Adopted overseas as children, they're not U.S. citizens at all

By Melanie Payne (mpayne@news-press.com) August 15, 2010

Alexis Stevens liked to describe herself as a model citizen. She was adopted from England by a U.S. military family who moved her to Texas. She raised a family, put herself through college and became a school teacher.

Four years ago, Stevens and her husband, Wayne, decided to celebrate their wedding anniversary and Stevens' completion of her master's degree by going on a trip to Europe.

"I've always wanted to see where I was born," Stevens said.

The couple submitted passport applications and made a deposit on the trip. A few weeks later, Wayne's passport arrived in the mail.

His wife's did not. Turns out the model citizen was not a citizen at all.

Stevens' parents never went through the process to allow Stevens to become a U.S. citizen. The mistake her parents made by not applying for naturalization of their adopted children almost 50 years ago has sent Steven's life reeling, leaving her uncertain of her identity and her future.

Stevens has heard horror stories of adoptees returned to their birth country because they'd broken the law. She wonders if that applies to her because she voted in every election since she turned 18 and signed documents to get jobs and college aid stating she was an American citizen.

"It's a scary feeling," Stevens said in the kitchen of her Estero home. "Am I going to end up deported?"

'Who am I?'

Stevens' adoptive father was in the Army, stationed in England, when he and his wife adopted the 2-year-old Stevens and her younger sister.

When Stevens was 3 the family moved to Texas, where a court made the adoption official in the U.S. and issued Stevens a Texas birth certificate.

Stevens obtained a Social Security card, a driver's license and voter registration card. Her citizenship never was questioned and she assumed she became an American when Americans adopted her.

Now 52, Stevens breaks into tears when she talks about not being a U.S. citizen.

"I guess what makes it hard is it brings up the feeling of, 'Who am I?'" she says.

Costly mistake

After realizing the State Department had not simply made an error in not issuing her passport, Stevens went for an interview with the immigration service in Tampa. She was given the wrong form to submit for citizenship. The application was rejected and she lost the $420 fee.

That's when she hired an immigration attorney, spent thousands of dollars and had her legal residency card reissued. The attorney told her he needs $4,500 if she wants him to represent her before an immigration court judge.

"You have many hundreds if not thousands of children who were adopted and are here legally, but are not U.S. citizens and therefore not afforded all the protections of U.S. citizenship," said Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the National Council For Adoption, an advocacy organization.

More than half of the children adopted overseas by American parents become U.S. citizens when they enter the country thanks to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. But the law doesn't apply to anyone who was 18 or older on Feb. 27 , 2001.

"We've been in conversations with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of State and they know this is an ongoing problem," Johnson said. "But no one has offered a fix."

After adopting three siblings from eastern Europe, McLane Layton was surprised to find out the children aren't citizens.

"They're supposed to be treated like I had given birth to them," she said.

Layton worked as legislative counsel to then-U.S. Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, and wrote the Child Citizenship Act before founding Equality for Adopted Children.

Layton's group advocates for adopted children to have the same rights as any child of American parents. The group has been unsuccessful in getting legislation passed to cover older adoptees who did not obtain citizenship.

"It's no fault of their own. It's neglect and ignorance on the part of the parents," Layton said. "The adoptee should not be punished in such a serious way because of the failure of their parents."

Stevens never will know why her parents failed to apply for her citizenship. Her adoptive father died when she was 6. Her adoptive mother died when she was 16. Her sister died at 19.

'Puts your life in limbo'

Anita Cotter is going it alone with the Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Cotter was a toddler when she immigrated with her American military parents into Texas. She, too, thought her Texas birth certificate was proof of her citizenship.

Cotter, who will be 53 next week, found her German birth mother living in Kansas. About 2 1/2 years ago she moved to be closer to her mother and the immigration problems began.

To get a driver's license in Kansas, Cotter needed to prove her citizenship. But her adoptive parents, like Steven's parents, had never applied for her naturalization.

"I was astounded," Cotter said. "I didn't know what to say. I've lived here all my life as a citizen and to get slapped with this at 50 years old was a total and complete shock."

The couple who adopted Cotter in Germany and brought her to the U.S. are dead. And Cotter is having a difficult time getting the adoption records she needs to apply for citizenship.

The whole process "puts your life in limbo," Cotter said. "I'd be real interested in knowing how many of us there are out there."

No guidance

Most American parents complete the requirements for their foreign-born adopted children to become naturalized U.S. citizens.

Grace Willoughby was born in Germany and adopted by an American military family. She lives in California and has a vivid recollection of the naturalization ceremony in Baltimore when she was about 7.

"I stood up, put my hand up and swore I would be a good citizen of the United States," Willoughby said. "I remember that."

Jeanne Dunham of California also recalls a swearing-in ceremony when she was 11 or 12.

Her parents adopted her and the boy who became her brother from German children's homes in the 1950s. The couple were provided with step-by-step instructions written in German, which she still has, Dunham said. One of the steps was to apply for the adopted child's U.S. citizenship.

Kathleen Moakler, government relations director for the National Military Family Association, doubts people received much guidance from the military about how to proceed with an adoption and naturalization of a foreign-born child.

"Everything was so much looser then," Moakler said.

Moakler, a U.S. citizen, gave birth to her son while overseas in 1975. She registered him as a U.S. citizen only because she had "read a blurb" on the topic in a magazine she picked up at the commissary.

"I just wanted to make sure his ducks were in a row so when he ran for president no one would challenge him," she said. "If I had not seen that article, I wouldn't have done it."

Patriotic feelings

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Chris Rhatigan said last year 28 adopted children of military parents were naturalized in ceremonies overseas. Rhatigan said the State Department's website clearly explains to parents about naturalization and the perils of not getting citizenship for an adopted foreign-born child.

What was told or not told to people who adopted 40 or 50 years ago, isn't known. But people who immigrated legally, as did Cotter and Stevens, can apply for citizenship now if they want, Rhatigan said. They will have to meet all the requirements such as passing the citizenship test. Once the application is made, processing time can be as short as five months. But in some cases it takes years, because of residency and other requirements.

Cotter and Stevens intend to get their U.S. citizenship.

"Before all this, I was the most patriotic person you would know," Stevens said.

"I love this country. I have no intention of moving," Cotter said.

But, she added, "It's like a slap in the face. I'm an American and they don't consider me one."

[from my research...Trace]

Peter Dodds (views on International adoption) & who is Rita Simon?

In this eye opening interview, author Peter Dodds who was adopted from an orphanage in Germany, describes the harm caused when children are uprooted from their native countries and cultures.
I did read Peter's book "Outer Search\Inner Journey" a few years ago when there were so very few adoptee memoirs. What he says in this interview is what I hear many adoptees say.   Was this the same Rita Simon who published the study:  "Native American Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories?" YES! Simon was not talking on this youtube interview... but this Jewish author is very pro-adoption! ......Trace

Rita Simon, University Professor, Department of Justice, Law and Society... recently published her 63rd book in these fields. Area of Expertise: Transracial adoption, history of women's rights, abortion, rape, women and crime, civil rights and liberties in Israel, U.S. immigration, jury system, insanity defense, death penalty, impact of mass media on public opinion.
Rita Simon is a well-known authority on transracial and intercountry adoption, immigration, justice, and women’s issues.
Her books include: In Their Own Voices; The Case for Transracial Adoption; The Jury System: Its Role in American Society; The Insanity Defense; The Ambivalent Welcome: Print Media, Public Opinion, and Immigration; Adoption, Race, and Identity; Women’s Movements in America; Rabbis, Lawyers, Immigrants, and Thieves: Women’s Roles in America; The World Over: A Comparative Analysis of Capital Punishment; Immigration: The World Over; and The Crime Women Commit and the Punishments They Receive.  She served on the Title IX commission.

"Native American Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories" : Simon's study focuses on the lives of Native American transracial adoptees and their struggle to establish a healthy sense of cultural identity, while being raised in non-Native homes. The 20 participants in this study focus on what methods their adoptive parents used or, in some cases, did not use to help them establish their own sense of cultural identity. In the end, most participants agreed that adoptive parents can help their adoptive child establish a healthy sense of cultural identity by nurturing a connection between their child and their child's tribal community.

Red Road documentary from Canada (60s Scoop) (with links on youtube)

Background: STEALING THE CHILDREN: THE SIXTIES SCOOP
In 1951, the Indian Act was changed so that provincial authorities would be responsible for the welfare of Indian children. This had little effect initially. This can be seen in the British Columbia statistic for 1955 in which 29 of the 3,433 children placed in protective care in the province were Native, less than 1%. Starting in the 1960s, however, aggressive policies of taking Native children from their families, communities, and from the Native world generally came into play. In British Columbia in 1964, the figure became 1,446 Native children out of a total of 4,228 children, or 34.2%. In his book “Native Children and the Child Welfare System,” writer Patrick Johnston coined the term “Sixties Scoop” to refer to the forced migration of aboriginal children.

The situation was the worst in Manitoba. Between 1971 and 1981, over 3,400 Native children were taken from their homes and removed from their province. More than a thousand of these children were sent to the United States, where there was a demand for children to adopt. American agencies could get $4,000 for every child placed. Native children in the United States had been adopted in a similar way until 1978, when the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed, protecting the children from being taken from their people… There is still no such law in Canada.

In 1982, the Manitoba government finally agreed to impose a moratorium on the export of children outside of the province, the last province to do so. There was an investigation into the practice. Justice Edwin C. Kimelman wrote a report in 1985 entitled ‘No Quiet Place’ based primarily on looking at the 93 children that were “exported” in 1981. He did not mince his words in his conclusions, saying: “Cultural genocide has been taking place in a systematic routine manner. One gets an image of children stacked in foster homes as used cars are stacked on corner lots, just waiting for the right ‘buyer’ to stroll by.” (as reported in Fournier and Crey 1997:88)

WATCH HERE: http://youtu.be/Y7--Lt11tTk  http://youtu.be/ujau8Fm4Tko by Dan MckalisterMcedwardsmccoy (videos)

TORONTO, ONTARIO: Hamilton-based Lost Heritage Productions announced the broadcast premiere of Red Road, a one-hour documentary about one man’s search for identity, aired on LifeNetwork.ca, on Saturday, August 28, 2004.

Where does a bricklayer, raised on British afternoon tea, who speaks some Italian and counts among his ancestors the great Sioux leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, begin the process of piecing his life together? Barry (Whitecap) Hambly was born in 1967 on Carry The Kettle First Nation in Saskatchewan. When he was four, his mother, Darlene Whitecap, ran from the reserve and an abusive relationship, taking Barry and his three siblings with her to Regina, 100km to the west. A victim of alcohol abuse, the 24-year-old mother would soon lose her children when social agencies intervened. This era, known as the “Sixties Scoop”, saw thousands of aboriginal children adopted into non-Native homes. Some children remained in Canada while others were sent to the U.S. and around the globe. While some have called it “assimilation”, many claim the “scoop” era to have been a cultural genocide.

Despite a loss of his aboriginal heritage, abuse from one foster family, and the emotional scars from being shuffled through 10 foster homes, Hambly considers himself one of the lucky ones. He was eventually adopted at the age of nine by Maggie and Don Hambly, a couple of British descent living in Hamilton, Ontario. Struggling through his adolescent years, chased by the ghosts of his past, Hambly landed on his feet after a “tough love” decision that saw him thrown out of his adoptive home at age 18.

Successful in the Hamilton construction business today, Hambly began his search for his birth parents and his cultural identity when an aboriginal person called him an “apple”—a slang expression referring to someone who is red on the outside, white on the inside.

Red Road shadows Barry Hambly’s journey, returning to Saskatchewan to confront his past and meet his birth mother. “After my first call to her, I knew that one day I would have to meet her face-to-face, to help me deal with the anger and answer questions I have had all my life.”

The First Nation word “waka” refers to walking a spiritual path in search of one’s origins. Barry Hambly has taken the first step down that road, the “red road”. Finding the way home is not always easy.

PONCA tribe wants right to intervene in kids' case (2009) (update!)

[UPDATED!.... Trace]

By Timberly Ross - May 24, 2009

OMAHA- The Nebraska Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments (in late May 2009) on whether the state's legal procedures can trump a federal law that allows American Indian tribes to intervene in child-welfare cases.
In an appeal filed with the high court, the Ponca Tribe says a Dakota County juvenile court judge denied its rights under the Indian Child Welfare Act because the tribe was not represented by a state-recognized attorney.
"The federal law provides that tribes can intervene in any state child-custody proceeding that involves their children," said the tribe's Denver, Colo.-based attorney, Brad Jolly. "If a tribe has to have a lawyer in each of those cases, they won't be able to intervene."
For most tribes, the cost of having an attorney appear in each and every child-welfare case is prohibitive, he said. 
The Indian Child Welfare Act provides tough standards for removing American Indian children from their homes.
Congress passed the law in 1978 to curb a rise in adoptions of Indian children by non-Indians. In some states, 35 percent of Indian children had been removed from their homes to live with non-Indians.
"Tribal intervention in state child-custody proceedings involving Indian children is one of the primary tools Congress provided to ensure an Indian child's continued relationship with his or her tribe and
community," Jolly wrote in the appeal. "The right of Indian tribes to intervene in state child custody proceedings involving their children is absolute and unequivocal."
In October, the Ponca Tribe filed a motion in Dakota County juvenile court to intervene in a child-welfare case involving two Ponca children.
But the filing was thrown out by Judge Kurt Rager because, according to court documents, it was not submitted by an attorney.
Rather, the motion had been submitted by a trained specialist who counsels tribes on juvenile cases.
In the appeal, Jolly wrote that courts typically grant such specialists the same power as an attorney because of the tribe's sovereign status.
"In refusing to allow the tribe's ICWA specialist to file a motion to intervene on behalf of the tribe, the county court has effectively removed the tribe's right to intervene in the proceedings," he wrote.
The Ponca Tribe is asking the high court to overturn Rager's dismissal of the filing. Arguments in the case are scheduled for Tuesday.  A message left for Rager was not immediately returned. Judges generally do not comment on pending cases.
Jolly said the Ponca Tribe has faced similar dismissals in other Dakota County juvenile court cases since October.
The Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, which submitted a so-called friend of the court brief in support of the tribe, said: "The state's interest in requiring organizations to be represented by an attorney, however, cannot compare to the interest of tribes in their children and in their survival, an interest which Congress unambiguously intended to safeguard through the ICWA."
Legal Aid of Nebraska, the National Child Welfare Association, Indian Center Inc. and several tribes, including the Winnebago and Omaha, also participated in the brief.

UPDATE: In re Elias L., 227 Neb. 1023 (2009) - Partner Achieves Victory for Tribal Rights Under the ICWA

by Brad Jolly, Partner, June 26, 2009 http://www.bsjlawfirm.com/info/arts/artsFull.php?id=58&p=2
In a case brought and argued by Partner, Brad Jolly, the Nebraska Supreme Court unanimously held that Indian nations can intervene and fully participate in state court proceedings subject to the Indian Child Welfare Act ("ICWA") without legal counsel regardless of state laws requiring organizations to appear in court only through an attorney.


The case, In re Elias L., 227 Neb. 1023 (2009), originated in the Dakota County Court. The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska filed a motion to intervene pursuant to Nebraska and Federal law through its ICWA Specialist, Jill Holt. The ICWA provides an absolute and unqualified right of Indian tribes to intervene in child welfare cases involving their children. However, the Douglas County Judge refused to hear the motion to intervene on the grounds that Nebraska state law requires that organizations appear in court only through an attorney and the Tribe's ICWA Specialist was not a lawyer. The Judge held that he "is charged with the duty to enforce the prohibition against the practice of law without a license" and that required him to prevent the Tribe's ICWA Specialist from appearing on behalf of the Tribe even though the Tribe had authorized and designated her to do so. The Judge simply returned the motion to intervene, refusing to allow it to be filed.


The Tribe appealed the Judge's refusal to allow the Tribe's intervention and Brad Jolly represented the Tribe as its general counsel. In its opinion, aligning itself with prior decisions from Oregon and Iowa, the Nebraska Supreme Court recognized that the ICWA preempts state law and requiring tribes to appear only through attorneys would interfere with the federal right of intervention guaranteed in the ICWA. Further, the Court recognized that economic barriers which may prevent tribes from being able to afford legal counsel would prevent many tribes from intervening in ICWA proceedings. leaving both the rights of the tribe and key rights of the children unrepresented and unheard. The Court concluded that enforcement of Nebraska's unauthorized practice of law ("UPS") statutes "is incompatible with the federally granted tribal right of intervening in child custody proceedings governed by ICWA."


On the other hand, the Court held, while the state has a legitimate interest in requiring organizations to be represented by an attorney, its interests did not outweigh those of the tribes and the federal government in ICWA proceedings. The Court noted that state law permits individuals to represent themselves in court proceedings and also permits employees of organizations to perform certain acts that otherwise constitute the practice of law when done for the benefit of the organization. The Court also noted that the state's interests were not necessarily compromised because tribes generally appear through child welfare professionals, such as the Tribe's ICWA Specialist, who are familiar with juvenile proceedings and the ICWA.


Ultimately, the Court held that "tribal participation in state custody proceedings innvolving Indian children is essential to achieving the goals of ICWA." Importantly, the Court held that state courts "shall allow the Tribe's designated representative to fully participate in [ICWA] proceedings."


The case is an important victory for the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska and all other tribes with ICWA cases in the state. Over the years, many county court and juvenile court judges have refused to allow tribes to appear in ICWA cases without an attorney. At times, even when a judge allows a tribe to intervene without an attorney, they do not allow the tribe to participate in the proceedings by refusing to allow the tribe's representative to speak in court, present evidence, or do anything other than observe. The Nebraska Supreme Court's bold opinion finally settles the issue in Nebraska, ensuring that Indian nations will be permitted to not only intervene, but to fully participate in ICWA proceedings in accordance with federal law.

Thanks to John Dall for his research on this!...Trace

Good to know: Canada's Indian Status Card

What is a Certificate of Indian Status or Status card and why does INAC issue it?

The Certificate of Indian Status (CIS), more commonly referred to as a Status card, is an identity document issued for administrative reasons by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) to confirm that the cardholder is registered as a Status Indian under the Indian Act.

 

For more information: http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/

Thanks Linda Roady Thaler for this information!

Indian Child Welfare history and the "Existing Indian Family" exception

[from the archives...   Trace]

ICWA History

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was enacted in 1978 because of the high removal rate of Indian children from their traditional homes and essentially from Indian culture as a whole. Before enactment, as many as 25 to 35 percent of all Indian children were being removed from their Indian homes and placed in non-Indian homes, with presumably the absence of Indian culture. In some cases, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) paid the states to remove Indian children and to place them with non-Indian families and religious groups.
Testimony in the House Committee for Interior and Insular Affairs showed that in some cases, the per capita rate of Indian children in foster care was nearly 16 times higher than the rate for non-Indians. If Indian children had continued to be removed from Indian homes at this rate, tribal survival would be threatened. Congress recognized this, and stated that the interests of tribal stability were as important as that of the best interests of the child. One of the factors in this judgment was that, because of the differences in culture, what was in the best interest of a non-Indian child were not necessarily what was in the best interest of an Indian child, especially due to extended families and tribal relationships.
As Louis La Rose (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska) testified:

"I think the cruelest trick that the white man has ever done to Indian children is to take them into adoption court, erase all of their records and send them off to some nebulous family ... residing in a white community and he goes back to the reservation and he has absolutely no idea who his relatives are, and they effectively make him a non-person and I think ... they destroy him."

Various other groups also played a factor. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) had an Indian Placement Program that removed Indian children from their tribes and into church members homes.  By the 1970s, approximately 5,000 Indian children were living in Mormon homes. The lack of knowledge of most social workers also played into the high removal rates. Most social workers are conditioned by the "best interest of the child" as outlined by Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (Second Edition), which advocates bonding with at least one adult as a parent figure rather than taking into consideration the tribal culture of the extended tribal family. The common Indian practice of leaving a child with an extended relative was viewed as abandonment by these well-intentioned social workers, but was viewed as perfectly normal by tribal members.
During congressional consideration, at the request of Native American advocacy groups, opposition was raised by several states, the LDS Church, and several social welfare groups. The bill was pushed through by Representative Morris Udall of Arizona, who lobbied President Jimmy Carter to sign the bill.
Congress’s overriding purpose in passing the ICWA was to protect Indian culture and tribal integrity from the unnecessary removal of Indian children by state and federal agencies. Awareness of the issues facing American Indian children came about from the advocacy and research by the Association on American Indian Affairs. Congress reasoned that “there is no resource that is more vital to the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes than their children.”

"Existing Indian Family" Exception

History of the Exception
In 1982, the Kansas Supreme Court held that the ICWA "was not to dictate that an illegitimate infant who has never been a member of an Indian home or culture, and probably never would be, should be removed from its primary cultural heritage and placed in an Indian environment over the express objections of its non-Indian mother."
Under the facts of the case, the court stated that the ICWA did not apply unless the child was part of an "existing Indian family unit." The court denied the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma the right to intervene in the case, stating that the ICWA did not apply. The court also held that even if the ICWA did apply, the trial court committed no reversible error because the non-Indian mother would have objected to the transfer of the case to a tribal court and, thus, defeated the transfer.
From the Kansas Supreme Court case sprang a body of jurisprudence around the "existing Indian family" exception to ICWA. In the years following the Kansas Baby Boy L. case, approximately half of the states adopted or expanded upon this "existing Indian family" exception, despite the fact that the language appeared no where the text of the ICWA.
Subsequent to the Kansas Baby Boy L. case, in 1989, the United States Supreme Court heard the only ICWA case that it has issued an opinion on to date in Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield. 490 U.S. 30 (1989)
Like the Baby Boy L. case, both parents in Holyfield consented to the voluntary termination of their parental rights and adoption of their infant by a non-Indian family. Unlike the parents in Baby Boy L., the mother in this case lived on the reservation both before and after the birth of the child off-reservation. The Supreme Court found that the child was "domiciled" on the reservation because its biological mother was domiciled on the reservation. Therefore, the exclusive jurisdiction of the tribal court under ICWA should have been invoked. The case was remanded to the tribal court for a custody determination three years after the child had been placed with non-Indian adoptive parents. Noting the potential disruption in the child's life, the Supreme Court noted that any potential harm could have been avoided if the parents and state court had not wrongfully denied the tribe its rights under ICWA.
While the Supreme Court did not consider the "existing Indian family" exception, some sources cite Holyfield as an implicit rejection of the exception. Other sources have noted that the Holyfield case is relied upon as support for both sides of the debate over the "existing Indian family" exception:

"Surprisingly, Holyfield has been relied upon by courts and parties both to support and reject the existing Indian family exception, which has been invoked in proceedings involving Indian children and families who are living off the reservation and who are, therefore, subject to state court jurisdiction concurrent with that of the tribal court."

As of 2010, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee still use the "existing Indian family" exception. Alabama and Indiana have limited its application by further court decisions. Nineteen states have rejected the doctrine, either by court decision or statute, including Kansas, where the Kansas Supreme Court expressly overturned the Baby L. decision in In re A.J.S., stating:

"Given all of the foregoing, we hereby overrule Baby Boy L., (citation omitted), and abandon its existing Indian family doctrine. Indian heritage and the treatment of it has a unique history in United States law. A.J.S. has both Indian and non-Indian heritage, and courts are right to resist essentializing any ethnic or racial group. However, ICWA's overall design, including its "good cause" threshold in 25 U.S.C. 1915, ensures that all interests--those of both natural parents, the tribe, the child, and the prospective adoptive parents -- are appropriately considered and safeguarded. ICWA applies to this state court child custody proceeding involving A.J.S., and the Cherokee Nation must be permitted to intervene."

Criticisms

Some critics have complained that the existing Indian family exception requires the state court to determine what it means to be an Indian child or an Indian family, by applying tests to determine the "Indian-ness" of the child. One such test involved evaluating if the child lived "in an "actual Indian dwelling," apparently thinking of a teepee, hogan, or pueblo."[43] Another work notes that "state courts have taken it upon themselves to determine individuals' relationship with their tribes by examining such contacts as subscription to a tribal newsletter."[44]
In her 1997 testimony before the Joint Hearing of the House Resources Committee and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Ada Deer (Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin) stated:

"...we want to express our grave concern that the objectives of the ICWA continue to be frustrated by State court created judicial exceptions to the ICWA. We are concerned that State court judges who have created the "existing Indian family exception" are delving into the sensitive and complicated areas of Indian cultural values, customs and practices which under existing law have been left exclusively to the judgment of Indian tribes... We oppose any legislative recognition of the concept."
     (all footnotes removed) Source: Wikipedia

Court rules Indian Child Welfare Act doesn’t apply in Cherokee boy’s adoption

Complicated Utah case involves Cherokee Nation
By Brooke Adams [The Salt Lake Tribune April 6, 2011]

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday (April 5) that a lower court erred when it determined parental rights were improperly terminated in an adoption proceeding involving a child who was later identified as a member of the Cherokee Nation.

Britney Jane Little Dove Nielson relinquished her parental rights in 2007, a day after giving birth to a boy who was adopted by Joshua and Sunny Ketchum. In that proceeding, a Utah judge ruled the baby’s grandmother was a registered (enrolled) member of the Cherokee Nation, but Nielson was not and the adoption did not need to abide by the Indian Child Welfare Act. The adoption became final in May 2008.

In June 2008, Nielson filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging the adoption was invalid under the act, which imposes a 10-day waiting period before parental rights involving an “Indian” child can be terminated. Nielson also argued the baby qualified as a member of the Cherokee Nation because his grandmother is an enrolled member of the tribe and, under a Cherokee Nation law, every newborn who is a direct descendant of such members receives temporary citizenship.

In a 2009 ruling, the district court judge agreed and ruled the termination of Nielson’s parental rights was invalid. The judge left the adoption decree intact, however, and said a state court would have to sort out the baby’s custody.

Nielson filed a lawsuit in state court seeking return of her child and, when that judge ruled the statute of limitations barred the action, appealed. The case is now pending in the Utah Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Ketchums (adoptive parents) appealed the district court decision to the 10th Circuit.

The appeals court said in its newly released opinion that Nielson’s child is a direct descendant of a Cherokee Nation enrollee. But it found that the type of temporary citizenship bestowed by Cherokee Nation law does not apply for Indian Child Welfare Act purposes. The act only covers full members, the court said, not those with temporary status.

“We find that Congress did not intend the ICWA to authorize this sort of gamesmanship on the part of a tribe [authorizing] a temporary and nonjurisdictional citizenship upon a nonconsenting person,” the court said. “The tribe cannot expand the reach of a federal statute by a tribal provision that extends automatic citizenship to the child of a nonmember of the tribe.”

Because of that, ICWA and its 10-day waiting period did not apply, the court said. It remanded the case back to district court.

Nielson’s options now include asking the full bank of 10th Circuit judges to reconsider the case or appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

James B. Hanks, who represents the Ketchums, said that barring an appeal, his clients will ask the district court to dismiss the case. “They are thrilled,” he said of the Ketchums. “They’ve been on pins and needles for a long time now. It is a wonderful day for them.”

The Tribune was not able to reach attorneys for Nielson or the Cherokee Nation on Tuesday.


[Reading this in 2011 is astonishing...Native children are still lost to the system of adoption and then courts, not tribes, give rulings in favor of adoptive parents over biological parents. Why was this child's mother not enrolled? Probably because she is an urban Indian and not on the Cherokee reservation, so apparently her son is not enrolled either - what is wrong with this picture?   Bottom line: ICWA is really not working as it was enacted in 1978. The article doesn't say the Ketchums are Mormons... Trace]
UPDATE: She did, however, state that they were considering enrolling Nielson in the next few
months, and Nielson in fact became an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation on August 5, 2008.
http://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinions/09/09-4113.pdf

ICWA states: When an Indian child is placed for adoption, the ICWA requires that, in the absence of good cause to deviate, the child should be placed with: (1) a member of his or her extended family, (2) other members of his or her tribe, or (3) other Indian families.

Facing the Future: Indian Child Welfare Act at 30

By Matthew L. M. Fletcher, Wenona T. Singel,  Kathryn E. Fort

This is a comprehensive evaluation of well-intentioned but problematic federal legislation: The U.S. Congress is charged with responsibility for the protection and preservation of American Indian tribes, including Indian children. In 1978, Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), with the intent to "protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families." ICWA sets federal requirements that apply to state child custody proceedings involving an Indian child who is a member of or eligible for membership in a federally recognized tribe. ICWA also sets out federal requirements regarding removal of Indian children and their placement in foster or adoptive homes, and it allows the child's tribe to intervene in the case.

The history of the Act is a tangle of legal, social, and emotional complications. Some state courts have found unusual legal arguments to avoid applying the law, while some states have gone beyond the terms of the Act to provide greater protections for Indian people. This collection brings together for the first time a multidisciplinary assessment of the law — with scholars, practitioners, lawyers, and social workers all offering perspectives on the value and importance of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Paperback Edition: Notes, references, World rights, 320 pp., 6 " x 9 ", December 2009, $39.95, ISBN: 978-0-87013-860-7

Illegal aliens? Deported adoptees?

Some stories keep me up at night. Some stories shake me to my very core. Last night I learned more about Navajo adoptee Leland Morrill who is one of 10 Native American children adopted by one Mormon family.
How does this happen? 10 kids? Did adopting this many children offer some form of financial gain? Or was there a religious conversion planned? His adoptive father worked for the Church of Latter-Day Saints education systems and retired recently after 40 years.  Lee's sister Virginia (also Navajo) was fostered two years then adopted with Leland. The day after their adoption was finalized, the family moved to Ontario, where they proceeded to adopt Shaun who is a mixed blood and seven who are Ojibwe Canadians: Sheila, Debbie, Cindy, Robert, Sharon, Keith and Adam who are all siblings.
Lee had the misfortune of losing his wallet which led to his discovery that his adoptive parents did not have the legal paperwork or proof of his citizenship in his Navajo tribal nation.
He said on his blog, "So, in January 2010, I visited the DMV. I filled out the application to replace my drivers license only and went up to use my Navajo Nation Final Judgement of Adoption and Social Security card as proof to get the replacement and was denied. New procedures had taken place on January 1, 2010 under the Real ID Act of 2005. I now was required to produce a state-issued birth certificate. I had none, as the Tribal Court of the Navajo Tribe Judicial District of Chinle Arizona had adopted me without any other documentation ...my only documentation: Final Judgment of Adoption. IT WAS THEN I REALIZED I AM AN ILLEGAL ALIEN."
I am sure this story will unravel in Leland's favor, as to his citizenship. He has been in contact with his Kirk relatives regularly on the Navajo reservation and I will post my interview with Leland very soon.

More news: Here is a story about an adoptee from India who may be deported....
...an example of international adoption meets immigration... Schultz is facing possible deportation to India due to his adoptive parent’s not getting him citizenship. His adoptive mother is white, and his case is quite unique in that he is Mormon, speaks only English and know nothing about his country, India or his culture.  Read his story here: http://kadnexus.wordpress.com/2007/03/29/indian-american-transracial-adoptee-faces-deportation-for-criminal-record/

Can it happen... will adoptees can be targeted for deportation when their adopters do not finalize their US citizenship? Only time will tell.

Signs of Poverty: Lost Kids

By Trace A. DeMeyer

It’s easy to pop a pill these days. It’s even easier to bury what bothers us because our minds will do that without drugs, with something as simple as memory loss. Street drugs are one way to self-medicate. Recommended medical treatments for emotional distress are pharmaceuticals.

It’s work to analyze where we disconnect, where we feel bitter, sad or disappointed, or when we seemingly lose all hope.

It’s also less work to lock a person in a prison cell. Across the US in the last 50 years, mental hospitals have been replaced by jails and prisons. In Massachusetts alone, 16 hospitals that treated mentally ill patients closed their doors. There was 7,000 mothers (with a combined 16,000 children) incarcerated in Massachusetts in 2007. The majority of women are there for non-violent offenses. Some 85% in prison in Ludlow, Massachusetts, have an addiction problem. Their crimes were prostitution or drugs. Social, economic and health problems are billboards, obvious signs of poverty.

“When women are locked up, there’s another group of people who are adversely affected: their kids. Across the US, there are 1.3 million kids whose mothers are under some form of ‘correctional supervision,’” according to journalist Christina Rathbone, author of "A World Apart, Women, Prison and Life behind Bars."

“Give maximum affection to your children,” the Tibetan holy man, Dalai Lama told a gathering here in Massachusetts. He understands the tragedy when people have children then neglect or abuse them. One broken child becomes a mother or father who may create another broken child. These cycles must end.

To shine light on any crisis, it will take sensitive people and serious money. Yet it always comes back to poverty, who has money and who doesn’t and who cares.


Pathways to Prosperity:

Northwest Area Foundation Awards Grant to United Indians of All Tribes Foundation

ST. PAUL, Minn.-- The Northwest Area Foundation announced the award of a two-year, $3.5 million grant to the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF) located in Seattle, WA. UIATF will utilize the funds to implement the 'Pathways to Prosperity,' project, a holistic community development initiative designed to systematically address the determinants of poverty faced by urban Native American populations. This initiative is a union of in-depth community-based research and cutting edge community development theory. 
"We are working from a cultural and spiritual foundation that recognizes poverty as much more than simply a lack of money," states UIATF CEO Phil Lane, Jr. (Yankton Dakota/Chickasaw) "Poverty is many things braided together. It's an interdependent web of social, cultural, political, economic and personal factors that combine to trap families, and whole communities in patterns of ill health, deprivation, and dependency. The only way out of the trap is to truly engage these same families and communities in a journey of learning, healing and building."
"We believe, and experience is demonstrating, that poverty reduction initiatives have greater chance of success if they are owned by the community," said Kari Schlachtenhaufen, interim president and CEO of the Northwest Area Foundation. "We are excited to make this grant and hope other funders and partners will join in this effort to reduce poverty long term." Source: U.S. Newswire, October 10, 2007

Colonizer and Assimilation (great quotes)

Kenn Richard, director of Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, and the man who commissioned the “Our Way Home” report:

“British colonialism has a certain process and formula, and it’s been applied around the world with different populations, often Indigenous populations, in different countries that they choose to colonize,” says Richard. “And that is to make people into good little Englishmen. Because the best ally you have is someone just like you. One of the ones you hear most about is obviously the residential schools, and residential schools have gotten considerable media attention over the past decade or so. And so it should, because it had a dramatic impact that we’re still feeling today. But child welfare to a large extent picked up where residential schools left off....

“The lesser-known story is the child welfare story and its assimilationist program. And you have to remember that none of this was written down as policy: ‘We’ll assimilate Aboriginal kids openly through the residential schools. And after we close the residential schools we’ll quietly pick it up with child welfare.’ It was never written down. But it was an organic process, part of the colonial process in general.”

"...Even now, researchers trying to determine exactly how many Aboriginal children were removed from their families during the 60s Scoop say the task is all but impossible because adoption records from the ‘60s and ‘70s rarely indicated Aboriginal status (as they are now required to).

Those records which are complete, however, suggest the adoption of native children by non-native families was pervasive, at least in Northern Ontario and Manitoba. In her March, 1999 report, “Our Way Home: A Report to the Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy on the Repatriation of Aboriginal People Removed by the Child Welfare System,” author Janet Budgell notes that in the Kenora region in 1981, “a staggering 85 percent of the children in care were First Nations children, although First Nations people made up only 25 percent of the population. The number of First Nations children adopted by non-First Nations parents increased fivefold from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. Non-First Nations families accounted for 78 per cent of the adoptions of First Nations children.”

Quote from news article: STOLEN NATION (article posted on this blog! use google to find it)

[Child welfare is (in fact) the permanent and closed adoptions of North American Indian Children by non-Indian parents... these quotes are from my archives... Trace]

Alaska tribes win adoption court case

Alaska tribes win adoption court case: "FAIRBANKS — The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that tribes share jurisdiction with the state in most child custody issues, providing the second major victory for tribal sovereignty advocates..."

Jesuits settle with American Indians on Sex Abuse cases

Jesuits settle Indian Sex Abuse Suit
January 4, 2008

An order of Roman Catholic priests announced a $5 million settlement January 3, 2008 with 16 people who said they were sexually abused while attending a boarding school on an American Indian reservation. The Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuit Order of priests, will pay $4.8 million in cash to the abuse victims and raise another $200,000 for the homeless in the area, the Jesuits and lawyers for the accusers said. The Jesuits operated St. Mary's Mission and School near Omak (Washington) for more than 60 years until turning it over to the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in 1973.

UPDATE:
Catholic Order Reaches $166 Million Settlement With Sexual Abuse Victims
By WILLIAM YARDLEY [New York Times March 25, 2011]
SEATTLE — A Roman Catholic religious order in the Northwest has agreed to pay $166 million to more than 500 victims of sexual abuse, many of whom are American Indians and Alaska Natives who were abused decades ago at Indian boarding schools and in remote villages, lawyers for the plaintiffs said Friday.

The settlement, with the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, known as the Northwest Jesuits, is the largest abuse settlement by far from a Catholic religious order, as opposed to a diocese, and it is one of the largest abuse settlements of any kind by the Catholic Church. The Jesuits are the church’s largest religious order, and their focus is education. The Oregon Province includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

“There is a huge number of victims, in part because these Native American communities were remote and vulnerable, and in part because of a policy by the Jesuits, even though they deny it, of sending problem priests to these far-off regions,” said Terry McKiernan of Bishopaccountability.org, a victims’ advocacy group that tracks abuse cases.

The province released a statement saying it would not comment on the settlement announced by the plaintiffs’ lawyers because it was involved in bankruptcy litigation. The bankruptcy stems from previous abuse settlements, totaling about $55 million, reached several years ago. A small group of victims and their lawyers have been negotiating the current settlement for more than a year as part of the province’s bankruptcy-ordered restructuring.

An insurer for the province is paying the bulk of the settlement, which still is subject to approval by hundreds of other victims and by a federal judge.

John Allison, a lawyer based in Spokane, Wash., represented many clients who were abused in the late 1960s and early 1970s while they were students at St. Mary’s Mission in Omak, Wash., near the reservation of the Colville Confederated Tribes, one of the largest reservations in the country. The Jesuits ran the St. Mary’s school until the 1970s, when federal policies began to encourage more Indian control. St. Mary’s is now closed, though its building stands beside a new school.

Mr. Allison noted that English was not the native language for some of the students at the time of the abuse. Some were 6 and 7 years old and came from difficult family situations. Some were orphans. At the same time, many Jesuit priests were not happy to have been assigned to such remote places.

“They let down a very vulnerable population,” Mr. Allison said.

Lawyers representing some of the victims initially suggested they would go after assets of some of the region’s large Jesuit institutions, including Gonzaga University and Seattle University. But the settlement does not involve them, and their future vulnerability is unclear. Mr. Allison said some of the accused priests, now in their 80s, live at Gonzaga under strict supervision.

Mr. Allison and another lawyer, Leander James, of Idaho, said the settlement required the province to eventually apologize to the victims.

One of the plaintiffs, Dorothea Skalicky, was living on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in northern Idaho in the 1970s when she said she was abused by a Jesuit priest who ran Sacred Heart Church, in Lapwai. Ms. Skalicky, now 42, said that her family lived across from the church for several years, and that she was abused from age 6 to 8.

“My family looked up to him,” Ms. Skalicky said of the priest, who is deceased. “He was somebody high up that was respected by the community and my parents.” The church, she said, “was supposed to be a safe place.”  [Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York.]

[I ask you all to say a prayer for the survivors. Money cannot alleviate the memory....Trace]

Self Love (how many adoptees don't have enough)

My definition of a narcissist is someone who is totally in love with themselves. Every child, not adopted, has this love of self. Ask a five, six or seven year old about love and they will say I love who I am, how I feel, I love my parents and I am happy – they might even act giddy, unaware their focus is on themselves and not other people. An emotionally-healthy child typically is self-centered until they grow to learn compassion, interest and respect for other life forms.

When a narcissist doesn’t grow up, they show an excessive interest in their own appearance, comfort, importance, and abilities – you might say self-centered and selfish to an extreme. It is unhealthy, actually, and all too common! It's often the "Me Generation."

There is a Greek myth about Narcissus, a beautiful youth, who after Echo’s death, is made to pine away for love of his own reflection in a spring and changes into a narcissus (a lily with narcotic properties.) It’s interesting the word narcotic is anything that has a soothing, lulling or dulling effect and narcosis is a condition of deep stupor which passes into unconsciousness and paralysis, usually caused by a narcotic or certain chemicals.

Being in love with yourself is intoxicating and quite healthy if you are a child.

Sooner or later reality will knock on your door and change this perception and sensible adult behavior will take hold.

I totally believe adoptees are not as narcissistic as they should be in childhood. We are worried, sad, watchful and we blame ourselves for everything, especially our abandonment.

I hated myself. I truly did.

This was a consequence of my adoption and my abandonment.

The adoption business will again downplay: Most of the patients in psychiatric care are adoptees!  One doctor calls it “severe narcissistic injury.”  Emotions, even extreme emotions, can be expected at some point in time in an adoptees life. Some thing or some event or someone can and will trigger a reaction.  Adoptees face facts eventually.  The adoption system is hardly aware of the damage it causes – or else they would change it or stop it altogether! Adoptees are locked out of reality and given an illusion to embrace. And we must never expect to know our origins? Yes, this is true. Sealed court documents and secrecy prevent knowledge and truth in adoption.  When will the world wake up?

Reunion: What you need to know about rejection

Perhaps one of the best analysis of the “reunion of adoptee and birthparent” I have found is called The Second Rejection, Part 1 and 2 by Marcy Wineman Axness (available on the website: www.reunite.com/adoption-records/the-second-rejection.html)

The Second Rejection
Your phone call takes too long to be returned. Your letter goes unanswered for an unnerving number of weeks. You concoct exaggerated scenes inside your overtime mind, clamoring to make sense of it all, to somehow feel sense of it all.
Ah, reunion.
Now that we as a movement have gotten past the reunion-as-panacea stage, we are beginning to address the very complex issues imbedded in the process, the relationship, the roller coaster experience that attends reunion. And the big old elephant sitting squarely in the middle of this room, the one almost everyone sees -- or rather feels, trampling their already-bruised toes -- but hates to mention for fear of making it real, is named Rejection. But whether we name it or not, it’s very real.
For many adoptees, it’s experienced as The Second Rejection. My friend Amy’s birthmother, upon being found, said that she needed time to adjust. She told Amy to call her in six months, and upon doing so Amy found that she had moved to Germany. Amy has channeled her renewed feelings of abandonment into her own healing, thereby transforming what might have been an immobilizing turn of events, but she still knows frustratingly little about what’s at the heart of her birthmother’s rejection.
Dr. Randolph Severson explains that behind many kinds of reunion rejection lies a sort of grieving for the might-have-been. And people respond to that grief in different ways.
“I think there is a stage that some people go through where they feel rejected, really, by life. That all these things that could have been, or, along a different kind of life trajectory, would have occurred, simply aren’t going to be -- too much of life has already been lived. And people withdraw. The anxiety is just too great, the disappointment is too great.”
This kind of withdrawal can happen on the part of the adoptee as well. “What a lot of adoptees seem to go through is a stage where they realize that the birthmother or birthparents are really not going to be able to answer to their wish when their fundamental wish is ‘I wish none of this had ever happened to me.’"
Dr. Severson says that an underlying desire of many adoptees -- subconscious, irrational, and understandable -- is that through reunion they will somehow become un-adopted, become like everyone else.
“The second rejection sort of occurs when folks realize that this just simply can’t happen. And sometimes it creates a little bit of a distance that the birthparent then complains about, too. It’s like an almost impersonal rejection that occurs as a result of finding that the reunion simply can’t erase, eliminate or undo everything that’s gone before. The wounds still exist.”
It is the different way we address these wounds that is at the heart of my own experience with the second rejection. As long as I was still in the deep sleep of denial over how adoption etched me, my birthmother felt safe to be very forthcoming in our relationship. The fact that I’ve come to address these issues, these wounds of mine, holds a certain terror for her, I think, since she has always minimized her adoption experience, as in “I had a great pregnancy, I knew I was carrying you for Bee and Bob, and I’ve never believed in ownership of children.”
In her blithe attitude about this profound experience -- one we intimately shared -- I experience a certain basic rejection, a dismissal of the part of me who doesn’t regard it blithely in the least, the part of me who feels fundamentally shaped by it.
My birthmother’s response is a variation on a theme that Dr. Severson says often occurs in the reunion experience as birthparents encounter the fullness of their children’s emotions and responses. “They can be overwhelmed about the intense, deep sorts of needs and yearning that adoptees often have. And they can just withdraw, it’s just too frightening. I think most second rejections that occur literally, occur out of fear, mostly, and not knowing how to respond.” (It can also happen vice versa, with the adoptee overwhelmed by the needs of the birthparent.)
Sometimes the birthparent -- most often the birthmother -- doesn’t feel free to respond to her newly-returned “child” in the way her instincts would guide, hamstrung as she is by allegiances to her existing family, especially her husband, notes Dr. Severson.
“When the full weight of what this means bears in on a spouse, and for awhile the birthparent becomes almost a stranger, that spouse can put a whole, whole lot of pressure on the birthparent.”
This can lead to painful choices that pit a birthmother’s instincts and heart’s desires against the harsher demands she may feel pressing in on her. In this way, the birthmother - or birthfather --experiences another kind of second rejection, of the sort that occurred when she had to reject an entire realm of response within herself -- and indeed felt it rejected by those close to her -- in order to relinquish her child for adoption. This can stir up old anger, another elephant in the reunion room, who sits in many laps.
Whenever I attend our local support group, I can count on hearing at least one birthmother complaining about her adult child’s confusing, ambivalent, “push-pull” behavior, which she will often perceive as rejection. I usually offer some insight into primal anger, for notwithstanding the old debate regarding Did-We-Or-Did-We-Not-Abandon-Them, I believe that regardless of how we -- including adoptees -- frame it within our adult, intellectual perspective, there is rooted in the adoptees’ experience a profound sense of rejection registered on the most primal level, at our most tender marrow. Dr. Severson cautions against regarding the anger as simply a “stage”, which implies some sort of term limit.
“It co-exists with all these other feelings, and it doesn’t go away. It exists because it’s reality-based. It’s human. And then when it comes boiling out it frightens everybody, especially if they’ve not read anything or talked to anybody, are not in therapy or a support group, and it’s kind of like ‘Where’s this anger coming from? It shouldn’t be there because after all, we’re having this nice, happy reunion.’"

Marcy Wineman Axness, an adoptee, lives in California with her husband and two children. She writes and lectures nationwide on adoption and pre- and perinatal issues. She welcomes correspondence at her e-mail address: axness@earthlink.net

[I am posting this from my research on adoption and what I learned while writing my memoir...Trace]

Understanding impact of past adoption practices: Australian research (2009)

Current needs of women affected by past adoption practices (part 3 of their report)

Marshall and McDonald (2001) noted that there is considerable (emotionally charged) debate around the effects of adoption with, at the extremes, some extravagant claims for and against adoption as a practice. The purpose of this review is not to debate the merits or otherwise of adoption or what the research says about how current adoption practices could be improved. Instead, the focus is on understanding the impact of past adoption practices, and the evidence from the research literature that can be used to assist with understanding and developing appropriate responses to the needs of women affected by past adoption practices.


Many writers (including autobiographical accounts and collections of case studies) either indirectly or directly identify that one of the crucial issues for mothers affected by past adoption practices is for their experiences to be publicly recognised. For example, in her recent edited volume of mothers' perspectives interspersed with documentary material, Cole (2008) quoted the following response from a psychiatrist, Dr Geoff Rickarby. In response to an interview question on his expectations of the NSW inquiry into adoption practices (which reported in 2000), Rickarby stated:

I would have liked to have seen a huge exposure of what was actually done ... you know ... for the adoptees to actually see what a helpless isolated position their mother was in, what drugs were given to them, what coercion, what brainwashing, what illegal things happened and how they were taken from their mothers. (cited in Cole, 2008, p. 173)

This points to a common theme across all of the research: the pervasiveness of the silence and shame, and the impact this has had in terms of isolation, lack of support and specific services. Marshall and McDonald (2001) argued that long-term pain for relinquishing mothers could have been relieved if they had had help in dealing with the relinquishment, accompanied by support and the opportunity to know something about the child (p. 73).

Based on her advocacy work with mothers who have been separated from their babies by adoption, Lindsay (1998) identified some of the needs that she recognised as being part of the healing process (which she sees as a societal responsibility):

•availability of ongoing counselling with highly skilled psychologists;

•provision of trauma counselling services pertaining to mothers and children traumatised by adoption separation;

•establishment of advertising campaigns encouraging mothers to speak out;

•provision of education programs for GPs and other health services providers; and

•avoidance of statements that are likely to re-traumatise (e.g., referring to 'unwanted babies', 'your decision', 'birth mother', 'think about how the adoptive parent feels').

At the conclusion of their groundbreaking Australian empirical study, Winkler and van Keppel (1984) recommended that two things were most needed for these women:

•counselling and support; and

•increased information.

The efficacy of these various services or actions have not been empirically tested in relation to the specific population group; however, they are consistent with the broader theoretical and empirical literature on other forms of trauma, such as the field of child abuse and neglect or adult sexual assault (see Astbury, 2006; Connor & Higgins, 2008). Consideration should also be given to the difference between generalist services, and specialised mental health and other support services for this particular group. As with other groups who have experienced pain and trauma, having society recognise what has occurred (i.e., naming it, and understanding how it occurred and its impact) is an important element in coping with and adjusting to the deep hurt they have experienced.

Winkler, Brown, van Keppel and Blanchard (1988) noted:

Many older adoption practices were cruel and insensitive, reflecting older, harsher social attitudes; the scars left by these practices have never really healed for many people. The probability, therefore, is substantial that adoption-related problems will occur over a person's full life course. (p. 3)

Given that past practices cannot be 'undone', one of the steps in the journey for both mothers and children given up for adoption is the choice around reunion. Given the variability in responses provided in the case study literature, and the absence of any systematic empirical evidence, this is an area where further research would be of particular value. Services attempting to support those affected - including professional counsellors, agencies and support groups - would all benefit from a greater understanding of typical pathways through the reunion process, estimates of the number of reunions that have occurred, the perspectives of those involved, and factors that are associated with positive and negative reunion experiences.

Apart from these issues relating to reunion, the research material—supported strongly by the case studies and autobiographical material (see Appendix, Tables A2 and A3)—points to other ongoing issues for mothers affected by past adoption practices. These issues include:

•personal identity (the concept of 'motherhood' and self-identity as a good mother);

•relationships with others, including husbands/partners, subsequent children, etc.;

•connectedness with others (problematic attachments); and

•ongoing anxiety, depression and trauma.

(note: I added the italics and highlights for emphasis...This study could certainly be applied to First Nations mothers who lost children in North America.  The lack of support for us is a further betrayal... Trace)

Hopi Elders: offer prayers for Japan

View on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buMD1Qi_fNw

“Hopi” means Peaceful People. The greatest power is the strength of peace. Peace is the will of the Great Spirit, God....Trace

Northern Exposure (the best tv series ever)

Miscellany Adoptee: Northern Exposure: "By the way, one of my very favorite (well, my favorite, really) shows in the history of EVER is Northern Exposure. You can buy the seasons ..."

[please friend me on Facebook since I post a ton of great things on it! Trace]

Federal Policy & Forced Sterilizations (1972-1976)

U.S. federal policy toward the Indian tribes was made without knowledge or consideration of the values of the Native people themselves. In addition, educational curricula (school books and lesson plans) and teaching came from a Eurocentric-White perspective and completely neglected any mention of tribal ways of life.

American Indians, especially those who live on reservations, are among the poorest groups in the country. In 1999, 26 percent of the American Indian/Alaska Native population lived below the official poverty level, compared with 12 percent of the total population. Factors such as geographic isolation, limited opportunities for upward mobility in rural areas and on reservations, and low labor force participation rates contribute to a continuous poverty cycle among American Indians. This poverty is often accompanied by a range of social problems —injuries and violence, depression, substance abuse, inadequate health care and prenatal health care, unhealthy or insufficient diets, and high rates of diabetes — that can greatly affect the ability and desire to pursue education. 
[Path of Many Journeys, www.aihec.org/resources/documents/ThePathOfManyJourneys.pdf]

Here is an excerpt from a report
A History of Governmentally Coerced Sterilization: The Plight of the Native American Woman, published on May 1, 1997 by Michael Sullivan DeFine, University of Maine School of Law:


The United States General Accounting Office Investigation of the Indian Health Service (IHS) Procedures and the Meaning behind Statistics of Population Growth:

Complaints of these unethical sterilization practices continued, but little was done until the matter was brought to the attention of Senator James Abourezk (D-SD). Finally, affirmative steps were taken - specifically the commissioning of the General Accounting Office - to investigate the affair and to determine if the complaints of Indian women were true - that they were undergoing sterilization as a means of birth control, without consent. The problem with the investigation was that it was initially limited to only four area Indian Health Service hospitals (later twelve); therefore, the total number of Indian women sterilized remains unknown.

The General Accounting Office came up with a figure of 3,400 women who had been sterilized; but others speculate that at least that many had been sterilized each year from 1972 through 1976.

The General Accounting Office confined its investigation to Indian Health Service records and failed to probe case histories, to observe patient-doctor relationships, or to interview women who had been sterilized. This deplorable lack of thorough investigation only served as an attempt to placate the concerns of Indian people.

The General Accounting Office investigators concluded that Indian Health Service consent procedures lacked the basic elements of informed consent, particularly in informing a patient orally of the advantages and disadvantages of sterilization. Furthermore, the consent form had only a summary of the oral presentation, and the form lacked the information usually located at the top of the page notifying the patient that no federal benefits would be taken away if she did not accept sterilization. The General Accounting Office notified the Indian Health Service that it should implement better consent procedures. Some Indian Health Service Area Directors were pressured by local Indians and by Indian physicians and staff to suspend certain nurses and to move the hospital administrators to another post. Other than that, however, there was little else done by government officials.

Outraged by the level of governmental inaction, Indian people accused the Indian Health Service of making genocide a part of its policy. For the Indian Health Service, this was a serious accusation, as the purpose of this agency was to somehow alleviate the terrible health conditions in Indian communities. The Indian Health Service defended itself by relying on the inaccurate sterilization figures provided by the General Accounting Office. In reality, however, the accusation of genocide was not far off base.

As Thomas Littlewood stated in his book on the politics of population control, “non-white Americans are not unaware of how the American Indian came to be called the vanishing American . . . [t]his country’s starkest example of genocide in practice.”

From a statistical point of view, the reality of the devastation of Native American women victimized by sterilization can be observed through the comments of Senator Abourezk himself: “given the small American Indian population, the 3,400 Indian sterilization figure [out of 55,000 Indian women of childbearing age] would be compared to sterilizing 452,000 non-Indian women.”

Conclusion: Science has provided a means of categorizing and victimizing those in society deemed unworthy of continued existence. Its influence in academic and political circles has created a pervasive social bigotry that rewards extermination over reform. The failure to embrace the racial and cultural diversity of this country has left a wake of destruction and oppression in minority populations. It is time for the pundits of social change to rearrange their thinking and give back to the people the power to choose what is right for themselves.

[from my archives and research...Trace]

END THE CRISIS: Congressional testimony 1974 (archives)



archival photo of Residential Boarding School students

 William Byler at hearings on the Indian Child Welfare Program, April 1974

The National Institute of Mental Health publication, “Suicide, Homicide, and Alcoholism Among American Indians,” reports:


The American Indian population has a suicide rate about twice the nation’s average. Some Indian reservations have suicide rates at least five or six times that of the Nation, especially among younger age groups. While the national rate has changed but little over the last three decades, there has been a notable increase in suicide among Indians, especially in the younger age groups.

The report then singles out nine social characteristics of Indians most inclined to completed suicide. I think two of these are pertinent here: He has lived with a number of ineffective or inappropriate parental substitutes because of family disruption, and he has spent time in boarding schools and has been moved from one to another.

In our efforts to make Indian children white, I think it’s clear that we’re destroying them. In attempting to remove Indian children from communities of poverty, I think we help to create the very conditions of poverty. When we remove children from the home or disrupt family life -- with families as the basic economic, health care, and educational unit in human life -- when you break that up, you impede the ability of the child to grow, to learn, for himself or herself, to become a good and responsible parent later.

We have certain recommendations, in a general sense, that we would like to lay before you.

Mr. Hirsch will present some more specific recommendations that we believe could be acted upon by Congress this year without any kind of significant question of committee jurisdictions, and we believe are uncontroversial.

We offer the following summary recommendations. Congress should enact such laws, appropriate such moneys, and declare such policies as would:

(1) Revise the standards governing Indian child welfare issues, to provide for a more rational and humane approach to questions of custody; and to encourage more adequate training of welfare officials;

(2) Strengthen due process by extending to Indian children and their parents the right to counsel in custody cases and the services of expert witnesses, subjecting voluntary waivers to judicial review, and encouraging officers of the court who consider Indian child-welfare cases to acquaint themselves with Indian cultural values and social norms;

(3) Eliminate the economic incentives to perpetuating the crisis;

(4) End coercive detribalization and assimilation of Indian families and communities and restore to Public Law 280 tribes their civil and criminal jurisdiction;

(5) Provide Indian communities with the means to regulate child-welfare matters themselves;

(6) Provide Indian communities with adequate means to overcome their economic, educational, and health handicaps;

(7) Provide Indian families and foster or adoptive parents with adequate means to meet the needs of Indian children in their care;

(8) Provide for oversight hearings with respect to child-welfare issues on a regular basis and for investigation of the extent of the problem by the General Accounting Once;

(9) End the child-welfare crisis, both rural and urban, and the unwarranted intrusion of Government into Indian family life.

The ultimate of responsibility, of course, must properly rest with the American Indian tribes and urban communities, the Indian people themselves.
 
[source: www.liftingtheveil.org/byler]
 
[Again, I am posting information and research from my archives...Trace]

The Declassified Adoptee: You Know, I Think I Was "Angrier" Before

The Declassified Adoptee: You Know, I Think I Was "Angrier" Before

Out of the fog! True! This is a fantastic blog! Please read it. I mention coming out of my fog in the memoir...

THE ADOPTION MACHINE: No Wonder Adoption Agencies are Nervous About OBC Access! (from my archives)

by Jo Swanson, October 25, 2010 

I was looking for a quote in my 1989 'mini-book' The Adoption Machine and came across something I had forgotten about. It fortifies what we've known all along about why agencies fight so hard to keep adoptees and birth families from locating one another. The agency is in Michigan - it's the one my daughter was placed through. I'll quote directly from the book:

A birthmother who placed her child through our same "Christian" agency contacted me for search help. She had kept in touch with her social worker throughout the years, even after the woman retired, as a way of somehow staying connected to her child. In recent visits, the former social worker had become quite upset about the birthmother's desire to be reunited with her daughter. "Give it up," she admonished her, suggesting that she was merely having a "bad day." "Cheer up! You have another family now! Besides, I checked the phone book recently, and the family isn't living in the area anymore."

Mother and daughter did meet, however, and upon comparing information provided to each by the agency at time of placement and later with the real story, found:

Claim: Birthmother was told by her social worker at time of relinquishment that her infant was perfectly normal and healthy.

Fact: Records indicated the child was diagnosed in the hospital, right after birth, as having a severe hearing impairment (95% loss), possibly due to exposure of mother, unknowingly, to German measles during pregnancy.

Claim: One year after relinquishment, birthmother was sent a letter by the agency, informing her that her child was "in a happy home" and that the adoption was finalized.

Fact: At the time the social worker wrote that letter, this child was back in foster care after a failed adoption. "The adoptive mother was having a nervous breakdown and couldn't handle a handicapped child." A second placement had been made at thirteen months, and fortunately it was a very good placement.

Claim: The adoptive family no longer lived in the area.

Fact: Adoptive father was deceased, but the mother still lived in the same home as at the time of adoption, and was still listed in phone directory. (Adoptive mother was supportive of her daughter's desire to meet her birth family.)

Claim: The adoptive couple had been told by the agency social worker after placement that the child's birthmother had died subsequent to the birth! (Common practice, we now know, as was telling birthmothers their infants died before or after birth.)

Fact: This agency social worker had spun so many lies that she was in a virtual panic that the two parties might actually meet one day and learn the truth!

     We're getting the truth out drop by drop. But we've been doing it for so many decades - when will legislators begin to "get it" and realize how power has been abused by adoption brokers at the expense of children and their mothers?

[Lies...This is one example of the difficulties in dealing with the adoption industry, social workers and lawmakers on passing unconditional "no consent clause" access to our OBC (original birth certificate) and our adoption records...   Trace]