There are no rules. None! #AdopteeReunion

By Trace L Hentz, Blog Editor

 

Children would never choose to be adopted.  It was not our fault.  It happened.  As adults we have to be strong to go into reunion.  There are no rules – none.  You just go back and meet relatives.  You do risk losing your adoptive parents.  It’s like climbing a mountain on a tightrope.  It hurts me to think about this but I have to…

American, what have you done?  You really attempted to destroy Indian Country, didn’t you?  You attempted to eliminate every Indian, right?  If you couldn’t murder us all, you invented an adoption project to deal with us – to end our tribal heritage as small children, to assimilate us.

 

This was posted in 2013 on my LARA blog:

I am not myself.  I feel like I am transforming again, maybe like a part of me is dissolving, disappearing, no longer necessary.  I rarely feel like this and I don’t like it.  I can’t control it.  It won’t pass.

This time is different.  Really different.  It’s like a dark foreboding cloud.  Like I felt two days before 9-11.  It’s hard to put into words.  It’s bigger than I have words for.

I am not sure if this is/was triggered because I lost my friend Rocio very recently or how so many others (friends and family) have been dealing with major health issues, like my brother Danny who just had surgery and is going to start treatment soon. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Veronica Brown who was placed with strangers in an adoption that her father did not agree to – and he fought hard for his daughter but lost.  This little girl didn’t deserve this upheaval – Ronnie was abandoned by her birthmother at birth and essentially sold to strangers.  Her father lost her in court after court.  How does this happen in America?

Very hard things are happening right how.  Not just to me but to my circle of friends.

Yesterday I spoke with my close friend who lost her job with her tribe.  She’s an adoptee like me.  She wants to be closer to her birthmother.  This is so important for adoptees to do this hard work and to go full circle and be in reunion.  Her job loss was pure politics, the dysfunction we know that exists is our tribal world.  This friend also had an autoimmune disease that is now in remission, completely.  This is a miracle.  A deeply spiritual transformation happened to her.  Despite the loss of her excellent job with her tribe, and with much work and prayer, she just received a fantastic job offer with a university.  She won’t have to move.  She will be able to stay in reunion with her mother.  She witnessed how bad things can happen to you, even a serious illness, and yet Great Spirit is often clearing the way for a bigger job and better health.

I do believe in miracles. I believe in hard work.  Prayer works.  I know that we work for Great Spirit.  I am simply a channel for work that needs to be done.  It’s not about ego or about me at all.

You see I want all adoptees to know they can return to their families.  They can work for their tribes, too.  They can get to know their birth parents as people.  We can eventually blend in with all the relatives – but it takes time and effort.  Doing this will not be easy.  I do know this!

What America did to adoptees like me and my friend caused enormous pain and upheaval.  America removed children from our Indian families as part of a plan.  It was meant to destroy our connection to our tribes and families.  The result of a closed adoption was to alienate us from each other.  American Indians are unique and culturally rich and diverse.  Adoptees who are raised away from this culture must be allowed to step back in the circle and relearn what we missed growing up in non-Indian families.

2013 is when I wrote this... and it is still true... TLH 

 

America, land of better breeding societies https://t.co/KaKshHzBqG pic.twitter.com/DO07GXZhgw

— Schrödinger's adopted jesus (@SnavelyBrent) May 4, 2021