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I'll also chime in on my own experience in the District of Columbia as well as what the process looks like as an attorney in Minnesota and other states. - Attorney Gregory D. Luce
LINCOLN, Neb., March 2, 2021 — Vision Maker Media (VMM) is marking its 45th anniversary in 2021 with a yearlong celebration of free “commUNITY” events, including thematic online film screenings, online virtual programs and more. To celebrate Women’s History Month in March, VMM will launch its first online program of 2021, a community-themed online film streaming event, titled “commUNITY: Herald Native Women.” All March programs are free and open to the public but registration is required. The Cherokee Nation Film Office is a sponsor of VMM’s 45th anniversary events.
The March celebration will include a program of seven films — two short and five feature-length documentaries — all produced and/or directed by women, and a panel discussion organized in partnership with Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO). Founded in 1970 by LaDonna Harris (Comanche), AIO advances, from an Indigenous worldview, the cultural, political and economic rights of Indigenous peoples in the United States and around the world.
The seven films will be available all month for streaming 24/7 at visionmakermedia.org. The films portray Native women in leadership, coming of age, and language revitalization. All are available worldwide. For more information about the films and to register, visit visionmakermedia.org.
“Making Matriarchs – Indigenous Values-Based Leadership Development,” a panel discussion featuring four Native women leaders who are among the more than 250 graduates of AIO’s Ambassadors Program, will take place via Zoom on Tuesday, March 16 at 7 p.m. CST. AIO’s Ambassadors Program is the only national leadership training that encourages Native leaders to weave their traditional tribal values in a contemporary reality in order to affect positive social change and advance human rights.
“Americans for Indian Opportunity is pleased to partner with Vision Maker Media during Women’s History Month as we showcase some of the many contributions of Indigenous women to American society,” says AIO Executive Director Laura Harris (Comanche). “Together, we can amplify Native voices, build awareness and understanding, and share a positive and contemporary Indigenous narrative.”
Panel participants include: Francene Blythe-Lewis (Diné, Sisseton-Wahpeton, Eastern Cherokee), executive director, Vision Maker Media (introduction); Laura Harris (Comanche), executive director, Americans for Indian Opportunity (moderator); Janeen Comenote (Quinault/Hesquiaht/Oglala), executive director, National Urban Indian Family Coalition (panelist); Brittany Schulman (Waccama Siouan), director of leadership initiatives, AIO (panelist) and Lindsay Early, deputy director, National Indian Child Welfare Association (panelist). The fourth panelist is unconfirmed at press time.
The panelists will discuss the importance of female leadership and the influence of matriarchy. They will talk about the work they do for social change and education, and how they utilize the teachings of the AIO Ambassadors Program and their “Medicine” (personal strengths and talents) for the good of their communities and humanity.
Visiting scholar’s research examines the ways Indigenous culture and well-being are intertwined.
Estelle Simard is in her second year of a visiting scholar role in the UMD Department of Social Work. Her research features a theory of cultural attachment—or the idea that one’s connection to culture can help protect their well-being.
Simard obtained a Master of Social Work degree from UMD in 2009. For the research component of the program, she wrote a paper about the need for culturally restorative practices in American Indian child welfare. This foundational work impacted her career research trajectory.
A member of the Couchiching First Nation in Canada, Simard's research seeks to bring the concept of cultural attachment from the Indigenous world into academia. She also wants it to inform mainstream social work practice, particularly as it relates to child welfare.
The dominant approach to child welfare in the United States and Canada has long ignored the significance of culture. The overarching goal of the child welfare system is to protect children from harm. But removing Indigenous children from their homes and communities strips them of their cultural identity.
Because culture plays a role in nearly all aspects of Indigenous life, Simard asserts that culturally responsive services need to be integrated into social work practice. “Any service provision there is, culture has to be embedded within it. It needs to be a driving force,” she says, noting that otherwise Native children become “casualties of the system because we’re not addressing their unique cultural needs.”
Last summer, Simard helped facilitate the development of curriculum for the new Aabinoojiiyag-Wakhanheza Un Thantanhanpi - “For All the Children” Sacred Being: Tribal Training and Certification Partnership (TTCP), a foundational training for all Minnesota child welfare workers. This training is considered a foundational training piece for all practicing child welfare workers across Minnesota.
Simard calls the program and curriculum offered by the TTCP “provocative” and says it helps people to understand the true intention of the Indian Child Welfare Act and how to apply it in practice. This “decolonized social work practice” aims to protect children while preserving Native families.
She’s enthusiastic about the first virtual training, and says it was “exciting and pivotal” with people across Minnesota participating—including tribal child welfare workers in Leech Lake and Red Lake.
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Terese Marie Mailhot, pictured at 16 with her late mother Wahzinak Joyce Bobb
Courtesy of Terese Marie Mailhot
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I cut a fistful of hair over the bathroom sink in tears. This is how our people have mourned for generations. Nlaka’pamux women, my mother taught me, would cut their hair. They swallowed a spoonful of oil. They prayed and stopped harvesting for a year when a loved one died. There are stories about a woman who tried to pick berries after the death of a child, and the bush dried up, never grew back.
We grieve with ceremony—we have practices and traditions that go back thousands of years, before borders were created, before colonization, before smallpox brought more stories about devastation that made our healthy children skeletal and wiped out whole communities. Grief is honor work, and if you don’t follow instructions, it could hurt your family, hurt the dead trying to pass over into the next life.
READ: https://time.com/5923276/grieving-during-covid-19-pandemic/
We lost our sidebar on this blog. Changes were made to our blog design by Blogger, not us.
Scroll to the bottom of the blog for the other information you need to read.
LINCOLN, Neb., Feb. 9, 2021 — This year, Vision Maker Media — founded in 1976 as the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium — is celebrating 45 years of engaging Native voices in public media platforms.
Regardless of the party they represent, having first-hand Native voices in positions of power is a victory worth celebrating. Keep reading to learn more about the six Politicians currently serving in congress,
A bill to keep Native children within their tribe or pueblo when the state separates them from their parents passed the House State Government and Indian Affairs Committee unanimously on Feb. 8.
Sponsored by state Rep. Georgene Louis, D-Albuquerque and of the Acoma Pueblo, HB 209 has overwhelming support from various organizations and Tribal and pueblo governments in the state.
If it becomes law, the bill would codify the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which was passed in the 1970s but is poorly enforced, according to experts. The bill would guide the state Children, Youth and Families Department to notify tribes and pueblos when a child removal occurs and to work with the Tribal community to place a Native child with extended family or friends or foster families within their own sovereign nation.
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The department did send notice to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes about the child’s case. But the appellate panel found no evidence to confirm whether the tribes received those notices. Prior Court of Appeals decisions have established that notification must take place by registered mail with a return receipt requested.
“As a result, the juvenile court and the Department did not comply with ICWA’s notice provisions,” wrote Judge Sueanna P. Johnson. The panel returned the case to the lower court for compliance with ICWA.
In an annual report on American Indian child adoption cases, Kathryn Fort of the Michigan State University College of Law and Adrian T. Smith found that state appellate courts across the country decide approximately 200 cases implicating ICWA each year. Of the appeals that cite a lack of tribal notice, appellate judges returned nearly two-thirds of them to lower courts in 2019.
Larimer County did not comply with the federal law that protects the rights of Indian children when it failed to notify the relevant tribes in a custody proceeding, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday.
Around the World
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The Dutch government suspended adoptions from foreign countries Monday after an investigative committee report criticized past ruling coalitions for being "too passive" in the face of years of reported abuses including impoverished mothers being coerced into putting up their children for adoption.
The committee said that abuses included "the falsification of documents, the abuse of poverty among the birth mothers and the abandonment of children for payment or through coercion." Dutch media began reporting on them in the late 1960s, but previous governments failed to take decisive action to tackle the problems, it added.
"Not only have there been many abuses in the past, the system of intercountry adoption is still open to fraud and abuses continue to this day," the government-installed committee warned.
It said that the government needs to "restore its damaged relationship with adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents and families."
Minister for Legal Protection Sander Dekker conceded that Dutch governments had fallen short.
The committee studied adoptions from 1967-1998 in five countries -- Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Adoptions already underway will be allowed to continue, authorities said. The committee also found cases of corruption, falsification of documents to make it impossible or more difficult to establish the birth families of adoptees, child trafficking and "baby farming."
VIA
From beaded cat clothes to plant knowledge: Indigenous people pick up skills during pandemic
It's been almost a year since the pandemic forced a significant change in our lifestyle on Turtle Island.
Many Indigenous people have been using their extended time at home to learn new skills and feel closer to their identity — whether it was through moose hide tanning, learning a language, or beadwork.
This week on Unreserved, how Indigenous people are learning traditional skills to beat the quarantine blues. LISTEN
Tilda Mae Green passed away on Jan 7, 2021 at the age of 66 due to Covid 19 complications.
Born September 3, 1954 in Escondido, she was one of eight children born to Manuel and Julia Escalante. She was a member of the San Pasqual Band of Indians and moved to Valley Center in early 1978. Ms. Green served the tribe in an official capacity for 41 years and was elected as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Business Committee for several terms until her passing.
Ms. Green became a director representing San Pasqual with San Luis Rey Water Authority from 1999 to 2009. She was influential in the early research, among other early tribal members from the five tribes, which eventually led to the water rights litigation and settlement with The City of Escondido. Ms. Green was also one of the pioneers of “Strong Hearted Native Women” advocating for domestic violence victims and supported the VAWA movement. Her previous roles with the San Pasqual Band of Indians included bookkeeper, grants manager, education director, and tribal administrator. She was the tribal government representative in recent years advocating for ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act). She believed that the children are the greatest asset of the tribe.
Ms. Green was deeply respected for her tenacity, integrity and love for her community. She was a humble person and had a strong compassion for her family and had many friends throughout the county and native communities.
Ms. Green is survived by her three children Nichole Green of
Oklahoma, Charles Green, and Megan Green of Valley Center. She had eight
grandchildren and two great grandchildren that she loved and they all
brought great happiness to her heart. She is also survived by three
sisters Eva Arredondo, Lydia
Escalante, Judy Wright all of Valley Center and one brother Felix
Escalante of Escondido all who will miss her sense of humor and the
laughter she shared with them throughout the years. SOURCE
How about, we keep things out of where the wild things live? Things like pipelines and mines, even 5G. The whole world doesn’t need 5G. Sometimes, just listen to the ice crack on the lake, or maybe hear a wolf howl, that’s good enough.
Worldwide, Indigenous peoples represent 4% of the world’s population, but live with 75% of the world’s biodiversity. Indakiingimin, the land to which we belong.
GOOD READ: LaDuke: Who stands for the river, for the wild things? | Duluth News Tribune
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Fletcher and Fort posted “Intimate Choice and Autonomy: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl,” forthcoming in CRITICAL RACE JUDGMENTS (Cambridge Univ. Press, eds. Bennett Capers, Devon Carbado, Robin A. Lenhart, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig) (forthcoming 2021).
As if there was any doubt, we have reached the opposite outcome as the Supreme Court did back in 2013. A few excerpts:
This case is about a little girl (Baby Girl) who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, like her father, grandparents, and a multitude of generations before her. American Indian tribal citizenship with a federally recognized tribe is a unique concept in American law. E.g., Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 55 (1978) (“[Indian tribes] have power to make their own substantive law in internal matters. . . .”). Tribal citizens are beneficiaries of the federal government’s trust relationship with Indian tribes, and the federal government has promised to tribal citizens for centuries to assist in the maintenance of tribal governments, cultures, and sovereignty. Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 556 (1831) (“[The Cherokee treaty], thus explicitly recognizing the national character of the Cherokees, and their right of self government; thus guarantying their lands; assuming the duty of protection, and of course pledging the faith of the United States for that protection; has been frequently renewed, and is now in full force.”).
And:
The ethically dubious acts of the Petitioners in this case extends to this Court’s amici. Several amici invoked the racist dog whistle of referring to the Petitioners as the “only family” Baby Girl has ever known. E.g., Brief for Guardian Ad Litem, as Representative of Respondent Baby Girl, Supporting Reversal at 56 (“Indeed, it is hard to imagine what liberty interest is more important to a 27-month old child than maintaining the only family bonds she has ever known, absent a strong showing of necessity.”) (emphasis added); Brief of Amica Curiae Birth Mother in Support of Petitioners at 3 (“The decision below effectively negated Birth Mother’s decision to place Baby Girl with Adoptive Couple, and ripped Baby Girl from the only family she has ever known, in derogation of both Birth Mother’s and Baby Girl’s rights and expectations under state law.”) (emphasis added); Brief of Amici Curiae Bonnie and Shannon Hofer; Roger, Loreal, and Sierra Lauderbaugh; and Craig and Esther Adams in Support of Petitioners at 38 (“[T]he lower court took non-Indian Petitioners’ adopted Indian daughter from them – destroying the only family she has ever known.”) (emphasis added); Brief of Amici Curiae National Council for Adoption in Support of Petitioners at 13-14 (“ICWA is implemented in some cases to traumatize children by forcing them into completely unknown environments, traumatizing them by removal from the only family they’d ever felt a connection with and imposing the developmental delays that come with the traumatic removal from a secure attachment.”) (emphasis added).[1] It appears that for some of our amici, the “only family” that matters is the non-Indian Petitioners’ family. For these amici, the Indian family and other biological relatives are strangers and foreigners. The only pain and shame of removal and separation that matters is that of the non-Indian family. It is apparent the “only family” dog whistle is designed to distract our attention from the ever-present bias against Indian parents and relatives in the child welfare and adoption system. This we will not accept. As noted above, this Court long has been complicit in dehumanizing Indian people. In Professor Harris’ words, “[C]ourts established whiteness as a prerequisite to the exercise of enforceable property rights.” Harris, supra, at 1724. No longer. We additionally suspect that this form of advocacy implicates American Bar Association Rules of Professional Conduct 3.4 (Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel), 3.5 (Impartiality & Decorum of the Tribunal), 4.4 (Respect for Rights of Third Persons), and 8.4 (Misconduct).
[1] One commentator even referred to the Cherokee family here, who descend from an Indigenous nation that has been present in this hemisphere since time immemorial, as “foreign.” Thomas Sowell, Indian Child Welfare Act does not protect kids, Denton Record-Chronicle, Feb. 1, 2018, at 6A (“This little girl is just the latest in a long line of Indian children who have been ripped out of the only family they have ever known and given to someone who is a stranger to them, often living on an Indian reservation that is foreign to them.”) (emphasis added).
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Use the search word Baby Veronica to find our coverage and opinion on this blog...
There are numerous videos from Moses... his brother Thaddeus, also an adoptee, did commit suicide. Several children were adopted by the actress Mia Farrow. I have always wanted to hear from adoptees who are adopted by celebrities... here is our chance to listen...
Read Moses' first newspaper interview: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020...
As I see theft of Indigenous identity, I'm left to forge myself from scraps
When I see the cultural appropriation and identity theft of Indigenous people — the Latimer situation and others like it — it stirs something ancient in me, that resonates deep like the heartbeat of Mother Earth herself.
I was part of the Sixties Scoop. For those of you unfamiliar with that term, it refers to the tens of thousands of Indigenous children apprehended by the government to be assimilated and raised in non-Indigenous homes. In my case, the AIM (Adopt Indian and Métis) program of Saskatchewan from the 1960s and 1970s placed me permanently in a white family in small-town Saskatchewan.
I am part of the national Sixties Scoop settlement which seeks to compensate those wronged by the erasure of our cultural identity and birthright.
Now, five decades later, that loss echoes in all that I am and do. I make my home in Témiscaming, Quebec on the beautiful Ottawa River. I remain an activist on Indigenous issues, but the recent spotlight on Indigenous identity, race shifting and cultural appropriation tears at the core of me. I find myself sitting wondering, where is my buffalo robe?
The buffalo robe I speak of is my Indigenous identity (Plains Cree) and I am one of hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people displaced by centuries of Canadian government policy, left to forge my Indigenous self from scraps left by politicians, capitalism and exploitation. That's why these issues strike so deeply for Indigenous people.
My buffalo robe is my identity. It is my jingle dress on the pow wow trail. When I dance, the spirits move me and I dance without tiring, without shame and with great pride. Pow wow is a ceremony: flying ribbons, eagle feathers, all the colours of the rainbow moved by the resilience and humility of my people — a glimpse of that sacred buffalo robe on my shoulders.
