a blog for and by American Indian and First Nations adoptees who are called a STOLEN GENERATION #WhoTellsTheStoryMatters #WhyICWAMatters
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Wednesday, August 6, 2014
How much I changed (Part 5) #adoptionsurvivors
Take a read:
Excerpt:
Interview with Australian blogger ONCE WAS VON in 2011
old link: http://eag-oncewasvon.blogspot.com/search?q=One+Small+Sacrifice
Trace DeMeyer published her first book ONE SMALL SACRIFICE on the Split Feathers, the children taken from the First People of Turtle Island or the United States of America as it was renamed by those who claimed it. The Split Feathers (adoptees) were taken for education and for adoption in planned destruction of their Peoples. Many have not been found or found their way home. Trace includes the story of her own journey and tackles the difficult areas of adoption and the adoptee experience.
Von: In your life was there a pivotal event that changed you from being a victim of adoption to a survivor?
Trace: That is a great question because lots of people won’t recognize there is a definite shift from victim to survivor.
When laws restrict opening adoption records, these policymakers make us victims. There are many adoptees ready to know their family name, meet relatives and have reunions, but cannot because of adoption laws. Other adoptees, lulled by gratitude, may fear upsetting their adoptive family, and may not see themselves as victims of a corrupt unjust system.
The adoptee moves from victim to survivor when they decide to break the law, when they decide to regain and restore their own identity, and get their name. That’s a giant leap forward.
My becoming a survivor happened in stages, in a sequence of events. As a child I grieved. I promised myself as a teenager that I would find answers but it looked impossible with sealed records in Wisconsin. I felt overcoming my low self-esteem was first. In my 20s, I realized there would be “emotional processing” I’d need to do, slowly, over time. Opening my adoption records was very important in 1978 but troubling since I had no help to locate my parents. This was before the internet. I also had to face reality that I might not find them or my parents might not be willing to meet me. I never met my mother Helen which felt like a second rejection in the 1990s. I was almost 40 when I met my father Earl in 1994. Reunions (or not having a reunion) take time to process. Over the years, other adoptees were great teachers for me since there are no guidebooks for dealing with adoption trauma. There is so much to understand, obviously.
Writing my memoir, remembering everything again and adoption research changed me most – like a light bulb went on. I started to see adoption as an industry and a measure of control over a mother’s maternity and placed orphans in a state of emotional disgrace. Recognizing adoption as an institution, one that has outgrown its purpose, one that is damaging for mother and child, was perhaps my biggest transforming moment.
Von: You say in your book, that adoption involves many traumas, not just the one of the loss of a mother. Many of the things that happen to us, the damaging relationships, breakdowns and illness result from those traumas. How do we move from being vulnerable, to strength and survival?
Trace: In my book, I mention four distinct traumas for adoptees and I know there are more. Adoptee and natural parents are vulnerable to the billion dollar adoption machine that still manipulates us. I felt manipulated. Restricting us from meeting, laws which prevent our meeting, then add a dose of shame, judgement and misunderstanding, all deeply affects and even harms adoptees. I do write about this in depth in “One Small Sacrifice.”
Adoption is very isolating. Many adoptees like me suffered in silence. I see many adoptees create stories for their missing parents. If they do not know the truth, and never meet them, adoptees can stagnate emotionally and get trapped in illusions, lies and excuses. That is a very hard way to live. It’s very difficult to tell an adoptee what to do, or how to heal and overcome this vulnerability. I took small steps on my own and finally realized that there was only one solution – find the truth.
A closed adoption is the ultimate act of disruption. Because of my disgrace and orphan-status, I was not living emotionally well. I was not empowered as a human since the very act of adoption removed my identity. I made a decision to not live this way or accept the fantasy-land my adoptive parents and adoption industry created for me. I had to open my adoption, period. I would not give up.
It took me a long time to see how I failed myself with very troubling decisions and blamed Helen my birthmother for misery I had as a child. I fought the idea of being a disgrace. I fought feeling rejected by Helen when I finally found her. I fought very hard to heal myself, know myself and release judgment. Even as a teenager, I thought it was ridiculous to be expected to live a fantasy and project gratitude.
Finding the truth and meeting relatives moves you from feeling vulnerable to empowered, from victim to survivor.
(to be continued) How much I changed (Part 6) #Starved into submission #Food Insecurity #Occupied Tribes

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- Splitfeathers and Indian Child Welfare Act on Univ...
- Judge rules against destruction of residential sch...
- LOST BIRDS: Four adopted women seek out their Nati...
- How much I changed (Part 6) #Starved into submission
- How much I changed (Part 5) #adoptionsurvivors
- How much I have changed since the #CAICW story (Pa...
- Ensure children stay with blood relatives #ICWA
- Tribes on child welfare: We can do it better
- How much I changed (Part 3) #PAL (positive adoptio...
- How much I changed (Part 2) #IndianProblem
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NEW MEMOIR
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.
Diane Tells His Name

We conclude this series & continue the conversation by naming that adoption is genocide. This naming refers to the process of genocide that breaks kinship ties through adoption & other forms of family separation & policing 🧵#NAAM2022 #AdoptionIsTraumaAND #AdopteeTwitter #FFY 1/6 pic.twitter.com/46v0mWISZ1
— Adoptee Futures CIC (@AdopteeFutures) November 29, 2022
ADOPTION TRUTH
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.

Original Birth Certificate Map in the USA
Why tribes do not recommend the DNA swab
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.
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