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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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Monday, October 26, 2020

Soul Wound

Soul Wound

The Legacy of Native American Schools

U.S. and Canadian authorities took Native children from their homes and tried to school, and sometimes beat, the Indian out them. Now Native Americans are fighting the theft of language, of culture, and of childhood itself.

By Andrea Smith (2015 reblog)

A little while ago, I was supposed to attend a Halloween party. I decided to dress as a nun because nuns were the scariest things I ever saw,” says Willetta Dolphus, 54, a Cheyenne River Lakota. The source of her fear, still vivid decades later, was her childhood experience at American Indian boarding schools in South Dakota.

Boys pray before bedtime with Father Keyes, St. Mary’s Mission School, Omak. © Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture/Eastern Washington State Historical Society, Spokane, WA

Dolphus is one of more than 100,000 Native Americans forced by the U.S. government to attend Christian schools. The system, which began with President Ulysses Grant’s 1869 “Peace Policy,” continued well into the 20th century. Church officials, missionaries, and local authorities took children as young as five from their parents and shipped them off to Christian boarding schools; they forced others to enroll in Christian day schools on reservations. Those sent to boarding school were separated from their families for most of the year, sometimes without a single family visit. Parents caught trying to hide their children lost food rations.

Virtually imprisoned in the schools, children experienced a devastating litany of abuses, from forced assimilation and grueling labor to widespread sexual and physical abuse. Scholars and activists have only begun to analyze what Joseph Gone (Gros Ventre), a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, calls “the cumulative effects of these historical experiences across gender and generation upon tribal communities today.”

“Native America knows all too well the reality of the boarding schools,” writes Native American Bar Association President Richard Monette, who attended a North Dakota boarding school, “where recent generations learned the fine art of standing in line single-file for hours without moving a hair, as a lesson in discipline; where our best and brightest earned graduation certificates for homemaking and masonry; where the sharp rules of immaculate living were instilled through blistered hands and knees on the floor with scouring toothbrushes; where mouths were scrubbed with lye and chlorine solutions for uttering Native words.”

Sammy Toineeta (Lakota) helped found the national Boarding School Healing Project to document such abuses. “Human rights activists must talk about the issue of boarding schools,” says Toineeta. “It is one of the grossest human rights violations because it targeted children and was the tool for perpetrating cultural genocide. To ignore this issue would be to ignore the human rights of indigenous peoples, not only in the U.S., but around the world.”

The schools were part of Euro-America’s drive to solve the “Indian problem” and end Native control of their lands. While some colonizers advocated outright physical extermination, Captain Richard H. Pratt thought it wiser to “Kill the Indian and save the man.” In 1879 Pratt, an army veteran of the Indian wars, opened the first federally sanctioned boarding school: the Carlisle Industrial Training School, in Carlisle, Penn.

“Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit,” said Pratt. He modeled Carlisle on a prison school he had developed for a group of 72 Indian prisoners of war at Florida’s Fort Marion prison. His philosophy was to “elevate” American Indians to white standards through a process of forced acculturation that stripped them of their language, culture, and customs.

Government officials found the Carlisle model an appealing alternative to the costly military campaigns against Indians in the West. Within three decades of Carlisle’s opening, nearly 500 schools extended all the way to California. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) controlled 25 off-reservation boarding schools while churches ran 460 boarding and day schools on reservations with government funds.

Both BIA and church schools ran on bare-bones budgets, and large numbers of students died from starvation and disease because of inadequate food and medical care. School officials routinely forced children to do arduous work to raise money for staff salaries and “leased out” students during the summers to farm or work as domestics for white families. In addition to bringing in income, the hard labor prepared children to take their place in white society — the only one open to them — on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder.

Physical hardship, however, was merely the backdrop to a systematic assault on Native culture. School staff sheared children’s hair, banned traditional clothing and customs, and forced children to worship as Christians. Eliminating Native languages — considered an obstacle to the “acculturation” process — was a top priority, and teachers devised an extensive repertoire of punishments for uncooperative children. “I was forced to eat an entire bar of soap for speaking my language,” says AIUSA activist Byron Wesley (Navajo).

The loss of language cut deep into the heart of the Native community. Recent efforts to restore Native languages hint at what was lost. Mona Recountre, of the South Dakota Crow Creek reservation, says that when her reservation began a Native language immersion program at its elementary school, social relationships within the school changed radically and teachers saw a decline in disciplinary problems. Recountre’s explanation is that the Dakota language creates community and respect by emphasizing kinship and relationships. The children now call their teachers “uncle” or “auntie” and “don’t think of them as authority figures,” says Recountre. “It’s a form of respect, and it’s a form of acknowledgment.”

Friday, October 16, 2020

Larimer County (Colorado) violated federal Indian child adoption law, court finds


Excerpt:

With the passage of ICWA, Congress found that terminations of parental rights had the effect of separating Indian children from their tribal communities. Around the time of the law’s enactment, up to 35% of Indian children were living in foster care or were adopted or institutionalized. A lack of culturally-competent standards for assessing Indian families, poverty in Indian country and economic incentives for adoption all led to the high rates of removal. 

Despite the fact that states routinely violated the rights of the Indian parents and children, the Bureau of Indian Affairs found as recently as 2016 that states have implemented ICWA inconsistently, with the upshot that “an Indian child and her parents in one State can receive different rights and protections under Federal law than an Indian child and her parents in another State.”

The National Indian Child Welfare Association reports that even with ICWA, native children still experience removal from their homes at two to three times the rate of white children.

The bureau did not immediately answer an inquiry about the number of custody hearings pursuant to ICWA that occur in Colorado annually. Kathryn E. Fort, director of the Indian Law Clinic at Michigan State University's College of Law, said there were at least 16 appeals of ICWA-related custody proceedings in Colorado between 2017 and 2019. She added that the difficult nature of aggregating cases meant that not all proceedings are included in her tally.

The appellate panel returned the adoption case to the Larimer County juvenile court with instructions to the human services department to notify all relevant parties.

 

SOURCE

Thursday, October 15, 2020

American Indian Children Still Removed From Homes at High Rates


 repost from 11/9/2015

By LEX TALAMO
 

Almost 40 years after the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) passed, American Indian children are still being removed from their homes in highly disproportionate numbers– at a rate almost three times higher than any other ethnicity, excepting African American children.

Minnesota leads the list of states with the worst rates of disproportionate removal– where American Indian children are overly represented in the foster care system– according to a June 2015 report from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.  Other states with high numbers of disproportionate removal include Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, Wisconsin, Washington, South Dakota and Oregon.

Even in states without dramatic removal rates– like Arizona and New Mexico– many American Indian children find themselves removed from their families and placed in group homes, treatment centers or foster care.

In McKinley County, New Mexico,  American Indian children make up 73 percent of all children in foster care, according to a 2015  third quarter report from the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD).  And in Arizona, over 1,300 American Indian children were in the foster care system as of March 31, 2015, according to a Department of Child Safety Child Welfare Report.

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 applies to any child of American Indian descent who is an enrolled member or eligible for enrollment in any federally recognized tribe. When an American Indian child enters state custody, the state must contact the child’s tribe, and the tribe has the right to transfer the case to tribal court or to participate in court proceedings.

In order to help American Indian children stay connected to their tribal cultures and identities, ICWA also established a placement preference that starts with the child’s extended family and clan relatives and then progresses to enrolled members of the child’s tribe and enrolled members from any tribe– with placement of the child in a non-Indian family as a last resort.

“Any child who might be Native American, they have a [cultural] identity,” said Regina Yazzie, Program Director of the Navajo Nation Division of Social Services.  “It’s a benefit.”

Yazzie added that across the country, state agencies struggle to find American Indian foster families for children.  Finding placement families on reservation land can prove equally challenging.

Data from the Children, Youth and Families Department of New Mexico shows there are currently 43 American Indian foster care providers who have 79 placements available– nowhere near enough for the 262 American Indian children in New Mexico’s foster care system.  Melissa Otero from AdoptUsKids.org also said through an email correspondence that less than 1 percent of all AdoptUsKids placement families identify as American Indian.

When speaking with the Navajo Post, several tribal members mentioned hardships on reservations that negatively impacted families’ ability to foster– including poverty, poor housing, poor mental health care, suicide, and addiction.

“Part of what’s going on [is] drug and alcohol numbers are sky high,” said one tribal member, who wished to remain anonymous in order to be able to speak freely. “There are not a lot of healthy families. There are tons of families that care, but it takes structure, it takes money [to foster], and so many families are overwhelmed with the day to day living, how could they bring another child into their home?”

For the San Carlos Apache Tribe, methamphetamine poses a particular devastating problem.   Social services Director Terry Ross said that the reservation currently has an “epidemic of mothers with meth-exposed babies.”

“We try to work with the family, but when mothers are addicted to meth… it’s hard,” Ross said. “We can’t make people do anything. They have to want to change for their child.”

Many tribes offer social services like counseling, parenting classes, detox centers and emergency supplies to American Indian families in need. But representatives from several tribes mentioned that funding is limited and resources are stretched thin, so that American Indian children continue to find themselves in foster care– where many undergo significant trauma and loss of identity when growing up separated from their tribes, communities, and cultures.

Adoption and Addiction: Be someone you cannot be? VIDEO


 http://www.lifeworkscommunity.com/news/lecture/adoption-and-addiction

(repost from 1/15/2012) I do agree: an impossible job description: be someone you cannot be... adoption causes grief...hunger for attachment...trauma played out...catastrophic thinking...enormous wound at beginning of life...PTSD... Absolutely... Yes, all true... Trace

Sunday, October 11, 2020

Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy | Bill Addresses Cultural Genocide Caused by Indian Boarding Schools

 

Lost Sparrow movie/all are adoptees

For about 100 years, the U.S. government supported a system of boarding schools where more than 100,000 American Indian and Alaska Native children were stripped of their culture, their languages, and their religions and forced to assimilate to white customs.

That policy, which continued until the 1960s, has continued affects on native communities today, says a bill filed this week by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M. 

The United States has never fully accounted for the harms caused by the schools, the lawmakers said. Their bill, which has attracted a bipartisan list of cosponsors, would form a "Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy" to compile records and oral accounts of what happened in at 367 Indian boarding schools across 30 states. Those schools educated children as young as five years old and sometimes forced them into labor in white communities far from their homes, advocacy groups say, but many records of their practices have been lost or destroyed.

GOOD NEWS: Bill Addresses Cultural Genocide Caused by Indian Boarding Schools - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Alaskans should be mad

 Sullivan should stand up for principle, stand down on Barrett nomination

 

 caption: Senator Dan Sullivan met with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Sept. 30, 2020. (Photo provided by Sen. Sullivan office)

Where does Judge Barrett stand on Native American issues? 

While her record is thin, Alaska Natives should be concerned. Barrett has repeatedly stated that she shares the late Justice Scalia’s judicial philosophy, and he voted against tribal interests in over 86% of the cases he heard, including all of the cases he considered when she clerked for him in 1999.

Justice Scalia was also skeptical of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 1978 law enacted to prevent state agencies from forcibly removing Indian children from their families and placing them in Native American boarding schools or in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes. In the earliest Supreme Court case to interpret ICWA, Justice Scalia voted to uphold tribal jurisdiction, but in later years said that it was a vote he regretted.

READ: Sullivan should stand up for principle, stand down on Barrett nomination - Anchorage Daily News

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Dear Dad, You are Still Racist

 

by Author Mae Claire, born in Haiti raised in the USA.

A letter to my deceased father who illegally trafficked me out of an orphanage in Haiti. 
My works: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00IZG9Q56
Insta: @liftingtaboos
Blog: https://solifegoeson.com/

Excerpt:

Adoption is dangerous. Oftentimes we do it and we don’t even really know or understand why we are doing it. We do it because in the moment, it ​feels​ like the right thing. We do it because we think it is going to fix something in us. Maybe it does fix something in us…but it leaves the adoptee with scars, bruises and longing for what could have been.

Dear dad, now you are dead and can probably see and understand the pain you caused. If there is any way you can infiltrate the lives of others who have adopted or are hoping to adopt and warn them of the dangers; we adoptees will forever be grateful.

May you not rest in peace until you have saved other adoptees from the same pain.

FANTASTIC WRITING: Adopted from Haiti, Mae | InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)

 

MORE:

Friday, October 2, 2020

Canada's Residential School Abuse testimony #OrangeShirtDay

 



 

Truth and Reconciliation REPORT CARD #TRC

 UPDATE

Tansi Nîtôtemtik, 

Today’s post continues our assessment of TRC Call to Action #4, specifically in relation to the following requirements of the national standard for Indigenous child welfare: 

    ii. Require all child-welfare agencies and courts to take the residential school legacy into account in their decision making. 

    iii. Establish, as an important priority, a requirement that placements of Aboriginal children into temporary and permanent care be culturally appropriate. 


READ

 

Indian Child Welfare Act:[6] The Gold Standard

The United States enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act (CWFA) in 1978, in response to overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the child welfare system. The CFWA is exemplary as it empowers Indigenous communities with inherent jurisdiction to resolve matters involving children in need of care.[7] 

When determining the best course of action for an Indigenous child, the ICWA requires US courts to consider the following:

  1. A genuine desire from the biological parents to place an Indigenous child in care.[8]
  2. Active efforts to keep the family together (e.g. rehabilitative programs) to be unsuccessful before any placement is ordered. [9]
  3. A higher burden of proof to require placement/adoption.[10]
  4. A legislated order for placement to keep the child close to their family and community.[11]

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Elders Can Experience Domestic Violence #ViolenceAwarenessMonth

 


StrongHearts Native Helpline: 
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month


Native American Elders

A Native American is usually considered an elder when they are above the age of 60 to 65, although it varies from tribe to tribe.

In our Native communities, we are taught to respect our elders. We honor them at ceremony, community gatherings, and pow wows. Their presence is considered to be an honor. We depend on them for wisdom and guidance gleaned from their years of experience. They are invaluable to us. Yet, they can still be victims of domestic violence.

Abuse can happen to anyone. It is not limited to a specific age, class, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Abuse can happen in relationships where couples are married, living together, dating or have children together. Violent behavior can appear at any time in a relationship, though possessive, controlling and other alarming behavior often reveals itself as the relationship becomes more serious.

Domestic violence happens when an intimate partner uses a repetitive pattern of abuse to maintain power and control over their partner. The abuse can physically harm, intimidate, prevent a person from acting freely, or force them to behave in ways they do not want.

Types of Abuse

What can domestic violence look like in elder relationships? Domestic violence can look similar in elder relationships as it does in their younger counterparts, but some elders may be more vulnerable to the impacts of abuse and less able to get support. 

      Physical abuse includes inflicting physical pain or injury upon the victim like pushing, holding or pinching. It can also include prohibiting one to get medical help, withholding medicine, or not allowing one time to heal after illness or surgery. 

      Emotional abuse includes verbal assaults, threats of abuse, and intimidation. It also includes isolation, where the abusive partner will not let the victim visit with their relatives. Isolation can be particularly harmful to elders as they may already have limited mobility or relationships.   

      Gaslighting is also a form of emotional abuse. This can occur when the abusive partner blames the victim for their behavior in such a way that the victim begins to question their own version of events or reality. In this situation, it can be very difficult for the victim to recognize that abuse is happening. 

      Spiritual and cultural abuse happens when the abusive partners uses hurtful stereotypes to criticize the victim, uses tribal membership against them, won’t allow them to participate in traditions, or restricts them from honoring their beliefs.

      Sexual abuse includes grabbing and hurting the sexual parts of the victim’s body, pressuring the victim for sex and becoming angry or violent when refused sex.

      Financial abuse happens when an abusive partner keeps money, accounts or financial information hidden from the victim. The abusive partner may also give an allowance to the victim or keep the victim’s social security or per capita checks. They may also use gaslighting as a tactic of control here. They may say things like, “I’ve always controlled the money.” or “You aren’t good with money.”; or “You have everything you need, don’t you?”

      Digital abuse happens when the abusive partner takes away phones, iPads, or computers in a bid to control who the victim can contact. 

A Stay Together Era

Elders can be more traditional. They came of age when families stayed together even during abuse. Some elders have endured a lifetime of domestic violence. To understand why elder-survivors of domestic violence stay, consider the following.

      Love: They have a long history of loving their partner and believe the abuse will someday end.

      Family: They want to maintain harmony within the family.

      Normalization: Elders may feel they have lived through the violence their whole life and there is no need or way to change it now. 

      Community: They fear having to leave the community in order to escape the abuse or are embarrassed about what other members of the community would think about the abuse.

      Manipulation and Low Self-Esteem: They blame themselves for the abuse, or feel hopeless. 

      No Money/Resources: They don’t have the resources to leave their situation, or feel a responsibility to financially support their abusive partner.

      Denial/Shame: Denial or shame happens when a survivor is embarrassed and wants to protect themselves, their children and/or families from being associated with the stigma of abuse.

Help is Available

At StrongHearts Native Helpline, we know that Native American elders are humble and it can be difficult for them to ask for help. Native Americans and Alaska Natives experience domestic violence at higher rates than any other ethnic group and that elders still suffer intimate partner violence.

 Domestic violence and dating violence are not Native American traditions, and neither is ever okay. 

StrongHearts Native Helpline is a free, culturally-appropriate, and anonymous helpline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives impacted by domestic violence and dating violence. We acknowledge and support all victims regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation or relationship status. If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic violence, help is available.

Contact StrongHearts at 1-844-7NATIVE or click on the Chat Now icon to connect one-on-one with and advocate daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. CT. As a collaborative effort of the National Domestic Violence Hotline (The Hotline) and the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, after-hour callers can connect with The Hotline by choosing option one.


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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.

You are not alone

You are not alone

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?
lakota.cc/16I9p4D

WATCH THIS

Diane Tells His Name


click photo

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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