Watching and waiting to see what BLOGGER does to us

 posted on American Indian Adoptees website/blog

Hey readers!

It's Trace, your editor.  I started this blog/website in 2010 to help adoptees like me navigate the waters and terrors of closed adoption, reunions and the genocidal Indian Adoption Projects.  There were so many stories of adoptees like me, I decided I'd share them here.  (Because of this blog, there is an anthology book series called Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects, five books - your voices, your stories.)

I had never made a blog before. It was all new to me.  (Yes, I worked as a journalist since 1996, but this was different.)

It made me happy to find out:  Together, WE are a voice, a history, a force.  We are not going anywhere!  We will speak our minds, help each other and share our stories!

Last night, this website hit 8 MILLION VIEWS! I thank each of you for being here and educating yourself and reading this information! WOW!

Now the bad news: Google who owns blogger is going to change soon. They are obviously policing blogs, as I had warned you. (My blog Puck and Otis disappeared then reappeared then was gone again then came back.)

right click to enlarge

 

On December 16, Blogger will change again.  I just read their 6-page policy statement. We are not violating any of their policies.  I am simply sharing information and giving you the news, the source, the newspaper, or whoever wrote it.  Or I wrote it...

I know they keep an eye on us.  But is it artificial intelligence monitoring us? WHY?

I wrote before this blog might disappear and that means I'd have to relocate it to wordpress or some other platform, if necessary.  I'll keep you informed and will work on that transition immediately.  I have backed up this content: over 3,000 posts!

If there are stories you want to save, or read again, print them out, please. Use the search bar to find topics you need to reread and save.  I know some of you are students, so please use the important resources up top on this blog.

😢SADLY this site may simply go poof.

I don't run ads or make money from this blog-website.  Other than book sales, which I really appreciate, books are the only income stream.  And it seems that people are not reading books.  THEY READ BLOGS like this one! 

So BIG THANKS to you! Thank you for coming here. I thank you for all your comments and emails. I thank you for reading my rants and learning about this history.  CHI MEGWETCH!

IMPORTANT:  How to reach me:

Trace Hentz

email: tracelara@pm.me

phone: 413-772-6996

If you need my address, email me or call. 

My door is open! Let me know what you need or if I can help!  LOVE TO YOU ALL XOX

AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES today #LANDBACK

 

What “Stolen Land” and Land Back Actually Mean

SOURCE: https://juliefrancella.substack.com/p/we-are-not-going-to-evict-you-what?r=cbskx&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

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A caller to our radio show was furious. He said he was sick and tired of Indigenous people saying we are living on stolen land.

I understand why that phrase makes people defensive. They hear it as a personal accusation. They think: I didn’t steal anything. I bought my home. My grandparents came here after all of that happened. What exactly do you want from me?

But that reaction often misses what Indigenous people are actually saying.

When we say “you are on stolen land,” we are not saying that every person alive today personally stole a home, or that we want to knock on people’s doors and force them out. We are naming the foundation this country was built on: Indigenous lands were taken through removal, violence, broken treaties, fraud, confinement, and laws written to make theft look legal.

That is history. But it’s also the present.

“Legal” does not mean just.

A lot of people assume that because land is owned legally today, the question is settled.

But legal systems can be built to make injustice look legitimate.

The United States did not simply expand into “empty land.” It removed Native nations from territories that invaders and governments wanted. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 created the legal machinery for pushing Indigenous people west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee removal in 1838–39—the Trail of Tears—was carried out by the U.S. government, and approximately 4,000 Cherokee people died during that forced displacement.

That is a documented policy of making Indigenous land available by removing Indigenous people.

And removal was not the only strategy. The federal government also confined Native nations to reservations, violated treaties, and divided collectively held Indigenous lands through the allotment system. Under allotment, land deemed “surplus” was sold to non-Native settlers. Native landholdings dropped from 138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres by 1934.

So yes, someone can hold a valid deed today. That does not erase the chain of events that made the deed possible.

Not every Indigenous nation has the same history, and we should not flatten hundreds of nations into one story. As I always say, we are not a monolith.

But when Indigenous people call land “unceded,” they are making a specific point: the original Indigenous nation did not surrender, sell, or legally sign away that territory to the Crown (Canada) or the government (USA).

Much of British Columbia, Canada, is unceded territory.  About 95 percent of the province, including Vancouver, was never covered by treaties that transferred First Nations land to the Crown.  The City of Vancouver acknowledges that it is located on the unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

Ottawa, Canada is located on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe territory.  Large areas of British Columbia, Quebec, eastern Ontario, and Atlantic Canada have unresolved or unceded Indigenous land questions.

Here in New York City, we are in Lenapehoking—the homeland of the Lenape people. That does not mean we can reduce a complex history to a slogan “You are on Stolen Land”.  It means we should know whose homeland this was and is, and understand that the Lenape did not disappear just because settlers drew new borders and wrote new property laws.  Pratt Institute in Brooklyn identifies its location as the traditional and unceded homeland of the Lenape.

So does the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Then there is the argument people make when they want the conversation to end quickly: But treaties were signed so the land issues were settled.

Yes, treaties were signed. But treaties were also broken, manipulated, ignored, and discarded when Indigenous land became profitable.

Look at the Black Hills.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. Then gold was found. The United States took the land anyway. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government’s action amounted to a taking that required compensation.

Fort Laramie, Wyoming, painting by Alfred Jacob Miller.

The government took land in violation of its own agreement, and more than a century later, the country’s highest court recognized that the taking was unlawful. Stolen land!

Another thing people may not understand is that many Indigenous peoples hold a different worldview about money, ownership, and wealth.👇

Reposting this from AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES website

 8-5-2026

Yesterday, (g**gle) the blogger platform took down my blog Otis and Puck.  Made for humor, I posted silly stuff, music, and sweet fun junk.  By the way:  Otis is a shapeshifter and Puck is a raven.  Nothing political or porn or anything bad was anywhere on that blog/website. It didn't have ads. [https://www.blog.otisandpuck.com]

When I got notice yesterday that they took it down, once my shock wore off, I clicked a link they sent me and asked them to review it.  For a few hours today the blog was "reinstated" and was unlocked, then bam, an hour ago, it was locked again. It's gone.

This is the situation we are facing with any websites and blogs, even ones that are non-political.  They can simply disappear.

Now I am going to work fast to get a website/blog set-up just in case this one disappears. It could happen, and all the history posted here would be gone... 

(They changed how I can download and save my content on here, and they made it much more confusing and difficult to save everything and back it up.  I even had a back-up blog (https://americanindianadoptees.blogspot.com) just in case.  Last year, I was unable to upload news content from this website to that website. I tried!

I know it's important we keep a historical record, especially in Indian Country.  We have been erased before!

YES, I am trying to save everything quickly.

I guess that why real (paper) books are so important now, because they can't be deleted and erased, like what happened to Otis and Puck.

Having a bad day? I am...

Trace, blog editor 

 

(This back up blog has over 5,000 posts) 

 

Leonard Peltier on Indigenous Rights, His Half-Century in Prison & More

I interviewed Peltier when he was in Leavenworth in 1998.   I am glad he is home... Trace

 

PLEASE GO TO https://blog.americanindianadoptees.com/ for many more stories... we cannot update this blog...

We are very sorry

We are no longer able to duplicate American Indian Adoptees blog posts to this website. Blogger changed.

This blog will remain here unless google takes it down.

GO TO American Indian Adoptees:  https://blog.americanindianadoptees.com/ 

Musical Time Travel: "Polyphony Meets the Prairies"

Andrew Balfour, a Cree composer and a ’60s Scoop survivor, has spent nearly two decades developing the ideas behind Polyphony Meets the Prairies. 

The concert tells the story of a young Cree girl, Chepi, who is guided by a trickster through time and place, encountering prophetic music from figures such as Hildegard von Bingen, Portuguese composer Alonso Lobo, and Mexican Indigenous composer Manuel de Zumaya. 

The music, both old and new, serves as a bridge between past and present, Indigenous and European traditions, and storytelling and song. 

SOURCE: https://classic107.com/articles/a-musical-time-machine-polyphony-meets-the-prairies-explores-history-and-healing

 

Andrew Balfour is a Cree composer and conductor from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is the artistic director of the vocal ensemble Dead of Winter.

Balfour was nominated for the 2023 Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year (Small Ensemble) for Nagamo, recorded with Musica Intima vocal ensemble.^[1][2]

Early life

Balfour was born in the Fisher River Cree Nation, located north of Winnipeg, in 1967.^[3] He was taken from his birth mother at six months old as part of the Sixties Scoop and adopted by a White settler family of Scottish descent.^[4] Balfour's adoptive father was a minister at All Saints’ Anglican Church in Winnipeg and his mother was a violinist. His adoptive family would encourage his interest in music which developed through choral singing and playing trumpet and trombone.^[4]

Balfour would go on to attend Brandon University, later dropping out. During this period he would develop a dependence on alcohol. Balfour was arrested in 1992 for vandalism and was then placed in Milner Ridge Correctional Centre.^[4] Following his time in prison, he would begin singing in an informal choir with a group of singers which would later become Camerata Nova (now Dead of Winter), of which Balfour is artistic director.^[4][5][6]

New Science to Fight the Old Science

Ancient DNA Revolution September/October 2024

By Eric A. Powell: North American High Plains  

https://archaeology.org/issues/september-october-2024/collection/ancestors-of-the-blackfoot/ancient-dna-revolution/

The Blackfoot Confederacy is today made up of four bands. The traditional lands of three of them, the Blood (Kainai), Piikani, and Siksika First Nations, are on the plains of southern Alberta, Canada, while the Blackfeet Tribe’s homeland is in northern Montana.  Many scholars have concluded that the confederacy is a relative newcomer to the High Plains.  Linguists classify the Blackfoot language as part of the Algonquin family, which includes many languages spoken by peoples living around the Great Lakes and on the Eastern Seaboard.  Since the nineteenth century, Euro-American anthropologists have argued that the ancestors of the people of the Blackfoot Confederacy must have originally lived near the Great Lakes.  At some point in the last millennium, they are thought to have migrated to the High Plains.  But the Blackfoot have no collective memory of a migration from the east.  Some of their stories do tell of a migration from the north that took place long ago, when giant beavers and camels still existed, but nothing in Blackfoot oral history matches the history anthropologists have written for them.  (I call that BAD HISTORY...)

A genetic study has now provided support for the Blackfoot people’s belief that they have lived on their traditional lands from time immemorial.  Working in partnership with the Blood (Kainai) First Nation and the Blackfeet Tribe, a team led by archaeologist Maria Zedeño of the University of Arizona and archaeogeneticist Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign analyzed DNA samples taken from six living members of the Blackfoot Confederacy and from the remains of seven ancestral Blackfoot. 

To their surprise, the researchers discovered that the Blackfoot did not share any genetic affinity with Algonquin groups, or, indeed, with any other Native American peoples.  Statistical analysis showed that the Blackfoot lineage probably broke off from other Native groups around 18,000 years ago.  The Blackfoot likely lived in relative isolation for millennia before interacting with Algonquin speakers.  These new insights into Blackfoot genetic heritage support recent linguistic research suggesting that the Blackfoot language has features that belong to an ancient language spoken by a people who lived in the Blackfoot Confederacy’s homeland.  These features are thought to have long predated the advent of Algonquin languages.

“This really confirms what we already knew,” says Gheri Hall, an archaeologist with the Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office, who notes that the genetic evidence could help the tribe in future legal cases involving land disputes. “Now we can use the new science to fight the old science.”

Members of the Siksika First Nation, 1913

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2003, July 14: State police carry out a controversial raid at a smoke shop on land owned by the Narragansett Tribe.

Dark Past: “We were basically human flagpoles”

'Human Flagpoles': Dark story behind Inuit scene on $2 bill

Musician Lucie Idlout says the discontinued bank note reflects a dark time for Canada's Inuit

Andrew Friesen · CBC News · May 7, 2014

Circulated between 1974 and 1979, the two-dollar bill features Joseph Idlout and his relatives preparing their kayaks for a hunt. (Bank of Canada / National Currency Collection)

If you’re a Canadian of a certain age, you’ve likely seen the Idlout family. In fact, you’ve probably carried them around in your back pocket.

The reason: they’re featured on the back of the 1974 two-dollar bill.

Part of the Scenes of Canada series, the discontinued bank note depicts a group of six Inuit men preparing their kayaks for a hunt.

One of the men is Joseph Idlout, the grandfather of Canadian musician Lucie Idlout. On a recent episode of the CBC Radio program DNTO, she revealed how the photograph of her grandfather and his relatives came to be taken.

Photographer Douglas Wilkinson spent years documenting Joseph Idlout and his community. (Douglas Wilkinson / Library and Archives Canada (PA-189095))

“My grandfather was known to be an excellent hunter,” said Idlout.

“He was one of the first few Inuit to receive the Coronation medal from the Queen - I kind of view him as a superhero, even though I never met him.”

Based on a photograph taken by documentarian Douglas Wilkinson, the bill features Joseph Idlout and his relatives hunting nearby the Baffin Island community of Pond Inlet.

On its surface, the bill appears to reflect nothing more than an innocent scene of daily Inuit life. But dig a little deeper, and the story behind the photograph becomes much more complicated.

“We were basically human flagpoles.”

In the 1950s, the Canadian government relocated a number of struggling Inuit families from Inukjuak (Quebec) to the communities of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord - hundreds of kilometres to the north.

Ostensibly done to improve their standard of living, the realities of life in the High Arctic proved difficult for families accustomed to the warmer temperatures and more fertile tundra of Quebec. To ease their transition, Joseph Idlout was hired to instruct the southern Inuit on life in the unforgiving northern climate.

“His role in Resolute Bay was to assist with teaching Inuit how to survive in a much harsher climate than what they were used to,” said Idlout.

As the transplanted Inuit struggled to adapt to their new surroundings, the motivation behind their relocation became increasingly clear.  

“The sad story is that we were basically human flagpoles, so the Canadian government could assert sovereignty over the high arctic.”

Lucie Idlout: "It is another example of how Inuit were part of asserting sovereignty" (Facebook)

In 2010, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development issued an apology to Canada’s Inuit people, expressing regret “for the hardship and suffering caused by the relocation.” 

And while adjusting to a new and unfamiliar landscape was challenging, Lucie Idlout said that it was the actually the change in lifestyle that had the biggest consequences - both for the transplanted communities and for her grandfather. 

“With the amenities and modernness of southern life coming to the north … it really changed the way Inuit lived," said Idlout.

“It was a lot of change that happened really quickly, and it had a lot of negative impacts on the people who lived there.”

And though he was considered to be an exceptionally skilled and well-respected man, the move proved to be particularly traumatizing for Joseph Idlout. Although reports of his death vary, Lucie Idlout says that her grandfather’s eventual suicide can be traced back to the relocation.

“The transition of life was just too fast and too much.”

Bills were meant to inspire Canadian pride

The Scenes of Canada series, which was printed and put into circulation between 1969 and 1979, was meant to instill pride and reflect Canadian settlements from sea to sea.

When asked how she feels looking at the bill today, Idlout says she has mixed feelings. 

Detail of the 1974 "Scenes of Canada" two-dollar bill (Bank of Canada)

“I don’t think there’s any coincidence the photograph was shot in the 50s, just before the relocation,” said Idlout. “It is another example of how Inuit were part of asserting sovereignty over different parts — so Canada could claim it as their own.” 

But despite the darkness the bill represents, Idlout still feels a certain pride when she looks at the image of her family on the $2 note.

“It became less of a photo and more of a piece of our history - that involved important people from my family and people I love very much.”

SOURCE: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/human-flagpoles-dark-story-behind-inuit-scene-on-2-bill-1.2632380

Adoption Reality: SOUTH KOREA

 

South Korea says it sent babies abroad for adoption ‘like luggage’

For most of her life, Mary Bowers had one version of her adoption story. 

It was that she was an orphan — born in South Korea to a single mother who, unable to take care of her, handed her over to an adoption agency when she was a baby. In 1982, Bowers was adopted by a family in Colorado. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, though, she took the time to examine her past more carefully. She started finding discrepancies in her adoption documents. That’s when she decided to move to South Korea and keep digging. 

“As I delved further into my adoption file, I found the name of a father, as well, with his whole background, description, aunts, uncles, hometown, height, weight, all of that,” she said. “I was like, ‘well, if he wasn’t in the picture, this seems like a lot of detail to provide about this man,’ who honestly I had spent a good portion of my life hating because I thought, ‘well how could you leave [my birth mother] like that?’”

Bowers also found other discrepancies in her adoption records. For example, she was listed under three different names. The details just didn’t add up.   

In 2022, Bowers joined more than 350 Korean adoptees — from 11 different countries — who filed cases with South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission alleging all kinds of malpractice in adoptions.  Last week, the commission released a damning report on this — it said South Korean adoption agencies sent children abroad like “luggage” for decades.  The report includes details about falsified documents, profit-driven decision-making and children taken from their parents without consent.

“The commission determined that the state violated the human rights of adoptees protected under the constitution and international agreements, by neglecting its duty to ensure basic human rights, including inadequate legislation, poor management and oversight, and failures in implementing proper administrative procedures while sending large numbers of children abroad,” the commission said in a statement.

The commission’s report corroborates an investigation by The Associated Press last year, about how Korean birth mothers were pressured or deceived into giving up their children while adoption agencies bribed hospitals to route babies their way. The AP also produced a documentary on the subject in collaboration with Frontline (PBS) and compiled resources for adoptees who have questions about their backgrounds here.

SOURCE:  https://theworld.org/stories/2025/04/02/south-korea-says-it-sent-babies-abroad-for-adoption-like-luggage

HUMAN TRAFFICKING = BILLION DOLLAR ADOPTION INDUSTRY

MOHICAN Landback!

 

GREAT STORY

 

KEEP READING

 

More: This tribe helped win the Revolution, then were expelled and migrated to Wisconsin. What's changed now?