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THANK YOU CHI MEGWETCH!
Girls make up only a small fraction of the incarcerated
juvenile population, but girls often land in detention because they have
experienced some form of trauma: abusive families, bad experiences in
the foster care system, and especially sexual abuse. Policy experts even
use the term "sexual abuse to prison pipeline," and they say it’s why
incarcerating a young girl perpetuates more negative behavior and makes
it harder to exit the system.
Desiree is a young woman who has bounced between foster care,
detention centers, and residential treatment centers since she was
10. Even though she has been the repeated victim of abuse, she says
she's been made to feel like she's the problem...and she's angry about
it. But she has her own ideas about how to make things better and she’s
making her voice heard.
Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice is supported, in part, by the Anne Levy Fund, Margaret Neubart Foundation, the John and Gwen Smart Family Foundation, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Birth of a Family the fifth and final movie screened during the Wide Awake series
A film sharing the story of three sisters and a brother trying
to rebuild their family after it was torn apart during the Sixties
Scoop was shown at the University of Windsor Thursday night. Birth of a Family
was the fifth and final movie screened during the Wide Awake series put
on by the university's Aboriginal Education Centre in partnership with
the Arts Council Windsor and Region.
It follows the journey of Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie and Ben, who
were adopted as infants into different families across North America and
are just meeting again for the first time.
"I think that the policies in place were very systematic in how they
were targeting First Nations people," said Kathryn Pasquach, the
Aboriginal Outreach and Retention Coordinator for the university. "It
was very unfortunate that the cultural importance and the belief system
that Indigenous people hold were not valued."
Anthony Saracino is a university student who felt it was his duty to see the film
"I think just being a citizen of Canada — a citizen of the world —
it's important to know the ground you walk on and I'm just doing my due
diligence with that," he said.
Ostoro Petathegoose is an Indigenous woman who attended all of the screenings.
"I grew up with a lot of anti-Indigenous racism in my life and I have
found when talking to a lot of people they are not educated on the
history of Indigenous peoples in this country," she explained. "So I
feel that movies like this are really relevant and people should be
seeing movies like this."
The education centre hopes to run a similar series of films next year.
We also have the Canada and American governments conducting the ARENA programs- transporting First Nations and American Indian children for adoptions cross borders. Were you adopted into the US from Canada? Do you know?
1966The National Adoption Resource
Exchange, later renamed the Adoption Resource Exchange of North America
(ARENA), was established as an outgrowth of the Indian
Adoption Project.
It was a devastating day in April 1973 when Lillian Semaganis, a young Cree mother whose six children had all been taken by Saskatchewan social services, opened the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix newspaper to see two of her own daughters advertised for adoption.https://t.co/IXrk5WxEz1
As I wrote "What do you call this" on this blog: THIS is genocide. Taking children and selling them in a catalog? Taking children so they would disappear? Taking children so there would be less Indians to deal with, so governments would not have to honor their treaties? All the missing and murdered Indigenous women? The hunting of these women and their deaths by serial killers or maybe the police?
Think about it. Protect yourself.
Yes, adoption as human trafficking is what happened. Trace
Siblings separated in Sixties Scoop had been searching for sister for decades when they turned to CBC for help
A patchwork of information suggested Cleo Semaganis Nicotine had been killed decades ago while trying to make her way back to Saskatchewan from her adoptive family in the U.S., but no one knew for sure what happened until CBC News began looking into the case.
Episodes 6, 7, and 8 done. This podcast is just getting better and better. Such incredible (and heartbreaking) storytelling / reporting by @connie_walker and an absolute must listen for all Canadians. Can’t wait for the rest of the episodes. #FindingCleohttps://t.co/1LQ4415YCO
Any move to have Aboriginal children adopted by non-Indigenous
families would be a backward step, according to Australia’s peak body
representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
SNAICC (National Voice for Our Children) chairwoman Sharron Williams,
a Narungga-Kaurna woman based in Adelaide, said all children needed to
be safe and cared for but Aboriginal children shouldn’t be separated
from their kin and culture.
Ms Williams’ comments came as federal Children’s Minister David
Gillespie said permanent adoptions should play a role in finding new
homes for abused or neglected Aboriginal children, including adoptions
with non-Indigenous families.
Mr Gillespie has described the situation as a child protection “crisis”.
Ms Williams told NIT this week that before upping adoptions,
more work needed to be put into helping parents, families and
communities care for their children.
“We don’t believe Aboriginal children should lose connection to culture through adoption,” Ms Williams said.
“We know from our history that (approach) has created some enormous
problems with our children losing connection to their country, their
culture and in many instances their community.”
Asked if she thought non-Indigenous families should be able to adopt
Indigenous children, Ms Williams said: “I don’t think they should.”
She said in most states and territories adoption was not an option, but permanent and stability placement was.
“In most states, non-Aboriginal people can become foster carers of
Aboriginal children and that happens and in those instances cultural
connect plans and stability plans are developed for individual children
in care,” she said.
“But adoption is one of those areas where it doesn’t happen.
“I know there is work happening in New South Wales where there is a push to go down the road of adoption.
“I’m unsure how far that’s got, but in South Australia that isn’t something that is on the drawing board.”
Need to look at underlying poverty
Ms Williams said more resources needed to be put into addressing the
poverty in Aboriginal families, the lack of employment, difficulties
with housing, access to early childhood services and health programs.
“I think if they were better addressed for our communities, we would
have a far greater response to better parenting (and) building stronger
and more resilient communities, therefore less children would be
removed.”
Northern Territory Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation head
Eileen Cummings said a bridging program was needed to help keep children
who were removed from their homes for their own safety connected with
their families, communities and culture and to also help the communities
grieving the loss of the children.
“We don’t want the children at risk to be left in their home
environment unless there is a safety net there somewhere,” she said.
“But what we want is programs for the parents and the community as well.
“A lot of them are upset because the children are being removed, but you can’t leave them if they are not safe.”
Ms Cummings said when her corporation worked with women who were
being subjected to domestic violence, one of the shelters ran an
outreach program so that women could work to revisit their families and
reconnect with their children.
“I thought that was a good way of reconnecting the parents back with
the children because I don’t want our children to lose their identity as
young Aboriginal people,” she said.
Children need better home environments
The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples said in a
statement vulnerable children should be removed, but they needed to be
going to a better place.
“We are troubled by the knowledge from past Royal Commissions of the
dangers of neglect and abuse perpetrated within institutions and of the
failures of many out-of-home-care alternatives,” it said.
“We desperately need to know where we are removing our children to.
“Their new environment must allow them to thrive.
“Countless Aboriginal children who have missed out on care and
support have already been ‘removed’ – they are currently in juvenile
detention centres and jails.
“These are the children failed by support ‘programs’, failed by
distant policy-makers, failed by families in over-crowded houses and
failed by communities where local control and self-determination have
been frustrated.”
The program subsequently revisited the topic with a panel of Indigenous experts, but ignored calls for an apology,
It said it blocked out the protestors with a generic backdrop last week.
“We respect the right to protest as much as we respect the right of free speech,” a Seven spokesperson said.
“Some of the group was holding offensive signage and some began banging on the window and mouthing obscenities.
“To ensure regulatory compliance, and bearing in mind the potential
for young children to be watching, the decision was made to utilise a
generic backdrop.”
Eleanore Sunchild, a Cree lawyer who specializes in Aboriginal law
and has represented Sixties Scoop adoptees, says, "a lot of times, they
were so young they don't remember their family, they don't know what
community they come from or even what tribe they belong to."
Sunchild says that loss of Indigenous identity coupled with separation from family is often devastating.
"The whole loss of being raised in a different home and not exactly
knowing why, why they were removed — there's something wrong with them?
Or was there something wrong with their family? And in a lot of
instances it was just because of the policy that was in place at the
time," she said. Kicknosway says some people don't necessarily want to return to their communities. She says they "only want to know they belong somewhere" and "have
validation that they were alive" and that maybe someone missed them when
they were taken away.
Author and Sixties Scoop survivor Raven Sinclair, an associate
professor of social work at the University of Regina, has written
extensively on the subject. She is in the midst of a five-year study
with the aim of creating a national database of adoptees.
Her goal is to create a network that can provide practical, long-term
support similar to what is available to some of the people affected by
the residential school system.
Cree lawyer Eleanore Sunchild, who represents
survivors of the Sixties Scoop, says it's hard for adoptees to track
down their biological families because many of them were so young when
they were taken that they don't remember any details about their
relatives or their community. (Connie Walker/CBC News)
"An adoptee you know here in town could call up a therapist
who's been approved by us ... and get some help," she said. "For some,
it's been a lifetime of abuse, so it's going to take a long time for
them to recover."
NOT WORKING: NISCW has set up a toll-free number to help adoptees searching for family connections and to provide peer support.
The Indian Adoption Project (IAP), which resulted in the out-of-home placement of many Native American children, lasted from 1958 through 1967. It emerged during the U.S. federal government’s ‘Termination Policy’ that sought to assimilate Native tribes into the larger American fabric “as rapidly as possible.” This meant removal of federal protection of tribes and tribal lands and the transfer of civil and criminal jurisdiction to the states, affecting laws around “social services, child welfare, probate, those kinds of civil matters,” Melissa says.
“You’re
telling me this thing I’ve lived all these years has a history and that
history includes some policy and that policy has been unknown to me?
I’m a second year PhD student. To be at that level of study and for that
to just be known, it still floors me.” Source: Meet Melissa Olson | Pollen - Pollen
Documentary Stolen Childhoods, an audio documentary written by Melissa Olson, Ryan Katz, and Todd Melby aired during the Listening Lounge and Truth to Tell. You can listen to the podcast below. To support the project, visit their GiveMN page.
This week, High Country News published a story by reporter Allison Herrera detailing a conservative think tank’s efforts to dismantle the Indian Child Welfare Act,
an adoption law that turns 40 this year. The 1978 act was created to
prevent the separation of Native children from their families and
communities through adoptions, to “protect the best interests of Indian
children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and
families.”
...
Groups like the Goldwater Institute that push for the elimination of
ICWA are, intentionally or not, contributing to the continued attack on
Native existence.
Such groups have attempted to capitalize on misinformation and stereotypes
as a way to undermine ICWA. But ignoring the rights of tribes as both
governments and as peoples to protect their culture not only ignores
sovereignty, an all-too-common practice these days, it also overlooks,
quite callously, generations of historical trauma.
Note from Trace Hentz
I am so grateful to Graham for writing this article and interviewing me and others on the topic of ICWA and keeping adoptees in the news. When I spoke to him, it hit me that I wrote the article for Indian Country Today in 2013 and very little has changed. other than Goldwater trying to end the important much-needed federal law Indian Child Welfare Act.
In Indian country, opiates and heroin are called dark spirits.
“...When you are in the throes of opiate addiction, it now owns your soul,” he added. “Pharmaceuticals was the gateway to addiction for our elders, and now some are experiencing addiction at 60, 70, 80 years old who had led a clean and traditional life but were prescribed without being told they were going to have a dependency problem.”
Meanwhile, the rate of drug-related out-of-home child placements in general in Minnesota has skyrocketed.
Of the 7,595 children placed into out-of-home care in Minnesota in 2016, parental drug abuse was cited as the primary reason in nearly 28 percent of cases. Of those 1,478 children covered under the Indian Child Welfare Act, 588, or about 40 percent, were removed for the primary reason of parental drug abuse, according to Department of Human Services data. Nearly 90 percent of ICWA children, regardless of the reasons for removal, were placed with a relative while in out-of-home care.
Wondering who powers us? You. A true adoptee rights army, growing each day, with each of you linked up to NY legislators across the state. This is who we are, an #AdopteeArmy. https://t.co/Ta6eAoSPBj
— New York Adoptee Rights Coalition (@nyadopteerights) February 27, 2018
We were awarded an in-kind grant from Google to run $10,000 worth of ads per month on their search results pages, to promote our website and our mission to bring public records back to the public. We're going to have a lot of fun with this. pic.twitter.com/ISUNVbMUzw
Here's an older post (2014) still relevant today: LINK An excerpt:
Margaret Jacobs’s new book, A Generation Removed, provides a
thoroughly documented and heart wrenching account of good intentions
gone wrong, both in education and in child welfare. Jacobs’s
specialization is women’s history, particularly the interactions between
Indigenous and white women in settler nations such as the United
States, Canada, and Australia. I appreciate Jacobs’ stance as a scholar
all the more because she is a white feminist historian who is able to
cast a critical eye on the contradictory roles often played by women of
European descent. It was from reading Jacobs’s earlier work that I first
encountered the Maternalism movement: the proto-feminist reformers of
their day who asserted female authority and expertise (before American
women could vote or hold elected office) into the public spheres usually
reserved for male leadership. Jacobs’s previous work, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler
Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the
American West and Australia, 1880-1940, is a massive scholarly tome.
I drew on this work for my keynote remarks to the 2013 KAAN (Korean
American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network) conference and at AAC
(American Adoption Congress) 2014. White Mother to a Dark Race is
a valuable resource, particularly for researchers with an interest in
the origins of public school teaching and the social work profession.
Having said that, White Mother is quite weighty and not nearly as accessible to lay readers as her latest book, A Generation Removed. Jacobs’s new book provides highly personal accounts that help readers
to make sense of the social reform experiments in Indian child welfare
and education from the perspective of the Native women who lost their
children in the process. Those of us wondering what can be done in contemporary times to halt
the widespread practice of family disruption still perpetuated by the
adoption industry will gain inspiration from the chapter explaining how
the Indian Child Welfare Act came into existence in the 1970s. This
largely untold story may also inspire activists who want to interrupt
the vulture-like “baby lifts” in impoverished communities around the
globe that search for “orphans” for the marketplace of adoption. Readers
will learn not only the faulty reasoning that leads popular
opinion-shapers such as television’s Dr. Phil (who sympathized with the
Capobiancos, the adoptive parents in the Baby Veronica case) to
characterize ICWA as a racist law. Readers will also learn how the
valiant efforts of a committed group of researchers, child welfare
practitioners, and first/birthmothers combined to create an effective
coalition to get ICWA passed in order to protect Indian families.
Key to that process, as Jacobs documents meticulously through
archival records and interviews with key players, was the construction
of a counter narrative that challenged the public perceptions of Indian
mothers as unfit parents and drunk welfare dependents who didn’t love
their children. While not denying the problems plaguing many Native
communities, such as alcohol addiction, child neglect and abuse, and
poverty, Jacobs offers a more nuanced and complete portrait of
Indigenous families and their struggles to raise children by maintaining
extended family ties, drawing on the cultural traditions that had been
systematically attacked dating back to the Great Indian Wars. The
struggle for extended family integrity is all the more remarkable and
poignant, given the subsequent onslaught of well-meaning educators in
the boarding schools that for a lengthy period preached the inferiority
of Native ways and tried to replace them with superior Euro-American,
Christian ways.
Another way of putting it is this: There is no “post-adoption” until we
have ended adoption, once and for all. Just as the boarding school
experiment for Native American children has been discredited as
genocidal, just as the Indian Adoption Program has been disbanded (you
can read about its rise and fall in A Generation Removed), so
too, I anticipate that the transracial and transnational adoption
experiments will be replaced by a much more just and humane practice
that is less about the business of selling children (and in the process,
disrupting extended families of color), and more about ensuring justice
and care for the most needy and vulnerable—namely, poor women of color
and their children around the world.
Another EXCELLENT review of A GENERATION REMOVED John
Raible has written a breathtaking article on how "child removal"
affects us adoptees both past and present...It is true Margaret Jacobs
has broken new ground in history with her new book A GENERATION REMOVED,
and it's brilliant. It takes time to digest. After editing and
writing four books on this topic myself, we have made HUGE STEPS in
creating awareness of the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs that
were genocidal in intent and purpose... We are living proof as American
Indian Adoptees that we are resilient....Trace
My mom & me were both adopted. My mom was 5 when she was taken out of Alaska, adopted by nonNatives who severely abused her. I found her 19 years ago & am still finding other family, reconnecting with them & my tribe. Adoption is trauma & intergenerational trauma is real. https://t.co/48pUWyuTcf
The Indian Child Welfare Act lawsuit filed in Rapid City's federal court
almost five years ago is going to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. A
three-judge panel is hearing oral arguments in St. Paul, Minn., on
Tuesday, Feb. 12.
In March 2013, the Rosebud and Oglala Sioux Tribes, as well as tribal
parents, brought suit against state officials in Pennington County.
They claim the process for handling abuse and neglect cases routinely
violates ICWA and due process rights.
After two years of
litigation, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Viken found for the plaintiffs
and ordered changes in the way emergency placements are handled.
Immediate appeals were filed by the Seventh Circuit presiding judge, the
Pennington County State's Attorney, and the state Department of Social
Services. SDPB's Victoria Wicks has this story.
A A two-day emergency meeting in Ottawa begins today, to discuss what the Minister of Indigenous Services has called a “humanitarian crisis.”
"Right now dollars flow into the child welfare system according to
the number of kids that are apprehended," said Jane Philpott. "So the
more children in care, the more money comes out of government coffers."
Groups help ease transition back into families, tribes
WASHINGTON —
Conrad Eagle Feather, a Sicangu Lakota, was only three when he was
taken from the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and adopted by
a non-Native farming family in the state of Nebraska. His three sisters
were removed to separate families.
He recalls a childhood with little joy.
“They used us for farm labor,” he said, detailing a list of chores
that began before dawn and continued until bedtime. He said he still
bears the scars of physical abuse.
“For every sin I had committed according to the Bible, I got one
strike with whatever they had in their hands at the time — a garden
hose, a broom handle, a wire hanger,” he said. “And all the time, they
used to tell me, ‘Who knows what would have happened to you if we hadn’t
saved you?’”
Indiana is set to open their adoption records
on July 1st, and this will be of particular interest to our Native
American community. As you may know, over a million children were routed
through Chicago between 1950-1970 and many of them ended up in Indiana,
having been placed in non-Native foster and adoption
settings.
Please let your readers know there will be a conference open
to everyone that will assist people in filling out the forms to request
their birth information, hosted by the Indiana
Adoptee Network http://indianaadopteenetwork.org/. Needless to say, we are counting the days so that hopefully many of the American Indians/Native Americans living here will be able to find their
rightful families and reconnect with their culture and heritage.
Thank you,
--
Kerry Steiner
Professional Genealogist Aspen Genealogy
Creating Affordable Family Trees Since 1992 Association of Professional Genealogists
National Genealogical Society Indiana Genealogical Society
Chief
Marcia Brown Martel is a lead claimant in the 'Sixties Scoop' court
settlement with Canada. Under the settlement, First Nations and Inuit
children who were taken from their homes between 1951 and 1991 will be
eligible for personal compensation.
Montreal
Sixties Scoop victims from 1951 to 1991 can seek assistance from
National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network regarding
settlement
In October of 2017, the federal Government of Canada reached a
settlement with the First Nations victims of the “Sixties Scoop.” The
program gained its nickname when child welfare agencies removed
thousands of indigenous children from their communities primarily in the
60’s and placed them with foster families or adopting families.
After years of trying to fight against the Canadian federal
government, Lead claimant Chief Marcia Brown Martel won a massive
victory when the court awarded a payout of $800 million Canadian / $635
million American, to about 20,000 victims.
How to seek compensation and / or support as a “Sixties Scoop” survivor
Colleen Cardinal, (Plains Cree from Saddle Lake Cree Nation) one of
the co-founders of the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare
Network (NISCW) told Indian Country Today that the NISCW is a great
resource for those seeking compensation and / or support as a “Sixties
Scoop” survivor.
In addition to offering services such as leadership, support and
advocacy for those affected by Indigenous child removal systems in
Canada, the NISCW is currently offering a specific “Sixties Scoop” Peer
Support Toll Free Number (1-866-456-6060.)
According to the NISCW website:
The peer support line will provide listening and support services to
Indigenous 60s scoop survivors who experienced displacement, loss of
culture, due to being adopted or fostered in non-Indigenous households
across Canada, the U.S.A.
The Peer Support Line will provide safe, respectful and
non-judgemental confidential listening.It will link Survivors to
approved services across Canada to support their emotional, cultural,
spiritual and mental needs.
Services include:
Provide direction on how to access government information related to their adoption and other government documentation.
Provide direction to support their repartition efforts that include finding families and communities.
Provide information and direction on how to attain Indigenous
programs and services, Treaty Indian Cards, Metis memberships and
Nunavut Land Claims Agreement services for Inuit.
Provide one-on-one talks with Survivors to listen to stories,
connect them with other Survivors, or Sixties Scoop organizations across
Canada.
For more information on the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network visit www.NISCW.org.
A young woman, guided by Spider Woman, must overcome colonial history and education to find herself. Michif director and animator Amanda Strong combines puppets and stop motion in this arrestingly beautiful short.
Survivors, write your stories. Write your parents stories. Write the elders stories. Do not be swayed by the colonizers to keep quiet. Tribal Nations have their own way of keeping stories alive.... Trace
“Indigenous based child-rearing in today’s generation
resides in watching the restoration of unfaltering kinship in our
Indigenous family systems unfold and allowing that to reside in the
raising of our children with the knowing of who they are, and where they
come from, wildly and unapologetically.”
Artwork by: Votan Henriquez
excerpt:
This reconciliation is for the colonizers.
This is a time of pseudo-reconciliation for continued colonization.
This reconciliation is colonization, disguised with dollar signs and white-skinned handshakes.
This reconciliation is not our reconciliation.
Because.
The only reconciliation that exists for us, as Indigenous nations, is
the reconciliation we need to find within ourselves and our
communities, for agreeing and complying to this madness for so long.
The only reconciliation that exists for us, is the reconciliation
needed to forgive our families, our loved ones, for acting like the
colonizer.
The only reconciliation we need. Is a reconciliation that doesn’t
involve white skinned handshakes and five dollar handouts for our lands.
At eighteen months old, Susan Harness (M.A. cultural anthropology
’06, M.A. creative nonfiction ’16) was removed from her home because of
neglect. Notes from the social worker document a hungry infant with
infected and bleeding mosquito bites and a diaper that hadn’t been
changed in days. Harness and two of her siblings had been left in the
care of their six-year-old sister by a mother who regularly disappeared
for extended periods of time.
Family and community members on Flathead Indian Reservation in
Montana were unable to help since they did not have the economic
resources. As a result, in 1960, like over 30 percent of American Indian
children in that time period, Harness was adopted into a non-American
Indian home.
Transracial adoption
The Indian Adoption Project was a small study interested in
understanding the impact of transracial adoption on American Indian
children. From 1958 through 1967, researchers spoke with a small subset
of American Indian children who were adopted by white families.
Proponents of this practice argued that this was an improvement over
previous policies which resulted in difficulties placing American Indian
children into homes. Harness’ experience and later academic research
document a unique perspective on this subject – that of the child
adoptee.
“The primary purpose of placing over a third of American Indian
children with white families was assimilation,” said Harness. “My
adoption, like nearly every other transracial adoption, was a closed
adoption. This means our names were changed; our families, our tribes
and nation, erased. Our entire identity was kept locked away in files
that could be opened only by court order, trusting you could find a
sympathetic judge. Therefore, finding our way home would be almost
impossible. That’s how it was meant to be. We were not supposed to ‘be’
Indian, we were supposed to become members of the dominant society, with
full and complete access to the American Dream.”
"We were not supposed to ‘be’ Indian, we were supposed
to become members of the dominant society, with full and complete access
to the American Dream." – Susan Harness (upcoming book Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, out fall 2018 from University of Nebraska Press.)
Your original birth record indicates where your natural mother and
father were born. You can use the phone directory for that city to
contact them or other family members to find out where they might
currently be living.
Henderson Directories (“City Directories”) for the city you were
born in, or in which your natural parent was born, and for occupations.
They can also provide relevant older information on names, addresses,
and occupations dating back to 1905. Many cities across Canada had these
directories in addition to phone-books. Check local libraries and
online sources (e.g., University of Alberta) for copies.
Check adoption notices in the newspaper after date of completion of
adoption. Also check birth notices that do not mention the time of
birth or doctors involved, these are sometimes disguised adoption
notices.
Check birthday wishes in the paper
Peruse highschool and yearbooks for appropriate years
Check Obituaries
Many use Facebook and other social media to locate relatives also... Trace
By Trace Hentz (adoptee and editor of the book series Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects)
What do you call it when a woman has a baby and a social worker/ judge/ government has pre-judged
her, then decides to take that baby, then it happens again and again… each
and every time she gets pregnant. What if this happened 5 times, or 9 times?
What do you call that?
Debby, Mitzi, Elizabeth (and countless other Native adoptees)
your mothers lost you and other children. What do you call this? How do you tell
people or explain to people a history like this?
What did they call your mother? Did they demean
her, label her crazy, to justify this?
How does anyone define genocide? What is Human Trafficking? Choosing one segment of the population for this
treatment? Placing American Indian First Nations Indigenous babies with a
non-Indian family? This had a purpose. The government paid for this. And until the
Indian Child Welfare Act, this
decimated tribes to near extinction.
We know with slaves, children were sold. Families separated. Rebellions
quashed. Resistors hung from trees. Millions of dollars were made selling human
life, with fortunes created, mansions built, and enough wealth for generations.
Who in their right mind would find this acceptable?
What do you call taking babies from their own mothers? Do you give this a name, like adoption. Do you market it as something else? How
do you sell people on this? Why did people accept this?
How did mothers survive losing their children? How do children survive without them?
If this feels like slavery and heinous and insanity and genocide and
cruelty, that’s because it is. It is all this.
I will be publishing a new updated second edition of TWO WORLDS this month! Please tell your friends and other adoptees. We'll post more on this blog when it comes out. Please get in touch if you are an adoptee and still searching. Pray for mothers across the planet that they can keep and raise their children.
We are writing to update you on legislative developments in Florida,
specifically around HB357/SB576, which we have all joined in opposing.
Earlier this week, Rep. Barry Russell, a Democrat from Broward County,
filed a clean OBC access bill with a genuine contact preference form
(HB821). We are obviously supportive of clean bills. We are, however,
cautiously moving forward with support of HB821 at this time. It appears
certain that the new bill was filed at the request or direction of
Representative Richard Stark, the sponsor of the bill that we currently
oppose. With the recent history of two widely different New York OBC
access bills being simultaneously introduced and sponsored by the same
legislator---with disastrous results for adoptees---we are concerned
that the new bill in Florida is not genuine and is instead being used
solely to obtain a hearing on Representative Stark’s bill.
Representative Stark has represented that at least one committee
assigned to his bill will not approve it without adding redaction
provisions.
For this reason, we have expressed guarded support for the new bill. At
the same time, we are working with Florida constituents to determine
whether the current sponsor of the clean bill is committed to the bill
and to adoptee rights generally. We will specifically ask him if he is
willing to work with supporters in assuring passage of HB821 without
discriminatory amendments.
The new bill, which does not have a required senate sponsor, can be found here. We will let you know more details once we talk with Representative Russell.
As always, thanks for your support!
Gregory Luce • Marley Greiner • Susan Friel-Williams + all 26 organizations in unity
Adoptee Rights Law Center
Adoptee Rights Campaign
Adoption Rights Alliance (Ireland)/The Philomena Project
ALARM Network
American Adoption Congress
Banished Babies of Ireland
Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization
Concerned United Birthparents
The Donaldson Adoption Institute
National Center on Adoption and Permanency
The National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC)
Saving Our Sisters Trace L. Hentz, author, Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects series
Access Rhode Island
California Open
Canada Open
Equal Access Oklahoma
Equality4Adoptees (Texas)
Florida Adoption Initiative for Reform
Indiana Open
Michigan Open
Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform
Missouri Open
Nevada Open
New York State Adoptee Equality
Post-Adoption Center for Education and Resources (PACER)
By Trace L Hentz (blog editor) It appears that Baby Deseray was placed by the same adoption lawyer Ray Godwin and the birthmother dealt wi...
Bookshop
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.
Diane Tells His Name
click photo
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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