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| Take The Children |
First, do no harm. That is the doctor’s creed. Doctors are part of a larger group I call The Adoption Industry.
Their group includes clergy, politicians, academics, psychology-types,
social workers, lawyers and adoption agencies made up of similar people.
Apparently this group lacks historians. If they had historians, they’d
know adoption hurts the adoptee.
Statistics don’t lie. Adoptees are among the highest population in psychiatric care. If it hurts, it harms.
The
mental health of Native babies and children who go through adoption
with non-Indian parents has been documented in studies for decades.
Suicides, arrests and addictions are common and adoptees have known this
pain a long time. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was supposed to
end the harm to Indian children by placing them with other family
members. Sadly, that still isn’t happening.
My friend Stephanie Woodard wrote in Indian Country Today, here (Dec. 1, 2012) about South Dakota’s ICWA violations:
“The
ICWA directors found that the latest information shows South Dakota is
not only taking a disproportionate number of children into custody, it
is also failing to ensure that they stay with their tribes, despite ICWA
provisions requiring that tribes have a say in their children’s
placement. As of July 2011, they said, Native American foster homes sat
empty while nearly 9 out of 10 Indian children in state foster care were
in non-Native homes.
“The ICWA directors also
noted the state’s tendency to equate “poverty” with “neglect,” which in
turn results in more seizures of Native American children: “South
Dakota’s rate of identifying ‘neglect’ is 20 percent higher than the
national average,” they wrote.
“The group also
found disturbing information on the fate of children once they left the
(social care) system. Some youngsters are reunited with their families
or adopted; or they may turn 18 and “age out.” But from 1999 to 2009,
the “other” category—children who died, ran away or were transferred to
correctional or mental-health facilities—grew from 6.9 percent to 32.8
percent….”
In two conversations, two different
birthmothers in Minnesota confirmed what I was thinking about harm to
the adoptee. One mother found her son was harmed emotionally by his
adoption and is in treatment for addictions. Then an adoptee friend
shared her brother, also an adoptee, is homeless and drug addicted. Her
family doesn’t know what to do, other than hope and pray he finally gets
mental health counseling for adoption issues and not get prison-time.
This
mental health crisis has been building for decades! I sought counseling
twice in my life, and even though it wasn’t focused on adoption, it
helped me recover my self-esteem. Doing research for my book One Small Sacrifice changed me the most and healed what I call “the wound.” (There are adoptees who say they were not harmed, not all, but some.)
The truth that adoption harms and hurts Native children
is something we’ve known a long time. But this truth never seems to
reach our adoptive parents ears. They were not told by Adoption
Professionals they’d need to prepare for our adoptee issues and get us
help early.
Propaganda by the Adoption Industry would prefer we don’t speak the truth. Adoptees have known that a long time, too.
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