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.
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