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Canada and South Africa both used similar commissions to
grapple with their histories of racism and genocide. The U.S. could
benefit from following suit.
excerpt:
In the context of the commission in Maine, Anne said she thinks the word “reconciliation” can be problematic in how people understand it and what their perspective is. During the commission’s work, White people wanted to get right to the healing, but the tribes needed to tell their truth, she said.
Ibahawoh said he thinks the U.S. should seriously consider a truth and reconciliation commission as a model to try to heal from injustices like slavery and persistent racism.
“I think it means a lot to our foster kids that we’re
Cherokee,” said Carney Duncan, a gentle, soft-spoken man whose hair
falls below his shoulders. “My mom and dad always helped people and took
them in. I have an ‘Uncle Joe’ who is no kin but we took him in. And a
‘brother’ who lived with us who is no blood kin. We help our own. It’s a
Cherokee value.”
Given the daily racism that Native people endure, Schon said, he thought
it was important for Native children to grow up in Native families, to
ground themselves.
Few of yesterday's articles about his life mention just howmuch work he did on behalf of Native children, including the
March for Lost Children. In this
interview, he speaks about making people uncomfortable--"Nothing changes until someone feels uncomfortable."
If you worked on ICWA in any capacity, you knew Frank LaMere. Keep making people uncomfortable.
**
Winnebago activist Frank LaMere, far right, speaks to the family of
Zachary Bear Heels outside the bus station in Omaha, Nebraska, where the
Native man first arrived on June 5, 2017. He later died after being
beaten by police officers. A prayer walk took place in his honor on
December 8, 2018. Photo by Kevin Abourezk
excerpt
‘We’re going to keep it going’
Matt Ohman, executive director of Siouxland Human Investment
Partnership, a nonprofit in Sioux City, Iowa, that LaMere had worked
with for nearly a decade, said LaMere was pivotal in bringing together
leaders from many nonprofit and government agencies to help improve the
lives of Native people in Sioux City.
Among those he built relationships with were Iowa Department of Human
Services leaders, whom LaMere had heavily criticized following the
deaths of several Native children in non-Native foster homes over 16
years ago.
“There was a lot of anger,” Ohman said about the deaths of the Native
children. “It’s a testament to Frank because he used that to really
develop a relationship with the Department of Human Services here, and
now they are some of the biggest allies to the Native people.”
LaMere’s latest effort involved seeking Indian Health Service funds
to build a detox center or halfway house for Native men in Sioux City.
He and Ohman had traveled several times to Washington, D.C., to try to
convince Congressional leaders, including Rep. Steve King of Iowa, to
support efforts to fund the project.
Ohman said language has been included in the Interior appropriations
bill now being considered by Congress to provide funding for treatment
programs for Native people in Sioux City.
Last Tuesday, Ohman and other representatives from his organization
visited with LaMere in his hospital room in Omaha.“His body had been
through so much, but he was in good spirits,” he said.
“His biggest concern was, ‘I’ve got so many things going on right now, there’s so much work to do and here I am.’”
“I just assured him, ‘Hey, we’re not going to let the momentum die on
any of these things while you’re recuperating. We’re going to keep it
going and make sure all of this stuff keeps moving forward.’”
“Babies don’t get born and run down to the citizenship office and file a
petition,” said Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and
Policy Center at Michigan State University. When his own child was born,
he and his partner took a year to register
him as a tribal member, in part because he was eligible for more than
one tribal nation. “To say that somehow this kid hasn’t been enrolled
yet and therefore doesn’t have a political relationship is really quite
disingenuous.”
***
Reflecting on the rhetoric used by ICWA opponents like Sandefur, Nicole
Adams, a spokesperson for Partnership for Native Children, pointed to
the institutions that pushed for the use of boarding schools and
adoption for decades before ICWA’s passage. “They
were led by very well-intentioned Christian coalitions purporting that
Indian children needed to be saved, and they were just the ones to do
it. If you look at the rhetoric being put out by some of ICWA’s most
staunch opponents, it is eerily and frighteningly
similar.”
Many believe that “the past is past,” and it’s time to move on. Such thinking ignores the traumatic impact of genocide on future generations and the continued oppression of indigenous Americans. I recently watched the film “Dawnland” at Amherst Cinema, which highlights the first U.S. truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the government of Maine’s removal of generations of indigenous American children from their families. In the 19th and 20th centuries, tens of thousands of children on reservations were severed from their families and sent to residential schools and foster homes in order to eradicate indigenous Americans through forcibly acculturating their children — another form of genocide.
The Indian Child Welfare Act was established in 1978 to end this century-long practice and to instead “... protect the best interests of Indian Children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families by the establishment of minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children and placement of such children in homes which will reflect the unique values of Indian culture.”
Critics of the ICWA argue that the law is race-based, ignoring the sovereignty of tribal nations. A Federal Appeals Court judge will soon be deciding the fate of this 41-year-old law based on a case heard in March. The consequences of overturning the ICWA would once again threaten the welfare of Indigenous American families. Today, indigenous American children are three times more likely to be removed from their homes than white children, according to “Dawnland.”
In the more than 700 comments posted on our site, we heard from adoptive parents and
adoptees, Native Americans, foster parents, child welfare experts ...
Comments:
Alan Berkowitz
Mount Shasta, CA
The stories from adoptive parents and children are touching and raise many important issues. Many (both adoptive parents and children) point out the advantages of being raised in a loving home that is safe and secure in which they are also able to pursue and celebrate their tribal/cultural identity. This is a strong argument which however does not apply to the case in question, in which the adoptive parents show no interest in affirming or celebrating their children's native ancestry and culture AND there is a healthy and loving family of relatives that wants to adopt the two siblings in a home with other biological siblings. Therefore, as much as the arguments provided in the NYT article may merit discussion, they do NOT apply to this case, which represents a modern form of the legalized kidnapping that the dominant culture has perpetuated on Native peoples, notwithstanding the the adoptive parents claims of 'love' and 'religiosity.
linda diane
vancouver, bc
I was born in Canada to a Metis woman whose husband died just before the birth.
I was adopted during the "Sixties Scoop" where thousands of indigenous children were taken from their home communities. An adoption to a white middle class family with an engineer father was seen as a big step up from the working class environment I came from.
I had very conscientious adoptive parents, who were loving and did their best to help me be a part of a family of 6. They never lied to me.
Unfortunately, that was not enough. I was taken from my mother. And my indigenous roots. Trauma. Period. This was never addressed, I muddled through life with an underlying sense of not being ok, faked alot and used various means of escaping.
When I eventually found my birth mother, she had died two years previous. I have connected with cousins, but I have siblings i have not been able to locate.
This kind of trauma and it's lifelong impact needs to be accounted for. It's a systemic issue. Not all, but many adoptive parents are entitled, short sighted, and will be dealing with the fallout when the children grow up and reject them outright for their hubris and folly. Children are not accessories to complete your magazine lifestyle.
The cousins I have spoken to who knew my biological mother speak fondly of her; I think she must have hidden alot of pain, as she never spoke of children.
I
am an adoptee and journalist who has documented the history and narratives of
Native adoptees in three Lost Children anthologies. If the Brackeens had done
any research prior, they would know the outcomes for Native adoptees are not
good. Adoption gets pretty ugly when it doesn't work. Once kids are out of
diapers, they start noticing and feel the isolation without kin. There are
medical terms for our damage. The adoption industry will not advertise that
most patients in psychiatric care are adoptees. They don’t warn adoptive
parents their new child will suffer from “Severe Narcissistic Injury” or
“Reactive Attachment Disorder.” This news would not be welcome. LINK
Of
course some readers slam me for using the word "kin" ...or ask how do
I know about the damage we suffer... No shock... I get it: they don't get
it and they don't know the history or the Native adoptees I know
personally... (There were 775 comments before they shut it off today and many
are amazingly correct!)
An
earlier comment from Ellen gets it:
This
country has a long brutal history of removing Native children from their
families with the intent of culture genocide. There is nothing different about
this case. I am sure that the Brackeens are lovely (wealthy) people who care
for Zachary, and the new baby they selfishly wrested from her family. Still, it
does not undo the damage done to the Navajo nation, in losing 2 precious
children, not to mention the damage done to the children in growing up apart
from their culture...while being quite different in appearance from the rest of
this family. But skin color is not the issue - the erasure of culture and sense
of self is.
After
reading the NYT story I am not surprised that the Navajo tribe and the
Brackeens will share custody, as Judge Kim declared, but the Brackeens would
have primary possession. Taking Indian children off the rez and
changing their identity to white and ending their sovereignty and treaty rights
and a connection to tribal lands: the old playbook is the new
playbook.
It
is always about possession.
We
have covered this case on this blog for the past few years. (please look at Goldwater Institute (34 posts) for more insight
on this case.)
Hundreds
of tribal nations vehemently oppose the lawsuit Brackeen v. Bernhardt
that splits Texas, Indiana, Louisiana and a coalition of conservative legal
groups, including the Goldwater Institute, against the federal government,
hundreds of tribal nations, 21 state attorneys general, Native American civil
rights groups and child welfare organizations, including the Annie E. Casey
Foundation and the Children’s Defense Fund.
The
Navajo are appealing Judge Kim’s custody order.
What
about the BRACKEENS:
Potential
Adoptive Parents (PAPS) Chad and Jennifer Brackeen might want to learn Navajo
history during this lengthy court battle in Texas. (Try this one in 2011: Illegal aliens? Deported adoptees?)
The
total population of the Navajo people residing in their land is
approximately 180,462 having a median age of 24 years old. Navajo Nation is situated over a 27,000 square
miles of large land within the vicinity of the state of Arizona, Utah and New
Mexico. It is considered to be the largest land that is primarily covered by
the jurisdiction of the Native American within the territory of the United
States.
What
most people don't know: The Navajo are survivors of a barely-known Mormon
assimilation program from 1947 to the mid-1990s.
Year
after year, missionaries of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints
approached Navajo families and invited children into Mormon foster
homes. As part of the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program,
children would live with Mormon families during the school year to “provide
educational, spiritual, social, and cultural opportunities in non-Indian
community life,” according to the Church.
Typically,
the Mormon foster families were white and financially stable. Native
American children who weren’t already Mormon were baptized. Although the
LDS Church reached out to dozens of Indian tribes, most participants’ families
lived within the Navajo Nation.
Roughly
50,000 children participated in the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program,
according to Matthew Garrett, a professor at Bakersfield College.
Rather
than improving conditions on the Navajo reservation, the LDS Church asked that
children assimilate to the way its white members lived.
Some Church leaders interpreted the Book of Mormon literally and expected that
Native American children’s skin would turn lighter as they grew closer to
God.
The Church now admits that not all Native Americans are descendants of the
Israelites, or Lamanites, as described in the Book of Mormon. (Oh
really, thanks)
In
addition to the claims of damage done by sexual abuse, the lawsuits involving
the Indian Student Placement Program assert that the culture of the Navajo
Nation was “irreparably harmed” by the LDS Church’s “continuous and systematic
assimilation efforts.” Although the last student in the Indian Student
Placement Program graduated in 2000, plaintiffs are asking the Church to do all
it can to enhance and restore Navajo culture and create a taskforce for that
purpose.
Participants in the Church-sponsored Indian Student Placement Program have filed at least three sexual-abuse lawsuits. Lilly Fowler
***
Practices
of adopting Native American children directly followed the residential/boarding
schools. Such adoption practices, which came into fruition through forms
such as the forced removal of Native American children during Canada’s 60s
Scoop and its parallel in the United States, the Indian Adoption Projects,
exemplify the adaption of adoption as a settler colonial tool for dispossession
and disenfranchisement.
***
Narragansett
author John C Hopkins wrote about his Navajo mother in law on his blog:
Chilocco Indian School opened in 1884 with 123 students. Its
first graduating class was comprised of six boys and nine girls. The school
finally closed its doors in 1980. The name Chilooco comes from the Choctaw word
“chiluki” and the Cherokee word “tsalagi,” which means “cave people” in both
languages.
A long, hard-used tarred road turns off Route 166 and ends
where the abandoned, ivy-covered stone buildings stand in disrepair haunted by
the ghosts from memories past.
Bernice Austin-Begay, a Navajo, recalled the long ride down
the road when she was a child returning to school after a rare family visit.
“I’d be sad because I knew it would be a long before I would
see them again,” Austin-Begay, Class of 1965, said. “I’d be thinking about my
family, thinking about my sheep.”
Austin-Begay was 10 when she was first taken to Chilocco.
More than 50 years later she still recalls the day the government agents came
to Black Mesa, Ariz. and took her away.
“I was captured,” she said.
Many Indian families resented how the government swooped in
and took the children away from their families and did all they could to thwart
the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Austin-Begay’s family was one of those. Whenever
her mother saw a car coming up the road she would send Bernice running, to hide
in the hills until the “biliganas” left. (Biligana is the Navajo
word for white man)
But one day the car arrived unexpectedly and young Bernice
never reached the woods.
“I was too slow,” Austin-Begay said.
**
'CATASTROPHIC AND UNFORGIVABLE'
Starting in 1958, the Indian Adoption Project placed Native American children
in non-Native homes, in what it said was an effort to assimilate them into
mainstream culture and offer them better lives outside impoverished
reservations.
The project was run by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal government
agency, and the nonprofit Child Welfare League of America, in partnership with
private agencies.
There was a reason Indian leaders went to the Senate
in the 1970s and demanded an inquiry into the staggering number of children
disappearing in Indian Country. It was not just boarding schools creating this
mass exodus of children. Adoption programs in 16 states removed 85% of
Native children. Programs like the Adoption
Resource Exchange of North America (ARENA), established by the Child Welfare
League of America in 1967, funded in part by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, paid
states to remove children and place them with non-Indian adoptive families and
religious groups like the Mormon Church.ARENA expanded to include
all Canadian and United States adoption agencies and offered them financial
assistance.
ICWA (the Indian Child
Welfare Act) prioritizes placing Native children into Native homes or
with kin or with families that are willing to keep them within a certain proximity to their
cultures.
***
Associate Attorney General Tony West
Delivers Remarks at the National Indian Child Welfare Association’s 32nd Annual
Protecting Our Children Conference ~ Monday, April 14, 2014
"...There's more work to do because
every time an Indian child is removed in violation of ICWA, it can mean a loss
of all connection with family, with tribe, with culture. And with that
loss, studies show, comes an increased risk for mental health challenges,
homelessness in later life, and, tragically, suicide."
I run across comments by adoptive parents and PAPS (potential adoptive parents) all the time on why is it wrong for non-Natives to adopt Native kids? Volumes have been written about this, on this blog, and in medical studies and published reports but we STILL have people who don't understand.
I'm watching this documentary right now on demand. Its about these two
Native American boys (now adults) who were adopted from foster (care) in Canada
to an American (CC) family in Redding, PA. They were adopted as young
boys so they remembered being with the bmom and now one of the boys is
making a film about being between both families.
I thing that bothers me is the younger
brother has basically at 18 yrs old left his adoptive family and went
back to Canada to bio family and he hasn't talked to his AP's in 8
years. His issues are growing up without his NA identity and racism he
dealt with being NA in a all CC environment. Actually both boys are
living in Canada now. The older brother still has a relationship with
his AP's.
As an AP I would take it as a slap in the
face if my kid just left and wouldn't talking to me for 8 yrs. Its like
these boys bio mom was an alcoholic who had her kids taken away because
she was neglecting them. She said herself she would be drunk for 6 weeks
straight and have no idea what day or month it is. Also leaving these
babies at home by themselves while she's out partying and they have to
change each diapers etc... So you have this family come in and give you a
stable home and love and yet because they are CC you just leave?? Im
wondering if this something that happens more often with older kids
adoption from foster care? Like I said earlier it really annoys me but a great watch anyways. LINK
A Place Between – The Story of an Adoption is a 2007 documentary film dealing with cross-cultural adoption and aboriginal life in Canada. It was directed by First Nations adoptee Curtis Kaltenbaugh and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
Curtis and Ashok Kaltenbaugh were born in Manitoba and are of First Nations ancestry. After the 1980 death of their younger brother, at ages of 7 and 4 respectively, they were removed from the custody of their birth mother and placed for adoption with a middle-class white family living in Pennsylvania.
The film chronicles their search for identity and the meeting of their adoptive and birth families.
The film won Best Public Service Award at the Annual American Indian Film Festival, held in San Francisco during November 2007.[wiki]
An inquiry concluded that
high rates of violence against indigenous women in Canada amount to a
genocide fueled by government abuses
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mr. Trudeau has said the relationship between the Canadian government and indigenous people needs to be rebuilt and the process will likely take decades.
Monday’s report isn’t the first time Canada’s treatment of indigenous people has been labeled a genocide. A separate inquiry released in 2015 found Canada’s centurylong practice of forcibly removing indigenous children from their homes and educating them at government-funded residential schools was a “cultural genocide.” (We call this the 60s Scoop but it was before and after the 1960s)
Matthew Fletcher, who directs the indigenous law and policy center at Michigan State University, said Native Americans have faced similar wrongs in the U.S., including the forced removal of children from Native American families. He said Canada has done more in recent years to recognize the problem publicly.
Indian Country is under attack. Native tribes and people are fighting hard for justice. There is need for legal assistance across Indian Country, and NARF is doing as much as we can. With your help, we have fought for 48 years and we continue to fight.
It is hard to understand the extent of the attacks on Indian Country. We are sending a short series of emails this month with a few examples of attacks that are happening across Indian Country and how we are standing firm for justice.
Today, we look at recent effort to undo laws put in place to protect Native American children and families. All children deserve to be raised by loving families and communities. In the 1970s, Congress realized that state agencies and courts were disproportionately removing American Indian and Alaska Native children from their families. Often these devastating removals were due to an inability or unwillingness to understand Native cultures, where family is defined broadly and raising children is a shared responsibility. To stop these destructive practices, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).
After forty years, ICWA has proven to be largely successful and many states have passed their own ICWAs. This success, however, is now being challenged by large, well-financed opponents who are actively and aggressively seeking to undermine ICWA’s protections for Native children. We are seeing lawsuits across the United States that challenge ICWA’s protections. NARF is working with partners to defend the rights of Native children and families.
