AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: Vancouver Island couple lose appeals to adopt Metis toddler

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Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Vancouver Island couple lose appeals to adopt Metis toddler

A British Columbia foster family has lost its fight in the province’s highest court to adopt a Metis toddler in an emotional saga that has pitted the importance of indigenous heritage against that of blood relatives.
The B.C. Court of Appeal has dismissed two appeals launched by the Vancouver Island couple, who hoped to stop the Ministry of Children and Family Development from moving the little girl to Ontario to live with her biological siblings, who she has never met.
The foster mom is Metis while the adoptive parents in Ontario are not, and the B.C. couple had argued the girl’s aboriginal background should take precedence. The girl, who is nearly three, has been in the couple’s care since two days after birth.
But a five-judge panel ruled unanimously in a written decision released Tuesday that both the couple’s appeals of earlier B.C. Supreme Court decisions must be dismissed.
“(The foster parents) face an insurmountable hurdle to achieving the relief sought,” the ruling says. “The adoption scheme in British Columbia does not provide for adoption of a child by foster parents at the behest of a court….”

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Review: 'Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption,' by Susan Devan Harness https://t.co/aF2s87Wn03
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Good words

Priscilla Sharp

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

Link: http://adoptionvoicesmagazine.com/adoptee-view/dear-christian-who-is-praying-for-an-infant-to-adopt/