AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: BITTERROOT: Adoption Didn't Solve the Indian Problem

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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/ .

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

BITTERROOT: Adoption Didn't Solve the Indian Problem

Adoption didn’t solve the “Indian Problem.” Its weight simply shifted to our small shoulders. No one told us “we” represented “them.” We had to find that out for ourselves. Some of us are still looking. Bitterroot is a roadmap. - Susan Harness
An author recounts how 1960s policies ripped apart families and communities, including her own.

MUST READ: Adoption didn’t solve the ‘Indian Problem’ — High Country News

See her other posts on this blog... HERE
HERE

Susan Devan Harness, author of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption is a member of the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes, a writer lecturer and cultural anthropologist living in Fort Collins, Colorado.

10-16-2019
This past weekend Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption took home two awards at the High Plains Book Festival: Creative Nonfiction and Indigenous Writer. I am so honored to be among so many really great authors.

Thank you goes to the readers and staff of the High Plains Book Festival, the University of Nebraska Press for their seeing the value of this project, my advisers Kate Browne and John Calderazzo, the overwhelming support from friends and family and the many voices who contributed to this work.

It is humbling.

All my best,

Susan

Susan Harness, M.A.

STOLEN GENERATIONS

No comments:

Crime Scene

The Justice Department is protecting the names of many perpetrators of abuse of Indigenous children.
We need a special independent prosecutor who can force the government and church to turn over the documents.
There can be no reconciliation without justice.@MumilaaqQaqqaq pic.twitter.com/5TL6OxKM5O
— Charlie Angus NDP (@CharlieAngusNDP) July 8, 2021

This is a map of every residential "school" site in Canada.

Every dot is a crime scene.

Only a few have been investigated so far.

Canada, do not get used to these numbers.

Do not let them become statistics.

Put yourselves in the shoes of these children in the ground. pic.twitter.com/5XJS1w1ka2
— Mumilaaq Qaqqaq (@MumilaaqQaqqaq) June 24, 2021

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.

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.