15 years later, how much changed #ICWA Brackeen v. Bernhardt

UPDATE

15 years already? How I changed...but has adoption perception changed?

By Trace Hentz, ADOPTEE ACTIVIST

If  you had asked me in 2004 or 2014 what I had planned for myself, I would have not said “writing” about adoption, child trafficking, Indian Adoption Programs/Projects, the 60s Scoop, Stolen Generations and Cultural Genocide research.


As an adoptee, I'd attended the first Wiping the Tears ceremony in Wisconsin and met the organizers Sandy White Hawk (an adoptee) and elder Chris Leith.  Then my world changed.
I'd learn more hidden history. 

How adoption affected me: I'd never told my story of opening my adoption while I lived it. A few friends knew details but not all of it. I got the idea for a book when I wrote an article in 2005 about stolen generations of North American Indian children placed for adoption with non-Indian parents. That article, "Generation after Generation, We are Coming Home" was published in Talking Stick magazine in New York City and then in News from Indian Country in Wisconsin. It took me down a path I never expected.

I'd find new information, new history, meet new adoptees, and grow more concerned.*

It's true many bloggers hoped we made a strong and lasting impression, to impact and end the propaganda since the early 2000s. I am not sure we can actually gauge or measure how world views of adoption have changed. (If books on Amazon are an indication, memoirs by adoptees are now climbing the ranks over all the propaganda books about how to buy/adopt a baby.)

It's also true some blogger friends stopped blogging on adoption out of pure exhaustion!

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

If the statistics on adoption are any indication, the number of babies adopted by Americans are dropping each and every year.  There is definitely a BIG demand for infants (primarily because of infertility) but there remains a short supply of newborns/babies to adopt.  (I do think the adoption traffickers are constantly reinventing new ways to grab a fresh supply of infants.

What new poor countries or communities they will invade as this demand increases?! Read THIS) On this website we published stories ( Adoption Reality: Adoptee returned to Russia #NAAM (and) Adoption Reality: Guatemala #NAAM) and (Trafficking) on many countries who became the suppliers and traffickers of newborns and children. Child exploitation, labor bondage, organ trafficking and illegal adoption is also an ongoing problem that award winning Moroccan medical doctor in pediatrics and UN expert Dr. Najat Maalla M’jid says is not decreasing.

Indian Country has lived through this over a century with forced assimilation, child snatching and disappearing children. The government's motive: take more LAND (or what is on or under the land). Targeting children, the future of Indian Country, was obvious.

White people believe they deserve the right to adopt without considering the best needs of the Native child who is sovereign and future of their tribal nation.

On January 16, 2019, 325 tribal nations, 57 Native organizations, 21 states, 31 child welfare organizations, Indian and constitutional law scholars, and seven members of Congress joined the United States and four intervenor tribes in filing briefs to urge the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), the long-standing federal law protecting the well-being of Native children by upholding family integrity and stability.

THEY WILL STOP THE MADNESS - They know the HISTORY!

How much I changed (Part 1) #BABYVERONICA

REBLOG (worth a read)


By Trace DeMeyer (now Trace Lara Hentz) (I'm legally dropping my adoptee name in 2014)

I started this blog in 2009! How little I knew then. I tried to write a regular post about the subject of adoption, my own experience of search and reunion, my learning curve, what I hate about the billion dollar adoption industry, and the history I was finding about the Indian Adoption Projects and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), all of it. I looked at books, academic papers, everything I could find.

First I had to learn Google Blogger then I did as the marketers suggest: use social media and share your blog posts on Facebook and Twitter to get new readers. (Thank you all for reading and adding me to your networks!)

I met many adoptees after my memoir One Small Sacrifice came out. These Native American adoptees needed to tell their stories which lead to the first anthology TWO WORLDS.

Then along came a little girl named Veronica. I was utterly changed. To think a mother would (and did) adopt out her infant (when the baby had a young Cherokee dad who was not notified), I really thought this was an odd phenomena. This was not something that happens now. It's not the 50s, 60s or early 70s! We have the Indian Child Welfare Act, even it was passed in 1978. This was not supposed to happen!

What would make a mother do this? Money was all I could think or possibly revenge. (Even if this was a supposedly open adoption, Veronica's Cherokee dad wasn't in the picture and she was not adoptable since that is a violation of federal law!)

Veronica is a Cherokee child. We see how Veronica was ensnared in the racketeering industry called adoption.  Veronica was sold! We really don't know how the Nightlight Adoption Agency circumvented ICWA but they did. Veronica was moved across state lines and the tribe was not notified correctly. All this smelled rotten to me.

I know about the Supreme Court case and I know that Indians don't win cases but come on! This is a child who is not with her tribe or her own family because her non-Indian mother adopted her out? How does this happen in this century when there is a federal law that was enacted to prevent this?

Well, this case was my wake up call. And there are other cases where evidently ICWA is not being adhered to, even if it is federal law. WHY? Indians can live anywhere and do. You can find a Lakota or Inuit in Los Angeles or Miami or Dallas.  We have judges and social workers in cities everywhere asking how can this be? If the mother (or father) is Lakota or Inuit, shouldn't they be in South Dakota or Alaska? NO!

These authority figures learned as little as I did about Indians in school. If they know so little, they shouldn't even be allowed to handle a case with an Indian child. If they haven't been to an Indian reservation, they should recuse themselves from any case involving an Indian family.

What they don't know is dangerous. This is how children will slip through like Veronica did. And that is not supposed to happen with ICWA.

Indians are still living here in the USA! 

(continued) Eight part series is posted under HOW I CHANGED (part 4 was deleted)
How much I changed (Part 2) #IndianProblem

How much I changed (Part 8) (final installment) #Adoption

10 years already? How has adoption perception changed?

By Lara/Trace Hentz (DeMeyer) (Part 8)

If you had asked me in 2004 what I had planned for myself, I would have not said “writing” about adoption and human trafficking or blogging. I had just left my editor’s job at the Pequot Times in Connecticut in August and by September I was married, my second time. How life changed so dramatically for me is documented in my memoir in much greater detail.

It doesn’t seem possible 10 years zoomed by so fast – it’s like a time tornado hit. Time sped up to warp speed and still has me in its grip!

I know many bloggers on adoption (many good friends to me) had hoped we’d made a strong and lasting impact by now. I had that dream myself.  I am not sure we can actually gauge or measure how world views of adoption have changed. (If books on Amazon are an indication, adoptee memoirs are now climbing the ranks over all the propaganda books about how to adopt a baby.)  If the statistics on adoption are any indication, the number of babies adopted by Americans are dropping each and every year. There is definitely a demand for infants (primarily because of infertility) but there is still a short supply of newborn flesh to adopt.  (I do believe the adoption traffickers are constantly reinventing new ways to grab a fresh supply of infants. Think of what new poor countries or communities they will invade as the demand increases!! Read THIS)

What hasn’t changed fast enough for me are adoption laws, sealed adoption files or the old views of promised secrecy and confidentiality for first mothers. If you gave birth, wouldn’t you want to know what happened to your own baby? If you are an adoptee, don’t you want to know what happened to your mother (and father)?  Haven’t we moved past shaming women for unwed pregnancies? Yes, but not enough, apparently.  Lawmakers are still being wined and dined by adoption agency lobbyists so I don’t expect to see much change in the laws – but I hope I am wrong.

What I’d hoped would change faster is the perception of adoption, that it’s not as great for adoptees as people were made to think and believe.  As much as I’ve read in these past 10 years, blogs and books changed me beyond recognition!  Many times I emailed legislators (like in New Jersey and Illinois) and offered my memoir (as a free ebook) hoping they would see the light and change existing adoption laws. Maybe it helped?

Open Adoption - when adoption is necessary – is also an indication that times are changing! But we have a long way to go…This is a quote I saved about open adoption:

…ignored by the adoption agencies is the reality of “open adoption.” Only 22 of fifty states in America recognize open adoption agreements, but failure of the adoptive parents to comply with the agreement is not legally enforceable by the surrendering mother.

There are many excellent writers making profound statements too.

A quote by adoptee-author-blogger Elle Cuardaigh:  And adoption certainly is “worked.” When supply of newborns decreased in the 1970s, the adoption industry had to put a new spin on relinquishment  to stay in business. Since women could not be so easily shamed by single motherhood, they changed tactics. Potential suppliers (pregnant women) are now encouraged to “make an adoption plan.” She reads the “Dear Birthmother” letters and interviews hopeful adoptive parents. She is provided with medical care and possibly even housing.  She is promised this is her choice, and that she can have ongoing contact with her child in an open adoption. It would seem she has all the power, but she is being systematically conditioned to accept her role, her place. She doesn’t want to hurt the baby’s “real parents,” feels indebted to them, emotionally invested. She is soon convinced they are better than she is. She becomes “their birthmother.” It almost guarantees relinquishment. 

 

READ Elle’s blog and new book THE TANGLED RED THREAD.  Or visit: http://ellecuardaigh.com

READ LAURA DENNIS and the guest post: Welcome to the Adoptionland Carnival, Next Stop: The End.
 

Read any and all posts at THE LIFE OF VON. (We lost Von in 2020)
 

Such powerful WRITING!

If you want insight into The St. John’s/Montclair University Adoption Initiative conference from attendee Jae Ran Kim, an adoptee/social worker who I admire greatly, read this.  “Adoptive parent scholars and scholars without any connection to adoption sometimes just miss asking certain questions that adoptee scholars ask,” she wrote on her blog Harlow’s Monkey. (Check out the books too while you are at Harlow’s Monkey!)

The number of excellent powerful blogs and books by adoptees and first parents (and some APs) has exploded in the past 10 years and for that I am so very grateful! Writing three books about the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs and that history (and exploring my own journey) and contributing to new books like ADOPTIONLAND certainly changed me.

I am happily shocked my blog AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES reached over 240,000 hits (in 2014)! If that is any indication, the times really are a changin’.  That blog came about when my memoir One Small Sacrifice was about to be published in 2009 and experts claim if you have a book, you have to have a blog. Well it worked!
I never would have guessed my life would move in the direction it did but I see that there was much more I needed to write about my life and experience.  I let Great Spirit use me and this was the path.
I want to thank those brave bloggers and hundreds of adoptees who have inspired me so much over past 10 years. Keep it coming!

There is a FACEBOOK PAGE by Carol Schaefer that lists many books about adoption: https://www.facebook.com/adoptionbookslist

So what will the next 10 years be like? I don’t have a clue.

How much I changed (Part 7) Scared Silent, Four Traumas, PTSD

Family Photo

By Trace L Hentz (DeMeyer)

(Part 7)

I have met quite a few adoptees who can’t talk about being adopted. Why? They can’t put feelings into words. They didn’t talk about it as a kid and they never learned how to talk about it as an adult.

They might be as confused as I was when I was a child hearing that I was adopted - this was before first grade. What did “adopted” mean? Somehow I got it -  these were not my parents, someone else was. But who? And why?

I got used to hearing we “adopted” Trace.

They'd explained I had a different mother and father. I don’t think I took the news well at all. I sat with it a long time. All I could imagine was “bad.” Nothing  good. Something bad happened or else I wouldn’t be there. Later I was very pissy and unhappy about it. I don’t remember exactly how I acted but I do remember my a-mom Edie would tell me I didn’t like her. I never recall saying to her “I want to go home and leave here” but I would have acted out my hurt and confusion, because I had no words for what I was feeling!  She took it that I didn’t like her. (Which was the groundwork for guilt which I did feel...)

Now that we have the internet and many new ways to find useful information, I read adoptees are more traumatized than a prisoner of war. That’s right. It’s called PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder. A prisoner of war may escape or be released, but an adoptee may suffer their entire life.

(The following is taken from my memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE)

I believe there are four distinct traumas in being an adoptee. They are: 1) in utero, when you feel what is happening to you or sense what is coming; 2) when you are delivered, abandoned, and handed to strangers; 3) later when you are told you are adopted and realize fully what it means; and 4) when you realize you are different, from a different culture or country, and you can’t contact your people, or know them, or have the information you need to find them.

It took me years to get this. (The adrenals do go into over-drive, the fight-or-flight syndrome.)

Some adoptees are scared silent - they are not able to communicate any emotions they feel. This is the adoption fog.  

Then some adoptees are afraid to meet their birthparents -  afraid to know why they were given up as babies.

Then we fear we might disappoint them! (Or in my case, I had no tools when I was told by my b-mother to never contact her again. How was I supposed to handle that?)

There are more traumas, too, that happen as you age – like when I’d fill out forms at the doctor’s office. I had no medical history. I had no idea if I was sitting next to someone who could be my biological brother, sister, mother or father. In my 20s it was terrifying to think I could marry my own relative! I could carry a gene or trait that I might pass down to my children – and I wouldn’t know until it’s too late. If my birth-parents were alcoholics (they were), then I really shouldn’t drink. I could be predisposed to diabetes or heart disease or cancer or depression and not even know. My list went on and on.

In 2006, I found out my birthmother had diabetes, another shock. I never knew anything about my mother’s side until the 1990s, then I met my dad when I was 38 in 1994.

Today I realize a powerful link exists between what I’m feeling and what happens in my body. There may be some adoptees who do not wish to face all this and go on as they are, holding on to these sad feelings and self-pity, rather than do the mental work to heal and go into reunions. Recognizing a pattern of belief is tough, partly because you gain sympathy by stealing (or sucking) energy from others when you act sick. Some call this co-dependent behavior. That is no way to live. You need to be your own person, self-energizing, and emotionally stable.

Some adoptees believe that when we meet first mother or father, all pain and agony will disappear. That sadly is just hope. That is not the way it works. A reunion is just one step on the journey and it helps, but there are many many more steps just as difficult.  It’s truly a test to get better.

Regardless of your ancestry, blood or skin color, adoptees can heal this.  But the only one who can fix you is YOU.

(to be continued)

How much I changed (Part 6) #Starved into submission

By Trace Hentz

My entire childhood I had plenty of food.

This is not true for all humans, I know. Look at the news across the world, like in Gaza.

When it comes to this blog or writing about adoption or world events, I know I’m doing something right if I am afraid.

I spent most of my life afraid of upsetting people, avoiding that. Some might say that is low self-esteem but I think being afraid, fear itself, is a call to action. If you are afraid, then you know you are doing something right.  You are challenging yourself and breaking down your thoughts into something you can fix or not.

I could not change what happened in my childhood but I could change how I looked at being adopted. I could drop judgment. I could stop blaming my adoptive parents and my natural parents. I could turn “being adopted” into something good - or try to make my life and other lives better.

I heard Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now today describe how the occupiers of Palestine are using food insecurity to keep Palestine children alive but not enough to thrive! Too little food and starvation can be used as a weapon of war - with long-term consequences. Brains and bodies are affected long-term.

That is exactly what has happened here on American soil. YES! The American government only feeds American Indians junk with commodities (boxed or canned food and very little vegetables). The diabetes epidemic is living proof it’s working. Plus there are not enough jobs to feed ourselves. That way we Indians will be too weak to protest reservation living conditions. That way we’ll stay depressed or immobile. That way we’ll self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. That way many of our men will be imprisoned. That way we won’t be in the way when the government and industry wants to take more resources like copper, coal, uranium and shale gas.  Reservations were purposefully isolated so American (and Canadian) governments could totally control what we received - especially food, blankets, housing, medical care, etc.

Governments still keep Indians poor. The occupiers claimed they wanted Indians to be farmers, settle in one place, but not exactly on “farm-able land.” Think of the Badlands, a dry arid remote place, not exactly farmland.

Most of us Lost Birds who were adopted out didn’t have food insecurity or starvation growing up. It was not something we had to worry about.  SplitFeathers/Adoptees need to realize the WAR is still being waged on Indians in many subtle ways.  And if we use our minds in a good way, and come together, maybe WE can tackle food insecurity on reservations that still exists!

Maybe just maybe being adopted out was destined to give us the mind and ideas and courage necessary to feed our tribal families who have been occupied and starved into submission.

Also published on LAST REAL INDIANS: http://lastrealindians.com/starved-into-submission-food-insecurity-occupied-tribes-by-trace-a-demeyer/

How much I changed (Part 5) #adoptionsurvivors

I gave this interview some time ago but my thoughts still stand...Trace
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

How much I changed (Part 3) #PAL (positive adoption language)

By Trace A. DeMeyer  (start calling me Lara)  PART THREE


For the next week or so I am trying to give you a recap of what this blog is about, adoption history and the eye-opening research I did since 2004.  (It's like you and me taking a college course without paying the hefty tuition.)


Let's look at some of the terminology:

LDA= Late Discovery Adoptee (an adoptee who was not told they were adopted and somehow find out later) (many are in a state of shock, feel lied to, disappointed)

PAPs= Potential Adoption Parents (what some call Mr. and Mrs. Entitlement: we are entitled to a baby, we are infertile, we paid money and/or we are good Christians) (some use fundraising blogs) (most convinced they save an orphan)

APs= Adoptive Parents (though the amended (falsified) birth certificate lists them as biological parents which is not true) (legal parents)

AMom- Adoptive mother/mom

BM= Biological Mother, Birthmother, "Real" Mother (makes some Amoms angry), First Mother, Breeder Mother and Tummy Mummy.

A lucrative satellite industry has grown from the term “birthmother.” The billion dollar adoption industry promotes “Birthmother Packages” (offering everything from all expense paid trips to designer maternity wear), “birthmother” jewellery,” birthmother” stationery, “birthmother” gifts, and more.  Marketing firms aid prospective parents in drafting “Dear Birthmother Letters” designed to  catch the attention of a vulnerable pregnant woman in a sea of desperate infertile couples. If lucky enough to catch one, she is referred to as “Our Birthmother” similar to their car or other chattel. [SOURCE] 

This new language (PAL) not only psychologically destroys the existence of the natural mother, but also became a tool in the arsenal of the adoption industry for use on pregnant youth and women for coercion. By labelling a pregnant woman a “birthmother” BEFORE birth, the adoption industry had a new, powerful weapon in hand. She's a breeder and you buy from her. 

I found a new word: Adoptimist (an agency that connects expectant women considering adoption and qualified adoptive parents.) How clever of them!

To me the P stands for PROPAGANDA!

Example of terms used in Positive Adoption Language (PAL)

Non-preferred:	PAL term:	Reasons stated for preference:
your own child	birth child; biological child	Saying a birth child is your own child or one of your own children implies that an adopted child is not.
child is adopted	child was adopted	Some adoptees believe that their adoption is not their identity, but is an event that happened to them. ("Adopted" becomes a participle rather than an adjective.) Others contend that "is adopted" makes adoption sound like an ongoing disability, rather than a past event.
give up for adoption	place for adoption or make an adoption plan	"Give up" implies a lack of value. The preferred terms are more emotionally neutral.
real mother/father/parent	birth, biological or genetic mother/father/parent	The use of the term "real" implies that the adoptive family is artificial, and is not as descriptive.
natural parent	birth parent or first parent	The use of the term "natural" implies that the adoptive family is unnatural, and so is not a descriptive or accurate term. Although it can be seen as unnatural to conceive and relinquish children, the purpose is to present the adoption of those children in need as natural. The term "natural" in its origin means a family by the natural means of conception and birth and its primal bond which exists by itself since the beginning unless it's severed.
your adopted child	your child	The use of the adjective "adopted" signals that the relationship is qualitatively different from that of parents to birth children.
EXTRA CREDIT: I want you readers to google birthmothers seeking adoptive parents - it's all adoption agency and industry propaganda - you might be amazed! Over 70,000 hits! How much I changed (Part 5) #adoptionsurvivors		(to be continued)