Blog Week: Returning Stolen Children

Continuing with Blog Week and "What Annoys You about the Adoption Establishment: this story tore me up about India's Adoption corruption and their Stolen Children.

Read this post:

http://fleasbiting.blogspot.com/2012/02/finding-truth-returning-stolen-children.html

Quote: Note that almost all adoption corruption -- whether coercion of first parents to relinquish, persuading non-infertile folks to become adoptive parents, or persuading the general public or anyone in particular of the absolute goodness of international adoption in spite of facts to the contrary -- involves persuading people of a strong belief system (whose foundations have been laid for decades in our popular culture) and then reinforcing that strong belief system. This belief system is often at odds with other knowledge, emotions, and values and often requires the suspension of the usual protections of questioning assumptions, and using research and critical thinking to evaluate truth claims.

About their blog: Why These Fleas Bite

Desiree: In 1998 my husband David and I adopted a sibling group of two older girls from India.

Within six weeks of their arrival, our new daughters, who were severely emotionally traumatized, told us they had been stolen from their birthfamily.
For six long and difficult years, our agency, though asked to do so repeatedly, failed to investigate our daughters allegations.
Finally, on our own with the help of an Indian activist for the poor, we found our daughters' birthfamily and confirmed their disturbing story.
Despite all this there has yet to be so much as an apology from our agency, and certainly no justice. Not for our daughters. Not for our daughters' first parents. Not for ourselves.
It seems that NO ONE CARES about this crime.
Our US agency--which has not disputed the facts of the case--says that it bears no legal responsibility even if, like we say, they helped place stolen children in our home.
Our pleas to both the Indian and US governments have fallen on what appears to be deaf ears, and therefore, we assume, uncaring ears. The state office which licenses our agency has a phone machine for complaints; apparently they do not return phone calls--at least ours was never returned.
Meanwhile, the Indian orphanage director has been jailed three times on child trafficking related charges. He is currently trying to be relicensed yet again.
We have been left to ask the questions:
1) How could this have happened? Was our case simply a rare happenstance or could there be specific flaws--specific or systemic--in the system that have allowed/caused it to happen?
2) Why is it that no one cares about this kind of crime?
This blog represents some of the answers we've found to these questions. It also is shares the ongoing answers as we continue to learn.
Flea bites are simply individual incidents of exposing the reality of international adoption practices--one example, one practice, one analysis, one real-life experience, one proposed remedy, and one "big picture" at a time.
If our insignificant flea bites can save other families the extreme pain that our daughters, our daughters' first family, and our own family have endured, these flea bites will not be in vain.
To find out more about Desiree's family's adoption follow the following link. NPR's" Adoption in America Series: An Adoption Gone Wrong, July 24, 2007
Their advice: Tell Bad Stories
http://fleasbiting.blogspot.com/2007/02/corruption-item-17-tell-bad-stories.html

Blog Week: Who you need to read!

Participating in the unofficial "What Annoys you about the Adoption Establishment" Week - here are links to blogs who will be posting:

http://thirdmom.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-adoption-establishment-annoys-me.html

adoptionechoes.com/2012/02/27/why-the-adoption-establishment-annoys-me/

http://bastardette.blogspot.com

 http://www.declassifiedadoptee.com/

http://landofgazillionadoptees.com/

http://reformtalk.blogspot.com/2012/02/guest-blogger-barbara-mcartney-on-why.html
http://reformtalk.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-does-adoption-lobby-annoy-me-they.html

New addition: http://karenmoline.com/lurchingintodecrepitude/?tag=adult-adoptees
One more: http://reformtalk.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-annoys-me-about-adoption.html

Now is the time to share these posts with your friends AND sign up and subscribe to these blogs (via email) - and the greatest thing you can do is retweet, share on Facebook and comment - every blogger LOVES that!

I love my readers very much - and you adoptees teach me every day and I appreciate you all! ...Trace

" QUOTE"

“My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”

             -Albert S. Wei, Special Advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee

Blog Week: What bugs me about the Adoption Establishment

SHOTGUN ADOPTION
http://www.thenation.com/article/shotgun-adoption?page=0,0
This article is from 2009 but offers an interesting insider view of the Adoption Agencies agenda and their role in coercion of young women to relinquish their babies, instead of supporting them so they can keep their child.

Excerpt:
Carol Jordan, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, was living in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1999 when she became pregnant. She'd already decided against abortion, but she was struggling financially and her boyfriend was unsupportive. Looking through the Yellow Pages for help, she spotted an ad under "crisis pregnancies" for Bethany Christian Services.

Within hours of calling, Jordan (who asked to be identified with a pseudonym) was invited to Bethany's local office to discuss free housing and medical care. Bethany, it turned out, did not simply specialize in counseling pregnant women. It is the nation's largest adoption agency, with more than eighty-five offices in fifteen countries.

...instances of coercion in adoption stretch back nearly seventy years.

...CPCs (Crisis Pregnancy Centers) might persuade reluctant women by casting adoption as redemption for unwed mothers' "past failures" and a triumph over "selfishness, an 'evil' within themselves."

...CPCs were wary of looking like "baby sellers"...

Care Net runs 1,160 CPCs nationwide and partners with Heartbeat International to host a national CPC hot line.

... National Council for Adoption (NCFA), the most prominent adoption lobby group in the country, in the company of other benefactors like Bethany; Texas maternity home giant Gladney; the Good Shepherd Sisters, a Catholic order serving "young women of dissolute habits"; and the Mormon adoption agency LDS Family Services.

The federally funded NCFA has a large role in spreading teachings like these through its Infant Adoption Awareness Training Program, a Department of Health and Human Services initiative it helped pass in 2000 that has promoted adoption to nearly 18,000 CPC, school, state, health and correctional workers since 2002.

(Blog Week: http://landofgazillionadoptees.com/2012/02/22/secret-message-for-other-bloggers-about-the-week-of-february-26th-aka-why-the-adoption-establishment-annoys-the-heck-out-of-us-blog-week/#comment-1867)

I added the bold in the excerpt so you can notice the main players in the industry. Stay tuned to this blog - more of my rants coming this week...Trace

BLOG WEEK: MY TOP 5

Kevin Ost-Vollmers and Shelise Gieseke at Land of Gazillion Adoptees Blog said Feb. 26th begins BLOG WEEK to answer this question: “Why does the adoption establishment annoy the heck out of us (adoptees)?” http://landofgazillionadoptees.com/2012/02/22/secret-message-for-other-bloggers-about-the-week-of-february-26th-aka-why-the-adoption-establishment-annoys-the-heck-out-of-us-blog-week/

MY MISSION today is to answer that question!  Ok, so why does the adoption establishment bug the heck out of me?

Here is my Top 5.

1- (Lack of) Disclosure - Old archaic laws are on the books in many states and it seems every state is having some kind of major meltdown or fiscal crisis. Adoptees who are fighting to gain access to our birth records can’t seem to grab their attention or warrant the lawmaker’s time or serious consideration - unless maybe the lawmaker is an adoptee.  

Yup, we know adoptees are low on the totem pole and status meter and that annoys me.

What are “they” thinking? Oh, it’s obvious - the status quo - let’s not rock the boat, just leave the law as is and let's not disclose information every adoptee needs and deserves, and definitely let’s not disturb the Adoption Industry who lobbies Wash. DC with fancy dinners and big campaign contributions. (Lack of medical history is a huge problem for many adoptees, including me)

I can hear the lobbyist pounding on their tables, “adoptees should be grateful they were adopted.” The adoption industry is a billion dollar business and they don’t want to lose a single dollar in profits. It’s about money. Even now, the adoption industry does not appreciate adoptees or ask how we feel or acknowledge what we endured. We are not invited to sit at their table or join in discussions. That really bugs me!

2- Secrecy - Over and over and over “they” claim our natural mothers demanded secrecy yet many mothers who lost children after closed adoptions are saying, “damn the secrecy, damn the laws, where are my children?”

Uniting all these mothers with all the adoptees on the same stage, fighting the discrimination, shame, secrecy and old laws would be powerful!

Sadly it seems both are on their own warpath to be heard.  Uniting our voices on this issue - especially natural mothers and adoptees who have been silenced for too long - is what is urgently needed. Big crowds marching on Washington DC would get "their" attention.  

Blogs (my favorites are listed in the right column) are enlightening the world to our plight. Using our voices, activism and blogging for change is good.

3- Identity - Adoptees are denied our basic human rights to the truth of our ancestry, our tribe(s), our birth name, our family names, our background (which is our identity), our medical history, our original birth certificate (OBC) and information about both our natural parents.

I noticed writing my memoir how adoptees will say they are looking for their mothers -- but we do have a dad somewhere and possibly siblings - and we do need to know who they are and where they are! Adoptees need to add “dad and siblings” to their list of needs when facing adoption industry discrimination and current adoption laws.

The bias in the adoption industry is to protect the adoptive parents and seal our identity so no one will ever find out the truth. That deeply annoys me.

If you are Native American, you cannot be enrolled without documentation and proof. If you are a Split Feather/adoptee, you not only lose your identity but your treaty rights and all that goes along with being an enrolled tribal member. Just remember your identity is Native American with or without tribal enrollment.  We must unite and form a national organization to teach about the government’s use of closed adoption to hurt and destroy American Indian families and cripple future generations.

4- New Identification Cards? Yup, as of 2005 more states will implement this new country-wide identification card. And guess what? Adoptees who cannot produce a real birth certificate (OBC) may (let me stress “MAY”) not be able to renew a driver’s license, vote, or apply for or renew a passport. That scares me and bugs me equally! Those ignorant lawmakers who wrote the Real ID Act of 2005 (and passed it) didn’t consider adoptees or how this would affect us? We pay them big salaries because they represent us. What were they thinking? They were not thinking of adoptees, perhaps 10 million of us in the USA.

5 - Gratitude - Over and over I hear adoptees say - almost by script - how grateful they were to be adopted by their parents. I call this our gratitude attitude. We get stuck there mentally and it’s hard to move on to empowering ourselves to regain our birth rights and identity. I know my gratitude silenced me. Gratitude meant I could not talk to my adoptive parents about anything - how I felt, what I planned to do, or even ask them questions about my adoption file. Laws prevented me from knowing anything about myself and my first family.

AND I found out my new parents were not really informed when they adopted me in 1957. They had basic information like I was illegitimate, how my mom was unmarried.

AND my adoption file didn’t include medical history. Really. Apparently the adoption industry didn’t think about the child at all when compiling information for the adoption hearing. It was about convenience and expedience for adoptive parents. Really.
Looking back the adoption industry should be so embarrassed and horrified they didn’t get our medical history when they “sold” us to our new parents.

So, what about the Adoption Establishment annoys you? Please leave a comment.

Indian Child Welfare, three interviews

Click here: http://stephaniewoodard.blogspot.com/

Indian Child Welfare Act, three interviews; part one

By Stephanie Woodard

Excerpt:

Native parents face extraordinary hurdles in keeping their children—including cultural misunderstandings and legal barriers that are unimaginable to many non-Native people. In this second decade of the 21^st century, American Indian children in states across the country are still taken from their families and placed in foster care or adoptive homes at a much higher rate than other kids—just as they were before the passage of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal statute intended to help keep Native families intact.

In Alaska, Native children make up 20 percent of the child population but 51 percent of those a state agency has placed in foster care; Montana, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, North Dakota and Washington also have highly skewed numbers. In Minnesota, the percentage of Native children in foster care isn’t just high, it’s gotten worse in recent years. “Disproportionalities exist nationwide at every stage in the process, starting right from the initial reports of possible abuse or neglect of a Native child,” says Kristy Alberty, Cherokee, spokeswoman for the National Indian Child Welfare Association.

As those who read this blog are aware, the removal of Indian Children was supposed to end with the ICWA of 1978 and sadly, it's still a crisis and unacceptable. Poverty is a powerful weapon and is still being used against Indian people.  Trace

Cherokee Nation maintaining Sequoyah orphan cemetery

Read here: CN maintaining Sequoyah orphan cemetery

Video

By TESINA JACKSON, Reporter
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – Across from Sequoyah High School along Highway 62 in the Southgate Business Park is a small, bordered area where the Cherokee Nation has placed 32 stones to represent a cemetery that went forgotten for decades.
The cemetery, commonly called the Sequoyah orphan cemetery, began for children who attended Sequoyah during its days as an orphanage.
After the Civil War, Cherokee children were orphaned because of fighting between Cherokees. In 1871, the Cherokee National Council authorized the orphanage’s construction about four miles southwest of Tahlequah.
“All of the stones that are over at the cemetery are actually stones that were salvaged from the third floor of the Cherokee Nation jail facility,” CN Natural Resources Group Leader Pat Gwin said. The jail no longer stands, and its material is stored at the Cherokee Heritage Center. “We used that to make the rock walkways and the rock headstones.”
The orphanage also housed as an institution for the handicapped, and Sequoyah teacher Don Franklin believes that patients who died at the institution are buried in the cemetery.

tesina-jackson@cherokee.org
 

The Thick Dark Fog

"The Thick Dark Fog" Official Trailer from randy vasquez on Vimeo.

Read more here: http://www.thickdarkfog.com/?page_id=120

Thick Dark Fog" Official Trailer
http://vimeo.com/user9741689/trailer

Award winning documentary - The Thick Dark Fog.

Walter Littlemoon attended a federal Indian boarding school in South Dakota sixty years ago. The mission of many of these schools in 1950, was still to “kill the Indian and save the man.” The children were not allowed to be Indians – to speak their language or express their culture or native identity in any way at the risk of being severely beaten, humiliated or abused. What effects did these actions cause?

Many Indians, like Walter, lived with this unresolved trauma into adulthood, acting it out through alcoholism and domestic violence. At age 58, Walter decided to write and publish his memoirs as a way to explain his past abusive behaviors to his estranged children. But dealing with the memories of his boarding school days nearly put an end to it.

“The Thick Dark Fog” tells the story of how Walter confronted the “thick dark fog” of his past so that he could renew himself and his community.

For more information visit: thickdarkfog.com

Colonization is an Act of Genocide

The following appplies in North America but since it is not taught in schools, apparently Native People are not considered to be the colonized. I beg to differ... Trace

Maori and Indigenous Analysis Ltd

Colonisation is an act of Genocide

Màori researcher Dr Leonie Pihama says the use of the term holocaust is an
appropriate and valid description of the impact of colonial genocide on Màori. A
Radio New Zealand panel featured Taranaki Màori academic Keri Opai using the
word holocaust to describe colonisation for Màori. The NZ Jewish Council said
his use of the term was "diminishing and trivialising of the Jewish Holocaust
experience". Dr Pihama says the NZ Jewish council are "basically incorrect" in
their response. She states "The term holocaust refers to deliberate acts of
genocide and ethnocide against groups of people, and that is exactly what
occurred here in Aotearoa. There was a deliberate and planned process of
colonisation that sought the extermination of our people. That is clear and well
documented".

United Nations conventions define genocide as "any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group , as such: as killing members of the group;

(i) killing members of the group;

(ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(ii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(iii) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(iv) forcibly transferring children of this group to another group

The definition of genocide by the United Nations is clearly one that reflects
the experience of Màori people and there needs to be a greater awareness of the
reality of the history of this country and of other Indigenous Nations. "There
is clear historical evidence of acts of genocide that were undertaken by
successive white settler Presidents in America. Hitler modelled many of his
oppressive acts on the forced removal and murder of Native Amerian people and
the imprisonment of thousands in concentration camps" states Dr Pihama.

Dr Pihama notes that Màori use of the term 'holocaust' should not be viewed
as in any way diminishing the experience of Jewish people and others that were
targeted by Hitler and Nazi Germany. She says clearly that Maori have always
actively acknowledged that history and the impact of it. Dr Pihama explains
"This is not about comparing experiences. The reference by Mr Opai is directed
to the historical trauma and post traumatic stress experienced by our tupuna and
generations of our people who continue to live with that impact on our own
land".

http://www.scoop. co.nz/stories/ PO1202/S00076/ colonisation- is-an-act- of-genocide. htm

Closed adoptions are a form of cultural genocide... Trace

Jennifer Lauck on how her birth mother's sexual history affected her own

This incredible interview with Jennifer Lauck, author of FOUND, struck a chord with me. Please read it:
http://www.examiner.com/open-adoption-in-national/jennifer-lauck-on-how-her-birth-mother-s-sexual-history-affected-her-own

Excerpt:
There has been a belief that the moment a child is taken from her original mother she ceases being that woman's child. This is one of the reasons many want to adopt a baby rather than an older child. They believe they are getting a "blank slate." Many people will go as far as to adopt from far away lands--as far away as possible -- so that they get the "blank slate" and as a bonus eliminate the chance that the original mother will reappear and take away what supposedly belongs to the adoptive parent -- the child, the relationship, the connection, the concept of family and so on. There is great ignorance in this thinking--similar to the thinking years ago that babies don't feel pain and thus were operated on without the mercy of anesthesia or pain blockers. Of course, science has now shown us otherwise. Babies feel pain. And you cannot stop a child from being connected to the original mother. Yes, you can take legal measures, you can take geographic measures, but you cannot change the fact of the biological link.
To further expand on this, consider this remarkable passage from Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map: "women carry fetal cells from all the babies they have carried. Crossing the defensive boundaries of our immune system and mixing with our own cells, the fetal cells circulate in the mother's bloodstream for decades after each birth. The body does not tolerate foreign cells, which trigger illness and rejection. But a mother's body incorporates into her own the cells of her children as if they recognize each other. This fantastic melding of two selves, mother and child is called microchimerism....the mother's cells are also carried in the child. During gestation, maternal cells slip through the barriers of defense and join her child's cells as they pulse through his veins...of course the implications are stunning. Mother and child do not fully separate at birth. We do not lose each other at that moment of severance."

As I wrote in my memoir One Small Sacrifice, the new science of birth psychology will forever change the way the world views adoption and its impact.
There are follow-up interviews with Jennifer at that website, a virtual blog tour - so please read them, too... Trace

Toronto Birthmother story

I had to share this. A birthmother wrote in response to this: http://splitfeathers.blogspot.com/2011/04/red-road-documentary-from-canada-60s_11.html

I am so happy that this lost spirit has found his roots after living a life of not knowing where he fit in! I have never given up the hope that one day my son who was taken from me at birth will somehow find his true family. I just hope that it isn't too late for us to join each other. I have always believed that my son is out there someplace and he will come home soon. He was taken from me on October 17,1976 from Toronto General Hospital. I was told that he died at birth. I never was asked if I wanted to see or hold him. To tell him how much his mommy loves him. I was just a young mother with a child of 11 months at home and a baby that I so wanted to bring home. I never was told where or when he was buried never laid eyes on him ever. I felt that something wasn't right but I was to with drawn from the loss that I just couldn't bare the loss. To this day the thoughts of it burns at my insides. I never knew about the 60's or 70's scoop until just with-in the last few years. That is when I got my answers to what happen. I believed that my baby boy was more then likely one of the native children that was scooped that day. I hope that this man isn't bitter towards his true Mom for what he went through. May the Creator bless him with true happiness in his life now that he has found his true identity as a Proud Native Man. From this story of this man it gives me the added hope that my son to will find me some day.
Signed BM (which means birthmom)

Remember this adoptees - closed adoption was used as a weapon! First Nations Families, please start your search now...If you need my help, email me... Trace (tracedemeyer@yahoo.com)

 

Interview: Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy is not only a world famous Native American music legend but she's also an adoptee. I mention her and many others in my memoir One Small Sacrifice.

As I wrote in the Talking Stick article "Generation after Generation We are Coming Home": Being creative is an effective outlet for grief this enormous... (meaning our loss of identity and tribal family as adoptees/Lost Birds is healed with creativity and using our gifts.)

Like Buffy, we all have gifts...

Read the interview here:

READ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ragogna/better-late-than-never-a_b_1172096.html