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Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ . THANK YOU MEGWETCH for reading

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Saturday, August 17, 2013

Deal reached, details unknown about #BABYVERONICA

Mediation deal reached during unexpected hearings in Veronica dispute, but details a mystery

Comment by Renae Arbuckle on The Post and Courier news article

08/16/13 at 09:48 PM

So sad. Sad that an engaged couple's relationship ended so poorly that the woman would give away her child to total strangers rather than let the father have a chance. Sad that she, the adoption agency and the Capobianco's knew of the father's heritage as stated on the adoption papers and used deceit to illegally transfer a child from one state to another to quickly begin the adoption process in a state with a reputation of taking American Indian children.

Cherokee membership has nothing to do with blood quantum and they do not receive money for being native. The Capobianco's gambled on the father's never knowing the outcome. During the pregnancy, he and his family made several attempts to reach the birth mother with no success. She instructed the hospital to place her on a list where her or the baby's presence were unreachable - like no newspaper announcement of the birth. However, she invited total strangers to leave the state with her newborn child. Four months later, as the birth father prepared to leave the country on military duty, he is approached to sign acceptance of service papers. Our single service men and women sign many required documents including assigning custody to the other parent before leaving is standard practice. My own son had to sign similar documents along with having child support automatically sent each month electronically. This young birth father signed a similar document - he thought. When the process server tells him what he really signed, he began legal proceedings then to gain custody of his daughter.

Even the Capobianco's signed a court document a few months later acknowledging his Cherokee heritage. Even Brown's former wife is speaking favorably that he is a good father and financially supports their daughter. Not sure where you got your info, but check again.

Moving forward, the Capobianco's arrival in Tulsa this week was a big media joke. They setup a press conference the next morning in an expensive hotel with a new crew and many cameras following them all day.  Anyone can see they're trying to sway public opinion t their side, but it doing the opposite. To top things off, the "mediator" they bring is not qualified to use the title! This article doesn't mention that when he approached the Brown's living quarters, he had a camera crew with him ready to go. He is creating a documentary on the whole Baby Veronica ordeal. Although he said he had no intentions of filming the interview, why did he take a camera crew. Our Cherokee Nation Martials delivered his note to Mr Brown then escorted him off the school property.

During the same afternoon, Mr Brown offered them to visit Veronica, but they refused. Instead they filed yet one more lawsuit. Oh, and lets not forget their "friend" as announced at the press conference who is conveniently the president of her own marketing, PR, and social media firm. Now, is it Ms Munday or the Capobianco's that have created the media frenzy? None of the news is told from Mr Brown's side, only the Capobianco's. Who is trying to make Veronica the media's new toy?

I was glad to see the Brown's not bring the child to either courthouse today. They are protecting her in her own best interests. Look at the photo for this article if you don't believe me. They cannot stay in their own home because of the Capabianco's love affair with the media. Thank God for a smart Oklahoma judge who put a gag order on this case today.

Oh, according to Mr Brewster, the trumped up charge by the SC law enforcement has nothing to do with this situation. Have you read the law? How can someone steal their own child when they already have custody? It's all they can come up with.

Lastly, while the father may not fall under ICWA, the child does. The Cherokee Nation will always take care of its own and Veronica is a Cherokee Citizen. I am hopeful that the Capobianco's will realize their gamble did not pay off.  When the SC court sent the child home with her father, jurisdiction transferred to OK. What right does the SC court to finalized the adoption of a child that is not nor has been in the adoptive physical custody for half it's life?

Mr Brown has financially supported both his children, they formed a relationship, and Veronica is and has been a very happy child in OK. Leave her be. Someone should begin investigating the (Nightlight) adoption attorney and soon. He's already started an illegal adoption of another Oklahoma American Indian child from Shawnee. This time the birth grandmother and the birth father are on the same side.

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20130816/PC16/130819561

#BabyVeronica a Victim of Colonial Domination



A note from Ray Cook, ICTMN Opinions Editor: The political and legal ramifications of the Baby Veronica case have, in broad strokes, done two things....
Click here to read part 1 by Dina Gilio-Whitaker....

For Indigenous people around the globe, far too many moms and dads had no choice, truly no choice, when their children were taken. Even uneducated Indian people are not stupid. Giving Indian babies to white families was part of a larger plan: colonization. It worked. It ultimately did change our future.
            This was quite a revelation for me, being one of the colonized....Trace


Please READ: Observations of Adopted Children: http://larahentz.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/observations-of-adopted-children/

Friday, August 16, 2013

The Plan for #BABYVERONICA

Prayers are sent from around Mother Earth for the Dusten Brown family in Oklahoma

No matter what we see on TV or read in the news, we know Great Spirit has a plan.  If adoption needs to be in the national spotlight, Veronica and her family were chosen to do this work... and it's hard and anguishing work.  

The dark chapter of Native American's adoptions brought about the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 which was greatly needed to end the wholesale removals of Indian children to non-Indian parents.

Veronica must be raised by her dad Dusten and family. That is ICWA's federal law. The families met in court today to make important decisions regarding Veronica's future and best interest.

Keep a prayer that Great Spirit will protect the Brown family.  Keep a prayer for family preservation.  Keep a prayer that Veronica is safe from the media insanity surrounding her and her family.  Keep a prayer that the Capobianco's receive the message to leave Oklahoma immediately and end their crusade and insanity.... 

 

MEDIA UPDATE:  hearing-regarding-veronica

 

Can you help?

Hague Complaint Registry
Send the Hague a short letter about the Baby Veronica Case and report that the Nightlight Adoption Agency violated the Indian Child Welfare Act (more than once) and to please shut them down.
http://adoption.state.gov/hague_convention/agency_accreditation/complaints.php

#‎FirstNations‬ in Canada allege that discriminatory funding deprives tribes of services they need to keep families together. So, "children are being sent into institutional care by the thousands... It looks a lot like the pattern under residential schools." We have the same problem in ‪#‎SouthDakota‬

Baby Veronica's biological family, adoptive parents arrive in court this morning (Two Worlds Radio program this Sunday night)

(Two Worlds Radio that will be interviewing several Lost Daughters and Trace DeMeyer, a Native American adoptee, about this case -- this Sunday night at 10:00 p.m.)

The Capobianco petition was requesting that Dusten Brown and his wife, Robin Brown, along with Veronica's grandparents -- Alice and Tommy Brown -- be ordered "to produce Veronica before this court."

Another court hearing for the biological family -- before the Cherokee Nation -- is scheduled at 11 this morning, according to the tribe's attorney general, Todd Hembree.

The hearing will be to change the temporary guardianship of Veronica. The Cherokee Nation granted guardianship of the child to her grandparents and stepmother while Brown was on National Guard duty in Iowa this month. That guardianship would be changed to a "special guardianship," which is more permanent, Hembree said.
 
READ NEWS THIS MORNINGTULSA WORLD
UPDATE:A custody hearing has now stretched past two hours at the Cherokee County courthouse, where Baby Veronica’s adoptive parents are facing biological family.

A second hearing, in Cherokee Nation tribal court, was due to begin at 11 a.m. a few blocks away. But the parties remain inside the close hearing in Oklahoma district court. 

UPDATE: Rather than accept Brown's request to meet quietly to discuss Veronica's future, however, the Capobiancos instead turned to what has now become what insiders are calling “desperate and chilling” attempts to use the media to argue their case.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/16/capobiancos-send-locator-tv-star-take-veronica-school-150907

You will never own us or our history or our story #Adoption

Happened in Atlanta in 2013
The following excerpt is from the blog THE LIFE OF VON: http://eagoodlife.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/large-charismatic-animals/

I have always found zoos tragic and distressing; perhaps the dislocation of those wonderful animals and birds, their imprisonment in lives not of their choosing or making, in enclosures that can never, ever replicate where they came from, reminds me of adoption.

We hear the same stories of ‘orphan saving’ and excuses for what in the harsh light of day is greed and the bending of others to the will of the ones with money and power, control and influence.

Yet again we are being instructed how to behave! I could bring you many quotes. Most of you adoptees have heard it all before and are weary of the tiresome instructions. This time it is around the concept of ownership of adoptees by adopters.

A dear fellow adoptee writes:  “For many adoptive parents, they still do not get it: you do not OWN us, nor will you ever own us, make us your own, or become our ‘real’ parents.” (Von is referring to my post: here)

She was instructed not to speak for us all and is told not lump us in a group of all adoptees, whatever that means. We adoptees belong to the Bastard Nation, even those of us who were the offspring of parents who later married or who were married. We were ‘illegitimised’ in order for our adopters to ‘legitimise’ us with their name, our adoption and the erasure of our history, which was replaced with theirs. Some of us were commodified, sold and bought for large sums of money. No-one questioned that, it was accepted, part of adoption and it seems it is still accepted as ‘normal’ to pay large sums of money for children, but refuse to believe that means a commercial transaction has taken place. We are bought and sold, some of us are trafficked, stolen, kidnapped, traded for increasingly larger sums of money, as we make our way up the food chain.


We see time and time again adopters who have spent the money and feel ‘entitled’, to what it is not quite certain, but certainly it seems to the life of the adoptee, to the adoptee’s presence in their lives, to have ‘naming rights’ and to direct the life story of the adoptee. We so often see adopters who want to keep on directing the life of the adoptee in reunion. I could quote hundreds of examples of adult adoptees who are constrained from reunion with their biological families because
*they are not told they are adopted
*they don’t believe they have the right
*they are fearful of hurting their adopters
*they are afraid of losing both families
*they are threatened and blackmailed by their adopters
*they are encouraged to experience guilt for wanting to know who they are
*they are told they will lose everything
*they are encouragd to believe it is ‘either/or’ and that they can’t have both families

Because the need to know who we are and our identity is not about curiosity, but much, much more, many adoptees take the risks put in their way and find that the threats were real. It seems adopters are not only threateners, but feel very threatened by adoptees’ biology, our need to see our people, to know them and to make sense of that part of our lives before adoption. Our identity is about us, each of us makes it up as we go along, we weave a tapestry of the threads of our history, we become who we are and we are not owned as adults by anyone, our family is who we chose it to be.

If you are lucky and have raised us to be compassionate, inclusive and you have been open about adoption, encouraging and supportive of our exploration of who we are and generous and accepting in wishing us to have the most complete life possible, you may find yourself part of our family still.

Those who have not dealt effectively with their feelings about infertility, the fertility of non-biological members of the family, the presence in life of a mother and father who are the biological parents, the concept of life before adoption for the adoptee/s, the presence of trauma, loss, ambiguous loss for the adoptee/s, and who have not learned all they can about the effects of adoption, the monetary and political aspects of adoption may find hurdles and handicaps, stumbling blocks and difficulties getting in the way, making relationships unrewarding, hard to develop and maintain.

However you have raised us, whatever you paid for us, whatever you feel about us, you will never own us or our history or our story.

And you might like to check this out if you haven’t already – http://danielibnzayd.wordpress.com/the-adoption-honesty-project


We live in 2013...there is no excuse for those who adopt babies and children not to know our adoptee experience and harsh opinions...Until adoption is abolished or reinvented to respect our human rights, we will blog our strong opinions... Trace 

This winter we will make history again with a new anthology of Native adoptee voices from across North America. Thousands upon thousands of us were placed in adoptions and lost to our tribal families and communities because of the Indian Adoption Project and ARENA and stranger adoptions.

Read more about these programs and the congressional history of the Indian Child Welfare Act here

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The world is watching! #BABYVERONICA





The Topic of Adoption and Adoptees, Split Feathers, the Baby Veronica News and our history as Native American adoptees is reaching the world!

I started this little blog in late 2009 when my memoir One Small Sacrifice was coming out. The blog grew slow and steady ... Friends on Facebook and Twitter shared and liked the posts .... Over a month ago, we had almost 4 million LIKES then Facebook changed their app.

Thank you to all the new readers!

THIS MONTH: Google has sent us the most new readers! 10607 hits



These countries are now reading this blog.
United States

France

Canada

United Kingdom

Germany

Poland

Australia
Sweden

Spain

China
 

Oklahoma governor declines to sign warrant to extradite Dusten Brown #BABYVERONICA

Upcoming court action

Wednesday: South Carolina Family Court will hear motions from Brown and the Cherokee Nation.

Aug. 23: Deadline for Brown to contest South Carolina's order in Oklahoma court.

Sept. 4: A Cherokee tribal court will consider extending a temporary guardianship for Veronica's stepmother and grandparents, potentially claiming jurisdiction over the case.

Sept. 12: Brown to return to Sequoyah County Court for a hearing on his extradition.




Veronica and her biological father, Dusten Brown, in Oklahoma in April.

Oklahoma governor declines to sign warrant to extradite Dusten Brown to South Carolina to face charge in Veronica case

  • Posted: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 2:19 p.m., Updated: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 8:23 a.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin declined Tuesday to act on South Carolina’s extradition warrant for Dusten Brown until the birth father of Veronica has a chance to challenge the legality of his arrest for failing to turn her over to her adoptive parents on James Island.
Fallin said she had received Gov. Nikki Haley’s signed warrant seeking Brown’s extradition to South Carolina and had spoken to her counterpart in the Palmetto State. But Fallin said in a statement she has declined Haley’s request to sign the warrant until Brown has a chance to contest the action at a Sept. 12 court hearing in Sequoyah County, Okla.



“This is a difficult and sad situation for everyone involved, and Gov. Haley is working with law enforcement, the state of Oklahoma, and the family to resolve it as quickly as legally possible,” said Doug Mayer, Haley’s spokesman, by email in response. “Regardless of the varying personal opinions on this case, it is every governor’s first priority to uphold the rule of law and that is what must happen here. Both the U.S. and South Carolina Supreme Courts have spoken and the governor remains committed to returning baby Veronica back home safely.”
Brown is wanted in Charleston County on a custodial-interference charge for failing to surrender his 3-year-old daughter to Matt and Melanie Capobianco. He surrendered to Oklahoma authorities on Monday but was quickly released on a $10,000 bond. South Carolina authorities are now trying to get him back in custody and sent to South Carolina.
The Capobiancos, expressing frustration at the delay in reuniting with Veronica, vowed Monday to travel to Oklahoma and retrieve the little girl, whom they described as a “captive.” Word surfaced late Tuesday that they had indeed traveled to the Sooner State and planned to hold a press conference in Tulsa this morning.
A statement from Fallin’s office said she “believes that Mr. Brown should have the opportunity to argue his case in a court of law, and she will not act on the rendition order before that date. However, the governor encourages both the Capobianco family and Mr. Brown to reach a resolution outside of court as quickly as possible.”

Read more:  HERE

Capobianco Press Conference: here

The adoption industry's ugly side Op-Ed (from NCAI)

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/the-ugly-side-of-the-adoption-industry-90091.html


Great Column on BlogHer: http://www.blogher.com/baby-veronica-growing



ALARMING!

ON TWITTER: Krista Robertson @kdrobertson
is directly connected to Jessica Munday PR agent for the Capobiancos:



Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Sold in Oklahoma: Second Indian Infant Adopted to South Carolina



Raymond W. Godwin, the Greenville, South Carolina-based attorney
for the Capobiancos and for another adoptive couple
 in South Carolina who are also illegally holding an Indian child from Oklahoma


















By Suzette Brewer August 13, 2013
As Dusten Brown posted bail in a Sequoyah County, 
Oklahoma courtroom yesterday afternoon on a federal 
warrant for his arrest for "custodial interference" 
in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, Indian Country 
Today Media Network has learned that yet another 
Indian child from Oklahoma has been illegally placed 
for adoption in South Carolina.



 
RELATED: Baby Veronica's Father Accused of 'Custodial Interference' Felony
'Custodial Interference': Dusten Brown Turns Himself In
Dusten Brown Released After Posting copy0K Bond
 

What adoptees do to survive (some call it walking in a fog)



my first memory

By Trace A. DeMeyer

The adoption industry is so fricking clever at marketing itself.  They hide that adoptees are in therapy more than any other human, and that adoptees are institutionalized more than any other person, and that adopted children today are often drugged into submission for their acting out or behaving badly.

Ask yourself: Why would anyone do this (do a stranger adoption) to a child?

This is my life, my own experience.

The breakdown I had as a baby was fear-based. I’m born, mom disappears. I am in an orphanage then foster care then adopted. This sets my adrenals into fight-or-flight. Emotionally I’m scared. A part of my mind shuts down to protect me. As an infant, I deaden myself. I want my mother but she is long gone, never coming back. Read The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier.

The science of birth psychology hasn’t caught on with the public yet but it states that babies in utero are sensing everything.  We need contact with our moms (and dads) to grow and become fully functioning.  If that bond breaks, we break.  [Read http://birthpsychology.com if you don’t believe me.  For example: stress hormones in womb may be linked to neurodevelopmental diseases such as autism and schizophrenia, which affect males more frequently or more severely than females. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130304151811.htm]

So eventually I get adopted by strangers and I adjust. But I am not fully functioning. My ability to grow and trust was damaged. That’s why it’s called the primal wound.

I get along, graduate college, work as a musician. I make more bad decisions than good. I am smart enough to know I am sick. It took years (and therapy twice) to actually see how I was half-alive. The part of me I’d buried wasn’t going to walk out of the fog unless I was really safe.  It happened in my late 30s in Seattle.  When I start to feel again, it’s like I walked back in to my own body. As I told my holistic doctor, this was a serious emotional illness, what Indians call the splitfeathers syndrome. My mind protected me because it had to, for a long time. I got well. I walked out of the fog.

Are their adoptees out there who are not well?  Definitely.  Some self-medicate since we know something is wrong with us.  Some adoptees are drug addicts, alcoholics, even criminals.  Some kill themselves. Adoptee suicide rates are very high, another fact the adoption industry doesn’t mention in their forever family ads. (Read http://www.amfor.net)

So whoever invented “closed adoption” and “stranger adoption” was pretty sick themselves. Certainly after the world wars, there were war orphans. For Indian Country, there were these human experiments called the Indian Adoption Projects and ARENA Programs. Thousands upon thousands of Native children were placed into stranger adoptions, building the booming adoption industry it is today in the USA. The damage to us Lost Birds is rarely mentioned in this bad history.

Believe it or not: there are very few orphans in the entire world but the adoption industry has decided to keep selling babies -- they just call them orphans to grab our attention.

Why? The Adoption Agency morphed to serve a bigger ever-growing market: infertile couples. There are thousands and thousands of couples who can’t get pregnant.  Infertility is a silent epidemic. One thing leads to another, right? Toxic environment = infertility.

As I wrote in my op-ed for Indian Country Today published yesterday, the supply of infants is diminishing.  The adoption industry makes more than a billion dollars every year.  Where do you think they’ll go next to get a fresh supply of babies?



Excerpted from NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, NCJS Journal Abstract, "ADOPTION AND MURDER" (from Psychology and Law" p.274-280, 1997, Santiago Redondo and Vicente Garrido et al, NCJS 176632)

“…although adopted children commit murders more often than commonly believed, there is resistance to making an issue of this fact. This may be because of the secrecy associated with many adoptions and the failure of criminal justice agencies to record the nature of an offender's family background. From a legal posture, an adopted child is simply the child of his adoptive parents. …the psychodynamics of adoption are easily overlooked in forensic mental health evaluations.” 


Excerpted from "ADOPTION FORENSICS: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ADOPTION AND MURDER" by David Kirschner, PhD

“Of the 500 estimated serial killers in U.S. history, 16 percent were adopted as children, while adoptees represent only 2 or 3 percent of the general population. Adoptees are 15 times more likely to kill one or both of their adoptive parents than biological children.”

And my earlier post in 2012 about Adoption Propaganda and Dr. Phil: here

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Canada's Residential Schools

The religious organizations that operated the schools — the Anglican Church of Canada, Presbyterian Church in Canada, United Church of Canada, Jesuits of English Canada and some Catholic groups — in 2015 expressed regret for the “well-documented” abuses. The Catholic Church has never offered an official apology, something that Trudeau and others have repeatedly called for.

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What our Nations are up against!

What our Nations are up against!

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

Did you know?

Did you know?
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Diane Tells His Name


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60s Scoop Survivors Legal Support

GO HERE: https://www.gluckstein.com/sixties-scoop-survivors

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.”
The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

NEW MEMOIR

Original Birth Certificate Map in the USA

Why tribes do not recommend the DNA swab

Rebecca Tallbear entitled: “DNA, Blood, and Racializing the Tribe”, bearing out what I only inferred:

Detailed discussion of the Bering Strait theory and other scientific theories about the population of the modern-day Americas is beyond the scope of this essay. However, it should be noted that Indian people have expressed suspicion that DNA analysis is a tool that scientists will use to support theories about the origins of tribal people that contradict tribal oral histories and origin stories. Perhaps more important,the alternative origin stories of scientists are seen as intending to weaken tribal land and other legal claims (and even diminish a history of colonialism?) that are supported in U.S. federal and tribal law. As genetic evidence has already been used to resolve land conflicts in Asian and Eastern European countries, this is not an unfounded fear.

GOOGLE

In some cases, companies may even take it upon themselves to control the narrative according to their own politics and professed values, with no need for government intervention. For example: Google, the most powerful information company in the world, has been reported to fix its algorithms to promote, demote, and disappear content according to undisclosed internal “fairness” guidelines. This was revealed by a whistleblower named Zach Vorhies in his almost completely ignored book, Google Leaks, and by Project Veritas, in a sting operation against Jen Gennai, Google’s Head of Responsible Innovation. In their benevolent desire to protect us from hate speech and disinformation, Google/YouTube immediately removed the original Project Veritas video from the Internet. - https://desultoryheroics.com/2023/11/12/internet-censorship-everywhere-all-at-once

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