I see dead people

Repost from 11/12/2010

By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

Well, actually I do not see dead people but I know people who are living like they are dead.

OK, imagine this.... You are a child and you disappear. Not only are you upset, your entire family is crazy with despair and your parents are distraught. They might go on television and beg the people who took you to please bring you back. Your mom and dad might even divorce since they cannot forget you and they can’t seem to heal since you are missing.

You (the child) on the other hand, might be too young to fight back, or even try and escape. But you want to.

That is child abduction and we all take this seriously in American and all over the world.

Now, change the word child to adoptee.

This life changing event: “adoption” does change you and your parents. America and the world do not think of adoption as abduction but I do. Why? It feels the same to the child. And to some mothers, it feels exactly like your child was abducted.

The trauma of being abducted or adopted is the same for the child. You are feeling you are not where you are supposed to be. Let’s not get into the medical terms but those words do exist in medical journals.

So, I ask you, when will people who adopt children begin to understand that adoptees have feelings they cannot describe or display? Some adopters I know have taken this very personally and have tried to make the child feel better and assure them they will meet their natural parents someday. I have friends who have adopted and some are remarkable in their sensitivity. Some of them advocate for open adoption, so their adopted child meets their parent on a regular basis, if at all possible.

So, if you are adoptive parents and reading this, I need you to do something TODAY. Forget that there are laws preventing disclosure when it’s a sealed adoption. I want you to request the adoption file – the legal proceedings. All of it! You signed the documents so you can request them.

OK, you did it. When your adopted child asks, I want you to tell them you have the name of their natural mother and that you will help her/him find their natural parent(s) when they turn 18. It depends on the child and when they ask. If they don’t ask, I want you to give them the file when they are 18 as a gift.

That is why I see dead people. If you are a mystery, it feels like you’re dead.

Cash incentives for adopters?

By Trace A. DeMeyer

That headline "CASH INCENTIVES FOR ADOPTERS" is the kind that keeps me up late.  An adoptee friend sent a story from Louisiana about cash incentives for people to adopt. (Read here: http://www.dcfs.louisiana.gov/index.cfm?md=newsroom&tmp=detail&articleID=380)

Yes, these ideas are from our good ol' federal government.

The Adoption Incentive Program was created as part of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, which authorized incentive funds (like bonuses) to states that increased the number of children adopted out of foster care. This plan actually saves the states money, because once a child is adopted, the state no longer pays a monthly check to the foster parents.

The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (quite a fancy name) provided stronger incentives (more money) for states to find children adoptive homes (especially for older children and children with special needs). Let’s call them Special Children for this blog.

Why cash? People who plan to adopt still prefer white babies, as to be expected per adoption propaganda.

Why babies? Adoptive parents are convinced they can mold the baby to their expectations, the earlier the better.

For each SPECIAL child in Louisiana, the incentive awards are $4,000 for each foster child adoption; $4,000 for each special needs child; and $8,000 for each child age nine or older. Some of these things you simply cannot make up. Perhaps this is why the Mormons especially tend to foster and adopt several children at one time. One Dine friend was one of 10 adopted by a Mormon family who also made them work outside the home.  We are talking serious cash coming each month per foster child - from the state and from the Mormon's own church coffers.

If a person wishes to raise and parent a child, even a Special Child, why would there need to be a cash incentive?

Well, let me see… These are kids who have been in the system a long time, or they are labeled bad kids because they act out their frustrations, or they are damaged goods because of abuse (emotional, physical or sexual) by caregivers and parents. There are horror stories that circulate among adopters that some of the older ones won’t bond.

A parent would have to be bribed with cash to adopt a damaged kid, right? What kind of parent would that person be, really?

In total, HHS awarded more than $32.5 million to Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

These are your tax dollars. 

In a perfect world, if you want to raise and parent a child, you call your Department of Children and Family Services and get trained to be a foster parent. You do not legally adopt but become the child's legal guardian and you preserve contact with the child's first family. In this perfect world, federal dollars are spent to preserve, not separate, children from their families.

All Children are sacred and need our protection. Why aren't we there yet?

Guillotine Effect of Adoption and Nazi Party

"Neither Here Nor There...": "The 'Guillotine' Effect of Adoption" by Myst: The "Guillotine" effect of Adoption by Myst, who blogs at: " Living in the Shadows"  

Excerpt:

"Thus, the Guillotine. The child experiences this (besides other experiences) by way of his or her family tree being brutally cut off and all those who went before her or him, all those who existed in her/his family for generations stretching back in time, wiped away. By law, adopted persons are magically grafted into their adoptive families' heritage... negating the fact they have another family, another heritage - one that flows through their veins, shows in their personalities, in their being. The guillotine of adoption law wipes it all out."

Many adoptees who I talk with say this brutal cut-off and severing of our connection to family and tribe makes it hard to fathom WHO could write such brutal laws and insist today they are still right and good. Who did this? Who made these laws - church leaders? politicians? Who could be so cruel and barbaric to cut-off any chance of adoptees contacting their natural parents and tribal families? 
Every single closed adoption law needs to be overturned and erased forever ... Write your state governments and tell them your story - why adoption laws need to change - tell them about our history as American Indian adoptees...  Trace, an adoptee for life.....



Read more about the Guillotine:

The death room at Plötzensee - The guillotine can be seen in the foreground, and the gallows in the background.

FYI: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Guillotine

The Nazi Party employed it extensively—twenty guillotines were in use in Germany which, from 1938, included Austria. In Nazi Germany, beheading by guillotine was the usual method of executing convicted criminals as opposed to political enemies, who were usually either hanged or shot. An exception was made for the six members of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance organization, who were beheaded in 1943. The Nazis have been estimated to have guillotined some 40,000 people in Germany and Austria—possibly more than were beheaded during the French Revolution.^[3]

NICWA Conference Addresses Challenges of the Indian Child Welfare Act

NICWA Conference Addresses Challenges of the Indian Child Welfare Act

Excerpt:
"Increasing national and state compliance with the ICWA law includes getting accurate information out to the public about the real story of the act and how it impacts Indian children and families, said NICWA Executive Director Terry Cross. To that end, much of the conference focused on strategies in working with the media.
“The media plays a crucial role in telling this story,” Cross said. “Typically the mainstream press picks up a story regarding ICWA only when a non-Indian family has somehow been injured.”
Conference attendees were encouraged to work with the press and alert the NICWA office about local stories involving the ICWA law. “We are finding that it’s possible to defuse an explosive situation by simply getting factual information out to the press,” Cross said...."

Read more:http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/04/27/nicwa-conference-addresses-challenges-of-the-indian-child-welfare-act-110270 http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/04/27/nicwa-conference-addresses-challenges-of-the-indian-child-welfare-act-110270#ixzz1tG1Xblya

Mary Annette Pember did a fantastic job reporting on this conference!! Trace

Utah officials on Native children foster care statistics

American Indian children too often in foster care

Utah Officials try to keep children in their homes, out of system.

By Brooke Adams | The Salt Lake Tribune, Mar 24 2012   

More than 33 years after Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, American Indian children in Utah are still being removed from their homes and placed in foster care far too often — a troubling statistic that is the focus of the state’s tribes and government officials.

True, there has been a vast improvement in out-of-home placements over those decades. In 1976, two years before passage of the act, American Indian children in Utah were 1,500 times more likely to be in foster care than other children in the state, said Utah Appeals Court Judge William Thorne, who spoke March 16 at the first Indian Child Welfare Conference to be held in Salt Lake City.

Read story here:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53755655-78/indian-foster-american-care.html.csp?page=1

Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978

Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act to prevent breakup of American Indian families after a 1976 report showed “an alarmingly high percentage” of children were in “non-Indian” foster and adoptive homes or institutions. It governs what is supposed to happen if an American Indian child is placed in state custody, giving tribal courts jurisdiction for children who are members or eligible for membership in a recognized tribe.

It's Complicated, Baby

All across America, people still prefer to adopt babies. Millions of Americans adopted babies and some of us were adopted as babies. I’m guessing it’s because tiny babies don’t show their feelings; baby screams sound just like cries.  This may also explain why so many children languish in foster care: they’re just too old. Older kids do exhibit fear, uneasiness or apprehension; some kids even act like babies.

            Adopting babies is easier. Adoptive parents can hope their new baby will adjust and bond favorably by the time baby will talk. Some adopters believe they saved us as babies since our mother was a slut or wretched teenager, or maybe a sick woman on an Indian reservation or from a trashy tenement. Maybe we're Third World babies from an over-populated Chinese, Russian or African orphanage. Sometimes adopters simply ignore our culture and history, like it doesn’t exist. Some of my friends heard words like “dirty savages and filthy heathens.”

            Adopters might hope to mold “orphan babies” into something they want. They'll try loving us first. Yet we know love doesn’t cure everything. Love can’t erase genetics or ancestral memory. If love doesn't work, the adopters might try bullying us or drugging us into submission until we show them some gratitude.

            An even more complicated reality exists, a much bigger untold desperate story. 

            Adoptable babies are scooped up quick, especially if they are white and healthy and from America. You can even order one, but it will cost you thousands of dollars.

            If that doesn’t work, and if you can afford it, you can always buy a surrogate mother; these women widely advertise now. She’ll carry and deliver your baby for a price. Some sisters will do this for an infertile sibling.

            Then there’s a huge “underground market,” where they still kidnap and sell babies. Baby peddlers, some who practice law, are out there making money, too. Some abducted babies were made child sex slaves. Guatemala is now under investigation for illegal baby peddling. Someone made a ton of money on babies!

            A newer adoption scam is happening online – when a woman fakes a pregnancy, offers her unborn baby as bait, then steals the unsuspecting couple’s money (thousands of dollars) using the internet as a trap.

            There are tragic stories about sick women or couples who will kill a pregnant woman just to take her baby. This happened in Massachusetts recently.

            There are more stories about babies being dumped (abandoned) all across America. One mother dumped three babies in California (two were saved but one died from exposure). In New York, three sisters were arrested for helping one sister dump her newborn girl in the trash, causing the baby to die.

            Some mothers are illegal immigrants and don’t want their new baby. They'll do their child a favor by dumping them off at a firehouse. Those adoptees rarely find their mothers, since birth records won’t exist. There is a slim chance their mother will seek them out for a reunion since they are considered felons and criminals in most states.

            For the millions of us who have been handed over, dumped, or exchanged (or sold, or taken) for a hundred years – has anyone dared to ask how we felt at the exchange? 

            Apparently we are studied, not consulted.

            Bear in mind, babies didn’t create this billion dollar adoption industry or cause infertility. Babies can't solve social issues but we're sold as one solution. Babies can't cure the pain in women who can’t conceive. Babies didn’t create poverty. Some would say certain babies arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time. We were an inconvenience, or a sin, or a mistake.

            How will we ever fix this? It's complicated, baby!

My recent book tour (October 2010)

I had a blast!

By Trace L. Hentz (formerly DeMeyer) 

 Sometimes it takes me awhile to process what just happened. In other words, I had to recover from my recent mini-book tour/road trip to Wisconsin.

    
 Driving is my therapy. I think best while driving. This time I used the 30+ hours to pray and ask “what should I read?”  Great Spirit answered loud and clear. Four times I read from One Small Sacrifice and each time was different!

  
The first time I visited the Menominee tribe in 2001, it was to attend the Wiping the Tears ceremony, led by the most sacred holy men Chief Arvol Looking Horse and Elder Chris Leith. Here I was, nine years later, back there with my own story. That ceremony for adoptees was the first one ever and the miracle I attended was not lost on me. My writing about Lost Birds feels like ceremony.

  
On Sept. 27, I met my friend Jackie in the Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer and she shared recent updates about Ben-Ani, who is an adoptee currently incarcerated. I’ve known Jackie a few years and we talked about “abduction trauma,” while others may refer to this as “being adopted by non-Indians.”  Ben is Anishinabe-Menominee and he’s agreed to tell his story in my second book, Two Worlds: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects..

  
Monday night Jackie and I drove to the Menominee rez and stayed at their casino (their new guestrooms are even fancier than casino hotel rooms out East).  Tuesday for breakfast, we met up with Colleen, a Lost Bird from the Menominee tribe, who went full circle – from a stranger adoption in Pennsylvania to a reunion with her tribal family and is back home living on her rez in Wisconsin. Colleen is my relative now and always will be. It was Colleen who graciously arranged for me to read at the tribe’s high school and then at their tribal college.

  
Tuesday: One of the saddest moments for me was when I asked the high school students how many of their parents had attended boarding school and practically all their hands shot up. Their parents had been sent as far away as Texas and California. Stranger (not traditional kinship) adoptions and traumatic boarding school experiences permeate every American Indian experience, one way or the other. I think of this as “generational trauma.”

  
Next stop: the audience at the Menominee Tribal College was perhaps keenest and most sensitive to the Lost Bird/adoptee experience. Colleen was sitting up front with me and told of her own experience to the surprised group. The hour-long talk was taped. I answered all their questions and they asked if my talk could be used later in their classrooms. Of course I said YES! (News from Indian Country will later post this video on their internet TV channel. I’ll post a link on my blog when it airs.)

  
Late Tuesday afternoon I drove north. I was going home. I’d see cousins, old friends and even friend’s parents who remembered me but lost contact when I moved away after college. This was going to be the real test, sharing my personal life. Writing at 4 a.m., I would often think about my friends and relatives and what I never told them about my childhood being raised by an alcoholic who molested me. If they read the memoir, they’ll know every single gory embarrassing detail. Even writing it, I felt nauseous.

  
My grade school classmate Julie helped me to process this by letting me talk. I stayed with her and her husband Mike in Billings Park. By the time I read at the Superior Public Library, I was truly calm. (Thanks Julie!) Former mayor of Duluth and Superior, my awesome SSHS classmate Herb Bergson, was there to introduce me. Herb promoted my Twin Ports readings with emails and an update on Howie’s blog: http://www.howiehanson.com/?p=49616.

  
Wednesday morning, I was interviewed by the local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate at the University of Wisconsin in Superior: that interview was broadcast on National Native News later! Even my friends John and Sara heard me in Tuba City, Arizona. This was fantastic!

  
On Wednesday night at the Public Library, I read a few chapters about my younger days in Superior as a rock musician and even had 'em laughing. I also showed them the shawl my adoptee friend Kim Peterson gifted me for high school graduation. Across the street from the library was the apartment building where Kim was murdered. I’ll never forget Kim, I told them, and her photo is where I can see her every single day. Kim is who I credit for surviving my troubled teens, and why I dedicated my book to her.

  
That hour went by so fast at the library, I barely remember details. There were a few tears. I did survive emotionally, I told them. What irony I was reading on the birthdays of my favorite uncle, Chet McIntyre, and my own birthmother, Helen Thrall. Neither of them lived long enough to see this homecoming or know I wrote about them in my memoir.

  
 On Friday, the reading at Jitters in Duluth felt so good, it didn’t seem like a book reading. I caught up with new friends from Facebook and met classmates from high school. Gary, the awesome Jitters coffeehouse owner, made Julie and me his famous Mocha Malt. I have to admit, if every reading went this smooth, I’d never stay home.

  
 That week I had dinner with my first cousins Scott and Mary Margaret and had lunch with a family friend, Faye from Allouez. They gave me the greatest gift of all – their memories. They shared stories that made me so full and happy, I felt a profound peace. I do hope they realize this “troubled kid” can see her parents as people now. That gift, peace of mind, I wish I could give to every adoptee I know.

  
 I didn’t catch the bug going around during my week in Wisconsin but my sore throat was a sign it was time to head home to western Massachusetts.

  
To wrap up my talk, I shared this story with the high school students on the Menominee rez:  “The old story goes there was a farmer who found a wounded eagle and placed him in a chicken coop to recover. The eagle started to act like a chicken, he bobbed his head like a chicken, he ate like a chicken, and otherwise thought he was a chicken. Until one day an Indian came along and asked what the eagle was doing with the chickens. The farmer told him the story, and the Indian asked if he could remove the eagle. The Farmer gave his permission to do so. So the Indian took the eagle to the mountain and said, “You have to know who you are and what you stand for...” The eagle started to flex his wings. His keen eyesight started to return, and the strength in him started to come back. The eagle flew and soared and everything came back to him, who he was and that he wasn’t a chicken. He gained everything back he lost because of where he was placed.”

  
I told the students Lost Birds are that eagle and every adoptee raised away from their tribe and traditions needs to return home.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the readings of One Small Sacrifice a success: Colleen, Dale K and the Menominee Tribal Nation, Janet and Maggie at the Superior Public Library, Gary at Jitters, Mike Savage and Kalisha at UWS, the honorable Herb Bergson, Faye and her Allouez Book Club, my friends Julie, Mike, Jackie, and JRey, my cousins who I love so much, and my heartfelt thanks to everyone who showed up!

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.

            
 Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.

             
Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”

             
Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.

            
 I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.

            
 I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.

             
Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.

             
Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.