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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

'I Wanted Someone to Love Me for Even a Second'

'I Wanted Someone to Love Me for Even a Second'

Girls make up only a small fraction of the incarcerated juvenile population, but girls often land in detention because they have experienced some form of trauma: abusive families, bad experiences in the foster care system, and especially sexual abuse. Policy experts even use the term "sexual abuse to prison pipeline," and they say it’s why incarcerating a young girl perpetuates more negative behavior and makes it harder to exit the system.
Desiree is a young woman who has bounced between foster care, detention centers, and residential treatment centers since she was 10. Even though she has been the repeated victim of abuse, she says she's been made to feel like she's the problem...and she's angry about it. But she has her own ideas about how to make things better and she’s making her voice heard.

Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice is supported, in part, by the Anne Levy Fund, Margaret Neubart Foundation, the John and Gwen Smart Family Foundation, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

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Friday, March 23, 2018

Indigenous film draws attention to #60Scoop survivors

Birth of a Family the fifth and final movie screened during the Wide Awake series

A film sharing the story of three sisters and a brother trying to rebuild their family after it was torn apart during the Sixties Scoop was shown at the University of Windsor Thursday night.
Birth of a Family was the fifth and final movie screened during the Wide Awake series put on by the university's Aboriginal Education Centre in partnership with the Arts Council Windsor and Region.
It follows the journey of Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie and Ben, who were adopted as infants into different families across North America and are just meeting again for the first time.
"I think that the policies in place were very systematic in how they were targeting First Nations people," said Kathryn Pasquach, the Aboriginal Outreach and Retention Coordinator for the university. "It was very unfortunate that the cultural importance and the belief system that Indigenous people hold were not valued."

Anthony Saracino is a university student who felt it was his duty to see the film

"I think just being a citizen of Canada — a citizen of the world — it's important to know the ground you walk on and I'm just doing my due diligence with that," he said.
Ostoro Petathegoose is an Indigenous woman who attended all of the screenings.
"I grew up with a lot of anti-Indigenous racism in my life and I have found when talking to a lot of people they are not educated on the history of Indigenous peoples in this country," she explained. "So I feel that movies like this are really relevant and people should be seeing movies like this."
The education centre hopes to run a similar series of films next year.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Adopt Indian Metis Program



We also have the Canada and American governments conducting the ARENA programs- transporting First Nations and American Indian children for adoptions cross borders.
Were you adopted into the US from Canada? Do you know?

1966 The National Adoption Resource Exchange, later renamed the Adoption Resource Exchange of North America (ARENA), was established as an outgrowth of the Indian Adoption Project.

READ THIS

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Advertised for Adoption #HumanTrafficking #Adoption



As I wrote "What do you call this" on this blog: THIS is genocide. Taking children and selling them in a catalog?  Taking children so they would disappear? Taking children so there would be less Indians to deal with, so governments would not have to honor their treaties? All the missing and murdered Indigenous women? The hunting of these women and their deaths by serial killers or maybe the police?
Think about it. Protect yourself.
Yes, adoption as human trafficking is what happened. Trace


Finding Cleo: CBC podcast solves decades-old mystery of Saskatchewan girl lost in Sixties Scoop (UPDATED)


Siblings separated in Sixties Scoop had been searching for sister for decades when they turned to CBC for help

 

A patchwork of information suggested Cleo Semaganis Nicotine had been killed decades ago while trying to make her way back to Saskatchewan from her adoptive family in the U.S., but no one knew for sure what happened until CBC News began looking into the case.

NEW EPISODES AVAILABLE: MORE

LISTEN: Finding Cleo: CBC podcast solves decades-old mystery of Saskatchewan girl lost in Sixties Scoop - CBC News | Indigenous

Adoptions threaten culture #SNAICC




Any move to have Aboriginal children adopted by non-Indigenous families would be a backward step, according to Australia’s peak body representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
SNAICC (National Voice for Our Children) chairwoman Sharron Williams, a Narungga-Kaurna woman based in Adelaide, said all children needed to be safe and cared for but Aboriginal children shouldn’t be separated from their kin and culture.

Ms Williams’ comments came as federal Children’s Minister David Gillespie said permanent adoptions should play a role in finding new homes for abused or neglected Aboriginal children, including adoptions with non-Indigenous families.

Debate on the issue has raged following the alleged rape of a two-year-old girl in the Northern Territory town of Tennant Creek.

Mr Gillespie has described the situation as a child protection “crisis”.

Ms Williams told NIT this week that before upping adoptions, more work needed to be put into helping parents, families and communities care for their children.

“We don’t believe Aboriginal children should lose connection to culture through adoption,” Ms Williams said.

“We know from our history that (approach) has created some enormous problems with our children losing connection to their country, their culture and in many instances their community.”

Asked if she thought non-Indigenous families should be able to adopt Indigenous children, Ms Williams said: “I don’t think they should.”

She said in most states and territories adoption was not an option, but permanent and stability placement was.

“In most states, non-Aboriginal people can become foster carers of Aboriginal children and that happens and in those instances cultural connect plans and stability plans are developed for individual children in care,” she said.

“But adoption is one of those areas where it doesn’t happen.

“I know there is work happening in New South Wales where there is a push to go down the road of adoption.

“I’m unsure how far that’s got, but in South Australia that isn’t something that is on the drawing board.”

Need to look at underlying poverty

Ms Williams said more resources needed to be put into addressing the poverty in Aboriginal families, the lack of employment, difficulties with housing, access to early childhood services and health programs.

“I think if they were better addressed for our communities, we would have a far greater response to better parenting (and) building stronger and more resilient communities, therefore less children would be removed.”

Northern Territory Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation head Eileen Cummings said a bridging program was needed to help keep children who were removed from their homes for their own safety connected with their families, communities and culture and to also help the communities grieving the loss of the children.

“We don’t want the children at risk to be left in their home environment unless there is a safety net there somewhere,” she said.

“But what we want is programs for the parents and the community as well.

“A lot of them are upset because the children are being removed, but you can’t leave them if they are not safe.”

Ms Cummings said when her corporation worked with women who were being subjected to domestic violence, one of the shelters ran an outreach program so that women could work to revisit their families and reconnect with their children.

“I thought that was a good way of reconnecting the parents back with the children because I don’t want our children to lose their identity as young Aboriginal people,” she said.

Children need better home environments

The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples said in a statement vulnerable children should be removed, but they needed to be going to a better place.

“We are troubled by the knowledge from past Royal Commissions of the dangers of neglect and abuse perpetrated within institutions and of the failures of many out-of-home-care alternatives,” it said.

“We desperately need to know where we are removing our children to.

“Their new environment must allow them to thrive.

“Countless Aboriginal children who have missed out on care and support have already been ‘removed’ – they are currently in juvenile detention centres and jails.

“These are the children failed by support ‘programs’, failed by distant policy-makers, failed by families in over-crowded houses and failed by communities where local control and self-determination have been frustrated.”

Meanwhile, more than 100 people last week protested outside Channel Seven’s Sydney headquarters following a segment on Seven’s Sunrise program in which an all-white panel discussed the proposed removal of Indigenous children through an adoption scheme.

The program subsequently revisited the topic with a panel of Indigenous experts, but ignored calls for an apology,

It said it blocked out the protestors with a generic backdrop last week.

“We respect the right to protest as much as we respect the right of free speech,” a Seven spokesperson said.

“Some of the group was holding offensive signage and some began banging on the window and mouthing obscenities.

“To ensure regulatory compliance, and bearing in mind the potential for young children to be watching, the decision was made to utilise a generic backdrop.”

SOURCE
Wendy Caccetta
reporter@nit.com.au

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

National database for First Nations adoptees | #60s Scoop Peer Support Line #NISCW

reblog: March 2018


60s Scoop


Eleanore Sunchild, a Cree lawyer who specializes in Aboriginal law and has represented Sixties Scoop adoptees, says, "a lot of times, they were so young they don't remember their family, they don't know what community they come from or even what tribe they belong to."

Sunchild says that loss of Indigenous identity coupled with separation from family is often devastating.

"The whole loss of being raised in a different home and not exactly knowing why, why they were removed — there's something wrong with them? Or was there something wrong with their family? And in a lot of instances it was just because of the policy that was in place at the time," she said.
Kicknosway says some people don't necessarily want to return to their communities.
She says they "only want to know they belong somewhere" and "have validation that they were alive" and that maybe someone missed them when they were taken away.
Author and Sixties Scoop survivor Raven Sinclair, an associate professor of social work at the University of Regina, has written extensively on the subject. She is in the midst of a five-year study with the aim of creating a national database of adoptees.
Her goal is to create a network that can provide practical, long-term support similar to what is available to some of the people affected by the residential school system.
Eleanore Sunchild
Cree lawyer Eleanore Sunchild, who represents survivors of the Sixties Scoop, says it's hard for adoptees to track down their biological families because many of them were so young when they were taken that they don't remember any details about their relatives or their community. (Connie Walker/CBC News)


"An adoptee you know here in town could call up a therapist who's been approved by us ... and get some help," she said. "For some, it's been a lifetime of abuse, so it's going to take a long time for them to recover."


NOT WORKING:  NISCW has set up a toll-free number to help adoptees searching for family connections and to provide peer support.

Meet Melissa Olsen | Stolen Childhoods

The Indian Adoption Project (IAP), which resulted in the out-of-home placement of many Native American children, lasted from 1958 through 1967. It emerged during the U.S. federal government’s ‘Termination Policy’ that sought to assimilate Native tribes into the larger American fabric “as rapidly as possible.” This meant removal of federal protection of tribes and tribal lands and the transfer of civil and criminal jurisdiction to the states, affecting laws around “social services, child welfare, probate, those kinds of civil matters,” Melissa says.



“You’re telling me this thing I’ve lived all these years has a history and that history includes some policy and that policy has been unknown to me? I’m a second year PhD student. To be at that level of study and for that to just be known, it still floors me.”
 Source: Meet Melissa Olson | Pollen - Pollen
Documentary 
Stolen Childhoods, an audio documentary written by Melissa Olson, Ryan Katz, and Todd Melby aired during the Listening Lounge and Truth to Tell. You can listen to the podcast below.

To support the project, visit their
GiveMN page.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Indian Child Welfare Act attacks are a threat to tribes #ICWA


High Country News
This week, High Country News published a story by reporter Allison Herrera detailing a conservative think tank’s efforts to dismantle the Indian Child Welfare Act, an adoption law that turns 40 this year. The 1978 act was created to prevent the separation of Native children from their families and communities through adoptions, to “protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families.”
...
Groups like the Goldwater Institute that push for the elimination of ICWA are, intentionally or not, contributing to the continued attack on Native existence.
Such groups have attempted to capitalize on misinformation and stereotypes as a way to undermine ICWA. But ignoring the rights of tribes as both governments and as peoples to protect their culture not only ignores sovereignty, an all-too-common practice these days, it also overlooks, quite callously, generations of historical trauma.
Note from Trace Hentz
I am so grateful to Graham for writing this article and interviewing me and others on the topic of ICWA and keeping adoptees in the news. When I spoke to him, it hit me that I wrote the article for Indian Country Today in 2013 and very little has changed. other than Goldwater trying to end the important much-needed federal law Indian Child Welfare Act.

Right now, ICWA is the law, but legal challenges against it continue.

Monday, March 5, 2018

Grandmothers on front lines of opiate crisis need to be heard and helped #ICWA

In Indian country, opiates and heroin are called dark spirits.

“...When you are in the throes of opiate addiction, it now owns your soul,” he added. “Pharmaceuticals was the gateway to addiction for our elders, and now some are experiencing addiction at 60, 70, 80 years old who had led a clean and traditional life but were prescribed without being told they were going to have a dependency problem.”

Meanwhile, the rate of drug-related out-of-home child placements in general in Minnesota has skyrocketed.

Of the 7,595 children placed into out-of-home care in Minnesota in 2016, parental drug abuse was cited as the primary reason in nearly 28 percent of cases. Of those 1,478 children covered under the Indian Child Welfare Act, 588, or about 40 percent, were removed for the primary reason of parental drug abuse, according to Department of Human Services data.
Nearly 90 percent of ICWA children, regardless of the reasons for removal, were placed with a relative while in out-of-home care.

READ: Rosario: Grandmothers on front lines of opiate crisis need to be heard and helped – Twin Cities

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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.

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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.


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