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I have followed the disturbing tribal dis-enrollment issue many years, first as a journalist and then as a concerned adoptee who is still without tribal membership.
First of all, since CONQUEST, the governments of Canada and the US had goals.
The inter-country ARENA program and the Indian Adoption Projects were clearly planned genocide, essentially kidnapping and trafficking in children, as an act of war on Indian families.
Other goals? Reduce the populations. Write bad treaties then break them. Steal more land. Move who is left on to concentration camps but call it a "reservation" or reserve. Remove children on those reserves to faraway places like the Carlisle Industrial Boarding School. Erase children permanently from tribal rolls. It's how the governments of
Canada and the US planned this. They kill us by military force then colonize remaining savages, then they upped the game to use paper genocide with bad or fake history, to where we are now: blood quantum sorcery.
They'll
keep us divided, a Third World stuck in poverty and fighting for scraps forever.
That was the plan.
Let me start over...
Adoptees want to go home, meet family and if possible, have a relationship with tribal relatives. We were dis-enrolled essentially and the fake papers we were given are not
real birth certificates, not tribal membership, and not land rights and treaty promises. (Yes, some adoptees found out they were enrolled before they were taken away.)
For an adoptee today, Tribal membership would be icing on the cake, and all of us absolutely deserve it!
Too many Tribal leaders are not
traditional, as I see it. I see Tribal leaders adapted to the white man rules too well. Clearly it's about money now, not us, and not our recovery.
Why? Do they not see we had no CHOICE as children adopted
out... It wasn't our fault. Is this also about money?
Are you kidding me?
Since 2004-5, I took the stance there was no awareness of the cultural genocide on Indigenous People since conquest. I also could see how too many adoptees were struggling to get their tribal membership. Too many cannot and do not approach their tribe without papers, or some kind of legal proof. Who do we call? Phone messages and requests for help go unanswered. One Native adoptee told me a judge refused her request for her adoption file in Utah, which is against federal law and what the Indian Child Welfare said is our right.
Sadly, Reserve Indians do not prioritize bringing STOLEN GENERATIONS back, and many do not know how many adoptees are out here, spread across North American and beyond.
Now tribes are disenrolling their own people? Casinos changed the landscape. Tribes are protecting their profits. Greed, as you know, is a disease.
As the governments planned this, it was to control tribal populations. And it worked.
Go READ:
"You're No Indian" Examines the Disenrollment Issue (documentary) (top photo)
More than a thousand people attend a candlelight vigil for Melissa and
Mark Hortman at the State Capitol building Wednesday. (Aaron
Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
“We wanted to sing her an honor song, a traveling song, to send her off
in a good way, for all she did for our nation and for all native people,
standing up for us, our sovereignty, and our treaty rights,” Strong
said. “She would not only just work on our behalf, but she would be a
part of our community. She came and participated in our community and
our culture and our ceremonies, and she was very empowering.”
very very bad news... poverty can do that... TRACE
U.S. government has overestimated Native American life expectancy, study finds
By Marcos Magaña, Los Angeles Times
The
ruins of an old church building and cemetery at the Taos Pueblo in New
Mexico, a living Native American community located at the base of the
Sangre de Cristo mountain range. Official U.S. records dramatically
underestimate mortality and life expectancy disparities for Native
Americans, according to a new, groundbreaking study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association. (Dreamstime/TNS)
LOS
ANGELES — Official U.S. records dramatically underestimate mortality
and life expectancy disparities for Native Americans, according to a
new, groundbreaking study published in the Journal of the American
Medical Association.
The research, led by the
Boston University School of Public Health, provides compelling evidence
of a profound discrepancy between actual and officially reported
statistics on the health outcomes of American Indian and Alaska Native
(AI/AN) populations in the U.S.
The study,
novel in its approach, tracks mortality outcomes over time among
self-identified AI/AN individuals in a nationally representative cohort
known as the Mortality Disparities in American Communities.
The
researchers linked data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2008 American
Community Survey with official death certificates from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System from
2008 through 2019, and found that the life expectancy of AI/AN
populations was 6.5 years lower than the national average. They then
compared this to data from the CDC’s WONDER database, and found that
their numbers were nearly three times greater than the gap reported by
the CDC.
Indeed, the study found that the life
expectancy for AI/AN individuals was just 72.7 years, comparable to
that of developing countries.
The researchers
also uncovered widespread racial misclassification. The study reports
that some 41% of AI/AN deaths were incorrectly classified in the CDC
WONDER database, predominantly misrecorded as “White.” These systemic
misclassifications drastically skewed official statistics, presenting
AI/AN mortality rates as only 5% higher than the national average. When
they adjusted the data to account for those misclassifications, the
researchers found that the actual rate was 42% higher than initially
reported.
The issue of racial
misclassification “is not new for us at all,” said Nanette Star,
director of policy and planning at the California Consortium for Urban
Indian Health. The recent tendency for journalists and politicians to
use umbrella terms like “Indigenous” rather than the more precise
“American Indian and Alaska Native” can obscure the unique needs,
histories and political identities of AI/AN communities, Star noted, and
contribute to their erasure in both data and public discourse. “That is
the word we use — erasure — and it really does result in that
invisibility in our health statistics,” she said.
Issues
related to racial misclassification in public records persist across
the entire life course for AI/AN individuals, from birth to early
childhood interventions to chronic disease and death. Star noted that in
California, especially in urban regions like Los Angeles, Native
individuals are frequently misidentified as Latino or multiracial, which
profoundly distorts public health data and masks the extent of health
disparities. “It really does mask the true scale of premature mortality
and health disparities among our communities,” Star said.
Further,
said Star, the lack of accurate data exacerbates health disparities.
“It really is a public health and justice issue,” she said. “If you
don’t have those numbers to support the targeted response, you don’t get
the funding for these interventions or even preventative measures.”
According
to U.S. Census data, California is home to the largest AI/AN population
in the United States. That means it has a unique opportunity to lead
the nation in addressing these systemic issues. With numerous federally
and state-recognized tribes, as well as substantial urban AI/AN
populations, California can prioritize collaborative and accurate public
health data collection and reporting.
Star
noted that current distortions are not always malicious but often stem
from a lack of training. She suggested that California implement
targeted training programs for those charged with recording this data,
including funeral directors, coroners, medical doctors and law
enforcement agents; allocate dedicated resources to improve the accuracy
of racial classification on vital records; and strengthen partnerships
with tribal leaders.
The study authors suggest
similar approaches, and there are numerous examples of successful cases
of Indigenous-led health partnerships seen across Canada and the U.S.
that have helped reduce health disparities among AI/AN communities that
could be used as a template.
These efforts
would not only help to move toward rectifying historical inaccuracies,
but also ensure that AI/AN communities receive equitable health
resources and policy attention.
“When AI/AN
people are misclassified in life and in death, it distorts public health
data and drives inequities even deeper,” said Star. “Accurate data
isn’t just about numbers — it’s about honoring lives, holding systems
accountable and making sure our communities are seen and served.”
Sisters
Lorraine Sinclair, left, and Cindy Munro attend an event marking 10
years since then Manitoba premier Greg Selinger apologized to survivors,
like them, of the Sixties Scoop. (Zubina Ahmed/CBC)
Survivors of an
infamous Canadian campaign to take Indigenous children from their
families are underscoring the need for more action on the 10-year
anniversary of the Manitoba's government formal apology for its role.
Lorraine
Sinclair and Cindy Munro are grateful they reunited. The sisters say
they're from a family of 11 children — nine of whom, including them,
were separated and adopted out during the Sixties Scoop.
"We're
learning about each other. Our other extended family and our other
brothers and sisters, we don't really know them," said Munro. "I don't
know who they are. That's not fair — that's not fair to my children, my
grandchildren, my siblings."
The sisters were among a group of
survivors and supporters at an event at St. John's Park in
north Winnipeg on Wednesday to mark a decade since then premier Greg
Selinger apologized to families caught in the Sixties Scoop.
The once
legal and systematic practice removed thousands of First Nation, Métis
and Inuit children from their birth families from the late 1950s into
the 1980s. Most were adopted out to non-Indigenous families in Canada
and abroad.
Nelda Goodman, a Menominee tribal
elder, remembers when her white friend, Miriam Horneff, bought a
ceremonial Big Drum on eBay from a former Boy Scout leader.
The
drum belonged to the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Horneff
wanted to return the drum to its original owners, so, with her will
executors, she met with Alton “Sonny” Smart of the related Lac du
Flambeau Chippewa tribe.
Smart
is a traditional helper — or “skapaewes” in Menominee — who can be
given the cultural authority from Bad River elders to transport it back
to its Wisconsin reservation.
After
Horneff died, Smart covered the drum with a blanket and returned it
with a private ceremony. However, Goodman said Horneff had a deep
fascination with cultural artifacts, and her estate sold off much of her
collection, which included other Native objects that were not
repatriated with such care.
Navajo
students after entering the Carlisle Indian School in 1882. Photo
courtesy of the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.
A year ago, the Department of the Interior
concluded a first-ever accounting of the toll that Indian boarding
schools inflicted on Indigenous people in this country over centuries. Nearly a thousand Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Native American
children were buried in 74 marked or unmarked gravesites across 65
school sites.
Another number also stood out: the $23.3 billion the U.S. government
spent on a system of forced assimilation that subjected tens of
thousands of children to torture and abuse — the bulk of which was at
times paid for out of Native Nations’ trust funds from the sale of
Indigenous lands.
In the wake of these revelations, a class-action lawsuit filed by the
Washoe Tribe and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes alleges the $23.3
billion “barely scratches the surface” of the total losses to Indigenous
communities imposed by the federal boarding school program between 1871
and 1969.
They say the tally does not account for funds generated by forced
child labor, money removed from Native Nations’ trust accounts and the
resulting economic harm of extracting children from their families and
tribes.
The lawsuit, filed May 22 in a Pennsylvania U.S. District Court,
calls on the federal government to show its receipts by preserving and
publishing “all documents related to the Boarding School Program on an
openly accessible electronic database,” as well as all documents used to
prepare the Interior Department’s July 2024 investigative report “until a full accounting is provided and authenticated.”
An attorney representing the tribe describes this accounting as a key step toward economic justice for tribes.
“The United States forcibly separated Native children from their
parents, and systematically sought to erase their cultural identity,
killing, torturing, starving, and sexually assaulting many in the
process and doing untold damage to generations,” the plaintiffs allege
in their 68-page complaint. “And it made the Native Nations put up the
money to pay for it all.”
Navajo
students before and after entering the Carlisle Indian School in 1882.
Photos courtesy of the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.
The Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the
Bureau of Indian Education are named as defendants. They have 30 days
from the time of filing to respond to the complaint or seek a
continuance.
Agency spokespeople said they could not comment on pending litigation, but in a statement noted a broader obligation to tribes.
“The Department of the Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs remain
committed to our trust responsibilities of protecting tribal treaty
rights, lands, assets, and resources,” it said, “in addition to its duty
to carry out the mandates of federal law with respect to American
Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages.”
Plaintiffs in the Pennsylvania case represent the thousands of
students across 574 federally recognized tribes whose children were
forced to attend boarding schools designed to strip them of their
culture and language.
One of those children was a Wichita boy, Oscar Stephens, who is named
in the suit. In 1905, the 10-year-old was playing by a creek near his
home when he was taken by federal agents. He spoke two words of English
at the time: “yes” and “no.”
“The
United States stuck tribes with a bill for the Boarding School Program.
at points, as much as 95% of the funding for Indian boarding schools
came from ‘Indian trust fund monies.’ raised by selling Indian land.”
— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch
Oscar was initially sent to Oklahoma’s Riverside Indian School. Three
years later, on Sept. 10, 1908, he was enrolled at the Carlisle Indian
Industrial School in Pennsylvania, weighing 94 pounds with “numerous
scars,” the complaint reads.
Oscar’s student file
notes he was routinely sent on forced “outings” — a euphemism at the
time for children sent away from school to perform free labor.
“His head was shaved, and he was beaten for speaking his native
tongue, the only language he knew,” court documents state. “Over the
years as a young teenager he was routinely placed with families to do
servile work — his file described him being sent to do housework for a
family at the age of 14 — and routinely ran away.”
👉SEE Oscar Stephens’ student file from the Carlisle Indian School
Akin to apprenticeships or indentured servitude, the “outing system”
was formalized by Richard Pratt, who opened the first federal boarding
school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a half-hour drive from Harrisburg,
where the class-action was filed.
The lawsuit describes “outings” like the ones Oscar was sent on as
central to the boarding schools’ mission. Indigenous children were
relocated from schools to farms and non-Native homes to perform manual
labor — earnings they often never saw that helped sustain the system of
servitude.
In an 1895 letter
to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, Pratt said the
practice “brings the Indian youth directly in contact with good,
wholesome, civilized life, and they absorb it rapidly, and it absorbs
them, and they become a part of it.”
Chicago-based attorney Adam Levitt is part of the legal team that
represents the tribes suing on behalf of boarding school students like
Oscar.
He said there are many unique aspects of the suit brought by the
Wichita and Affiliated Tribes in Oklahoma and the Washoe Tribe in the
Lake Tahoe region of Nevada and California.
Adam Levitt
Though they are asking for an accounting of boarding school spending, they are not yet demanding funds be returned to tribes.
“We need to know where the money went,” Levitt told The Imprint. “So
this is not a reparations case, or a damages case. Whether money will at
some point change hands stands to be seen.”
He described the early-stage case as long overdue, and the first-ever
attempt to request such an accounting from the federal government.
In a 2023 ruling
in the Brackeen v. Haaland case that unsuccessfully challenged the
constitutionality of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Neil Gorsuch discussed the relevance of such an
accounting.
“The United States stuck tribes with a bill for the Boarding School
Program,” Gorsuch wrote, “at points, as much as 95% of the funding for
Indian boarding schools came from ‘Indian trust fund monies,’ raised by
selling Indian land.”
The plaintiffs acknowledged the work it will require to document and
itemize boarding school expenses but noted “that such an accounting may
be hard is no excuse.”
“The suffering so long inflicted cannot be undone,” the complaint
reads. “But the law does not turn an uncaring eye toward historic
wrongs. Justice demands a remedy. That remedy begins with an
accounting.”
Danny Wilber, 44, an Afro-Indigenous man enrolled at the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, fought for post-conviction relief after spending nearly 18 years in Wisconsin prison for first-degree intentional homicide, a crime he was able to prove he didn’t commit. A federal judge granted his petition for habeas corpus, and he was released from prison on Dec. 22, 2021, pending the state’s appeal, with his case being dismissed on May 27, 2022. His claim for wrongful conviction was denied by the Wisconsin Claims Board in July 2024, but his federal civil rights claim was settled by the Milwaukee Common Council on May 13, 2025 for $7 million, the second largest in Milwaukee’s history. Photo of Danny Wilber at the Wisconsin State Capitol on December 4, 2022 courtesy of Lacey Kinnart.
By Darren Thompson
MILWAUKEE—On May 13, the Milwaukee Common Council approved a $6.96 million settlement for the wrongful conviction of an Afro-Indigenous man who spent 18 years in prison.
Danny Wilber, an Oneida Nation of Wisconsin citizen, was convicted for first-degree intentional murder in Milwaukee County for an incident that occurred in Jan. 2004. The wrongful conviction settlement is the second largest in Milwaukee’s history, and is the result of a federal lawsuit against the City of Milwaukee and nine former Milwaukee police officers alleged to have violated Wilber’s constitutional rights.
“The Milwaukee Police Department knew Danny Wilber was innocent—and they framed him anyway," said Lacey Kinnart, Wilber’s partner for more than a decade, in an interview with the LRI Native News Desk. “The Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office had physical evidence proving his innocence and still spent years fighting to keep him in a cage. This wasn’t a failure of justice—it was a full-scale, intentional cover-up.”
The U.S. sold this tribe’s land illegally. It’s now the latest Native group to get its home back
Harvest Public Media |
By Héctor Alejandro Arzate and Peter Medlin | June 16, 2025
Peter Medlin / Harvest Public Media
Raphael
Wahwassuck, a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomie’s tribal council
and a direct descendant of Chief Shab-eh-nay, said he looks forward to
having more youth in the community connect to their land. "A lot of
times all you hear is negative stories or stories of defeat," he said.
"But now they have something that they can refer to in a positive aspect
and show that, yes, good things can happen if you have people that are
sincere and want to recognize and understand how we can correct these
things."
The United States government promised
the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation about 1,280 acres of Illinois
reservation in an 1829 treaty. Instead, the U.S sold all of it illegally
to white settlers. The Prairie Band is now the latest tribe in the
Midwest and Great Plains to get some of their ancestral home back.
I am not sure how many states do not accommodate Native prisoners and allow ceremonies... Trace.
R.I. prisons did not accommodate Native American religious practices for three inmates, lawsuit alleges
By Christopher Gavin June 13, 2025
PROVIDENCE — A new lawsuit alleges the Rhode Island Department of Corrections has denied opportunities for three inmates
of Native American ancestry to practice their religion, in contrast to
federal and state correctional institutions around the country.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island and the Roger Williams University Law School Prisoners’ Rights Litigation Clinic filed the lawsuit
in US District Court in Providence on Friday on behalf of Tyler Smith,
Kyle Moreino, and Joseph Shepard, who are all incarcerated at the Adult
Correctional Institutions in Cranston, R.I., according to the complaint.
“Prison
systems around the country have adopted comprehensive policies for
accommodating the religious practices of Native Americans, under which
incarcerated individuals have access to a spiritual counselor, typically
a Native elder; the opportunity to participate in religious ceremonies,
including pipe ceremonies, sweat lodge ceremonies, smudging ceremonies,
drum circles, and powwows; and the opportunity to obtain religious
items, including medicine bags, feathers, and dream catchers,” the
lawsuit states.
On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Joshua Frank and Erik
Wallenberg talk with Hadley Austin, director of the new documentary, Demon Mineral, which traces the radioactive legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation.
CounterPunch, Pilsen Community Books and Science for the People are co-sponsoring a screening of the film at Socialism 2025 in Chicago on July 4th. You can also check out Demon Mineral on Kanopy.
Hadley Austin is a filmmaker/director, producer, poet, photographer,
and aerialist. Along with Yoni Goldstein, she is one-half of Formidable
Entities, a Chicago-based film production studio.
CounterPunch Radio is produced by Nathaniel St. Clair, and
co-hosted by Joshua Frank, Erik Wallenberg and Rebecca Maria
Goldschmidt.
Cyrus Edward Dallin, “Appeal to the Great Spirit” (1909) in front of
Alan Michelson’s “The Knowledge Keepers” (2024) at the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston (photo Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic)
As a child, Alan Michelson often rode the T past sculptor Cyrus Edward
Dallin’s “Appeal to the Great Spirit” (1908) outside the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. He was riveted by the statue’s grand horse and the
powerful yet melancholy figure wearing a striking Plains Indian war
bonnet. It was only in his 20s that the artist learned that he had been
separated through adoption from his own Native heritage and Mohawk birth
family in the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, Canada. He
soon learned that the Dallin sculpture he marveled at in childhood
symbolized the nefarious “Vanishing Indian” myth, which cast Indigenous
peoples as doomed to extinction.
Host Levi Rickert sits down with Norbert Hill and Megan Hill to tackle the colonial policy that’s mathematically eliminating Indigenous communities — one generation at a time.
Drawing from their new book, Beyond Blood Quantum, the Hills examine how a 150-year-old colonial weapon is still being used against Native people — often by their own tribes. The math is brutal: blood-quantum requirements mean some tribes could legally cease
to exist within decades.
Norbert Hill, former area director of education for the Oneida Nation, and his daughter, Megan Hill, senior director at Harvard University, bring both lived experience and scholarly insight to the conversation. Together, they explore how blood quantum has historically
divided Native communities and present bold solutions for reclaiming identity and strengthening tribal citizenship for future generations.
This episode is more than a conversation—it’s an urgent call to rethink the frameworks that define who belongs. Discover how blood quantum weaponizes identity against Indigenous survival and learn about innovative solutions for preserving tribal futures.
Don’t miss this critical conversation that challenges outdated thinking and centers Indigenous perspectives.
TUNE IN:
Date: Friday, June 13th
Time: 12:00 pm ET / 11:00 am CT / 10:00 am MT / 9:00 am PT
A few weeks ago while doom-scrolling my Instagram feed, I came across a blaring headline
by The Washington Post urging me to immediately delete my DNA data from
23andMe: “If you’re one of the 15 million people who shared your DNA
with 23andMe, it’s time to delete your data.”
I almost skipped past it,
but then remembered that I had taken their test in high school in an
effort to find out more about my biological parents. The results had
revealed nothing new to me nor offered any insight into my ancestry, so
by the time I came across this warning, the entire ordeal had slipped my
mind. By March 23, the genetic information company declared bankruptcy, and later that week, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a “consumer alert” warning people to delete their genetic data housed by the firm.
For most customers, severing ties with this company may seem like a
cut-and-dry situation. However, that decision may be far more complex
for one group of people: adoptees.
In between frantically searching for my old 23andMe login and scouring the news, I came across a post by the Nanchang Project,
urging customers to keep their 23andMe data. This nonprofit aims to
build a community of adoptees and aid in their search for biological
relatives in China by organizing DNA testing and origin search trips. I
happened to come across their website last year during my own search for
more Asian adoptee communities. Since its founding, the nonprofit has
helped reunite 94 adoptees with their biological parents and have done
more than 400 biological tests — all relying heavily on 23andMe.
OKMULGEE, Okla. – During her
lifetime Phyllis Bigpond (Yuchi) spent over 40 years working in Native
American advocacy and community service. Serving Native communities in
Arizona, Oklahoma and Colorado, Bigpond made a big impact in the areas
she lived in. On April 17 it was announced that the former Ross-Barnum
Denver Public Library Branch was renamed the Ross-Phyllis Bigpond Branch
Library in honor of her contributions to the community.
Bigpond passed away on September 26,
2009 after battling lymphoma of the brain. She was the recipient of many
awards throughout her lifetime including Outstanding Native American
Leader by the Association of the American Indian Social Work. She was honored by then Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who proclaimed July 30, 2009 to be Phyllis Bigpond Day.
Bigpond was one of the founding
members of the Denver Indian Family Resource Center (DIFRC), along with
Lucille Ecohawk (Pawnee), and Dr. Nancy Lucero (Mississippi Choctaw). The center was built in 2000, back when Denver did not offer Indian
Child Welfare Act services for urban Native American families. DIFRC
offers culturally-connected services with the goal of keeping families
together, and connected to their culture.
In response to our ITVX investigation, the UK government said: “This abhorrent practice should never have taken place, and our deepest sympathies are with all those affected.
“We take this issue extremely seriously and continue to engage with those impacted to provide support.”
In
2016 the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales apologised
“for the hurt caused by agencies acting in the name of the Catholic
Church”.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols acknowledged
“the grief and pain caused by the giving up of a child through
adoption", and added that "the practices of all adoption agencies
reflected the social values at the time".
If you have been affected by the issues in this report, please visit the links for help and support:
Adult Adoptee Movement - provides links to resources offering information and support for adoptees in the UK
As out-of-control wildfires threaten communities across central and
Western Canada, thousands of people have been forced out of their homes
across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta — but even in the face of
mandatory evacuation orders and potential danger, some people may not go
willingly, or at all.
6/6/2025: ARIZONA: The Future, MINING, Man Camps and MMIWG
As Lian BigHorse helps her daughter prepare for her coming of age ceremony, she quietly tells the tragic story of Emily Pike, a teenage girl from her community who went missing, and was later found murdered, earlier this year.
“We’re
talking about how to start educating our community locally on what’s
happening, and the impacts of losing even one person,” said BigHorse,
the daughter of Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr., an Elder who has been working
for decades to protect Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, a sacred site in Arizona’s
Tonto National Forest.
BigHorse
explains how extractive resources correlate directly with increased
sexual violence, exacerbating the crisis of MMIWG+. “People don’t know –
because it’s so under-reported, and rarely are perpetrators brought to
justice,” she said.
As
a director of children’s mental health at San Carlos Apache Tribe, and
professor of Native American Studies at the American University of
Sovereign Nations, she wants more people to understand what’s at stake.
“Our community doesn’t understand what’s happening across the nation.”
With minimal infrastructure surrounding them, mining “boom towns” have historically been vulnerable to crime, states
the U.S. State Department’s office to monitor and combat human
trafficking. “The link between these industries and sex trafficking is
increasingly an issue of grave concern.”
Superior Mayor Mila Besich says she supports the planned Resolution Copper Mine, but is candid about her concerns that come with an influx of workers, and the risk of increased gender-based violence.
“Mining is inherently like a frat house,” she explains, drawing comparison to gender-based violence in the military. “When workers are brought in from far away, and families are separated, that mentality takes root.”
“I’m vehemently opposed to man camps
– not going to happen,” she said, unflinching in her resolve “I do not
want to be number one in domestic violence. I do not want to be number
one in STDs.”
“Areas
where extraction activities occur are usually remote and may be
difficult to access, meaning that workers are isolated from government
oversight and community support, and may have less access to protective
services, legal advocates, and law enforcement personnel.”
“We call on the Government of Canada to act now to ensure full
implementation of the Calls for Justice, not only on human trafficking,
but also policing, corrections, the impacts of resource extraction, and
interjurisdictional and cross-border coordination,” said National Chief
Woodhouse Nepinak. “We know what’s possible when governments and
institutions act with political will. That same commitment is needed now
for every First Nations woman, girl, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ person across this
country.”
Support is available. The Hope for Wellness Help Line provides
immediate mental health counseling and crisis intervention to all
Indigenous people across Canada. This toll-free service is accessible 24
hours a day, 7 days a week. To talk with someone, please call
1-855-242-3310. Phone and chat counselling is available in English and
French. Phone counselling is also available in Cree, Ojibwe, and
Inuktitut, upon request.
Belinda
Cameron holds her daughter, Stephanie Cameron-Johnson, in 1993. The
last confirmed sighting of Cameron was at a Shoppers Drug Mart in
Esquimalt, B.C., on May 11, 2005. (Submitted by Stephanie Johnson-Cameron)
Stephanie
Cameron-Johnson was 11 and in foster care when she learned her mother
had gone missing on Vancouver Island, after a friend showed her a photo
in a newspaper.
What followed would be two decades of
challenging racial stereotypes surrounding her mom, undoing shame,
and repairing identity disconnection caused by the child welfare
system, Cameron-Johnson says.
"The narrative that's been
spoken about missing, murdered Indigenous women and two-spirit folks… I
really feel like it's my responsibility to change that," said
Cameron-Johnson.
Her mother Belinda Cameron, a Sixties Scoop survivor from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, was 42 when she was last seen at a Shoppers Drug Mart in Esquimalt, B.C., on Esquimalt Rd near Head St., on May 11, 2005.
She
suffered from a mental illness and was prescribed medication, to be
picked up at Shoppers daily, but failed to attend the pharmacy in the
days following. She wasn't reported missing until June 4.
Police consider disappearance suspicious
Det. Colin Hanninen of the Victoria Police Department said Cameron was a person of routine and a fixture in Esquimalt in 2005.
She
was considered a vulnerable person by police due to addiction and
mental health issues, said Hanninen, and her disappearance is considered
suspicious.
Cameron was initially reported missing by a
man who she'd been involved with, but the man told Victoria Police he
had not seen her in over a month. Police used a polygraph test to
question if the man had harmed Cameron; he denied doing so and passed
the test.
"At the time there was a robust investigation involving this person, and a polygraph was part of that," said Hanninen.
Investigators
conducted over 100 interviews and an extensive forensic examination of
Cameron's Cairn Road apartment near Old Esquimalt Road, said Hanninen,
as well as canine and helicopter searches.
Cameron wasn't reported missing until June 4, 2005, nearly a month after her last confirmed sighting. (Submitted by Stephanie Cameron-Johnson)
"Unfortunately,
you know, it had been potentially three to four weeks from the time we
can confirm she was last seen to her being reported, which puts you at a
disadvantage," said Hanninen.
"In 2005, it would have
been a lot more challenging than it would be today to find clues of
where she could have gone or, you know, if she was with anybody."
A 2010 report
from the Native Women's Association of Canada said British Columbia had
the highest number of cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
and Girls in the country, according to its database.
B.C.
also had the highest percentage of suspicious death cases: nine per
cent of the cases in its database from B.C. fell under the category of
suspicious deaths, compared to four per cent nationally, the report
said.
Published on Sep 28, 2013 This 40-minute documentary explains the reason for and the process of creating and implementing ...
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You are not alone
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
GO HERE:
https://www.gluckstein.com/sixties-scoop-survivors
Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie
NO MORE STOLEN SISTERS
click image
We conclude this series & continue the conversation by naming that adoption is genocide. This naming refers to the process of genocide that breaks kinship ties through adoption & other forms of family separation & policing 🧵#NAAM2022#AdoptionIsTraumaAND#AdopteeTwitter#FFY 1/6 pic.twitter.com/46v0mWISZ1
As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.
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