“Because it’s who I am, and I have more to do.”

 

Seneca Nation citizen Terry Cross is widely known as the founding executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, launched in the early 1980s, and continues to serve as a senior adviser to the organization assisting tribes with preventing child abuse and neglect. 

These days, Cross, 71, spends time taking long walks on the Nedonna Beach with his wife, Kristin, he said in a lengthy interview with The Imprint. But he admitted that he’s “not very good” at staying retired, and so his work with Indigenous children and families through the organization known as NICWA continues — in large part due to his optimism about the future.

"...For those who’ve gone to boarding school, or those who’ve been reared in foster care, so many of our people were deprived of the opportunity to learn really positive ways of raising children. We need to be able to restore that and to give them the opportunity, because they’ve been told by the mainstream child welfare system that there’s something wrong with them. 

"Our approach is to say, ‘Here’s the teachings of our ancestors, many of you have missed this, and you have a right to learn it as an Indigenous person.’ Then you decide how you want your children raised. But the essence of those tribal teachings remains the same, because they have been handed down from time immemorial.

READ

Reunification and ICWA

 

READ HERE

montanafreepress.org

**

👉The Biden administration has introduced plans for new data collection on how well states comply with the Indian Child Welfare Act, potentially resolving part of a federal court challenge on the subject. 

The new proposed elements are “critical to being able to assess whether states are in compliance with the provisions of the ICWA,” Angelique Day, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, told Youth Services Insider. “ICWA can only fully be realized as the gold standard for child welfare if we are following it according to legislative intent.” 

(FILM) Gene Boy Came Home by Alanis Obomswain

Gene Boy Came Home is a 2007 documentary film by First Nations filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

The film tells the story of Eugene "Gene Boy" Benedict, who is a First Nations person raised on the Odanak Indian Reserve, approximately an hour and a half east of Montreal.   He left home at age 15 to work in construction in New York City.  At 17, adrift and beginning to lose his way, he accepted a dare and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.  A few months later, he was on his way to the frontlines of the Vietnam War.

The film recounts Benedict's childhood, when he was taken from his family (adopted out) then sent to school in Ontario.  In his teens, he left his reserve to in then high steel construction in the United States.  On a dare from his step-father, he enlisted in the U.S. military and went through boot camp at Parris Island. The film combines his recollections of experiences there with scenes of a contemporary boot camp, to show how little has changed in the way young men are broken down and remade as soldiers.^[3]

Benedict was assigned as a sniper and scout at Da Nang. During his time in Vietnam, he saw friends killed and maimed, and found himself fighting Vietcong as young as six years old. Benedict was also sprayed with Agent Orange, though he and his fellow soldiers were never warned of its hazards. After his military tour was over, he returned home only to find that, like many Vietnam vets, he was "spat upon" and "treated like the enemy." He learned to hide the fact that he served in Vietnam, and felt abandoned by the government. Afflicted with post-traumatic stress, he would experience flashbacks and bad dreams for the rest of his life.^[3]

Looking for some relief from his trauma, he decided to return to his home reserve in Odanak. Though he continued to need medication, he was able to gain some measure of peace, driving the community's school bus and helping young people. Benedict died shortly after the film's final scene was shot, at the age of 59.^[3]

Watch here.

‘True Detective’: Kali Reis on #MMIP

 

Putting a spotlight on missing and murdered Indigenous women is something Kali Reis (Wampanoag) has been passionate about throughout her career and is one of the reasons she signed on to play Navarro. “That’s the whole reason why I started bringing awareness to different issues in the community with my boxing career,” Reis says.

READ MORE 

Spoiler alert: Ending the TV Mystery HERE 

ABOUT KALI:

Reis was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on August 24, 1986 and is the youngest of five children.^[8] She and her siblings were raised by their mother in East Providence, Rhode Island.^[8][9] Reis claims Cape Verdean ancestry, and identifies as being of Native American descent, specifically Cherokee and Nipmuc ancestry.^[10] She is a member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe,^[10] an unrecognized tribe in Massachusetts. 

In June 2022, Reis was announced as the co-lead of True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of HBO's anthology crime series. Reis starred alongside Jodie Foster as a detective investigating the disappearance of eight men from an Alaskan research station. WIKI

Carlisle Labor, Arrivals | Eugenics

Indian boys at work in shoe-makers shop at Carlisle Barracks

 Choate, J. N. (John N.), 1848-1902

Boarding schools

United States Indian School (Carlisle, Pa.)

Sioux boys as they arrived at the Indian Training School, Carlisle Barracks, Oct. 5, 1879

 

 

Sioux boys as they arrived at the Indian Training School, Carlisle Barracks, Oct. 5, '79

Description

Black and white, large group photograph of Lakota SIoux boys in front of residential school facilities. Title written on verso.

People

Creator (cre): Choate, J. N. (John N.), 1848-1902

Contributor (ctb): Speck, Frank Gouldsmith, 1881-1950

Collection

Speck-Choate Photograph Collection

Subject

Choate, J. N. (John N.), 1848-1902

Boarding schools

United States Indian School (Carlisle, Pa.)

Date Created

1879-10-05

 

Sioux girls as they arrived at the Indian Training School, Carlisle Barracks, Oct. 5th, 1879

Creator (cre): Choate, J. N. (John N.), 1848-1902

Contributor (ctb): Speck, Frank Gouldsmith, 1881-1950

Description

Black and white, large group photograph of Lakota Sioux young women and girls wearing traditional clothing. Title written on verso. 

https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/graphics%3A2642

 

 

**

BORN TO BE A BURDEN?

Guineau Pigs at right (interbreeding is bad obviously)

EUGENICS

Exhibit at Sesquicentennial Exposition, Philadelphia, Pa., 1926.

Description

American Eugenics Society photograph with caption "Exhibit at Sesquicentennial Exposition, Philadelphia, Pa., 1926."

Collection

American Eugenics Society Records

Subject

Eugenics

American Eugenics Society

Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition (1926 : Philadelphia, Pa.)

Date Created: 1926

 

FILM: A Place Between - The Story of an Adoption

By Trace Hentz (blog editor) REBLOG from 2019

I run across comments by adoptive parents and PAPS (potential adoptive parents) asking 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.

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.

 Here is an example on Adoption.com:

SupaModel

April 15, 2011

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, Curtis Kaltenbaugh, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

Montana Foster Care and #ICWA

 

 

Native American children make up more than a third of the foster care caseload in Montana, despite representing less than 10% of the state’s child population. While there’s a broad consensus among child welfare experts that this outsized representation is a problem, there exists no collective strategy to address it. The Montana Free Press series Keeping the Kids, supported by a data fellowship through the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, explores the available data and highlights examples of local solutions around the state. This article focuses on MTFP’s analysis of the available data and some of the factors contributing to racial disproportionality in foster care. 

READ

If poverty exists, and it does in Indian Country, there will always be a problem... let's solve poverty... Trace

RELATED

How we calculated disproportionality in Montana foster care

In October of last year, Montana Free Press started investigating why Montana’s foster care caseload, which was at least 38% Native American in 2022, is so racially skewed. Here’s how data shaped our reporting.

by Mara Silvers 02.12.2024

Indigenous Children Forced Adoption: 2021 | Even More Children Than In The Residential School System

Remember it was expensive to run the residential schools, so their next plan was (closed) adoptions that were cheaper and more permanent.  Our records were sealed.  We disappear... The Indian Adoption Projects and ARENA (Adoption Resource Exchange of America and Canada) were cultural genocide... intentional moving children from the Canada to the US and vice versa.

Apooyak’ii, Dr. Tiffany Prete: The Kainai Stolen Children Era

2022

Did you know Indigenous children in Canada endured more than just Indian residential schools during the stolen children era? Indeed, they did.  In fact, for over a century, the Canadian government used several school models to try to assimilate Indigenous children. 

 University of Lethbridge sociology professor Apooyak’ii, Dr. Tiffany Prete, talks about The Kainai Stolen Children Era.  ICYMI: Watch the video

Apooyak’ii/Dr. Tiffany Prete (nee Hind Bull) is a member of the Kainai (Blood Tribe) of the Siksikasitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy), located in the Treaty 7 area.  Her program of work is comprised of implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action on the Blood Reserve. Prete’s background is in educational policy studies, specializing in Indigenous Peoples education. Her area of expertise includes Indigenous secondary retention rates within the public school system, Blackfoot historical research, impacts of colonization, intergenerational trauma, and Indigenous research methodologies. 

PDF   Learn more, visit: ulethbridge.ca/artsci/pps-prete

Wyoming #MMIWP | BIA 24/7 HELP LINE: 1-844-275-2497

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

The FBI just launched a new project to collect more data about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis.

Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann reports on the announcement at the Wind River Reservation made last week.

The FBI is the primary law enforcement agency that investigates serious crimes on the Wind River Reservation – and they’re trying to collect more information about those who’ve gone missing or have been murdered.

The agency set up a new designated email account – WYMMIP@fbi.gov – to better understand what the crisis looks like in the state and what resources the agency can contribute to solving cases.

FBI agent Leonard Carollo says he recognizes that tribal members have not always been comfortable working with the agency.

“We recognize these historical barriers and want to do all we can to improve the flow of information.”

Agents and other FBI employees will collect information – like new details or cases that were never reported – for the next ninety days. Then, they will research and investigate the tips.

The FBI also plans to host in-person information-gathering sessions on the Reservation.

Barbara BadElk 60s Scoop survivor

 

Adoptees, WE CAN BE ANYWHERE!

MORE VIDEOS HERE: https://sixtiesscoopnetwork.org/projects

LINK: https://thecount2024.blogspot.com/

 

Top court upholds Indigenous child welfare law, AFN chief reacts

Committed to Investigating Abuses at 523 BOARDING SCHOOLS (USA)

 

Thursday, February 8, 2024

This week, U.S. Reps. Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk/D-KS) and Tom Cole (Chickasaw/R-OK) reintroduced legislation to investigate, document, and report on the histories of Indian boarding schools and their long-term impacts on tribal communities.

The bill has been endorsed by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS).

NABS CEO Deborah Parker talked about the legislation at the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit.

“It’s much needed to help us tell the story, help us understand what happened to our Native American children in U.S. boarding schools. And we deserve, America deserves, not only Native Americans, but students, but people, any human being who is living today deserves to understand the truth about what happened in the United States.”

Parker says they’re seeking records and information from both the federal government and churches that ran the schools.

“We know parents are still looking for children to this day, their relatives who never came home. Most of the parents are no longer with us, but there are elders who have brothers and sisters, siblings, cousins who never made it home from the boarding school. So, they are missing. We’re trying to help families locate their loved ones…we still know our communities have, we have broken systems within our communities because we don’t know where our loved ones are.”

The legislation would establish a formal commission to investigate federal Indian boarding school policies, develop recommendations for federal entities to help with healing efforts, and provide a forum for victims to speak.

Reps. Davids and Cole, co-chairs of the Congressional Native American Caucus, say they’re committed to investigating the abuses at the institutions, which are connected to an estimated 500 student deaths.  (I have seen bigger numbers: 10,000 + who died in the schools)

The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act of 2024 has also been endorsed by the National Congress of American Indians.

 

Where are they?  Where are all the adoptees? Genocide is hard to document, right? Trace

My Interview: ADOPTION UNCOVERED

ENTIRE INTERVIEW:  Adoption Uncovered

Photo by Daniel Torobekov

Most of us have heard bits and pieces about how poorly America has treated the Native Tribes that have lived on this land. We may not understand fully how adoption was weaponized against tribes to raise children who were brought up without a memory of their heritage and culture. As journalist Trace Lara Hentz began to look into her own past as a Native American Adoptee she began to realize how many people like her are out there and alone. This year she is embarking on a project to find out how many adoptees in America and around the world can trace their history to a Native American tribe. Listen to this interview with Trace for more information about how adoption is connected to America’s treatment of Native American tribes, and where we should go from here.

If you or someone you know is a Native American Adoptee please consider participating in “The Count 2024“. The link to access the count is here.

Find easy access to all of Trace Lara Hentz’s written works on Amazon here.

Read more about Trace on her blog here.

To read more on the American Indian Adoptee blog click here.

Canada: Support for Adoptees | Stronger Than the Scoop

Campaign seeks to support ’60s Scoop survivors

• Miranda Leybourne, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Brandon Sun
• Feb 2, 2024

Educating the public about the lasting impacts of the ’60s Scoop on Indigenous individuals and families is the mission behind the Southern Chiefs’ Organization’s newest education and awareness campaign.

“It is essential we recognize the lasting impacts of the ’60s Scoop on Anishinaabe and Dakota citizens,” Jerry Daniels, grand chief of the Southern Chiefs’ Organization (SCO) said in a press release sent out on Jan 17.

The campaign, called “Stronger Than the Scoop,” will honour and care for survivors of the ’60s Scoop and their families.

The Scoop saw the removal of Indigenous children from their communities, families and cultures from the 1960s to the ’80s. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 First Nation, Métis and Inuit children were removed from their families and communities by the federal government and adopted out into non-Indigenous households.

According to the University of British Columbia, the ’60s Scoop began because the federal government started to phase out sending Indigenous children to residential schools in the 1950s and ‘60s, though the practice continued for decades.

The government, however, deemed many Indigenous families “unsuitable” to care for their children, and soon provinces were legislated to be able to use child protection services to remove Indigenous children from their families.

Indigenous Foundations, a group out of British Columbia, says that children who grew up in conditions where their identity was suppressed and where they were abused often eventually experienced psychological and emotional problems that sometimes didn’t emerge until later in life when they learned the truth about their roots.

“We often talk about resilience when it comes to our peoples, and that certainly applies to those who survived the ’60s Scoop,” Daniels said, calling it another dark chapter in what was an “epidemic” of child apprehension which started with residential schools. “We need to acknowledge the systemic harm and generational trauma that was caused and do what we can to help with healing.”

Chief Gordon Bluesky of the Brokenhead Ojibway First Nation, 298 kilometres northeast of Brandon, extended his gratitude to the national Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation of Canada for providing support to raise awareness of the impact of the Scoop, he said.

“I am pleased and proud to see SCO create this campaign to help bring awareness to this practice that continues to impact our citizens. It is essential that all citizens in Canada learn the truth about the practice and the ongoing impact of the ’60s Scoop,” Bluesky said.

The SCO is focusing the campaign on survivors of its member nations.  The organization represents 34 Anishinaabe and Dakota nations in southern Manitoba, and more than 85,500 citizens, its website states.

The SCO held an upcoming Survivors’ Healing Gathering in Winnipeg the week the press release was sent out, which featured keynote speaker Colleen Cardinal Hele, the executive director of the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network and ’60s Scoop survivor.

A virtual sharing circle for survivors was held on Jan. 25, and this month, a sharing circle for survivors will take place in Brandon on Feb. 10.

While the damage done by the Scoop remains, the SCO is committed to doing all it can to help survivors and their families regain their languages, cultures and identities, Daniels said.  He also put a call out for all Canadians to learn about the ’60s Scoop and the effect it had on Indigenous people so that they can help the SCO and other organizations do everything they can to help those impacted on their healing journeys.

“To our survivors: I see you and I honour you for what you have experienced. I stand with you as you move forward on your healing journeys,” Daniels said.

SOURCE:  https://www.pentictonherald.ca/spare_news/article_eec89e81-3ae0-58e1-80be-1ceaeda3536b.html

Caught Red-Handed #Looters #Murder #NAGPRA (updated!)

By Trace Hentz, blog editor

In the new book ALMOST Dead Indians, the expectation of dead Indians is pretty evident: after first contact: 1,000+ massacres, slavery, plagues they spread via blankets, rotten food commodities, poisons that killed entire tribal communities, numerous scalp bounties, then the Lake Mohonk rich men like General Pratt suggesting all kids attend residential boarding schools (Carlisle Indian Industrial School) - these ideas were the best way to assimilate and KILL THE INDIAN and SAVE THE MAN... it's all there... we have proof.

But looting graves and theft was yet another way to kill the Indian, to hide what they did: plus they'd make money, get a college degree from somewhere, while they leveled and robbed thousands of mounds (and tribal massacre sites) that held our dead and our sacred items.  See a pattern here?

It was expected we would all die... sooner than later... one way or the other.

Looting is proof.  Our bones in museum collections is more proof. These museums and the looters got caught red-handed.  Now they will pay for this atrocity.  We are exposing them.

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chair Schatz Demands Institutions to Return Native Remains and Items to Tribes  

For centuries, Native people had everything stolen from them – their lands, their water, their languages, and even their children. It wasn’t that long ago that it was the official policy of the United States government to terminate the existence of tribes and forcibly assimilate their citizens. And a big part of that unrelenting, inhumane policy was that the remains of Native ancestors and culturally significant items were also taken from them. Not with permission, but by force. Not discovered, but stolen. On battlefields and in cemeteries, under the cover of darkness or the guise of academic research.

Think about that. The U.S. government literally stole people’s bones. Soldiers and agents overturned graves and took whatever they could find. And these weren’t isolated incidents – they happened all across the country. In my home state of Hawai‘i, the remains of Native Hawaiians – or iwi kūpuna as they’re called – were routinely pillaged without any regard for the sanctity of the burials or Native Hawaiian culture. 

And all of it was brought to some of the most venerable institutions – at home and abroad -- to be studied like biological specimens…displayed in museum exhibits as if they’re paintings on loan…or squirreled away in a professor’s office closet, never to be seen again.

The theft of hundreds of thousands of remains and items over generations was unconscionable in and of itself. But the legacy of that cruelty continues to this day because these museums and universities continue to hold onto these sacred items in violation of everything that is right and moral – and importantly, in violation of federal law.

read more: https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/senate-committee-on-indian-affairs-chair-schatz-demands-institutions-to-return-native-remains-and-items-to-tribes

 Free BOOK PDF: email: tracelara@pm.me

*

TODAY on NATIVE AMERICA CALLING

Why are museums taking down Native exhibitions?

New language in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is prompting museums to pull some Native items from public display. The rule went into effect in January that requires museums to consult with tribes more comprehensively when it comes to Native artifacts. That’s because, even though they may not be the human remains or sacred items that NAGPRA historically referenced, many items held by museums, universities, and other institutions could have been looted from Native sites or otherwise taken under suspicious circumstances.

 

LINK: https://www.nativeamericacalling.com

 

👇

Opinion

Return the Stolen Artifact, But Keep the Museum Label

Some museums have chosen to explain the removals they had made for reasons including not wanting to display racial stereotypes, reconsidering “whose perspectives receive prominence in our collections,” and discovering that an object was created by someone pretending to represent a cultural tradition. I have also seen signs in the Denver Museum of Nature and Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) explaining that an empty slot in a case was once filled with an artifact restored to a Native American community. 

 

+

During District Attorney Bragg’s tenure, the ATU has recovered more than 800 antiquities stolen from 24 countries and valued at more than $155 million. Since its creation, the ATU has recovered nearly 4,500 antiquities stolen from 29 countries and valued at more than $375 million.

Under District Attorney Bragg, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU) has repatriated more than 950 antiquities stolen from 19 countries and valued at more than $165 million. Since its creation, the ATU has returned more than 2,450 antiquities to 24 countries and valued at more than $230 million.

https://manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-returns-two-7th-century-antiquities-to-china/