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Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ .
Beauty Without Boundaries
We
are all examples of true beauty, yet we live in a culture that tells us
differently. The society of today does everything it can to put us in a
box, doing its best to contort us into its shallow definition of "ideal
beauty." These unrealistic standards are completely one-dimensional,
and they fail to encompass the wide variety of beauty that abounds in
the human race.
Living in two worlds
American Indians often discuss the struggle of trying to live and thrive in two worlds:
the world of their culture and ancestors and the one of a modern day
civilization that is a melting pot of ideals, customs, and beliefs. When
Indigenous people embrace their physical beauty and inner uniqueness,
the conflict between these two worlds becomes even more apparent.
In a recent article titled "She's So Pale" that was posted on Native Appropriations, Adrienne
Keene, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, discusses the
stereotypes that so often bombard Native Americans. She explains how so
many people “think that Native identity is tied to looking like
something off the side of a football helmet...they want to be able to
categorize and move on. But Native identity isn’t just a racialized
identity. Native identity is political. We are citizens of tribal
nations. So we can’t just talk about our identities purely in racial
terminology. There’s also a deep power issue here—who has the 'right,'
especially as an outsider, to determine someone’s identity for them?”
Adrienne’s
pale complexion has caused many to cast judgment and challenge her
Native heritage. This fact alone exemplifies the danger of trusting our
eyes to be the only valid source of truth. She is determined to make a
difference and expose these obvious misconceptions, stating “instead of
feeling ashamed, I’m trying now to turn the tables and think that I,
instead, am the colonizer’s worst nightmare. Because history has tried
to eradicate my people by violence and force, enacted every assimilating
and acculturating policy against my ancestors, let me grow up in white
suburbia, and erased all the visual vestiges of heritage from my
face–but still tsi tsalagi (I am Cherokee)....fighting back against misrepresentations, through a keyboard and the internet.”
KEEP READING
Canada's Residential Schools
The religious organizations that operated the schools — the Anglican Church of Canada, Presbyterian Church in Canada, United Church of Canada, Jesuits of English Canada and some Catholic groups —
in 2015 expressed regret for the “well-documented” abuses. The Catholic Church has never offered an official apology, something that Trudeau and others have repeatedly called for.
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Did you know?
New York’s 40-year battle for OBC access ended when on January 15 2020, OBCs were opened to ALL New York adoptees upon request without restriction. In only three days, over 3,600 adoptees filed for their record of birth. The bill that unsealed records was passed 196-12.
According to the 2020 Census, 3.6% of Colorado's population is American Indian or Alaska Native, at least in part, with the descendants of at least 200 tribal nations living in the Denver metro area.
ADOPTION TRUTH
As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.”
The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.
Why tribes do not recommend the DNA swab
Rebecca Tallbear entitled: “DNA, Blood, and Racializing the Tribe”, bearing out what I only inferred:
Detailed discussion of the Bering Strait theory and other scientific theories about the population of the modern-day Americas is beyond the scope of this essay. However, it should be noted that Indian people have expressed suspicion that DNA analysis is a tool that scientists will use to support theories about the origins of tribal people that contradict tribal oral histories and origin stories. Perhaps more important,the alternative origin stories of scientists are seen as intending to weaken tribal land and other legal claims (and even diminish a history of colonialism?) that are supported in U.S. federal and tribal law. As genetic evidence has already been used to resolve land conflicts in Asian and Eastern European countries, this is not an unfounded fear.
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