Part One: What if we lost ICWA?

“The adoption system traditionally requires that children disavow reality.” BJ Lifton, adoptee, author (1994)

By Trace L Hentz, Blog Editor

Lying in bed last night I was writing this post "WHAT IF WE LOST ICWA?"  (Most of my ideas got wiped out by sleep.)

Here is some of what I remember:

For the last few days I've been cleaning my Outlook email inbox.  (Hundreds and hundreds of emails are kept in folders, for safe keeping. Just in case: If I need to ask something, find something or someone.)  I thought I'd be more organized if I kept everything, to remember names. (I'm talking HUGE FILES and lists and replies and adoptee stories and so many requests for help.)

I started rereading.  Shockingly: I found emails from 2004-5, from old email addresses I used, and of course I found people I don't have contact with anymore.  (Some only use their cellphone and don't email, of course.)  I found adoptees asking for help, and many were helped...  (Several people opened their adoption files and some went into reunions. Some were enrolled with their tribes, eventually. Karen Vigneault was a miracle worker.  Then we lost her in 2020. Here is an article about her: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-war-vets-great-niece-rights-great-wrong-2010jan24-story.html)

Looking back: I left Facebook (META) in 2018 after my cancer surgery and there are so many people on there I lost touch with... who I still miss ... but they are there and I'm not.   I lost friends, all across the country and world.  (Yes, I regret it but the loss of privacy was a much bigger concern.  WHY?  My life was invaded by the Cambridge Analytica data hack.)

Looking back, I never would have found so many adoptees without Facebook. I wrote two newspaper articles GENERATION AFTER GENERATION WE ARE COMING HOME. Both publications are gone now.  The spark that lit a fire, that 2005 article started me on a new path and new journey to find adoptees. (I have not found the article online but if I can, using the Wayback Machine, I will post a link.  It may be in this computer somewhere.)

Social media helped to create this global circle of adoptees, Native American and First Nations Adoptees, like our own universe.  Facebook connected us to each other.  Emails came in.  This blog/website began in late 2009.

Now my inbox has taken on a life of its own. And this blog has taken on a life of its own, too. (2,264 posts so far...) (That is BIG)

What if we lose ICWA? What if the Indian Child Welfare Act gets wiped out? What will happen?

 

Only slowly their hurt dies cry by cry 

As they fit themselves to what has happened

Ted Hughes (1985)

 TO BE CONTINUED

I Am Not Your Orphan #NAAM2019

Blake Gibbins

Oct 31 ·

There’s No Such Thing As An Orphan

November is #NAAM (National Adoption Awareness Month), and before you waste your time watching horribly exploitative films like Instant Family, it’s high time we cleared something up, you and me:

There is no such thing as an orphan. There is only colonization.

Now, before you start throwing dictionaries at me, which would be very unpleasant, we must remember that language is constructed by people, and people are subjective. Though a definition for a word may be one thing, the way we use it is something else entirely. The textbook definition for an orphan is “a child whose parents are dead,” and if we were textbook in our use of the word, then many senior care facilities ought to be renamed “orphanages.” But we don’t use “orphan” in this context, because we understand that loss of parents doesn’t mean loss of family. Organizations like UNICEF have formerly limited the definition of orphan to those children under 18 years of age who have lost one or both parents. Fine, this clears up my former comment about the senior community. But I’d still like to ask a few questions to further shore up what I mean when I say that our intended use is different from the reality of the situation.

When I say the word “orphan,” who is it you picture? What is their race? Where on the globe do they live? There is little doubt in my mind that the image this word conjures is not unlike those at the Live-Aid concert, and that’s not unintentional. Yet, let’s say there is a family of white, upper-middle-class characters in a film, and the main character’s sister and brother-in-law have just died in a car accident. This person’s six year old nephew is now, technically, an orphan. But would you imagine international organizations suddenly showing up at the house to take non-consensual photos of the child, blasting their image and embellished bio to couples in foreign countries, and then asking for tens of thousands of dollars to adopt said child? I doubt it. Our first thought is that the main character should take their nephew in. That’s because we understand that it’s important to #keepfamiliestogether. At least, we’d like to believe we understand that; because we sure don’t practice it.

It is said that more than 80% of the world’s “orphans” have one living parent. Out of the remaining percent who reportedly do not have either parent present, none of our statistics include the role of aunts, uncles, grandparents or adult siblings. The only unifying factor of struggle between the majority of these children is that they tend to come from poor(er) families. This is what separates the aforementioned fictional character from those international children we deem “orphaned;” a family’s access to resources.
source: MEDIUM

Canada's Secret Scoop #NAAM2019

The 60’s Scoop – “Do you know what the 60's Scoop means?

#NAAM2019 - ICAV - coming out of the adoptee fog

Coming Out of the Adoptee Fog

WATCH

#NAAM2019: National Adoption Awareness Month begins today

I plan to share posts from other adoptee bloggers all month...

Click and read:

The adopted ones blog

Two adoptees – one vocal the other not so much…

Day One of the longest month of the year (despite being only 30 days) where we all get to hear how wonderful and downright beautiful adoption is...

Day One 

**

Daniel Drennan ElAwar

Isn’t it valid to compare adoption with a pregnancy?

** 

Adopto-Snark

 

Here We Go Again

by Snarkurchin

Yay! It's National Adoption "Awareness" Month, in which almost nobody is made aware of anything about adoption except that it exists. Apparently people's brains fall out every Halloween and they have to be reminded about adoption (and furniture and birds, for all I know).

In short, there's nothing special about November. It's pitching the same "awareness" we're told about adoption the rest of the year. That is bullshit, and it needs to change. Some of us who have an actual awareness of adoption have been trying to change it for decades now. Very few people listen.

https://snarkurchin.wordpress.com/2019/11/01/here-we-go-again/

 

** 

Adoptee Author Lynn Grubb

The Latest Breakthrough on My Birth Father Search

 

**

 How the US stole thousands of Native kids (VOX)

https://youtu.be/UGqWRyBCHhw

  

These are great books and helpful:

10 years already? How has my adoption perception changed? Did we flip the script? #NAAM2017

POSTED in 2014 - UPDATED in 2021 for National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM)

Trace (adoptee) and her Ojibwe friend Desi in high school

By Trace Hentz (formerly DeMeyer)

If you had asked me in 2004 what I had planned for myself, I would have not said “writing” about adoption and child trafficking. I had just left my editor’s job at the Pequot Times in Connecticut in August and by September I was married, my second time. How life changed so dramatically for me is documented in my memoir in much greater detail.

First off, I am not a leader of adoptees/Lost Birds/SplitFeathers. I am an adoptee, a storyteller who happens to be a journalist.

Second, I do help adoptees (Native and non-Native) connect with one another. There are plenty of adoptees with leadership skills, like my friend Levi EagleFeather and Sandy WhiteHawk, both are Lakota. If adoptees need ceremony, they are the people to approach. I am a bridge and can help you reach them.

Third, I am an adoptee myself so I know what I went through. And I write about it in great detail but that doesn't make me an expert. I do feel like I have an advanced degree in adoption after 10+ years of reading and writing on this topic.

Now it doesn’t seem possible that 10 13 years zoomed by so fast – it’s like a time tornado hit.  I didn't have any idea my skills would be put to use in this way. I am humbled and deeply grateful to Wakan Tanka.

Since I started American Indian Adoptees, now I know many bloggers on adoption (and many are good friends to me). We had hoped we’d made a strong and lasting impact by now.  We knew:

The adoptee voice was missing. 

Chapters of history were blank. The change I worked for: giving voice to adoptees and writing that chapter, and I did what I could. There are four books in the Lost Children Book Series. A new second edition of TWO WORLDS is coming out soon - updated!

Changing adoption? I had that dream myself.  I am not sure we can actually gauge or measure how worldviews of adoption have changed. States still have adoption files sealed tight. Are they hiding something? Are they afraid of a massive uprising of adoptees? (There are an estimated 7 million of us, maybe more!) Are they afraid we'll find out adoption agencies and churches were trafficking in children? For a profit?

The governments of Canada and America have much to fear.

Other changes? If books on Amazon are an indication, adoptee memoirs are now climbing the ranks over all the propaganda books about how to adopt a baby.

If the statistics on adoption are any indication, the number of babies adopted by Americans are dropping each and every year. There is definitely a demand for infants (primarily because of infertility) but there is still a short supply of newborn flesh to adopt.  (I do believe the adoption traffickers are constantly reinventing new ways to grab a fresh supply of infants. Think of what new poor countries or communities they will invade as the demand increases!! Propaganda will change.)

Will there be more adoptees coming? If Indian Country is still poor, poverty-stricken and a Third World, YES!

What hasn’t changed are adoption laws, sealed adoption files or the old archaic views of promised secrecy and confidentiality for first mothers.

Haven’t we moved past shaming women for unwed pregnancies? Yes, but not enough, apparently.  Lawmakers are still being wined and dined by adoption agency lobbyists so I don’t expect to see much change in the laws – but I hope I am wrong.

What I’d hoped would change faster is the perception of adoption, that it’s not as great and wonderful for adoptees as the public was made to believe.  (In fact, vocal adoptees have changed everything in that regard.) As much as I’ve read in these past 10+ years, blogs and books changed me beyond recognition!  Many times I emailed legislators (like in New Jersey and Illinois) and offered my memoir (as a free book) hoping they would see the light and change existing adoption laws. Maybe it helped?

The big question: Open Adoption--when adoption is necessary--is also an indication that times are changing! But we have a long way to go…This is a quote I saved about open adoption:

…ignored by the adoption agencies is the reality of “open adoption.” Only 22 of fifty states in America recognize open adoption agreements, but failure of the adoptive parents to comply with the agreement is not legally enforceable by the surrendering mother.  (It is failing from many accounts I have read.)

There are many excellent writers making profound statements too.

A quote by adoptee-author-blogger Elle Cuardaigh: 

And adoption certainly is “worked.” When supply of newborns decreased in the 1970s, the adoption industry had to put a new spin on relinquishment  to stay in business. Since women could not be so easily shamed by single motherhood, they changed tactics. Potential suppliers (pregnant women) are now encouraged to “make an adoption plan.” She reads the “Dear Birthmother” letters and interviews hopeful adoptive parents. She is provided with medical care and possibly even housing.  She is promised this is her choice, and that she can have ongoing contact with her child in an open adoption. It would seem she has all the power, but she is being systematically conditioned to accept her role, her place. She doesn’t want to hurt the baby’s “real parents,” feels indebted to them, emotionally invested. She is soon convinced they are better than she is. She becomes “their birthmother.” It almost guarantees relinquishment.  READ Elle’s blog and new book THE TANGLED RED THREAD.  Or visit: http://ellecuardaigh.com

Read any and all posts at THE LIFE OF VON. (Von is now on hiatus)


Powerful WRITING!


The number of excellent powerful blogs and books and articles by adoptees and first parents (and even some APs) exploded in the past 10 years. In 2017, that is fading - far fewer than three years ago.

Helping to writing and publish four books about the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs and contributing to books like ADOPTIONLAND certainly changed me.

In 2014, #FliptheScript in November really moved people - tweets and comments were flying everywhere, some good, some not so good. Discussion is still needed and the people who need to hear adoptees out are the ones we don't reach that well: ADOPTIVE PARENTS. They have their own fog to lift.

Last but not least: I am happily shocked this blog AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES reached over 285,000 700,000 hits! If that is any indication, times really are a changin’.  Thanks to all the people who comment and read and subscribe!

There are thousands of Lost Children/Adoptees who are Native American. They are still out there. I hope they find this blog!

There are two things I hope to see for Lost Bird Adoptees: A class action lawsuit in the US on behalf of those children who were taken from their tribes because of the gov't programs (IAP and ARENA) and admitting PUBLICLY it happened with a declaration of this FACT.

I never would have guessed my life would move in the direction it did. I want to thank those brave bloggers and hundreds of adoptees who have inspired me so much over past 10+ years.


So what will the next 10 years be like? I don’t have a clue.

Still #Adoption Warriors

Archive photo

By Trace Hentz  (Blog Editor)

Hi everyone. Huge thanks for visiting this blog and reading this blog.  In case you don't know, I started this blog back in Dec. 2009.  I didn't know what I was doing but I had the notion to find more adoptees like me. Well, well, well... it worked.

Even in 2005 when I was writing and doing research for my memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE, I had no idea how many adoptees there are or were... not exactly easy to find out. There could be up to 7 million in the US right now, maybe even more.  That's not counting our relatives in Canada.

Along the way I found others who were blogging their experiences, like Von Coates in Australia. She educated me, and helped me become a better adoptee-activist-blogger.  We became friends and Von and I emailed, and both of us contributed our writing to the LOST DAUGHTERS blog.

Read this latest update from Von HERE  (she started this blog in 2012)

From her blog:
In the world of adoption, there are many phrases and words for describing adoption, the process of adoption or parts of it, adoptees and other characters appearing with regularity. So called experts write books about acceptable adoption language and there are regularly arguments in various venues around social medias sites on correct useage, offensiveness, unacceptability and who is right/wrong/indifferent....

Von had her blogger blog that was taken down. Someone complained about her posts and Google shut her down.  But she is a warrior and didn't stop. She moved her writing over to Wordpress.

After time and so much experience, the activism and blogging changed us.  We may not write as often.  We see the same battles, the same ignorance and we see the same propaganda.  We see over and over how the billion dollar adoption industry silences the adoptee.  In many ways we are seen as the commodity - the one they made their money on... today adoptees are still in the SILENT MAJORITY.

In many states in the United States, adoptees still cannot request their original birth certificate (OBC) or their sealed adoption files. See what states have access in 2016 HERE.

For the past 7+ years doing this blog, I saw that other adoptee blogs were firing up fighting this, as more and more adoptees found their voice. 

And they voiced their anger.  And their disappointment.

And they told their stories of reunions with their first families, or if they were not able to meet their mom or dad, because they were too late, because their parent had already died.

Why?  These adoption laws are archaic and ridiculous. They were written to protect the people who adopted us.

I have talked to adoptees about the anguish of not knowing who they are. And some tell me about reunions that started great and went silent.  (If you don't live close to your relatives, travel and jobs can make reunions very difficult to keep going.)

Adoptees know we have two families to find, our mother and our father's people. We may find one side and go into reunion, after we open our adoption records. The other side of our family might wait years to be found.

I was telling my friend Maggie yesterday that I have not met my two half-sisters on my mother's side.

So I am still an adoption warrior but not as vocal as I had been when I started this blog.  It's time for others to FIND THEIR VOICE and write their truths and BLOG too.

If you are an adoptee and you have a blog and you are writing about adoption, please leave a comment here (below.) Tell us the blog address so we can read you and support you.

We have a long way to go... The Indian Adoption Projects took thousands of us... and many adoptees still need to find our way home.

Adoptee Blogs #flipthescript #NAAM1014

http://www.thelostdaughters.com/

Can only read JUST one?? Here it is:  Lost Daughters (where I contribute too)

• 1966 Maryland Adoptee
• 73 Adoptee
• A Birth Project
• A Cup of Ambiguity
• Adoptee Restoration
• Adopted in the UK
• Adoption Find
• Adoption; My Truth
• A Different Outcome
• A Moment in Thought
• A Search for Survivors
• According to Addie
• Adopted and Abused
• Adopted Jane
• Adopted The Movie
• Adoptee in Recovery 
• Adoptee Journal
• Adoptee Path
• Adoptee Rights New York
• Adoptee Rights Reform
• Adopting my Identity
• Adoption Animal House
• Adoption Beat
• Adoption My Truth
• Adoption Survivor
• Adoption Unplugged
• Amazon Adoptee
• American Indian Adoptees
• Amy
• Amy Adoptee
• Antholo
• Anti-Adoption
• Asiatic Fish
• Austin Holistic
• B is for Bastard
• Bastard Corner
• Beirut Diary Online
• Bijou’s Bastardized Odyssey
• Bitch, You Left Me
• Biologically Speaking
• Black Sheep Sweet Dreams
• Bleatings of a Sacrifical Lamb
• Blog On
• Blue Moon
• Blueyesw’s Blog
• Born Today
• Borrowed Notes
• Boston Uncommon
• Brown Angels
• Bunnytude
• Cancer Distraction
• Caramel Galore
• Casper Andersen
• Child of a Stranger
• Clueless in Carolina
• Coleman Moms and Babes
• Communities don’t get built
• Confessions of a Cyrokid
• Crazy Rants of An Adoptee
• Cricket’s Drivel
• Daniel Ibn Zayd
• Declassifed Adoptee
• Diary of an Abandoned Abandoner
• Die, Commie Bastard!
• DNA Diaries
• Donor Conceived
• Eilujion
• Elaine’s Blog
• Empty Cereal Box
• Ethnically Incorrect Daughter
• Everyone Shut Up But Me
• Exile of Xingnan
• Faith and Illusions
• Family Secrets Unleashed
• Fayrie Tales
• Finding Jane Doe
• Flying the Void
• Forbidden Family
• Freedom 451
• Fumbling Toward Divinity
• Get More Abortions
• Green Mountain Country Mama
• Growing Up Doyle
• Grumppopotamus
• Harlow’s Monkey
• Having Been Adopted
• Heart, Mind and Seoul
• Hearts Wide Open
• Hello Korea!
• Holt Babies
• Holt Survivor
• I Have to Find My Sanity Somewhere!
• I, Cartographer
• iBastard
• Indiana Open
• Infant Atwell
• Involuntary Adoptee Immigrant
• Irrevocably Adopted
• It Came From the Cabbage Patch
• It’s Really Me
• Jane’s Blog
• Joanne’s Space
• John
• John Raible Online
• Joy’s Division
• Julia’s JAM
• KangSunLee1991
• Kimette
• Korean Adoptee
• Korean War Baby
• L’enfant du peche
• Land of the Not-So-Calm
• Letters from Kimberly
• Lex-B
• Lightning Crashes
• Lisa Talks
• Living the Dash
• Living, Laughing, Whining
• Lizard Chronicles
• Lonesome Dove
• Madame Compassionateless
• Marilee
• Mary Gauthier
• May 4, 1985
• May Adoptee
• May I Have a Word?
• Mia’s Saving Grace
• Misplaced Baggage
• My Birth is Not a Crime
• My Birth Name is Allison
• My Adoptive Life
• My Name is Simon Bell
• Neil’s Blog
• Neither Here Nor There
• Newly Orphaned
• Ninoska Andrea
• No Greater Act of Love
• No Matter How Small
• Once Upon A Time My Name Was Kimberly
• Once Was Von
• One Lucky Bastard
• Only an Adoptee
• Opening the Door
• Orphan Daughter
• Our Life in the Desert
• Out of the Fog
• Outlandish Remarks
• Persona Ingrata
• Possum’s Place
• Pushpa’s Blog
• Rant and Rave and Rant and Rave
• Real Daughter
• Reading, Writing, Living
• Revelations
• Reunion Journey
• Rhonda’s Ruminations
• Ruth Mary Celeste
• Sea Glass and Other Fragments
• Searching for Umma
• Secret Sons and Daughters
• Shadow Between Two Worlds
• Silenced Adoptee No More
• Sister Wish
• Sixth Sister
• Solim’s Walk in the Park
• Soy Adoptado
• Tasha’s Tale
• Tennessee Adoptees Rights
• The Adopted Feminist
• The Blur
• The Creepy Adoptee
• The Daily Bastardette
• The Door to Understanding
• The Little KAD Prince
• The Missing Piece
• The Original Heping
• The Queen of Denial
• The Sought After
• The Thriving Child
• The Transracial Korean Adoptee Nexus
• Thin Pink Line
• Third Cat Productions / Going Home
• The Warrior Princess Diaries
• This Adopted Life
• Through devastation to redemption
• Tigger Story
• Tribe Interrupted
• True of Voice
• Twice the Rice
• Umbilicly_Challenged
• Unknown Indy Baby Girl
• vietK
• Voices in Adoption
• Wes Unruh
• What do I do now?
• Without a Tribe
• World Citizens Blog
• Wraith’s Wrealm
• Your Blood is My Blood
• 안녕습니다!

SOURCE: Musings of the Lame

And we are changing the WORLD! ...Trace (my LARA blog is also focused on adoption)

Abusive Adoption Practices (abstract and links)

The Aftermath of Abusive Adoption Practices in the Lives of Adoption Triad Members: Responding to Adoption Triad Members Victimized by Abusive Adoption Practices
by David Smolin and Desiree Smolin (via email)

Abstract:
The above-titled presentation was given as a plenary presentation at the Annual Symposium of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS) on April 18, 2012. 
It is important to note that the original context for this presentation is Intercountry Adoption to the United States. However, some of you may find some of these points relevant to domestic adoption issues as well as Intercountry Adoption to other nations (Canada, Italy, Spain, etc.)

Especially at the event itself, with our own commentary added, this was a presentation not just on abusive adoption practices, but especially on how the intercountry adoption system, as shaped by the United States government and United States adoption agencies, is “designed for failure.” Abusive adoption practices thus are not merely problems in themselves, but are symptoms of a system that chronically produces abuses and breakdowns in the system: a system that fails to self-correct and thus is self-defeating.

Further, these features of the current dysfunctional system were not necessarily inevitable, but have arisen from specific choices made during the construction of the system by the U.S. government and U.S. agencies. The governing rules they advocated for, and chose, created the dysfunctions that have doomed the system to continuing cycles of abuse.

This is very much a presentation about the inestimable human costs of those failures for all those impacted by adoption: not only adoption triad members, but also siblings, extended families, communities, and even nations. It is also a presentation about a system that fails to assist or recognize its own victims.

The presentation is very much of a joint project: each of us wrote about half of the material, and each critiqued the other’s materials. The process of converting material into PowerPoint format was done initially by Desiree, although again the final product was reviewed, modified, and critiqued by both of us. Overall, the concepts and information presented represent years of working together to analyze adoption systems.
We certainly do not expect everyone to be happy with these materials and critiques may come from all sides. Please keep in mind that the PowerPoint cannot embody all that we said; also please keep in mind the original audience and occasion for the presentation. We welcome vigorous and respectful dialogue, from which we hope to learn, as so much of what we do know to this point in time is due to the many people who have shared their experiences and thoughts with us.

For discussion and further commentary, please go to the blog: http://fleasbiting.blogspot.com/

Thanks,

David and Desiree Smolin

Link: http://works.bepress.com/david_smolin/12

I do hope everyone will watch this presentation - we need to be informed about the billion dollar adoption industry and its practices... Trace

Why we had a Facebook Page SPLIT FEATHERS (but no longer)

Yup, it’s what all the experts say you need - and it’s the way to find new people who become new friends.

In fact, this blog Split Feathers has found many new adoptees (like Michael and his brother who are Native adoptees but don’t know their tribe yet).

That is the purpose of Facebook (FB) - to connect you with friends and let you comment and talk and like and share. I try and make time to read friend’s posts and I’m sure you do, too.

Because of Facebook I have reconnected with friends from school and college and friends I knew when I lived in various places but moved away. I have adoptees friends I have not met in person (yet) and Native American friends who are not adoptees. It’s a giant circle, really!

It’s a kind of meeting place - and you can have groups of people, business pages (like our Blue Hand Books) and lists of interests (I am figuring out Facebook like all of you are, yes.)

2019 UPDATE: We ended our relationship with Facebook - too many issues with violating our privacy.

Thank you! Chi Megwetch and Pilamaye!  Trace 

Blog Week: What bugs me about the Adoption Establishment

SHOTGUN ADOPTION
http://www.thenation.com/article/shotgun-adoption?page=0,0
This article is from 2009 but offers an interesting insider view of the Adoption Agencies agenda and their role in coercion of young women to relinquish their babies, instead of supporting them so they can keep their child.

Excerpt:
Carol Jordan, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, was living in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1999 when she became pregnant. She'd already decided against abortion, but she was struggling financially and her boyfriend was unsupportive. Looking through the Yellow Pages for help, she spotted an ad under "crisis pregnancies" for Bethany Christian Services.

Within hours of calling, Jordan (who asked to be identified with a pseudonym) was invited to Bethany's local office to discuss free housing and medical care. Bethany, it turned out, did not simply specialize in counseling pregnant women. It is the nation's largest adoption agency, with more than eighty-five offices in fifteen countries.

...instances of coercion in adoption stretch back nearly seventy years.

...CPCs (Crisis Pregnancy Centers) might persuade reluctant women by casting adoption as redemption for unwed mothers' "past failures" and a triumph over "selfishness, an 'evil' within themselves."

...CPCs were wary of looking like "baby sellers"...

Care Net runs 1,160 CPCs nationwide and partners with Heartbeat International to host a national CPC hot line.

... National Council for Adoption (NCFA), the most prominent adoption lobby group in the country, in the company of other benefactors like Bethany; Texas maternity home giant Gladney; the Good Shepherd Sisters, a Catholic order serving "young women of dissolute habits"; and the Mormon adoption agency LDS Family Services.

The federally funded NCFA has a large role in spreading teachings like these through its Infant Adoption Awareness Training Program, a Department of Health and Human Services initiative it helped pass in 2000 that has promoted adoption to nearly 18,000 CPC, school, state, health and correctional workers since 2002.

(Blog Week: http://landofgazillionadoptees.com/2012/02/22/secret-message-for-other-bloggers-about-the-week-of-february-26th-aka-why-the-adoption-establishment-annoys-the-heck-out-of-us-blog-week/#comment-1867)

I added the bold in the excerpt so you can notice the main players in the industry. Stay tuned to this blog - more of my rants coming this week...Trace

Shit People Say to Adoptees (R-rating)

http://bitchyouleftme.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/shit-people-say-to-adoptees/

Comment:

T. Laurel Sulfate, Snarkurchin says:

January 18, 2012 at 11:09 am

Ugh–the “I wish I were adopted” comments make me furious. Do you also wish you were stigmatized or disadvantaged in other ways? Wanna be poor because those people are the salt of the earth? Wanna be all gay and native American and differently abled because that would get you some really cool scholarships? No? Then *why* pretend you wish you didn’t know who you are?
And “I feel that way too” really gets to me. Yeah, your ordinary alienation is so very not ordinary that it’s like not knowing where you come from and never looking like anyone in your family. Sure it is. It’s exactly like that. In fact, when people ask me how it feels to be adopted I always say “It feels really emo.” SPARE ME.
If you have horrible abusive parents, and you think it really would have been better off for you to have been adopted, *find a different way of saying that when you know the person you’re talking to is adopted.* Sheesh.

That post will make you growl and smile! I promise!
Trace

GUEST POST: Is ADOPTION all I ever think about?

Read Amanda's post about this - The Declassified Adoptee: Is Adoption ALL you Ever Think About? (Some New Stuff)

Sooo - Is adoption all I ever think about?

Nope, but the overall topic and history of adoption is imbalanced and I do think about that often.

I started this American Indian Adoptees blog in 2009 to express how my being adopted affected me and how I found (some pretty horrific) adoption history affecting Native Americans when I was writing my memoir One Small Sacrifice. I never expected to uncover what I did about the genocidal Indian Adoption Project(s) and Programs.

To maintain some balance, I've asked other adoptees like Leland and Johnathan to post their views in guest blogs.

If I find new Lost Children/adult adoptees, I'll publish their interviews and/or news.

It's a fact adoptees are still struggling, and too many are still hoping to have a reunion with their tribe and birthparents.

 
Adoptees have not been respected enough, in my view. You can see this with numerous archaic adoption laws in the USA, no access or limited access to our records and a billion dollar adoption industry who prefers to hide their secrets and preserve their myths.

It's also fact that being adopted lasts your entire life. There is no escape. There are complications and twists every turn. I tell my own evolving story on this blog.

To heal this experience, you educate yourself. Finding out you are not alone does help. Reading about adoption history helps, too, and can make you stronger. Use the google search bar to find topics already posted on this blog.

I often read other blogs by adoptees.

Until all adoption records are opened everywhere and unconditionally, I am not stopping! I will blog, write, do more research and post news.

If you have news or research you want to share with other Lost Birds: email: laratrace@outlook.com

Thank you for your continued support and your comments..... Trace

QUESTIONS: a new journey begins...

By Trace L Hentz (blog editor)

Whenever I find new adoptees, I want them to know immediately we share this experience.

Here is someone who is in the first stages of discovery...
http://urbanhaas.blogspot.com/2011/08/unexpected-connection.html

What strikes me about this new adoptee and his new adoptee journey are the QUESTIONS: " Is it right to contact someone who carried you and gave you up 42 years ago? What if reaching out is painful or opens old wounds? What if it’s better not knowing? What if they’re bad people? What if …. Many questions rolled around in my head as I considered what to do...."

These are our thoughts. What do we do, how do we handle contact and reunions, what ifs, etc. There are no guidebooks for this which is why I wrote my memoir One Small Sacrifice. I had to explain to others we are not alone and if they are Native adoptees, I want them to know the history and how the Indian Adoption Project files are sealed to hide their hideous intentions to erase us as Indians.

I feel for this adoptee: He writes:
"...Contact. What happens next? We’ve been corresponding via email and are making plans to meet face to face. It’s exciting. Both of us felt shock at the sudden connection. Neither of us have experienced the pain that could have come. Not yet at least...."

One reason I blog and read other adoptee blogs is our shared experience. Sharing our stories is how we heal...

Have you found any new adoptee blogs?

More Voices, More Discussion

By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

archive photo

I read adoptee blogs. This one I particularly liked.
Joy's Division wrote:

"...That is exactly what drives me crazy about those that try to control the story of the emotional world of the adoptee, I spouted, they are trying to bear our souls, that is why I make so many bitchy posts about people who are trying to tell the story of adoption sans the frustrated adoptee. Which you know, happens, some adoptees are frustrated, some adoptees find this situation difficult to deal with." - from  http://joy21.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/you-can-only-bear-your-own-soul-controlling-the-adoptee-narrative/...

"...So no, I am not in charge of the adoptee experience, I was shocked as shit to recognize my mother and feel the damaged love I do feel for her. I want to be more compassionate with her experience and at this moment I am, my last comment feels a bit harsh. It tears me up, it leaves me twisting in the wind. I am just a small part of a much bigger story, but we should be allowed to tell our stories without getting comments like, “Poor Innocent Dismissed.” I may be poor and I may be dismissed but I have never pretended to be innocent, I am as big of an asshole as you would ever want to meet. I mean the caveat being we are all assholes if you catch us in the right moment. At least I can own that." Joy's blog is gone since she passed...

You see how adoption is complicated, messy, a pain! There are many discussions happening across the blog world on the myths, benefits and damages of adoption. It is definitely clear that each in the triad (birth parents, adoptive parent and adoptee) has their own unique voice and view. That is how we learn - by reading and listening to others who went through the adoption process as parents or as an adoptee.

Even Facebook has created new discussions and arguments, too. Divisions do not serve anyone but create the impression there is no common ground or mutual agreement. Yet we all walk the path together as humanity.

I am no longer a "frustrated" adoptee but the survivor of a closed adoption. I opened my adoption file at age 22. At age 54 I read my "identifying" information in my formerly-sealed Wisconsin adoption file. I have had many reunions.

I do not judge my mother Helen for giving me up. I know she made the only decision she could at the time - which was find new parents for me. I am not her and cannot read her mind. Sadly she has already died so I will never know how giving me up affected her past or her future. I do know society judged her and she lived with their judgements.

I do know many frustrated adoptees, and I try to help them navigate each step to finding their identity and eventual reunion with relatives. There is no guidebook on this, by the way. There is no "ALL" since each mother and father and each adoptee is unique.
The changes in communication with the internet, blogs, Facebook and email has opened up my world since 2004. Teach me, contact me, post comments...

As Joy's Division writes: "...I will be called names, I will endure ridicule, but also some adoptee somewhere will find my blog like so many others already have and as a result find the courage to tell their own story. They will feel less alone, less alienated, their story will be different because they always are, but my story will encourage others to own their own. Controlling your own story, your own narrative is one of the most delicate and beautiful gifts you can give yourself. The h8trs are gonna h8t, love yourself anyway. I can only bear my own soul and I am, here."

We need more voices and more discussion like this.

We need to change the archaic laws and end closed adoptions and give access to sealed adoption files  - period.