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

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

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

2022

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

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

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

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

Part 3: What if We Lost ICWA? Kinship Care

👉Nicole Chung on the family who tried to end racism through adoption: “The reality, of course, is that transracial adoption has no intrinsic power to heal racial prejudice.” | The Atlantic

Part 3: What if We Lost ICWA?

By Trace L Hentz, blog editor

Last November I wrote a post: WE ARE NOT GOING BACK and ended the post with: If the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) fails we will write a stronger law.  I meant it, and states are enacting their own laws right now to protect Indian children from the predatory billion-dollar Adoption Industry.

I had a friend, Jagade, who dreamed for others.  (Yes, that is a real thing. Sadly she passed on a few years ago.) She told me about a dream she had that many more adoptees were coming.  I didn't want to believe her.  She told me that is why I was directed to do the anthologies, so that future adoptees would know the history of the Indian Adoption Projects and what happened.  And how to return to their tribes as adults.

This dream can means two things: There is still too much poverty in Indian Country and the authorities (social workers) will come for Native children, judging families based solely on living conditions. It's happened before.  They need an excuse to remove children so the judges and lawyers and adoption industry can continue making profits.  (It also means that there are not enough Native people to foster and adopt children, and become adoptive parents.) 

Poverty Porn? Yes.

High levels of perceived Poverty justifies removal of American Indian children (again?) #PovertyPorn

Individuals with little exposure to or experience with American Indian communities would have little to no knowledge of these forms of social safety nets (ie. kinship care). 

Second: The other thing her dream might mean is: adoption will not be closed, and people who are adopted will know the truth when they become adults, and access and open their adoption file. And then have a reunion.

Yes, adoption has changed that much since I started studying it back in 2004/5.

Let's look at prior stats:

How many children were adopted in 2000 and 2001? STATiSTiCS

 AFCARS reported 54,627 adoptions in the United States during fiscal year 2000 and 50,136 adoptions in fiscal year 2001.

1992

PUBLIC: 18%

INTERCOUNTRY: 5%

PRIVATE, INDEPENDENT, KINSHIP AND TRIBAL: 77%

2001

PUBLIC: 39%

INTERCOUNTRY: 15%

PRIVATE, INDEPENDENT, KINSHIP AND TRIBAL: 46%

This number includes private agency, independent, and tribal adoptions with public agency involvement that were reported to AFCARS.

Is this the future? Kinship care?

Kinship care missing from survey

2010 excerpt:

Terry L. Cross, executive director of the Portland-based National Indian Child Welfare Association and an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation New York, said the results have their roots in cultural backgrounds.

“Cultural norms, including sustaining strong extended families, handing down of culture and traditions, and establishing a positive identity, contribute to perceptions of our foster care system and notions of your place within that system. What is missing from the survey is how many people would support ‘kinship care,’ or relative care, over foster care placements in a stranger’s home,” Cross said.

Cross said kinship care is considered by most to be a cultural norm of Indian Country, and when a crisis arises other family members step in to share the burden of taking care of the children. Given a choice of a child being removed from a home due to maltreatment and being placed in a licensed foster home with strangers in a new community, Cross said, it appears most Indians will choose informal kinship care arrangements, even if it means little financial support for the kinship caregivers.

 

and finally in 2018:

KINSHIP: State Turns to Urgent Placement of Foster Kids with Relatives, Friends

 

Up Front

40 years ago we stopped the practice of separating American Indian families. Let’s not reverse course.

*
Editor Note: The government takes the land AND causes the poverty, then they want more LAND and take the children to achieve this goal. The genocide cycle never ends...  That is the sport of colonization and empire. Trace

to be continued

 

The Danger Ahead

That's me in the braids.

By Trace Hentz, Blog Editor

Hi everyone. Do you realize that this blog/website has been here since 2010? 

It's even hard FOR ME to remember all that I wrote and posted. 

There are hundreds of posts from/about the adoptee perspective. There were many adoptees who started writing in the 2000s, posting on blogs, some even writing books. 

It was an avalanche but who was reading? Adoptees mostly. Social Workers/Academics, definitely.

Did it work?

Our intended target was the adoption industry and all the people who planned to adopt a baby. Apparently we failed. We thought people would realize that closed adoption (by strangers) causes harm, trauma, stress, injury and lifelong mental/emotional/physical health issues.  We hoped that people would realize the word "adoption" actually means child trafficking,

We hoped that potential adoptive parents (PAPS) would reconsider adopting newborns/babies.  

We made suggestions like KINSHIP ADOPTION and LEGAL GUARDIANSHIP instead of the archaic closed adoption system.  If a child was a true orphan, with these options at least an adoptee would still have their identity intact. (Yes, there would still be trauma losing birth parents.)

There is also the HISTORY of the Indian Adoption Projects (genocide) HORROR show, as that truth leaked out -- out of that came the book series LOST CHILDREN OF THE INDIAN ADOPTION PROJECTS with Adoptee Voices and history - we had a platform to tell our story.

Here we are in 2022 - we are reentering a NEW dangerous time - some people are listening to adoptees but most are not.  (Twitter apparently replaced the blogs. #AdopteeVoices is their hashtag. #FlipTheScript was also used.)

Adoption is touted the solution since Roe v. Wade was overturned.  

Some are chanting "adopt adopt" - as if all we adoptees worked for since 2005 was ERASED - WIPED OUT!

But adoptees are not silent: we are still here like my friend Karen:

Unfortunately, it seems that some people think placating those anti-abortion, pro-adoption factions will somehow work in adoptees' favor. This sounds ridiculous to me. These factions created the culture of the Baby Scoop Era & want to return us there. +

— Karen Pickell (@Karen_Pickell) June 30, 2022

Karen's website: www.adopteereading.com

 

Can I ask you a favor? Would you please read this? I wrote about WHAT MY ADOPTION COST ME. My story is your story.

https://blog.americanindianadoptees.com/2012/01/lost-daughters-what-my-adoption-cost-me.html?spref=tw

What did being "adopted" cost you? 

I look forward to your comments.   Trace

(p.s. Thank you for being here and reading.)

Sixties Scoop survivors call for federal inquiry and apology

 Survivors' group, Sinclair say more needed to uncover full number of children taken

CBC News ·August 2

Katherine Legrange is a Sixties Scoop adoptee and volunteer co-ordinator of the 60s Scoop Legacy of Canada group, which is calling for a federal inquiry. (Submitted by Katherine Legrange)

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Former Canadian senator Murray Sinclair and a group representing survivors of the Sixties Scoop are calling for a federal inquiry into the actions and policies of governments that led to thousands of Indigenous children being taken from their homes over four decades and placed with non-Indigenous families.

"There have been studies on the Sixties Scoop, but we really haven't delved into how far-reaching the effects really are," said Katherine Legrange, volunteer co-ordinator with the 60s Scoop Legacy of Canada.

An inquiry is needed to get a full account of the number of children taken, and the impacts on the lives of survivors and their families, said Legrange, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits involving survivors. 

The children who were removed need to know they are not alone, but they also need to know that there were reasons for what happened that were not of their parents' making.

- Murray Sinclair, former senator

Sinclair, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said many of the challenges facing Indigenous families that led to the apprehension of their children stemmed from the legacy of decades of the residential school system.

"The children who were removed need to know they are not alone, but they also need to know that there were reasons for what happened that were not of their parents' making," he said in a release.

• Sixties Scoop survivors receive cheques but still looking for healing support

The group wants a meeting with federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett to discuss an inquiry, as well as a national apology and a settlement for Métis and non-status survivors who were excluded from a 2017 class-action settlement.

Canada's settlement agreement set aside $750 million to compensate First Nations and Inuit children who were removed from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous foster or adoptive parents between 1951 and 1991, and ended up losing their cultural identities.

Views differ on number of children taken

Estimates of the number of children taken are at around 20,000, but Legrange said survivors and families believe the figure is much higher.

Legrange and her brother were born seven months apart. They were separated from each other when they were children, but reunited in 2019 after she tracked him down on Facebook. 

"He welcomed me with open arms, never questioned who I was or where I came from, and so we connected quite well," Legrange said.

Recently, however, Legrange lost contact with her brother, who she said endured trauma as a result of his experiences in the child welfare system.

"He's marginalized, he was suffering with unresolved trauma and some addictions issues, and unfortunately he passed away from an overdose on June 11. And it wasn't until July 18 that I was notified that he had passed away."

In 2018, Bennett pledged a separate settlement for Métis and non-status Indigenous survivors, but Legrange said her group has not had any meetings yet with Bennett to discuss it.

Leslie Michelson, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, said the Sixties Scoop settlement agreement was "only the first step" to address the harm done by that system.

"We know that there are other claims that remain unresolved, including those of the Métis and non-status First Nations, and we are working with our partners toward a fair and lasting resolution for all survivors," Michelson said in an emailed statement on Monday evening.

On top of individual compensation, the Sixties Scoop settlement also agreed on the need for a foundation to support those affected, the statement said.

"It was crucial to all of those involved that this foundation would bring forward the perspectives of survivors to undertake and fund healing, wellness, education, language and culture activities related to the Sixties Scoop," Michelson said.

• Mé​tis and non-status First Nations launch Sixties Scoop lawsuit over identity loss

Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the national inquiry inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) examined elements of the Sixties Scoop, there are key differences that need to be considered, Legrange said.

Many survivors of residential schools returned to their home communities; the Sixties Scoop involved the permanent removal of children from their families, she said.

---

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools and for those triggered by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for residential school survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

• Do you know of a child who never came home from residential school? Or someone who worked at one? We would like to hear from you. Email our Indigenous-led team investigating the impacts of residential schools at wherearethey@cbc.ca or call toll-free: 1-833-824-0800.
• Do you have information about residential schools? Email your tips to: WhereAreThey@cbc.ca
  

Barbaric: Closed Adoptions #flipthescript #NAAM2014

Pray for mothers across the planet so they can keep their children with them until they grow big and strong.... (from my memoir One Small Sacrifice)

By Trace (Adoptee-Lost Bird)

How many more Lost Birds will lose hope unless laws change?  This breaks my heart again and again. I can’t take their journey for them. I can’t open their sealed adoption records for them. I will work with them and put them in touch with search angel Karen Vigneault. I also recommend DNA testing now. I recommend ceremony now.

I heard stern warnings from elders, too. I was taught if people are not receptive to your words, let them proceed – even into difficulty or dangerous circumstances. It is the only way they’ll learn. This does not mean I should not pay attention – it’s just means that taking care of someone else’s pain could be harmful to me. There are many books on being co-dependent. It is no way to live.

Each adoptee must journey their own way, as far as they can. I’ve learned this.

I've made my share of mistakes definitely. I did try to push myself and rush things. I acted impatient and hurt. I finally learned to take my journey as it happens, and not try to control it.

Adoption laws protect adoption agencies and social workers from lawsuits and shelter adoptive parents who think we are "theirs."

Adoptees must face the pain with these archaic laws, adoption myths, government sealed files and no answers. If people really understood, there would be no more closed adoptions.

Those who conduct adoptions must take a much closer look at the harm on infants, adoptee trauma, birth psychology, stress and mental illness. The system of closed adoption, in the words of one lawyer, is barbaric.

One day we will all look back at this and say “how did we ever let this happen to innocent children?” 

 

If you are still searching, contact me and Karen Vigneault. (See header for more info) 

************
Trafficking in Babies?
Here is a link to a story about the Nightlight Adoption Agency who brokered the sale of Baby Veronica.
PURE PROPAGANDA - take a look for yourself...  Together for adoption?  
That's what they say... A child who has a parent who wishes to raise them is not an orphan but a commodity, someone sold into adoption, which is trafficking...Lara/Trace
HERE

 

Closed Adoption: TRIBE UNKNOWN

 By Trace A. DeMeyer

This week I was contacted by a young woman whose mother Amy is an adoptee, born in 1965. They believe Amy is full-blood Hopi and we hope to prove it. Another adoptee Michael and I are trying to figure out what language he spoke as a child to give us some clue as to which tribe is his family. We believe he’s Apache. Another adoptee Tom contacted me in 2011 and asked me to help he and his sister find their tribal relatives in Washington state since they were brought to Connecticut and placed in a closed adoption as young children. Tom and his sister believe they might be Colville. I haven't been able to connect them to relatives even though I wrote a few tribal newspaper editors in Washington and asked for their help.

I’m not giving up on any adoptee.

All of these adoptees come from the time period of the Indian Adoption Programs and Projects - when the US government and the Child Welfare League of America were funding ARENA (Adoption Resource Exchange of North America) and paying churches and agencies to remove Indian children; they purposefully placed babies and children with non-Indian parents in closed adoptions. (Read chapter 39, Indian Placement Program in my anthology TWO WORLDS.)

Since the late 1800s, adoptions happened before, during and after residential boarding schools (in the US and Canada). It's no surprise that the numbers of adopted Indian children are calculated in percentages, not actual statistics, and left purposefully vague. (Ontario has a class action for adoptees in the works now. We know First Nations children were also brought from Canada to the US as part of ARENA.) These two governments decided assimilation was a very good idea and adoptions far from the reservation would erase the Indian blood and a child's memories of home.

Every email I receive and every phone call I make, I want to give adoptees something concrete, something helpful, something that will work. In truth, I can't because it doesn't exist, not with sealed adoption records, no paperwork or proof, and current laws that prevent adoptees from knowing their tribal identities.

There are things I want to happen and my list grows after each email and phone call...

First, I want adoptees and birthfamilies to write their legislators and tell them, "This is wrong," and we finally get someone in the government to hear us and offer their help.

I want an American government agency to help repatriate adoptees to their tribes. (Canada has three repatriation programs for adoptees.)

I want more people to see this history for what it was: a form of mind control using assimilation to kill culture in children, what could be called genocide of the mind. Our loss was the government's gain.

When I get requests from adoptees, I email ideas. If a state (like Kansas or Oregon for example) has open records, I can guide them to the state agency or registry and then tell them about search angels who will help for free or small fees. I can explain how to order their adoption files and get a court order, etc. I can give examples of how adoptees (like me) got around the laws and what worked for us.

For Amy, Arizona sealed her adoption file. For Michael, New York and New Mexico sealed his adoption file. I want to be able to tell Michael he is Apache, what band of Apache and connect him to his relatives. For Tom and his sister, I want to locate their parents so we can find out why they were taken as children but Washington has sealed their adoption. For all of them, truth is a mystery.

I want to be able to tell them, "This is what we'll do and it will work and in about a week you will get a phone call from the tribe and they will help you." But that would be a lie. Now I can only offer them hope and my two books on this history and this issue.

Finally, I want tribes to do something! Tribes could hire lawyers and legally demand the states and agencies who took children to release their names and adoption files. Tribes could create a list of birthdates of children who disappeared so adoptees could match their birthdate on a database.

Tribes could also create some form of welcome ceremony or reunion powwow or something to help the adoptee meet relatives and hear their family stories.

Right now, adoptees have mountains to climb and laws to conquer and no one to turn to... and knowing which tribe can be a huge obstacle when there are 560+ federally recognized tribes. For them it’s still TRIBE UNKNOWN.

What adoption did was conquer and uproot children and hurt generations in tribal nations.  Being adopted ultimately disrupted our rights as sovereign citizens in North America.

Colonization is an Act of Genocide

The following appplies in North America but since it is not taught in schools, apparently Native People are not considered to be the colonized. I beg to differ... Trace

Maori and Indigenous Analysis Ltd

Colonisation is an act of Genocide

Màori researcher Dr Leonie Pihama says the use of the term holocaust is an
appropriate and valid description of the impact of colonial genocide on Màori. A
Radio New Zealand panel featured Taranaki Màori academic Keri Opai using the
word holocaust to describe colonisation for Màori. The NZ Jewish Council said
his use of the term was "diminishing and trivialising of the Jewish Holocaust
experience". Dr Pihama says the NZ Jewish council are "basically incorrect" in
their response. She states "The term holocaust refers to deliberate acts of
genocide and ethnocide against groups of people, and that is exactly what
occurred here in Aotearoa. There was a deliberate and planned process of
colonisation that sought the extermination of our people. That is clear and well
documented".

United Nations conventions define genocide as "any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group , as such: as killing members of the group;

(i) killing members of the group;

(ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(ii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(iii) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(iv) forcibly transferring children of this group to another group

The definition of genocide by the United Nations is clearly one that reflects
the experience of Màori people and there needs to be a greater awareness of the
reality of the history of this country and of other Indigenous Nations. "There
is clear historical evidence of acts of genocide that were undertaken by
successive white settler Presidents in America. Hitler modelled many of his
oppressive acts on the forced removal and murder of Native Amerian people and
the imprisonment of thousands in concentration camps" states Dr Pihama.

Dr Pihama notes that Màori use of the term 'holocaust' should not be viewed
as in any way diminishing the experience of Jewish people and others that were
targeted by Hitler and Nazi Germany. She says clearly that Maori have always
actively acknowledged that history and the impact of it. Dr Pihama explains
"This is not about comparing experiences. The reference by Mr Opai is directed
to the historical trauma and post traumatic stress experienced by our tupuna and
generations of our people who continue to live with that impact on our own
land".

http://www.scoop. co.nz/stories/ PO1202/S00076/ colonisation- is-an-act- of-genocide. htm

Closed adoptions are a form of cultural genocide... Trace

Weiner, Thurman, Edwards, Schwarzenegger and other philanderers…

This is a repost from June 2011.

I have decided adoption laws haven’t changed because too many law-men and law-women are not adoptees. That is right. If adoption doesn’t affect them or their wife or their kids or their relatives, they don’t care. There are bigger fish to fry, like getting reelected each time. Usually the law-maker is wealthy, and their friends are the kind of people who adopt.
Think of Arizona Senator John McCain who adopted a daughter from India. Do you really think he wants her to open her adoption and find her Third World family? I don’t think so.
Rich adopters believe the adoptee should be grateful and satisfied to be one of them -- and they’d prefer the adoptee not go looking for trouble. They probably like our adoption laws the way they are – sealed tight and secret. Why? No risk, no complexities, no contact between adult adoptee and his or her birth-family, no headlines. Remember adoptees become legal property and apparent heirs of their adoptive family…and an ungrateful adoptee risks losing all that.
Caring about adoption privacy (or not caring) goes back to the era of “judging” single women. It was thought some of these women could not possibly raise a baby alone. (Oh really?) And darn them for getting knocked up in the first place. (What about the sperm? It takes two people.) Darn those girls for being unable to say no. (You just can’t pass over relic judgments like these that still exist.)  Who is thinking about children who become orphans? (Not a chance. There are lists of people willing to pay thousands of dollars for a baby and adopters prefer secrecy, too.)
A lot changed in the 1970s – which seems pretty recent. Available adoptable babies dropped significantly. There is still no accountability for the guys who knocked up the girls. There is no stigma for the sperm-deliveryman.
This leads me to an interesting idea. Some of these law-men had mistresses (more than a one) and their offspring could have been placed in a closed adoption. Wouldn’t that be a revelation? Think of Anthony Weiner who just lost his Senate seat over sex-ting. At least we know about Strom Thurman and John Edwards who each had a child with a mistress.
Then we have the philanderers. Think of presidential-hopeful Newt! Back in 1999, shortly after Gingrich stepped down from his position as speaker of the House and resigned from Congress, he met Callista. She was 33 to his 56. They had an affair for six years during the Republican-led impeachment of Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich told wife #1, after 18 years of marriage, that he was seeing someone else over the phone. (It could have been worse: According to his first wife, Newt was married when he met Mrs. Gingrich #2, and he asked #1 for a divorce while she was recovering from cancer surgery in the hospital.) Newt married his mistress Callista, now-wife #3, in 2000.
Then we have Austrian-actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger whose little tryst with the housekeeper produced a son and caused an uproar and his upcoming divorce to Maria.
Other governors, like David Patterson and Mark Sanford had mistresses. Some 30 years ago, a Maryland governor’s made his mistress his wife. After Marvin Mandel issued a statement confessing his love for the tall, blond Jeanne Dorsey, his wife refused to leave the governors mansion for half a year. The governor had to stay in a hotel. Mandel's divorce was finalized in 1974; that very same day he married Dorsey, and they lived happily ever after. (Well, first Mandel was convicted of mail fraud and racketeering and went to jail. Then he got out and then they lived happily ever after.)
There are reasons for secrets and secrecy, right? Perhaps the rich and powerful make their own rules about family values, hiding the affairs and the offspring.
It seems obvious to me now. Closed Adoption is the perfect way to hide a secret.