Keep Calm and Decolonize: 5 short films

As the country marks 150 years of Confederation, five of Canada's most distinguished filmmakers respond to (First Nations Cree adoptee) Buffy Sainte-Marie's  call to "Keep Calm and Decolonize" and offer an alternative vision.

Earlier this year, during a panel discussion, Buffy Sainte-Marie urged the audience to remain calm and decolonize — marching orders from the iconic activist and artist, echoing a call that has been loud in Indian country for years and is now being heard more widely, thanks to the increased presence of First Nations, Métis and Inuit voices across Turtle Island. That Sainte-Marie would signal boost this message now, as Canada celebrates 150 years of its colonial state, is certainly no coincidence. For nations that have been present on this land for millennia, the number of candles on this cake seem quaint and come soaked in a history of violent assimilation and oppression.

Watch all five films, curated by Jesse Wente, now: http://cbc.ca/decolonize

A young woman, guided by Spider Woman, must overcome colonial history and education to find herself. Michif director and animator Amanda Strong combines puppets and stop motion in this arrestingly beautiful short.

Keep Calm and Decolonize: Flood https://www.youtube.com/CBCArts

Two Worlds: new and updated!

BUY NOW http://amzn.to/2CjtyRr

For Immediate Release


GREENFIELD, MA (2017) Tragic, true, heartbreaking, astonishing... those words have been used to describe the anthology Two Worlds, the first book to expose in first-person detail the adoption practices that have been going on for years under the guise of caring for destitute Indigenous children in North America.

What really happened and where are these Native children now? 

The new updated Second Edition of TWO WORLDS (Vol. 1), with narratives from Native American and First Nations adoptees, covers the history of Indian child removals in North America, the adoption projects, their impact on Indian Country, the 60s Scoop in Canada and how it impacts the adoptee and their families.

"This book changed history," say editor Trace Hentz. "There is no doubt in my mind the adoption projects were buried and hidden... we adoptees are the living proof."

The Lost Children Book Series includes: Two Worlds, Called Home: The Roadmap, Stolen Generations, and In The Veins: Poetry. The book series is an important contribution to American Indian history.

Trace Hentz (formerly DeMeyer) located other Native adult survivors of adoption and asked them to write a narrative for the first anthology. The adoptees share their unique experience of living in Two Worlds, surviving assimilation via adoption, opening sealed adoption records, and in most cases, a reunion with their tribal relatives. Indigenous identity and historical trauma takes on a whole new meaning in this adoption book series.

Since 2004, award winning journalist Hentz was writing her historical biography “One Small Sacrifice: A Memoir.” She was contacted by many adoptees after stories were published about her work. More adoptees were found after “One Small Sacrifice” had its own Facebook page and the American Indian Adoptees blog started in 2009. In 2011, Trace was introduced to Patricia Busbee and asked her to co-edit the first edition of Two Worlds.

As Hentz writes in the Preface, "The only way we change history is to write it ourselves." This book is a must read for all that want the truth, since very little is known or published on this history.

"I was asked to update this book by one adoptee contributor and I added a new narrative by Levi Eagle Feather, and more information on the 60s Scoop. Please tell your friends and other adoptees," Trace Hentz says. "One day in America, we Lost Children will have our day in court."

Patricia Busbee is writing a new chapter on her adoptee reunion in the anthology CALLED Home in 2018.

READ A FREE PREVIEW

On Amazon, Kindle, Kobo... For links and more information, to order copies, bulk orders, etc:  www.bluehandbooks.org

Permission? #TRC

Residential-school survivor must get permission from government, church to preserve her story: Ottawa /via @globeandmail https://t.co/FFJZ1y6qx3

— Connie Walker (@connie_walker) December 13, 2017

Survivors, write your stories. Write your parents stories. Write the elders stories. Do not be swayed by the colonizers to keep quiet. Tribal Nations have their own way of keeping stories alive.... Trace

This Reconciliation is for the Colonizer

Wrong Kind of Green Dec 01, 2017 Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
Indigenous Motherhood
June 13, 2017
By Andrea Landry

“Indigenous based child-rearing in today’s generation resides in watching the restoration of unfaltering kinship in our Indigenous family systems unfold and allowing that to reside in the raising of our children with the knowing of who they are, and where they come from, wildly and unapologetically.”

Artwork by: Votan Henriquez

excerpt:

This reconciliation is for the colonizers.
This is a time of pseudo-reconciliation for continued colonization.
This reconciliation is colonization, disguised with dollar signs and white-skinned handshakes.
This reconciliation is not our reconciliation.
Because.
The only reconciliation that exists for us, as Indigenous nations, is the reconciliation we need to find within ourselves and our communities, for agreeing and complying to this madness for so long.
The only reconciliation that exists for us, is the reconciliation needed to forgive our families, our loved ones, for acting like the colonizer.
The only reconciliation we need. Is a reconciliation that doesn’t involve white skinned handshakes and five dollar handouts for our lands.

READ HER STATEMENT

We were not supposed to ‘be’ Indian

Adoptee Susan Harness with her younger brother James Allen in 2012.

An anthropological search for belonging and identity

by Katie Horton

Anthropology | Research & Creative | Alumni

At eighteen months old, Susan Harness (M.A. cultural anthropology ’06, M.A. creative nonfiction ’16) was removed from her home because of neglect. Notes from the social worker document a hungry infant with infected and bleeding mosquito bites and a diaper that hadn’t been changed in days. Harness and two of her siblings had been left in the care of their six-year-old sister by a mother who regularly disappeared for extended periods of time.

Family and community members on Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana were unable to help since they did not have the economic resources. As a result, in 1960, like over 30 percent of American Indian children in that time period, Harness was adopted into a non-American Indian home.

Transracial adoption

The Indian Adoption Project was a small study interested in understanding the impact of transracial adoption on American Indian children. From 1958 through 1967, researchers spoke with a small subset of American Indian children who were adopted by white families. Proponents of this practice argued that this was an improvement over previous policies which resulted in difficulties placing American Indian children into homes. Harness’ experience and later academic research document a unique perspective on this subject – that of the child adoptee.

“The primary purpose of placing over a third of American Indian children with white families was assimilation,” said Harness. “My adoption, like nearly every other transracial adoption, was a closed adoption. This means our names were changed; our families, our tribes and nation, erased. Our entire identity was kept locked away in files that could be opened only by court order, trusting you could find a sympathetic judge. Therefore, finding our way home would be almost impossible. That’s how it was meant to be. We were not supposed to ‘be’ Indian, we were supposed to become members of the dominant society, with full and complete access to the American Dream.”

"We were not supposed to ‘be’ Indian, we were supposed to become members of the dominant society, with full and complete access to the American Dream."
– Susan Harness (upcoming book Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, out fall 2018 from University of Nebraska Press.)

keep reading

Susan contributed a story to the anthology STOLEN GENERATIONS: SURVIVORS OF THE INDIAN ADOPTION PROJECTS AND 60S SCOOP 

Ontario Adoption Records | Tips to Search

CLICK LINK

Adoption records opened for adoptees and natural parents
in Ontario on June 1st, 2009.

Records Prior to Adoption Act 1921

See Guardianship and Adoption Records – Ontario Archives
http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/access/documents/research_guide_223_guardianship_and_adoption.pdf

Once you have obtained the names of your natural parents or the child you lost to adoption, some useful tools for your search include:

• Searching for names using Google or Facebook
• Looking in online phone directories including www.canada411.ca and www.pipl.ca
• Your original birth record indicates where your natural mother and father were born. You can use the phone directory for that city to contact them or other family members to find out where they might currently be living.
• Henderson Directories (“City Directories”) for the city you were born in, or in which your natural parent was born, and for occupations.  They can also provide relevant older information on names, addresses, and occupations dating back to 1905. Many cities across Canada had these directories in addition to phone-books. Check local libraries and online sources (e.g., University of Alberta) for copies.
• Check adoption notices in the newspaper after date of completion of adoption.  Also check birth notices that do not mention the time of birth or doctors involved, these are sometimes disguised adoption notices.
• Check birthday wishes in the paper
• Peruse highschool and yearbooks for appropriate years
• Check Obituaries

Many use Facebook and other social media to locate relatives also... Trace

What do you call THIS?

By Trace Hentz  (adoptee and editor of the book series Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects)

What do you call it when a woman has a baby and a social worker/ judge/ government has pre-judged her, then decides to take that baby, then it happens again and again… each and every time she gets pregnant. What if this happened 5 times, or 9 times? What do you call that?

Debby, Mitzi, Elizabeth (and countless other Native adoptees) your mothers lost you and other children.  What do you call this?  How do you tell people or explain to people a history like this?   

What did they call your mother? Did they demean her, label her crazy, to justify this?

How does anyone define genocide?  What is Human Trafficking?  Choosing one segment of the population for this treatment? Placing American Indian First Nations Indigenous babies with a non-Indian family? This had a purpose. The government paid for this. And until the Indian Child Welfare Act, this decimated tribes to near extinction.

We know with slaves, children were sold. Families separated. Rebellions quashed. Resistors hung from trees. Millions of dollars were made selling human life, with fortunes created, mansions built, and enough wealth for generations.

Who in their right mind would find this acceptable?

What do you call taking babies from their own mothers? Do you give this a name, like adoption. Do you market it as something else? How do you sell people on this? Why did people accept this? 

How did mothers survive losing their children? How do children survive without them?

If this feels like slavery and heinous and insanity and genocide and cruelty, that’s because it is. It is all this.

I will be publishing a new updated second edition of TWO WORLDS this month!  Please tell your friends and other adoptees.  We'll post more on this blog when it comes out.  Please get in touch if you are an adoptee and still searching. Pray for mothers across the planet that they can keep and raise their children.

Latest Development in Florida #OBC Access

We are writing to update you on legislative developments in Florida, specifically around HB357/SB576, which we have all joined in opposing.

Earlier this week, Rep. Barry Russell, a Democrat from Broward County, filed a clean OBC access bill with a genuine contact preference form (HB821). We are obviously supportive of clean bills. We are, however, cautiously moving forward with support of HB821 at this time. It appears certain that the new bill was filed at the request or direction of Representative Richard Stark, the sponsor of the bill that we currently oppose. With the recent history of two widely different New York OBC access bills being simultaneously introduced and sponsored by the same legislator---with disastrous results for adoptees---we are concerned that the new bill in Florida is not genuine and is instead being used solely to obtain a hearing on Representative Stark’s bill. Representative Stark has represented that at least one committee assigned to his bill will not approve it without adding redaction provisions.

For this reason, we have expressed guarded support for the new bill. At the same time, we are working with Florida constituents to determine whether the current sponsor of the clean bill is committed to the bill and to adoptee rights generally. We will specifically ask him if he is willing to work with supporters in assuring passage of HB821 without discriminatory amendments.

The new bill, which does not have a required senate sponsor, can be found here. We will let you know more details once we talk with Representative Russell.

As always, thanks for your support!

Gregory Luce • Marley Greiner • Susan Friel-Williams + all 26 organizations in unity

Adoptee Rights Law Center
Adoptee Rights Campaign
Adoption Rights Alliance (Ireland)/The Philomena Project
ALARM Network
American Adoption Congress
Banished Babies of Ireland
Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization
Concerned United Birthparents
The Donaldson Adoption Institute
National Center on Adoption and Permanency
The National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC)
Saving Our Sisters
Trace L. Hentz, author, Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects series
Access Rhode Island
California Open
Canada Open
Equal Access Oklahoma
Equality4Adoptees (Texas)
Florida Adoption Initiative for Reform
Indiana Open
Michigan Open
Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform
Missouri Open
Nevada Open
New York State Adoptee Equality
Post-Adoption Center for Education and Resources (PACER)

From:

Gregory D. Luce

Adoptee Rights Law Center PLLC

adopteerightslaw.com

Twitter: @adopteelaw