AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: August 2010

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Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ . THANK YOU MEGWETCH for reading

Sunday, August 29, 2010

BOOK REVIEW: One Small Sacrifice

FAMILY PRESERVATION ADVOCACY: Review of "One Small Sacrifice"

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Newspaper Rock: Yesterday's Cherokees = today's Muslims

Friday, August 20, 2010

Strong as a Willow

My youth disappeared
under spell and dominion,
too powerless, mute, and
too weak to protest

Maid, cook, whore, child
Necessary, I believed, so
I disappeared into their idea
of what I should be

I read their desires as directions
like their force, somehow
My illusion had to be protected
with all my energy and faith

I trusted I would be safe
I told myself it was love
and that it was worth it
I was wrong, I was as good as dead

I was incapable of love
to any degree
There was no emotion
Just a numb, frozen heart

I found memories of a little princess
whose father took his piece
then a procession of narcissists
who either betrayed or enslaved

Yet even a slave is rewarded
Angels arrive, teachers, books
that open my world of silence
and give me my voice

There is no worthless left
just a force and direction
There are beliefs that allow no weakness
and no men left to dominate desire

Now, as I choose,
I am safe within my own walls,
alive in my body, strong as a willow,
as wild, as free.

© 2010 Trace A. DeMeyer

Friday, August 13, 2010

Adopt a village

By Trace Hentz (8-13-2010)

I am a Laura Jean Thrall-Bland and I was Tracy Ann DeMeyer.

Split feather – two names – two identities. Confusing, right?
Are any adoptees reading this? How about foster children? How about adoptive parents? Now what I can’t ask is – have any of you given a baby up for adoption? Why can’t I ask? Because there is a shame associated with this for many mothers and there is a stigma attached.
Thank God, little by little this stigma is changing, and views about adoptees who search for their relatives and open their adoptions is changing. Natural moms who want to find their lost child is changing.
What I learned about adoption and statistics in the past several years changed me.
What I discovered in reunion was not as pleasant as I wished, yet an increased awareness helped me write the book, heal my wounds, and transform fear into love.
The more I learned the better I healed.
As for the children who need families, please do not be afraid to become foster parents and legal guardians. Do not rob a child of their identity. Go to Social Services.

I think rich celebrities need to adopt a village, not an individual child. If Madonna can afford it, she should sponsor an entire village in Africa and pay for their food and education, so she can end the cycle of poverty.

We can’t fix adoption until we fix poverty, and we know that won’t be easy. Like Gandhi said, poverty is the worse form of violence. Poor families, Indian people on reservations with stifling poverty, their children, and future generations, are my greatest concern right now.
I promise you, once you read my memoir, you’ll never look at adoption in the same way again.

Monday, August 2, 2010

The takeaway: Adoptees fight for birth certificates

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.”
The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

Why tribes do not recommend the DNA swab

Rebecca Tallbear entitled: “DNA, Blood, and Racializing the Tribe”, bearing out what I only inferred:

Detailed discussion of the Bering Strait theory and other scientific theories about the population of the modern-day Americas is beyond the scope of this essay. However, it should be noted that Indian people have expressed suspicion that DNA analysis is a tool that scientists will use to support theories about the origins of tribal people that contradict tribal oral histories and origin stories. Perhaps more important,the alternative origin stories of scientists are seen as intending to weaken tribal land and other legal claims (and even diminish a history of colonialism?) that are supported in U.S. federal and tribal law. As genetic evidence has already been used to resolve land conflicts in Asian and Eastern European countries, this is not an unfounded fear.