BRUTAL PAST| Mental Impact of Cross-Cultural Adoptions

👉 The Brutal Past and Uncertain Future of Native Adoptions. “It is our right as Indian nations to raise our children,” said Sandy White Hawk, founder of the Minnesota-based First Nations Repatriation Institute, which serves Native people affected by adoption and foster care. 

In 1958, the Indian Adoption Project(s) were created “to stimulate adoption of American Indian children by Caucasian families on a nationwide basis.” 

See a 1967 portrait of a Long Island family, the Zuckermans, who took part in the project.  The program was immensely popular in New York, which was already the center of a robust and lucrative adoption marketplace.  

Such treatment of Native parents and caretakers by white social workers was not uncommon, but the Devils Lake Sioux were among the first to fight back publicly.  Members of the tribe, which is now called the Spirit Lake Tribe, traveled to New York for a news conference at the Indian Affairs office arranged that summer.  CLICK: [https://turtletalk.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/proquestdocuments-2018-11-09.pdf.]

 

COMMENT:

kkseattle

Seattle May 17

The entire argument for eradicating the Indian Child Welfare Act was expressed in a white supremacist poem by Robert Louis Stevenson that I expect Samuel Alito to quote in the opinion, with zero sense of irony: 

Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow, 

Little frosty Eskimo, Little Turk or Japanee, 

Oh! don't you wish that you were me? 

You have seen the scarlet trees 

And the lions over seas; 

You have eaten ostrich eggs, 

And turned the turtle off their legs. 

 Such a life is very fine, 

But it's not so nice as mine: 

You must often as you trod, 

Have wearied NOT to be abroad. 

You have curious things to eat, 

I am fed on proper meat; 

You must dwell upon the foam,

 But I am safe and live at home. 

 Little Indian, Sioux or Crow, Little frosty Eskimo, Little Turk or Japanee, 

Oh! don't you wish that you were me? VIA

 (New York Times)

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The Indian Child Welfare Act

A challenge before the Supreme Court.

Race Question in Supreme Court Adoption Case Unnerves Tribes

Nov. 7, 2022

Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Law on Adopting Native American Children

Feb. 28, 2022

Who Can Adopt a Native American Child? A Texas Couple vs. 573 Tribes

June 5, 2019

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Not Feeling “American Enough”: The Mental Impact of Cross-Cultural Adoption. “For adoptees in the adoptee community, to move forward is to have allies,” she explains. “The narrative [around cross-cultural adoption tends to] lie with adoptive parents, and so we need them to elevate our stories, to elevate us in order for people to know that there is another narrative out there. It's not this fairy tale.”

 

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