Part 3: What if We Lost ICWA? Kinship Care

👉Nicole Chung on the family who tried to end racism through adoption: “The reality, of course, is that transracial adoption has no intrinsic power to heal racial prejudice.” | The Atlantic

Part 3: What if We Lost ICWA?

By Trace L Hentz, blog editor

Last November I wrote a post: WE ARE NOT GOING BACK and ended the post with: If the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) fails we will write a stronger law.  I meant it, and states are enacting their own laws right now to protect Indian children from the predatory billion-dollar Adoption Industry.

I had a friend, Jagade, who dreamed for others.  (Yes, that is a real thing. Sadly she passed on a few years ago.) She told me about a dream she had that many more adoptees were coming.  I didn't want to believe her.  She told me that is why I was directed to do the anthologies, so that future adoptees would know the history of the Indian Adoption Projects and what happened.  And how to return to their tribes as adults.

This dream can means two things: There is still too much poverty in Indian Country and the authorities (social workers) will come for Native children, judging families based solely on living conditions. It's happened before.  They need an excuse to remove children so the judges and lawyers and adoption industry can continue making profits.  (It also means that there are not enough Native people to foster and adopt children, and become adoptive parents.) 

Poverty Porn? Yes.

High levels of perceived Poverty justifies removal of American Indian children (again?) #PovertyPorn

Individuals with little exposure to or experience with American Indian communities would have little to no knowledge of these forms of social safety nets (ie. kinship care). 

Second: The other thing her dream might mean is: adoption will not be closed, and people who are adopted will know the truth when they become adults, and access and open their adoption file. And then have a reunion.

Yes, adoption has changed that much since I started studying it back in 2004/5.

Let's look at prior stats:

How many children were adopted in 2000 and 2001? STATiSTiCS

 AFCARS reported 54,627 adoptions in the United States during fiscal year 2000 and 50,136 adoptions in fiscal year 2001.

1992

PUBLIC: 18%

INTERCOUNTRY: 5%

PRIVATE, INDEPENDENT, KINSHIP AND TRIBAL: 77%

2001

PUBLIC: 39%

INTERCOUNTRY: 15%

PRIVATE, INDEPENDENT, KINSHIP AND TRIBAL: 46%

This number includes private agency, independent, and tribal adoptions with public agency involvement that were reported to AFCARS.

Is this the future? Kinship care?

Kinship care missing from survey

2010 excerpt:

Terry L. Cross, executive director of the Portland-based National Indian Child Welfare Association and an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation New York, said the results have their roots in cultural backgrounds.

“Cultural norms, including sustaining strong extended families, handing down of culture and traditions, and establishing a positive identity, contribute to perceptions of our foster care system and notions of your place within that system. What is missing from the survey is how many people would support ‘kinship care,’ or relative care, over foster care placements in a stranger’s home,” Cross said.

Cross said kinship care is considered by most to be a cultural norm of Indian Country, and when a crisis arises other family members step in to share the burden of taking care of the children. Given a choice of a child being removed from a home due to maltreatment and being placed in a licensed foster home with strangers in a new community, Cross said, it appears most Indians will choose informal kinship care arrangements, even if it means little financial support for the kinship caregivers.

 

and finally in 2018:

KINSHIP: State Turns to Urgent Placement of Foster Kids with Relatives, Friends

 

Up Front

40 years ago we stopped the practice of separating American Indian families. Let’s not reverse course.

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Editor Note: The government takes the land AND causes the poverty, then they want more LAND and take the children to achieve this goal. The genocide cycle never ends...  That is the sport of colonization and empire. Trace

to be continued