Improving the Lives of Native American children, bill introduced

Sens. Heitkamp and Murkowski Introduce Bill to Improve Lives of Indian Children

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Matthew L.M. Fletcher, Turtle Talk

Here is the text of the press release (bill summary here):

U.S. Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) today introduced a comprehensive plan to find solutions to the complex challenges facing Native American children throughout Indian Country.
The bipartisan legislation, Heitkamp’s first bill as a U.S. Senator, would create a national Commission on Native American Children to conduct an intensive study into issues facing Native children – such as high rates of poverty, staggering unemployment, child abuse, domestic violence, crime, substance abuse, and few economic opportunities – and make recommendations on how to make sure Native children are better taken care of and given the opportunities to thrive.   Heitkamp and Murkowski are both members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

“We have all heard stories or seen first-hand the struggles that too many Native children and their families face from extreme poverty to child abuse to suicide.  Since I’ve been in public office, I’ve worked to address many of these challenges, and I’m proud my first bill as a U.S. Senator will take a serious look at finding solutions to better protect Native children and give them the opportunities they deserve,” said Heitkamp. “Tragically, for children in our nation’s tribal communities, the barriers to success are high and they are the most at-risk population in the country, facing serious disparities in safety, health, and education.

“We need to strive for a day when Native children no longer live in third-world conditions; when they don’t face the threat of abuse on a daily basis; when they receive the good health care and education to help them grow and succeed. However, we don’t just have a moral obligation to fix this, we have treaty and trust responsibilities to do so. The federal government pledged long ago to protect Native families and children. We haven’t lived up to that promise. But we can change that.”
“Last week at the Alaska Federation of Natives, a group of kids from Tanana speak up  with tremendous courage and express that they have had enough of violence, alcohol, drugs, and suicide in their community. Their call for us to take a pledge to protect our villages against suicide, is a call to action for all of us. I am proud to be the lead Republican co-sponsor of the Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission with Sen. Heitkamp,” said Murkowski.  “We must ensure our federal government upholds the trust responsibility, especially to our Native children, and this Commission will examine from the lens of justice, education, and healthcare how to improve the lives of our Nation’s native children.”
“It is also time we honor Dr. Walter Soboleff, our champion for cultural education in Alaska. Dr. Soboleff, lived a life committed to ensuring our public education system honored cultural values, and that our University system provided an option for students to learn cultural practices with the established of the Alaska Native Studies Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.”
The Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission on Native Children, named for the former Chairwoman of Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation in North Dakota, and Alaska Native Elder and statesman, respectively, is already being praised by a cross-section of individuals from North Dakota, Alaska and around the country. It has been lauded by former Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Byron Dorgan, the National Congress of American Indians and the National Indian Education Association (quotes endorsing the legislation are below).

Background:

Conditions for young people in Indian Country are tragic. For example:

• 37 percent of Native children live in poverty;
• Suicide rates are 2.5 times the national average for children 15-24 years old;
• High school graduation rate for Native students is around 50 percent, compared to more than 75 percent for white students; and
• While the overall rate of child mortality in the U.S. has decreased since 2000, the rate for Native children has increased 15 percent.

Tribal governments face numerous obstacles in responding to the needs of Native children. Existing program rules and the volume of resources required to access grant opportunities stymie efforts of tribes to tackle these issues.  At the same time, federal agencies lack clear guidance about the direction that should be taken to best address the needs of Native children in order to fulfill our trust responsibility to tribal nations.

To help reverse these impacts, the Commission on Native Children would conduct a comprehensive study on the programs, grants, and supports available for Native children, both at government agencies and on the ground in Native communities, with the goal of developing a sustainable system that delivers wrap-around services to Native children.  Then, the 11 member Commission would issue a report to address a series of challenges currently facing Native children.  A Native Children Subcommittee would also provide advice to the Commission.  The Commission’s report would address how to achieve:

• Better Use of Existing Resources – The Commission will identify ways to streamline current federal, state, and local programs to be more effective and give tribes greater flexibility to devise programs for their communities in the spirit of self-determination and allow government agencies to redirect resources to the areas of most need.
• Increased Coordination – The Commission will seek to improve coordination of existing programs benefitting Native children.  The federal government houses programs across numerous different agencies, yet these programs too often do not work together.
• Measurable Outcomes – The Commission will recommend measures to determine the wellbeing of Native children, and use these measurements to propose short-term, mid-term, and long-term national policy goals.
• Stronger Data – The Commission will seek to develop better data collection methods.  Too often Native children are left out of the conversation because existing data collection, reporting, and analysis practices exclude them.
• Stronger Private Sector Partnerships – The Commission will seek to identify obstacles to public-private partnerships in Native communities.
• Implementation of Best Practices – The Commission will identify and highlight successful models that can   be adopted in Native communities.

For a summary of the bill, click here. For quotations from national supporters, click here.

Capobiancos sit down for Dr. Phil interview #BABY VERONICA

The adoptive parents of 4-year-old Veronica Capobianco said in a television interview that they promise to keep her biological family a part of her life.

Oct 30, 2013.

By MICHAEL OVERALL Tulsa World Staff Writer |

Speaking publicly for the first time since winning custody, Baby Veronica's adoptive parents promised Tuesday to keep her biological family a part of her life.
Appearing briefly on national television, Matt and Melanie Capobianco confirmed that they have stayed in touch with Dusten Brown and other members of Veronica's Cherokee family.

"It's been positive," Melanie Capobianco said, "and we feel really good about it."

No recent footage of Veronica was included, but the Capobiancos apparently sat down for the interview over the weekend at their home in the suburbs of Charleston, S.C.

"All the people who love her, all of her family members," Melanie Capobianco said, "will be in contact with her."

A short segment on the "Dr. Phil" show included video shot while the Capobiancos were in Oklahoma to fight for custody, where the Brown family waged a court battle for weeks in hope of keeping Veronica.

Riding in the back seat of an SUV, the Capobiancos drove past the Cherokee Nation headquarters near Tahlequah, where they spotted Veronica in the yard outside of a VIP house where the Browns were staying at the time.

Brown said goodbye to Veronica at that house Sept. 23, when the Oklahoma Supreme Court cleared the way for the Capobiancos to take her.

But the video of Veronica, obviously shot from a distance, was apparently taken Aug. 15, after reality television personality Troy "The Locator" Dunn appeared at a Tulsa news conference with the Capobiancos.

Dunn tried to approach the house where Veronica was staying, but Cherokee deputies turned him away.

With the Capobiancos filing a writ of habeas corpus later that day, the incident led to the first of several court appearances that ultimately sent Veronica back to South Carolina.

Following the adoptive parents while they were in Oklahoma, Dunn had offered to be a "neutral" mediator between the Brown and Capobianco families.

But he was a registered member of the Coalition for the Protection of Indian Children and Families, a group founded by the Capobiancos' spokeswoman to lobby for changes to the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Brown used the law to challenge Veronica's adoption and take custody of her in 2011.

The Capobiancos appealed the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled this summer that the law didn't apply to Brown because he didn't have custody of Veronica at birth.

The Browns and Capobiancos have mutually agreed not to comment anymore to the media, Dunn told the Dr. Phil audience.

Although South Carolina is no longer seeking Brown's extradition, he still faces a felony complaint of "custodial interference" for refusing to hand over Veronica while appealing the case in Oklahoma.

The complaint could make him subject to arrest if he ever visits South Carolina, according to attorneys.

SOURCE: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/adoptive-parents-in-baby-veronica-case-speak-on-dr-phil/article_c3f1dbbd-0c59-5f81-ad16-202ca0deeb5e.html

Lawsuit Proceeds for Canada's Lost Generation 60s Scoop Adoptees

David P. Ball

10/28/13

A class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government on behalf of tens of thousands of indigenous children who were seized and moved to white families in an adoption wave known as the “Sixties Scoop” can now proceed after being approved by an Ontario judge.
The decision was handed down after several previous lawsuits in Canada failed, and as attention in the U.S. focused on the Baby Veronica custody case.

RELATED: Baby Veronica & Our Stolen Children: 'Someday, They'll Come Back'

“[The] harm done was profound and included lasting psychological and emotional damage,” said Justice Edward Belobaba in rejecting the government's arguments and summarizing his rationale for certifying the case, which affects at least 16,000 children in Ontario alone.
The Sixties Scoop followed a similar pattern across Canada, as the federal government signed funding agreements with the provinces that extended provincial child and family welfare services onto First Nations reserves. For example, in Ontario, the Crown signed the Ontario-Canada-Ontario Welfare Services Agreement on December 1, 1965. That lasted until the end of 1984, when a new federal law, the Child and Family Services Act, made “aboriginality an important factor in child protection and placement practices,” Belobaba said in his September 27 decision.
The class action is being represented by Beaverhouse First Nation Chief Marcia Brown Martel, who was seized from her Ojibwe family and adopted into a community where she was the only Native.
“It is in the power of the Government of Canada to right this wrong, to change how our Canadian systems work with aboriginal communities, to take the apology they offered and stand by it, and have it be a cornerstone to a new relationship—a dynamic, fulfilling relationship—to extend the apology to more than just fine words,” she told Indian Country Today Media Network. “It needs action.”
Currently, she added, there are “more than just the survivors to contend with. Every community that lost children to the Sixties Scoop has parents and extended family also affected by the loss of their loved ones.
“I was swept from my family, my community, my siblings, my extended family, my ability to function as an aboriginal person at all,” she said, “I had nothing as a young person, to say, 'Yes, I am First Nations,' other than the color of my skin and my hair. That's all I had left.”
As the only aboriginal person in a non-Native community, she felt completely alone in her struggles even into adulthood.
“Personally, it was a very, very lonely time in my life,” she said. “You start searching as a young adult to find your community. I'm very fortunate: I remembered my name as Sally Susan Mathias. Some may be so young that they would never remember their birth name. You don't know where to begin. It is an extremely difficult process.”

On Amazon

According to Sixties Scoop survivor Ernie Crey, who co-authored the 1998 book Stolen from Our Embrace (Douglas & McIntyre) with Suzanne Fournier and founded an aboriginal-run child welfare agency in British Columbia, Canadian aboriginal child welfare policies differ significantly from those in the U.S.
“It's a patchwork quilt here in Canada, versus what's true in the U.S. in the way of child protection,” Crey explained. “There isn't a National Indian Child Welfare Act in Canada, or anything even remotely like it, either. That goes back to the Sixties, when the Department of Indian Affairs refused to legislate child protection under the Indian Act. They abandoned the field to each province. That's what precipitated the Sixties Scoop.”
As some residential schools began to close around the same time, the change in child protection “created a perfect storm,” Crey said. “That's when the social workers from each province literally ... descended on the communities and apprehended children en masse.”
Advocates have described the Sixties Scoop as “identity genocide of children.” But many point out that even today there are more aboriginal children in Canada's child welfare system than ever attended residential schools.
“We're basically warehousing thousands and thousands of children in long-term care,” Crey said. “We're confining them to foster care.”
In another prominent case, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society director Cindy Blackstock and the Assembly of First Nations have taken the issue of unequal funding for aboriginal child services to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
Blackstock cited recent statistics that 48 percent of children in foster care are aboriginal – even though they make up less than eight per cent of Canada's children.
“We're looking at thousands and thousands of kids who are being raised away from their families,” she said in an earlier interview. “One of the big lessons that all of us should have learned, and certainly the government should have learned, from residential school, is that children need to grow up in their families. Then they learn the culture of themselves and their people.”

Go to website link below for the trailer for a documentary being made about this era, which took an entire generation of children away from their families even as residential schools closed down.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/10/28/canadas-baby-veronicas-sue-adoptees-seized-sixties-scoop-approved-class-action-lawsuit

Last Real Indians: The Missionary is Back

I am honored the Last Real Indians website posted my essay THE MISSIONARY IS BACK: Or Perhaps They Never Left about Lisa Morris, CAICW and her campaign to end ICWA.

Please read it here: http://lastrealindians.com/the-missionary-is-back-or-perhaps-they-never-left-by-trace-a-demeyer/

ADOPTION INDUSTRY TRAFFICKERS: The Light is on YOU

 By Trace A. DeMeyer, author of One Small Sacrifice

I was so naive when I took foster care training in the mid-1990s. I really was. I was in my mid 30s, an adoptee from a stranger adoption in Wisconsin, about to be divorced and there I was thinking about doing the Oregon foster-to-adopt program. I was thinking I could give a child a better life but eventually I changed my mind. I couldn't help but think any child I took in would wish to be with their "real" parents. That was my mindset, how I felt growing up. That thought really hasn't changed.

Then I decided to really look at my life, what I had done with it. I realized I was in no condition to adopt anyone. I couldn't love anyone. Yep, that was definitely true. And I hated my life. I hated what happened to me, being adopted. Time after time, I forgave. I forgave the pedophile who adopted me, who I called dad.  I forgave the woman who I called mom who lived in a fantasy world the entire time I knew her. I forgave my soon to be ex-husband and many others. (Eventually I forgave my birthmother and I found and met my birthfather and relatives in 1994.)

I wore the marks of disappointment all over my soul. Why? I could never be their biological daughter so I "created" who I thought the DeMeyer family wanted. I took up so much time trying to be that perfect daughter. I tried hard to please my adoptive parents. I literally wasted years - I mean more than half my life  - trying.

Then I tried to be what everyone else wanted. I didn't realize that I could have my own life. How is this possible I didn't know I could choose for myself? It was like "I" didn't exist. I was just a mosaic of other people's expectations. I was not a happy camper so I made some good choices for me - like getting counseling and knowing myself - finally.

My reading at the Pequot Museum

So fast forward to 2004, when I left my job as editor of the Pequot Times newspaper. I decided to look at adoption again. Not to adopt but to look at it as a journalist. I decided to pursue the study of adoption on my own, not to gain a college degree. I read everything. I read studies, I read blogs, I read books, I read history. I read more pages of text than I could write in my lifetime.

I decided I wanted to know who is really running this billion dollar adoption industry. I decided to look at global poverty and how it creates slave conditions which can lead to human trafficking. I looked at how young people fall into lust and create children when they are children themselves. I looked at how world religions treat unwed mothers. I looked at countries that do not allow adoption by Americans. I looked at how adult adoptees are rarely mentioned in what I call adoption propaganda. I looked at how psychology was just noticing that adoptees were suffering and not living a "fairy tale" life.  I studied birth psychology. I looked at adoption agency ads. I looked at couples who ran ads for a baby to adopt. I looked at the marketing by the adoption industry who created a niche for themselves, using newborns and young children (with living parents) to be the human guinea pigs for their experiment. I looked at intercountry adoption and how it makes some people very rich. I looked at industry profits. I looked at the history of the Indian Adoption Projects and ARENA. I looked at the governments who created and funded these adoption programs. I looked at how religions advanced the false idea there are orphans everywhere and someone needs to save them. I looked at how the adoption industry convinces people that babies are blank slates and we will adapt and be perfectly happy as the adoptee. I looked at how many children in foster care could have been placed with their own relatives instead of strangers! I looked at the suicide rates of adoptees, many who didn't make it to middle age.

Then I met adoptees. I met outspoken brilliant adoptees who filled me and educated me with a new narrative and perspective.

I thought I was emotionally well when I started my memoir in 2004 and as each year passed I woke up more and more to the truth that I wasn't healed.  I didn't set out to do this work but somehow this work chose me. And as I learned more, I healed more.

So I googled "The Adoption Industry" and found this website. I want you to look at it. I want you to study it as I have. I want you to open your eyes. I want the adoption industry, child traffickers and the adoption agencies to worry that their days are numbered. I want them to feel exposed. I want them to know there is a growing awareness and that the world is watching them. I want them to know that many of us see adoption as trafficking in babies to satisfy infertile couples needs and we know some couples feel important and special for bringing up a child that is not their own offspring. I want those people who adopt to realize we adoptees would never choose to be adopted. We'd rather be raised by family members, whenever it's possible.

Adoptees are Mending the Hoop

I want you readers to know that hundreds of adoptees I have met or talked to are healing too. We are mending the hoop. Some have made the journey back to their first families and tribes and are healing with their entire communities.

Adoptees across the planet are working to unseal our adoption records and change archaic laws so we can all make our journeys home.

Most of all, I want the adoption industry (traffickers) to know who they are dealing with... the light is on...WE are watching and writing and blogging and you can't hide your secrets and greed anymore.

#Baby Deseray NEWS

Mike and Debbie Nomura, co-directors of Heritage Family Services and husband and wife (Heritage Family Services)

Oklahoma Adoption Attorney Approves Baby Deseray Removal for Friend

Suzette Brewer

10/25/13

Next week, South Carolina Judge Marsh Robertson has a hearing scheduled for the finalization of the adoption of Oklahoma-born infant, Merry Rejoice Bixler, better known as “Baby Deseray,” in Greenville County family court. The hearing, on Monday, October 28, comes a little over a month after Oklahoma County Judge Allen Welch granted custody of the girl to the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and ordered her return to that state.

... In the Baby Deseray case, Indian Country Today Media Network has learned that Nomura is close friends with Swain, who is on the board of directors for Nomura's Tulsa-based private adoption agency, Heritage Family Services. Nomura has been the state’s Department of Human Services compact administrator for ICPC applications since 2008.



RELATED: Second Indian Infant Whisked to South Carolina for Quickie Adoption
Oklahoma Judge Gives Custody of Deseray to Absentee Shawnee Tribe

Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/10/25/oklahoma-adoption-attorney-approves-baby-deseray-removal-friend-151918

 

 

Veronica pool party and fundraisers by those who wish to abolish ICWA #BABY VERONICA

By Trace A. DeMeyer

Someone had told me about this group The Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare or CAICW and their connection to Melanie Capobianco and GOD - but there wasn't much available to read until now.  Elizabeth Lisa Morris started this group and is lobbying to abolish ICWA - because she married an Ojibwe man who has since died. This makes her the ICWA expert, I assume.

So read about the recent pool party in South Carolina and CAICW fundraiser with VERONICA BROWN (now renamed Capobianco) here: http://caicw.org/2013/10/24/time-for-strangers-to-leave-veronica-capobianco-alone/

And an interview with Elizabeth Morris here about her plans to abolish ICWA: http://caicw.org/2013/09/14/revealing-caicws-sinister-hidden-agenda/

And finally their work: 

Yes – There IS Draft Legislation to Amend ICWA. Morris blogs, "For your information, here is the amendment wording as it stood last summer.  There MIGHT be changes made following the Veronica events. I can’t say for certain as I am not an attorney.  But this is what we stood on last summer.
ICWA Amendments 11-11-12 PLEASE join us in urging your Congress members – as well as the President – to change ICWA."

I just finished writing an essay for Last Real Indians and will post the link when it appears...

Please leave a comment. I am STILL in a state of horrified shock!

Adoption Corruption Never Sleeps #BABY DESARAY/DESIRAI

Nightlight Adoption, Roger Godwin & South Carolina Selling Baby Desirai to  Child Abusers

What’s wrong with this picture? Same story- same adoption agency, same two states, same lawyers involved, same laws broken but a different baby and, so far, a completely different reaction by the state governor’s as well.
Yes, Baby Desirai could almost as easily be called Baby Veronica Part Deux. It’s like a Hollywood sequel for the worst movie you have ever seen.

Just Read: http://www.adoptionbirthmothers.com/adoption-corruption-baby-desirais-forced-adoption/

Veronica deserved better #BABY VERONICA #WICWA

Published on Sep 28, 2013

This 40-minute documentary explains the reason for and the process of creating and implementing the Wisconsin Indian Child Welfare Act (WICWA). This historic piece of Wisconsin legislation passed both houses unanimously in 2009, a rare feat, especially given the opposition its enactment faced.

By Trace A. DeMeyer

I've had a hole inside me for my entire life. Veronica will, too.

I was born in Minnesota in 1956.  In 2013, Minnesota still has my original birth certificate locked away in a file somewhere.  Because of archaic adoption laws, I am NOT able to have a copy of my original birth certificate with my birth name Laura Jean Thrall and my mother's name Helen Thrall.  Until laws change, I have to live with my amended "fake" birth certificate which lists my adoptive parents as my biological parents. Veronica will have a fake birth certificate, too.

In 1958, I was adopted in Wisconsin. In 2010, I paid for a court order in Wisconsin to have my adoption file released to me.  I wrote about what was in this file in my memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE (the second edition) and on this blog.  Years earlier I went to a judge in Wisconsin and at his discretion, he let me read my sealed adoption records when I was 22 years old.  I didn't get to keep a copy of any papers, just my notes. I started my search for Helen and my unnamed father that day.

Since I was illegitimate, there was nothing about my Native father or his ancestry or history in my adoption file.  As this video describes, I was denied truth. I was lost. I was denied my birthright. I was deprived of my family stories. I was denied my culture which would have been handed down by my father and grandparents. I was denied medical history of both my birth parents because I was placed in a stranger adoption and no vital information was given to my adoptive parents to give to me.

Did a closed adoption consider my rights? Absolutely not.

Because the Veronica Brown case threw a light on the atrocity of her adoption, we see how her father lost custody of her, and how adoption lawyers cleverly bypassed ICWA federal law. How? The adoption attorneys made sure Veronica's mother cut off all contact with Dusten - so the Supreme Court could rule he didn't support his pregnant girlfriend or their baby and was a deadbeat.

According to South Carolina court records, Christy Maldonado (Veronica's birthmother) and the Capobiancos were connected by the Nightlight Christian Adoption Agency. It is a fact the adoption lawyers connected to the adoption of Veronica filed error-filled ICWA paperwork to the Cherokee Nation.  Even the original South Carolina Supreme Court decision stated that though Maldonado alerted the agency of the father’s status as citizen of the Cherokee Nation, “It appears that there were some efforts to conceal his Indian status.” 

Private adoption lawyers like Raymond W.  Godwin and private adoption agencies like Nightlight Christian Adoption Agency will continue to work behind the scenes to profit from adoptions - but they will lose money if ICWA is understood and implemented nation-wide.  Godwin's wife Laura is the director of the adoption agency that handled Veronica's adoption.

Many more tribes need to unite like in Wisconsin to draft new legislation in their states to layout how to implement the federal Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and make ICWA stronger and clearer for judges. Social workers and courts in EVERY STATE need to ask if it is an Indian child (even with one Indian parent like me and Veronica) and then abide by ICWA.

No child should ever be lost to her own father and tribal nation. I was lost. Baby Veronica was lost.

As Cassi wrote on her Adoption Truth blog:

"...Veronica deserved better than this.  She deserved protection from an industry that used her for gain.  She deserved her rights to her family to be recognized instead of trampled on...."

Beacon Hill Training: Two Worlds: an adoption tale

Beacon Hill Training: Two Worlds: an adoption tale:

In the final countdown to BAAF National Adoption Week, I stumbled across a story on Twitter reported in the Kent and Sussex Courier about a Native American man adopted into a Western family in the mid 1960s.  The article caught my attention, not only because of my interest in adoption but also because of the fascinating cultural implications of such a tale.  Johnathan Brooks has contributed a chapter to the edited volume Two Worlds: Lost Children of the Adoption Projects, which I have now been able to read.  Johnathan's is just one of several stories detailing the cultural assimilation of Native Americans into a wider American / Europe world, something about which I was previously unaware. 

Read the entire review: http://beaconhilltraining.blogspot.com/2012/10/two-worlds-adoption-tale.html

Adoption failure? Sure, it's called rehoming

By Trace A. DeMeyer
Until the world catches on to the corrupt world of “human trafficking” (purposefully called adoption) and now the re-trafficking (rehoming) of adoptees, Until criminal charges are filed on the agencies and these parents, these adopted children are the victims of the unscrupulous and criminal “dark side” of adoption trafficking. The chances these re-homed children will be abused in some way, is obvious to me.

Parents Use Facebook and Yahoo to Unload Adopted Kids Online

According to Reuters, over the course of five years a Yahoo message board called Adopting-from-Disruption (failed adoptions are sometimes referred to as "disrupted") featured an new ad for a child about once a week. At least 70 percent of kids advertised there had been adopted from overseas, including countries such as Russia, China, Ethiopia and the Ukraine. Most ranged from ages 6 to 14.
Read here: http://gawker.com/how-parents-use-facebook-and-yahoo-groups-to-sell-adopt-1278659585

Baby Veronica & Baby Deseray: Sold Babies!

By Trace L Hentz (blog editor)

It appears that Baby Deseray was placed by the same adoption lawyer Ray Godwin and the birthmother dealt with the same adoption agency Nightlight. They are also responsible for the trafficking of Veronica Brown.
History does repeat itself until we learn and get it right.
I have been thinking about the abolition of adoption - and came across this quote: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete” said Buckminster Fuller.
The adoption industry propaganda is like fairy dust – it blinds the world to the trafficking of children by calling them orphans and their adopters as saviors while protecting a billion dollar industry. The industry has operated in virtual secrecy for far too long, getting rich selling babies to the highest bidder.
As I said before on this blog, a new war of awareness has begun.


Here is the link to an Op-Ed from a writer in South Carolina:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/10/13/baby-veronica-baby-deseray-dont-let-them-sell-our-babies

Now this:

Baby Deseray was removed from Oklahoma shortly after her birth in May by Bobby and Diane Bixler of Irmo, South Carolina.

Adult Son of Couple Adopting Deseray Says They Were Abusive Parents

Suzette Brewer, ICT,  10/16/13

A family court judge in South Carolina has scheduled a hearing on October 25 to finalize of the adoption of Baby Deseray, despite an Oklahoma court ruling last month that granted custody to the Absentee Shawnee Tribe, and ordered her return to that state. The infant, who was removed from Oklahoma shortly after her birth in May by Bobby and Diane Bixler of Irmo, South Carolina, has been the subject of a second heated interstate custody battle between an Oklahoma Indian tribe and the state of South Carolina. The Bixlers are represented by Raymond Godwin, attorney for Nightlight Christian Adoptions of Greenville, South Carolina, and Paul Swain, a Tulsa, Oklahoma attorney. Both lawyers also represented Matt and Melanie Capobianco in their adoption of Veronica, which was finalized in September after a bitter four-year custody battle with the girl's biological father, Dusten Brown.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/10/16/adult-son-couple-adopting-deseray-says-they-were-abusive-parents-151775

 

RELATED: Oklahoma Judge Gives Custody of Deseray to Absentee Shawnee Tribe
Cherokee Nation Mourns as Veronica Is Returned to Adoptive Family

 

Dusten Brown honored by NCAI

Jefferson Keel of the Chickasaw Nation (left), president of the National Congress of American Indians, and Sandy White Hawk wrap Dusten Brown in a prayer quilt Tuesday. MIKE SIMONS / Tulsa World

The custody case is viewed as 

an issue of tribal sovereignty

By MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer |

At the end of an open-mic session Tuesday morning, delegates were still lining up to talk about tribal sovereignty when the sergeant at arms interrupted.
"We want to take time to honor somebody," explained Dan King, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, who introduced Dusten Brown.

At the National Congress of American Indians, it wasn't necessary to explain that Brown is the biological father of "Baby Veronica."

..."Dusten and Veronica represent many, many families all over the country," Sandy White Hawk said. "There's a reason all of this is happening."

Read here:  http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/dusten-brown-honored-by-national-congress-of-american-indians/article_b8b6d647-25f9-5037-80da-3202a4c36e83.html

 MORE HERE

Angel Smith on decision not to pursue civil right lawsuit #BABY VERONICA

From the NICWA Facebook Page:
Here is the statement by Angel Smith, attorney for Veronica Brown, on her decision to not pursue the civil rights lawsuit. NICWA's role is, and has always been, to support the decisions of the parties involved in the litigation. They have arrived at these decisions after wrenching deliberations that no one should ever be asked to make. We ask that their wishes and privacy be respected. Our hearts are broken, as are theirs, as are many of yours. Let's come together to continue with the important work needed to ensure no family ever goes through this again. We cannot do it without you.

Statement of Angel Smith:
"I was appointed to represent the legal rights and claims of Veronica. It included her legal right to a best interest hearing for custody and, at a minimum, for the process of transfer of custody. Her rights and claims were taken up in multiple forums, and much to my regret, no court took present consideration of her best interest in the decision for custody or transfer.

No matter how fit or even wonderful both families are or may be, it is disheartening that Veronica was ever in a position to know one mom and dad at bedtime one day, and the next night to be in a different home with another mom and dad. The fact that she did is unquestionably a failure of the legal systems as to this child. It is the judicial systems placing upon the little head of Veronica the issues many courts had an opportunity to and should have resolved under the legal right of Veronica to a present best interest hearing.

In legal matters, any child -including Indian children- hold legal rights and claims under various tribal, state, federal and/or international law. These legal rights are those of the child and independent of any other party. Failure of judicial systems to consider these independent rights and claims due the child is truly a failure to protect the most vulnerable of our societies and puts upon children the historic semblance of property. All our children deserve and are legally guaranteed more from our judicial systems. For that failure in these matters, my apologies to dear Veronica and both her families because it is now the two families who are left to pick up the pieces of Veronica and help her heal.

Today finds me in a place where continued litigation only places my client at the heart of potentially years of legal proceedings with no guarantee of outcome. This is not in the interest of my client, and it is Veronica who I was appointed to represent. It is time for all of the United States and Indian country, the legal systems, and any acts growing out of self-motivation or hatred to quietly step aside. Yes, there remains work to do for children and Indian children, but it is time to allow Veronica and her families to heal and grow together in private."

Wa do

(Bold added by Trace)

And a new petition on Change.org:

WE'RE BOYCOTTING SOUTH CAROLINA" UNTIL all "charges" against Dusten Brown, Cherokee father of "Baby Veronica" are dropped...

This petition against South Carolina is important because it not only sends a strong message about the "Baby Veronica" adoption debacle, but could also effect the pending outcome of other similar cases on the dockets. Hitting the state in the "pocketbook" is what they deserve until they do what is right and just.
South Carolina has become a "hotbed" of illegal adoptions, especially targeting those of "Native American Heritage," and in many cases it's blatant "baby stealing, buying and selling." Corrupt forces protect only rich "adoptive" couples.   Dusten Brown was tricked by the birth mother of his baby and was brought to his knees by the "slick P.R. firm" adoptive couple Matt and Melanie Capobianco were able to hire immediately.


http://www.change.org/petitions/we-re-boycotting-south-carolina-until-all-charges-against-dusten-brown-cherokee-father-of-baby-veronica-are-dropped-and?utm_campaign=petition_created&utm_medium=email&utm_source=guides