Indian Child Welfare Act 101

Indian Child Welfare Act 101

Land Loss: This is what colonization looks like

The loss of Native American lands within the U.S. year by year. 2-min video https://t.co/fjJDcGkIZi pic.twitter.com/GYeAfd5Vrt

— Century Past History (@lienhart85) December 29, 2016

We must de-colonize history and educate ourselves...

Standing Rock and the Battle Beyond - Fault Lines

The Heart of ICWA: Lukas

The Heart of ICWA: Rhonda

Heart of ICWA Video Series

NICWA Launches Heart of ICWA Video Series

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Kate Fort

Press Release.

The first video is here, and features Quinault President Fawn Sharp and her family. Deepest thanks to her for being a leader unafraid to share her story to help Native families.

The Indian Child Welfare Act was borne out of the forced removal of one out of every three children from their homes in the late 1970’s. This issue is far from ancient history, as we continue to see the devastating effects of non-compliance with ICWA. That is why at NICWA, we are committed to keeping families together.

Becky (second video) contributed her story to the anthology STOLEN GENERATIONS... We thank everyone for making this series... AHO! MEGWETCH!

South Dakota: Changes ordered

Changes ordered in '48-hour hearings' involving Native children

Tiffany Tan Journal staff

 

South Dakota and Pennington County officials must make changes in their handling of temporary custody hearings involving Native American children as the result of judgments issued Thursday by the U.S. District Court.

The suit, filed in 2013 by Native American parents and the Oglala and Rosebud Sioux tribes, claimed that procedures in the state’s so-called 48-hour hearings violated the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The defendants are the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office, the state Department of Social Services and the 7th Circuit Court.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Dana Hanna, said the decision by Chief Judge Jeffrey Viken will “radically and fundamentally” change the way the hearings are being conducted, adding that the changes are supposed to take effect immediately.

In March 2015, Viken found that local court procedures violated Native American rights by not advising parents they had a right to contest the state’s petition for temporary custody and by not requiring the state to present live sworn testimony from a witness.

Jii-Anishinaabe-Bimaatiziwag Partnership Project

Federal grant for UMD aims to help Native American children

By Jana Hollingsworth | Dec 14, 2016 | DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE

Minnesota has the most disproportionate rate in the country of Native American children in foster care, and St. Louis County's rate is among the worst in the state.

The University of Minnesota Duluth's social work department has been tackling that issue for some time, and was just awarded one of three federal grants to further its work.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded a five-year grant to UMD worth more than $2 million to create a better delivery system for the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law meant to keep Native American kids with Native American families.

"People in the systems care a lot about children and families, but there is something about the way the system is responding that is leading to high levels of disparity," said Priscilla Day, director of the Center for Regional and Tribal Welfare at UMD, and head of the university's social work department.
The center will lead the work and partner with Duluth's 6th Judicial District, St. Louis County Public Health and Human Services, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Leech Lake Tribal Court and both the Fond du Lac and Grand Portage bands of Lake Superior Chippewa.

UMD has been working with the county and local court system for several years as part of another grant to see how Indian child welfare cases are handled and to try to make that work more effective. The national grant was a chance to further those efforts. The ultimate goal, Day said, is to devise a system of policies and practices for social workers, the court system, tribes and the county to use when dealing with Indian child welfare cases.

"This isn't about blaming or pointing fingers," Day said, but about better outcomes for kids. The goal is to establish methods that can be used across the country.

The project likely will involve studying data and how it is or isn't shared between schools, tribes and the county. It could look at neglect — a driver of high numbers — and whether intervention can take place before it leads to a report, Day said. And training in historical trauma will most certainly be a part of it, building on training that already is being done.

"My grandmother was taken out of her family when she was 4 years old and sent to a boarding school," Day said, referring to federal boarding schools where Native American children were forced to assimilate, forbidden to use their native language. "That certainly impacted the way she went on to parent, because she missed all those formative years of interacting with a parent. And I am sure that impacted my parent. And so it goes on and on."

Boarding schools also introduced neglect and physical and sexual abuse. But native families are resilient, and many are working to revitalize cultural ways and traditions, she said, which is why it's so important to try to keep native children with their families as much as possible, and within their communities, if it's not.

The county is hoping for better coordination of responses to child safety and protection issues, and those that are culturally responsive. Are searches for relatives rigorous enough; is the Indian child welfare law being followed in the placement of kids? Those are questions that will be studied, said Holly Church, division director for children and family services for St. Louis County's public health and human services.

The idea is to reduce the disproportionality the county is seeing with out-of-home placements, and to find ways to stabilize families and get them the support they need.

"We want to see more kids remain in the family home, and for those kids who do need placement, we want them to be able to be with relatives when at all possible and to hasten unification of the family when kids are placed out of the home," Church said.

There are several barriers stemming from historical trauma that helped lead to the disproportionality, Church said, citing poverty, addiction, mental health, racism and a lack of resources to deal with those things.

"On top of that, we have a lot of work to do as a child protection workforce to continue to build our ability to work in culturally responsive ways with Native American families," she said, noting an already strong partnership with UMD, which has educated some of the Native American social workers on the county's staff.

"This is a really important issue to us," Church said. "It's a significant part of our work with families, and that's why we continue to devote a lot of time and energy ... to try to reduce these disparities."
The project is called Jii-Anishinaabe-Bimaatiziwag Partnership Project, which means "so they can live the Indian way of life."

NEW: ICWA guidelines | Standing Rock Art at IAIA

2016 BIA ICWA Guidelines Released

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Kate Fort

Here are the 2016 Guidelines. For those keeping track at home

February 2015, Updated Guidelines replacing the 1979 Guidelines (No Longer in Effect)

June 2016, Federal Regulations released (Became Binding on December 12)

December 2016, Updated Guidelines replacing the February 2015 Guidelines

What this means:
25 USC 1901 et seq (ICWA) has not changed in 1978, and provides the minimum federal standards for Indian families. State ICWA laws (and corresponding court rules) that provide higher standards still apply. The federal Regulations are now binding and are like the federal law. The December 2016 Guidelines are now in effect and non-binding interpretation of the Regulations.

*****

Eliza Moaranjo Morse hard at work. Photo courtesy of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

Standing Rock depicted in IAIA art exhibit: http://wp.me/p442Tb-8Uy

California Owes Reparations To Victims Of Forced Race & Intellectual-Based Sterilization, Study Finds

  News One |FIRST NATIONS BLOG

Historians want to mobilize reparation efforts for California sterilization victims who suffered under a government mandated program in the early 1900’s. A new American Journal of Public Health report titled, “California’s Sterilization Survivors: An Estimate and Call for Redress,” examines the scope of the state’s sterilization recommendations. Sterilization was an option spurred by eugenics–a controversial practice aimed…

READ California Owes Reparations To Victims Of Forced Race & Intellectual-Based Sterilization, Study Finds — News One

Dehumanizing myths and misconceptions hurt Native students

The Miseducation of Native American Students

Commentary By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Autumn, the beginning of the school year, is the cruelest season for Native American students in the United States. Between sports games where entire crowds chant about "redskins" and other school mascots and the federal holiday of the Indian-killing mercenary Christopher Columbus, there is the misguided national celebration of "Thanksgiving" to mark the arrival of the religious Europeans, who set the stage for Native American genocide.

These rituals dominate the first months of school, putting Native children in their place, holding up the traditions of white children, and championing the ideals of white supremacy and imperialism. As November's recognition of Native American Heritage Month ends, educators should resist the urge to regurgitate the usual narrative and instead discuss the reality of life, historical and current, for the more than 600,000 Native American students in our nation's K-12 public schools.

In researching and writing "All the Real Indians Died Off," our book about Native American myths and misconceptions, my co-author Dina Gilio-Whitaker and I were aware of how these Native American stereotypes affect all children in schools today. Internalizing harmful images most acutely damages Native children, but absorbing racist and dehumanizing ideas about fellow classmates also diminishes the understanding and compassion of non-Native children, warping their conception of a history that often erases Native Americans altogether.

Blessing the Baby

Practiced in many Native American cultures, the Blessingway Ceremony was traditionally held to honor major life transitions. During late pregnancy and to prepare for birth, an important rite of passage for women, a woman's close female friends would host a Blessingway Ceremony to honor her transition into motherhood. This initiation helps to prepare a woman physically, mentally and spiritually for her journey through birth and into motherhood. It allows her to strengthen her social support, which she will need to nourish her postpartum, and to deepen the bonds that she has with her community of support.

Do your own Blessingway Ceremony: Invite a group of women friends/relatives for a relaxing time to share food, pamper mom-to-be and honor the new baby who is making the way to join the circle. 

Our ancestors will help you remember how...

Ceremony for adoptees 

Dakota Access: Standing Rock protesters tell of violent arrests

Kendrick Eagle Message to Obama

God's Plan? Mission Schools His-story

James Knowles argued in 1834 that it was God's plan for America for New Englanders to wipe out the Native Americans, because they would not “obey the great law of God” which “obliged them to become civilized, and to adopt those modes of life which would enable their territory to support the greatest possible number of inhabitants.” Knowles concluded the Americans could achieve this “by saving from ruin the helpless descendants of the savage.”^[5]

Mission schools

There is a final, far more tragic means to convert the people. Kidnap the children.

1. Rechristen them with English Christian names, forbid the use of their own names.
2. Punish them for speaking their own language, or grab them when they are young enough not to have learned it very well.
3. Force them to live at the Mission School and only visit home 1 or 2 days for the Christian Christmas.
4. Cut their hair, strip them of their clothing and religious artifacts, and denigrate the artifacts as uncivilized, backwards, or "primitive".
5. Do this all when they are young enough to not fight back.

Native populations were decimated by illness, starvation, and war. But the actual native cultures were more decimated by the mission schools and "Jesus" than anything else done to the various Indian peoples.

SOURCE

An Act of Genocide: Canada's Coerced Sterilization of First Nations Women

There are hundreds of indigenous stories in Canada that never make headlines. Some of them are taking place right now while others stem back centuries. In the case of Canada coercively sterilizing Indigenous women, we have an ongoing and almost completely unreported story that begins before the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, before the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, even before the holocaust. Courtney Parker digs deep to uncover the truth that no Canadian ever learned about in school.
KEEP READING

What They Took Away

A Solution to the “Indian Problem”, 1887 | Records of Rights

CLICK: A Solution to the “Indian Problem”, 1887 | Records of Rights

The violence and racism of the new Trump administration is creating new trauma for those already traumatized. --An elder in Vermont

"Montana Mosaic: Indian Boarding Schools" (2006)

American warfare: Missionaries, Militia, Historical Trauma

This was published earlier on my other blog

By Trace Lara Hentz

American Indians know warfare. The hair stands up on the back of the neck at the mere mention of several deliberate massacres called Indian Wars in North America.  It’s estimated 95% of the American Indian population was killed by war since first contact.

Every Indian has heard the words: the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

So if you can’t kill all the Indians, you civilize them. (Like in the residential boarding schools.)

The earliest form of America’s colonial warfare is when the missionary hand-delivers a message to a tribe: Christianize or die.  Tribes in New England convert and call themselves the Praying Indians.  For centuries, men in robes invaded with rosaries and crucifixes.  God’s men erect churches so they can teach Indian communities their way and declare it’s illegal for Indians to do sweats or hold ceremonies. The white God gave these orders.

From east to west, government overseers and militias dole out rules, rations, and alcohol. The Great White Father (America’s president) amends traditional hunting territories and instructs Indians to farm, not hunt.  Marched to isolated reservations on Trails of Tears, many Indians starve (or die) en route. Treaties fence in the Indians so rations of food and medicine would need to be delivered.  One government agent in Minnesota says, “Let them eat grass,” and steals their rations. The 38 Lakota men who fight to get the rations back are hung in a mass execution, ordered by then-President Abraham Lincoln.

Then a new round of messengers arrived as religion-wearing ministries and government social workers. Their message: Indians are not good enough to raise their own children. The Hopi resist and 17 of their men get sent to Alcatraz. Wagon-loads of Indian children are carried east or far enough away to be assimilated and taught in schools like Haskell and Carlisle. Some kids never find their way back to their parents or reservations. Generations of Indian kids are targets to be Christianized and civilized by these schools.

In the same manner of warfare, Indian children are placed in orphanages, foster homes or with non-Indian parents. The American government creates the Indian Adoption Project (IAP) run by Arnold Lyslo.  These little Indian kids aren’t black or Asian but exotic; their race is romanticized by Hollywood, and anxious adoptive parents sign up. Couples who had trouble conceiving a baby could have one or two Indian kids right away.

Lyslo travels to different states to convince the social workers to line up white parents for the flood of Indian kids being snatched for adoption. (In 16 states, 85% of Indian children were removed from their tribal parents). 395 parents agree to take part in Lyslo’s study and answer questions about their adopted Indian kids every year.

Lyslo claims poverty is the reason these children needed to be “saved” and adopted.  ARENA continues and expands after the IAP. Thousands of Indian children are wiped from tribal rolls and disappear into white communities. States seal their records and amend the child’s birth certificate.

For over 30 years, Indian kids are the lab rats for Lyslo’s human experiment, to see how well Indian children will adapt being adopted. This warfare is called assimilation.

By 1976, American Indians go to Congress with these abduction stories and ultimately create the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Unseen Tears: The Native American Boarding School Experience in Western ...

My friends, do not lose heart

From writer/feminist/Native American elder and adoptee: Clarissa Pinkola Estes 


My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. 

I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. 

Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. 

Yes. 

For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. 

Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind. 

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless. 

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. 

There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. 

We are needed, that is all we can know. 

And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. 

Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater? 

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. 

It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. 

We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale. 

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. 

To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. 

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. 

I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. 

I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. 

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. 

It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. 

The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. 

They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here.

In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

↬

“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype 

Adoptees: Does this affect your romantic relationships? #NAAM2016

excerpt:

Has being adopted impacted your romantic relationships and friendships? My fear of abandonment often propels me to test the devotion of romantic partners. In friendships, I'm cagey. (I know everything about them; they know very little about me.)

Yes, most definitely! It took me until I was 43 years old to come to a better understanding of why I continued to make the same cycle of choices. Three years ago, I took part in a ten-week program with a counselor about attachment and bonding. My eyes were quickly opened to understand how a broken mother/child bond can affect the way adoptees relate with people and the way we react to circumstances that present themselves on a daily basis. Prior to counseling, I was always adamant that adoption had no effect on my life because I had a loving upbringing. Certainly, the fact that I was raised in a nurturing family went a long way in helping me form bonds and provide stability. However, I learned that a child's sense of loss and fear of abandonment remains with them (consciously and subconsciously) throughout their life. It can permeate their interactions and relationships well into their adult life.

In my friendships, I have a strong tendency to keep discussions on a surface level. I rarely ask personal questions or challenge beliefs for fear that I might be rejected or hurt their feelings. Surface is easy, stable, and safe. Safety and stability are key for me, which is why my past choices in life have often followed a more conservative path.

KEEP READING

"My Once Life"

LOS ANGELES – Filmmaker, writer and poet Pamela J. Peters (Navajo) has produced a short film reciting a poem entitled, “My Once Life.”



“My Once Life” is a hybrid video poem about the continuing impact of colonization on tribal peoples. Native people resist the violent history and contemporary political struggles through engaging with deep historical knowledge and creating new oral histories.
The poem is read by 12 Native women living in Los Angeles whose strong voices embody empowerment : Nanabah Hill, (Navajo-Oneida), Diana Terrazas, (Paiute), JaNae Collins, (Dakota-Crow), Xelt’tia Temryss Lane, (Lummi Nation), Viki Eagle, Sicanqu (Lakota-Sioux), Cheyenne Phoenix, (Northern Paiute-Navajo), Stephanie Mushrush, (Washoe Tribe), Hakekta Winyan Jealous Of Him (Lakota), Chrissie Castro, (Navajo), Neyom Friday, (Cheyenne-Arapaho and Mskoke Creek), Vivian Garcia, (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), and Deja Jones, (Eastern Shoshone).

#60sScoop #NAAM2016 | SOLD AS SALVATION (warning: explicit)

Sold as "Salvation", Sixties Scoop placed children in abusive system

Caution: This story contains details of abuse that may be disturbing to readers

By Lisa Strong, for CBC News

Lisa Strong is a survivor of the Sixties Scoop. (Supplied)

This is the only photo Lisa Strong has of herself as a child. (Supplied)

Boozhoo Zawa Muzghkota Bizikee Ikwe Indiginicuz  Pizew Totem.

Hello, my name is Brown Buffalo Woman from the Lynx Clan. My family is from Grassy Narrows, Ont.
I am going to tell you my story of direct colonization from being a child of the Sixties Scoop. I will give you detailed information about my history to let you know how far I have come in my life's journey. I warn you, though, my story is graphic and extremely painful to read.

I will start at the beginning.
I am registered under Ochichagwe'babigo'ining First Nation in northwestern Ontario. My grandparents had a settlement on Jones Road, the road leading into Grassy Narrows First Nation.

We were a small community with aunties, uncles, cousins, and grandparents that all looked out for each other. When I was one, Children's Aid Society came to Jones Road and took all the children away as part of the sixties sweep.

 

Six homes in six years

My sister, brother and I were sent to Winnipeg. We lived in several different foster homes around Winnipeg for six years. When I was four, we were sent to live with a pastor and his wife. They had 12 foster kids and five biological teenagers. As soon as we arrived, I was sexually abused by their sons.

Lisa Strong said her Indigenous culture is helping her cope with years of abuse. (Supplied)

We stayed there for one year before being split up and sent to other homes around Winnipeg. At age seven, I had already been in care for six years and had lived in five foster homes and a receiving home. I was told that we were going to be placed back with the pastor's family for adoption, and then we were moving with them to the United States.

We still don't know if we were legally adopted by the pastor and his wife. I still wonder if we weren't legally adopted so they could continue to collect money from the Children's Aid Society in Winnipeg.
I was so happy to be with my siblings. I really didn't care for the family, but I thought it was a good thing to be back together with my siblings. However, my brother knew we shouldn't go back and was scared for us. The family was fanatical with their religious beliefs. Together, we paid the price.

 

Abuse continues

We moved to two different American cities as the adopted family was transferred to different churches. Their sons continued the sexual and physical abuse right where they left off when I was four. We also experienced ritual abuse in the name of the Lord from the parents. They showed us graphic pictures and movies of the devil and where my soul would go if I wasn't saved.

My sister left after the second year when she attempted suicide by overdosing on drugs. She was sent back to Winnipeg, since we were still under control of the Children's Aid Society. Her life went out of control when she returned to Winnipeg. Drugs and alcohol were the way she coped with the past.
Today she suffers from mental health issues and lives on the street. We have not resolved any of those issues and feel the pain of her leaving us behind with the adopted family.

When she left, the abuse escalated. My brother and I were taken to the basement of the home and raped in front of each other by the sons daily, or whenever they got a chance. This sexual and physical abuse went on for the next two years.

While the parents themselves did not sexually abuse us, the mother hurt us physically. In the fourth year, my brother fought back when the adopted mother hit him, and he was sent directly to Winnipeg and put in Agassiz youth correctional facility.

 

Even more alone

I stayed one more year with the adopted family. I was terrified by being alone with them, as I knew the abuse would grow, and I was even more alone.

To stop the abuse, I cut my legs. I have 43 scars on my legs that saved me from the sexual abuse. I put the blood from my wounds in my undergarments to protect myself, saying I was on my period and not available to be abused.

Finally, at 13, I couldn't take it anymore and ran away. I was sent back to Winnipeg. I did not return to Jones Road but instead was shuffled back and forth to foster homes and to group homes.

My brother and sister were both diagnosed with schizophrenia. I was the only one not diagnosed with this illness. My siblings and I had to search for each other. We were reunited, but there was no happy ending. We each carry our own scars and nightmares that will never go away.

On his 18th birthday, my brother said to me that he could not look at me anymore because of the abuse and killed himself. We only had three years together as brother and sister in Winnipeg.

 

Full circle

Most of us who have been through the Children's Aid Society or Child and Family Services systems have lost everything: our identities, our families, our communities and our sense of belonging. We get stuck in periods of depression, grief, addictions and suicide attempts. We have to climb ourselves out of the darkness.

I know I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, although Indigenous culture has guided me out of a dark place. I am a single mother and have three beautiful children who I am raising within the community and our culture. They will never have to find a sense of belonging.

I have gone full circle in my journey and have been welcomed back to my home reserve Ochichagwe'babigo'ning First Nation, but I am still a long way from Jones Road. When you go into the child welfare system, it affects your whole sense of being. I feel very alone and still feel the loneliness of wishing I was brought up within a blood family.

I am currently in my third year of working towards my bachelor's degree in urban and inner-city studies at the University of Winnipeg. The Selkirk campus of urban and inner-city studies has been a big support with providing a safe and comforting space during my healing journey, and they have taught me that education is part of my decolonization process.

I hope my story provides others with an understanding of how the Sixties Scoop has affected many of us Indigenous survivors. We all have our own healing process and life journey ahead of us. Meegwech (thank you).

•  

  Related Stories

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  • Indigenous children for sale: The money behind the Sixties Scoop
  • Sixties Scoop survivors say birth records 'mysteriously' lost or destroyed
  • Manitoban taken during Sixties Scoop returns after 2 decades behind bars in U.S.
  • Sixties Scoop lawsuit could be tied up by 'years of fighting,' says Métis leader
  • Winnipeg family reunites after kids taken in Sixties Scoop
  • Indigenous people impacted by Sixties Scoop finally getting day in court
   

We Clock You from a Mile Away #NAAM2016

SOURCE

Dear wealthy, white, entitled moms of adoption: Adult adoptees see you, and some of us don’t find your words “inspirational.”


The thing is, I knew you right away. I recognize the fierce determination. The grit. The fight. Because everything about what you have was a decision, and nothing about what you have was easy. You are the kind of woman who Makes.Things.Happen. After all, you made this happen, this family you have.
Maybe you prayed for it. Maybe you had to convince a partner it was the right thing. Maybe you did it alone. Maybe people told you to just be happy with what you had before. Maybe someone told you it simply wasn’t in God’s plans for you to have a child, this child whose hair you now brush lightly from his face. Maybe someone warned you about what happened to their cousin’s neighbor’s friend. 

Maybe you ignored them.

Maybe you planned for it for years. Maybe an opportunity dropped into your lap. Maybe you depleted your life-savings for it. Maybe it was not your first choice. But maybe it was.
Regardless, I know you. And I see how you hold on so tight. Sometimes too tight. Because that’s what we do, isn’t it?

See, we recognize you from a mile away because your interactions with your child suggest you are a complete control freak – one who believes pregnancy and childbirth are a cakewalk that “just happens” to women, but that having “an opportunity dropped into” your righteous lap requires grit, fight, determination.

I know about all those books you read back then. The ones everyone reads about sleep patterns and cloth versus disposable, yes, but the extra ones, too. About dealing with attachment disorders, breast milk banks, babies born addicted to alcohol, cocaine, meth. About cognitive delays, language deficiencies. About counseling support services, tax and insurance issues, open adoption pros and cons, legal rights.

We recognize you from a mile away because it’s obvious you believe your sweet precious angel child is defective because s/he wasn’t homemade. No matter how loudly you shout that the opposite is true…we see you, and we recognize you.

I know about the fingerprinting, the background checks, the credit reports, the interviews, the references. I know about the classes, so many classes. I know the frustration of the never-ending paperwork. The hours of going over finances, of having garage sales and bake sales and whatever-it-takes sales to raise money to afford it all.

We recognize you from a mile away because some people who had to undergo one lousy home study and a background check–the kind you undergo when you want to lease an apartment or go to college–wear a look of butthurt resentment about it FOREVER. I mean… you had to CLEAN YOUR HOUSE! Who does that?!

To be fair, I don’t know anything about the “so many” adoptive parenting classes. I don’t understand why anyone would resent them, either. Don’t we all joke that children should come with instruction manuals? Well, you get one! Lucky you! Don’t we all complain from time to time that parents ought to have to pass some kind of test before they can have children? Oh wait, I get it: you meant parents who are not of your class should have to do that. You are supposed to get the benefit of the doubt.

And I know about the followup visits, when you hadn’t slept in three weeks because the baby had colic.

We recognize you because you think you’re special for being sleepless and dealing with a colicky baby. And no, most mothers don’t have “followup visits” (how many exactly?), but if they aren’t of your class, if they have the misfortune to be the wrong race or too poor or not married, mothers face constant public scrutiny and shaming. They often do face a lot of followup visits from people and agencies that don’t believe they are worthy of their own children. And they have a lot fewer resources to defend themselves against those people and agencies than you do.

And yes, you probably get asked some rude questions if your child doesn’t look like you, but for every one of those questions, you get articles like this all November and people telling you how wonderful you are all year round.

I know how you wanted so badly to show that you had it all together, even though you were back to working more-than-full-time, maybe without maternity leave, without the family and casseroles and welcome-home balloons and plants.

We recognize you because you seem to believe doing what other mothers do makes you exceptional. Plenty of non-adoptive mothers work full-time, do without maternity leave and never receive balloons and plants or the support of their families.  And seriously: Balloons soon sag or pop, and plants often don’t get cared for and are tossed out. Your suffering, I am not feeling it. (Mothers’ suffering, yes: It’s a hard world to raise a child in. Women’s suffering, yes: It’s a hard word to be female in. Your super special adoptive mommy suffering, no.)

We recognize you from a mile away by your insistence upon actual superhuman powers, like your magical ability to survive without inhaling an iota of oxygen “for months. Months.”

And I’ve seen you in foreign countries, strange lands, staying in dirty hotels, taking weeks away from work, struggling to understand what’s being promised and what’s not. Struggling to offer your love to a little one who is unsettled and afraid. Waiting, wishing, greeting, loving, flying, nesting, coming home.

We recognize you by your insistence that the luxury of being able to take weeks off work to fly overseas without going hungry or being evicted is a horrible burden.

I’ve seen you down the street at the hospital when a baby was born, trying to figure out where you belong in the scene that’s emerging. I’ve seen your face as you hear a nurse whisper to the birthmother that she doesn’t have to go through with this. I’ve seen you trying so hard to give this birthmother all of your respect and patience and compassion in those moments—while you bite your lip and close your eyes, not knowing if she will change her mind, if this has all been a dream coming to an abrupt end in a sterile environment. Not knowing if this is your time.

We recognize you because you have to force yourself to offer respect and compassion to a woman who is about to lose her child forever. We recognize you by your willingness to hurt your fellow woman in order to get what you want…and then congratulate yourselves for it.

We recognized you before we’d read a complete paragraph of this mess. Maybe we’re superhuman, too.

This was published in November 2015... and still true...

SnarkUrchin Adopto-Snark · Not amused? Fuck right off.

#NAAM2016 memes | What is Your Story?

...if you have something to share and your story, send an email to laratrace@outlook.com



Here is the link to the 60s Scoop story, photos, profiles and video in the Toronto Star HERE

EXPLAINED: Dakota Access Pipeline IS ON Treaty Land

Two Worlds, Called Home, Stolen Generations: November 16 BOOK TALK #NAAM2016

Two Worlds, Called Home, Stolen Generations: November 16 BOOK TALK

Called Home: The RoadMap: We Will Always Dream in Indian

By LT Hentz

Our job as humans is to connect the dots. I published this link on the ACE STUDY and learned about that important study while I was writing my memoir One Small Sacrifice.

What does it mean for an adoptee to be raised outside your ancestry and culture that isn’t white/American? I have some answers in this new anthology CALLED HOME: The RoadMap. [ ISBN-13:  978-0692700334 (Blue Hand Books) ]

Here’s an excerpt of the PREFACE

No matter who adopts us, new parents will never erase our blood, ancestry, DNA… or our dreams…

No matter how much I want to believe things have changed for the better in Indian Country and in our world, the reality is there is still an “adoption-land” waiting to scoop up more children and more children who need healthy moms and dads.  This anthology and this entire book series will be their roadmap.

This is why Patricia and I chose the title CALLED HOME for this anthology. Roadmap was added to the second edition you are now reading.

There are many adoptees called home, but very few are back living on tribal lands.  It’s a testament to the courage to be in reunion as adult adoptees, as survivors who were part of the government plans to rid the world of Indigenous and First Nation People.  Adoption didn’t kill our spirit but it hurt us deeply.

After ten years of researching the topic and history of adoption, sadly, states like South Dakota and South Carolina are still violating federal law called the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 when Native children are supposed to be placed with family, close kin, a relative, or with a different tribe.  “Stranger adoptions” with non-Indian parents is supposed to be the absolute last resort or rare occurrence.  However, it can still happen, you can read the chapter on Baby V.

Let’s face it: With a shortage of Native adoptive and foster homes in the US and Canada, children will be lost and later called Lost Birds, adoptees and Stolen Generations.  Indian Country as a whole is still impoverished, living with daily reminders of broken treaties, remote reservations, soul-crushing poverty, loss of land, shortages of language speakers, and generations who are dealing with post-traumatic stress after centuries of war, residential boarding school abuse, food scarcity and neglect.  Since so many are still subjected to Third World conditions, Indigenous children will continue to be taken and placed into foster care and adoptions.  (Wasn’t this the original plan to erase all Indians?)  Native American moms and dads can still lose their child (or all their children) in courtrooms of white privilege and cultural insensitivity.

On a visit to Brock University in 2014, my co-editor Patricia Busbee and I learned how foster and adoptive parents are invited to bring their Native child to First Nations Friendship Centres in the Niagara, Ontario area.  Children are invited to hear stories, learn their language and songs, while their new adoptive parents can participate in activities, too.  The entire family is welcome and nourished in this cultural exchange.

Indian Country needs to look to its northerly neighbors in Canada and start its own US-wide “Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC),” and reinvent and redesign its own child care protection systems for the sake of its own future generations.  Maine is the only state with a TRC.

After many adoptees contacted me wanting to find their first families, I can say with certainty adoptees are CALLED HOME, called in dreams to be reunited with family members and their many nations.  These adoptees do find a way to reconnect despite difficulties with archaic laws, a clueless public, biased lawmakers, closed adoptions, sealed court documents and falsified birth records.

It’s long overdue that North America opens their closed adoption files.  When this happens, if this happens, the entire world will finally comprehend how adoption was actually colonization and the trafficking of Indigenous Indian children by the “Nation Builders” who call themselves America and Canada.  We in North America are literally educated to be ignorant of the true history of our colonization, by the nation builders who use it and what really happened here.  Hiding it only perpetuates continued racism and intolerance.

The fog is lifting now and it’s time we shine a light on the hidden history of the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs like ARENA, the Indian Adoption Projects, Operation Papoose, Project Rainbow and the 60s Scoop.  You will read about these programs in this book.

For the writers in this book, adoption was the tool of assimilation, erasing our identity and sovereign rights as tribal citizens, intending it to be permanent.

For too many of us, states still won’t release our files to us, even as adults.  We have included a section in this book for adoptees who are still searching for clues after their closed adoptions.  Many adoptees are doing DNA tests with relatives and to find relatives..

As these books travel to new lands and new hands, I pray that adoptive parents accept that we cannot be the child they want us to be, or dream us to be, and that we are born with our own unique biology, ancestry and characteristics.  We will always dream in Indian.

LINK