“Because it’s who I am, and I have more to do.”

 

Seneca Nation citizen Terry Cross is widely known as the founding executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, launched in the early 1980s, and continues to serve as a senior adviser to the organization assisting tribes with preventing child abuse and neglect. 

These days, Cross, 71, spends time taking long walks on the Nedonna Beach with his wife, Kristin, he said in a lengthy interview with The Imprint. But he admitted that he’s “not very good” at staying retired, and so his work with Indigenous children and families through the organization known as NICWA continues — in large part due to his optimism about the future.

"...For those who’ve gone to boarding school, or those who’ve been reared in foster care, so many of our people were deprived of the opportunity to learn really positive ways of raising children. We need to be able to restore that and to give them the opportunity, because they’ve been told by the mainstream child welfare system that there’s something wrong with them. 

"Our approach is to say, ‘Here’s the teachings of our ancestors, many of you have missed this, and you have a right to learn it as an Indigenous person.’ Then you decide how you want your children raised. But the essence of those tribal teachings remains the same, because they have been handed down from time immemorial.

READ

Gathering Wisdom for a Shared Journey VIII Keynote Presentation - Terry Cross... #ICWA

Terry Cross - Founder of the National Indian Child Welfare Association Terry Cross (Ha-ne-ga-noh), an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation, received his master’s degree in social work from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. He is the founding executive director of National Indian Child Welfare Association, now serving as senior advisor. He is the author of Positive Indian Parenting and co-authored Towards a Culturally Competent System of Care, published by Georgetown University. He has 40 years of experience in child welfare, including 10 years direct practice.

Presentation slides: http://gathering-wisdom.ca/wp-content...

Fighting for our children -- 35 years after ICWA

NEW YORK STATE OCFS

Posted: November 11, 2013  

Terry Cross, the executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, reflects on the 35th anniversary of the Indian Child Welfare Act:

Thirty-five years ago today (Nov. 11, 1978), Congress enacted groundbreaking legislation, the impact of which has been arguably more profound than any other piece of federal Indian law in the modern era.

On November 8, 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act, otherwise known as ICWA, became law. While recent national attention has highlighted the law’s role in child custody and adoption proceedings involving tribal citizens, less credit has been granted to ICWA for its wider affirmation of tribal sovereignty as a guaranteed and guiding tenet of federal law. In ICWA, Congress affirmed tribal authority to protect American Indian children through their own laws, courts, and services. It recognized that tribal courts are of commensurate standing to state courts.

ICWA established minimum standards for states to follow in issues of custody and adoptions, giving tribes the right to intervene in state court proceedings as full parties. In an extraordinary acknowledgment of tribal sovereign authority for the time, ICWA provided protection to all tribal citizens no matter where they resided.

As such, ICWA served as a catalyst for subsequent legislation that further restored the capacity of tribes to govern themselves and reinforced the era of self-determination for tribal nations. Yet all of these sovereignty-affirming provisions were not the intended purpose of ICWA. Rather, ICWA was aimed at stopping the inappropriate removal of our children from their parents, extended families, tribes, and culture by non-Indians. In the 1970s, studies documented the horrifying experiences of thousands of American Indian families: one out of every four of our children was being removed from their families.

Of these, 85 percent were placed in non-Indian homes. Often such placement meant these children were cut off forever from loving extended families, their culture, community, and traditional way of life. The resulting trauma experienced by American Indian children, families, and entire tribes was as wounding as any assimilationist policy ever inflicted upon our people.

Native American Leaders Call for DOJ Investigation of ICWA Violations

Published: February 3, 2014
 

PORTLAND, OR—Today, National Indian Child Welfare Association Executive Director Terry Cross formally requested the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division launch an investigation into the unlawful treatment of American Indian and Alaska Native children in private adoptions and public child welfare systems.
Cross presented a letter on behalf of four leading national Native American organizations—the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the National Congress of American Indians, the Native American Rights Fund, and the Association on American Indian Affairs—during a meeting at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland hosted by Department of Justice Acting Attorney General for Civil Rights Jocelyn Samuels.
 

PDF: http://www.nicwa.org

NOTE: This letter gives me the idea that WE adoptees can also draft a letter to the DOJ asking for an investigation into this case, mentioning our own adoptions pre-ICWA.... Use the addresses on this letter to write your own letter TODAY....one solution is public outcry - that is needed now... Trace

NICWA Conference Addresses Challenges of the Indian Child Welfare Act

NICWA Conference Addresses Challenges of the Indian Child Welfare Act

Excerpt:
"Increasing national and state compliance with the ICWA law includes getting accurate information out to the public about the real story of the act and how it impacts Indian children and families, said NICWA Executive Director Terry Cross. To that end, much of the conference focused on strategies in working with the media.
“The media plays a crucial role in telling this story,” Cross said. “Typically the mainstream press picks up a story regarding ICWA only when a non-Indian family has somehow been injured.”
Conference attendees were encouraged to work with the press and alert the NICWA office about local stories involving the ICWA law. “We are finding that it’s possible to defuse an explosive situation by simply getting factual information out to the press,” Cross said...."

Read more:http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/04/27/nicwa-conference-addresses-challenges-of-the-indian-child-welfare-act-110270 http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/04/27/nicwa-conference-addresses-challenges-of-the-indian-child-welfare-act-110270#ixzz1tG1Xblya

Mary Annette Pember did a fantastic job reporting on this conference!! Trace