Indian Child Welfare Act 101
back-up blog (just in case) (update/ 3/17/2024)
Pages
- Home
- About Trace
- Question and Answer with Trace
- Karen Vigneault - Helping Native Adoptees Search
- Soaring Angels (search help for adoptees)
- You're Breaking Up: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl #ICWA
- About the Indian Adoption Projects
- NEW: Study by Jeannine Carriere (First Nations) (2...
- Bibliography
- Split Feathers Study
- Oklahoma Supreme Court RULING: Brown v.Delapp (9-2...
- NEW STUDY: Post Adoption (Australia)
- Adoption History
- Laura Briggs: Feminists and the Baby Veronica Case...
- Help for First Nations Adoptees (Canada)
- GOLDWATER
- Canada Timeline
- THE PLACEMENT OF AMERICAN INDIAN CHILDREN - THE NEED FOR CHANGE (1974)
- How to Open Closed Adoption Records for Native American Children
BACK UP BLOG
This blog is a backup for American Indian Adoptees blog
There might be some duplicate posts prior to 2020. I am trying to delete them when I find them. Sorry!
There might be some duplicate posts prior to 2020. I am trying to delete them when I find them. Sorry!
If you need support
Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ .
MY EMAIL: tracelara@pm.me
Friday, December 30, 2016
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Land Loss: This is what colonization looks like
The loss of Native American lands within the U.S. year by year. 2-min video https://t.co/fjJDcGkIZi pic.twitter.com/GYeAfd5Vrt
— Century Past History (@lienhart85) December 29, 2016
We must de-colonize history and educate ourselves...
Land Loss: This is what colonization looks like
The loss of Native American lands within the U.S. year by year. 2-min video https://t.co/fjJDcGkIZi pic.twitter.com/GYeAfd5Vrt
— Century Past History (@lienhart85) December 29, 2016
We must de-colonize history and educate ourselves...
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Monday, December 19, 2016
Heart of ICWA Video Series
NICWA Launches Heart of ICWA Video Series
Press Release.
The first video is here, and features Quinault President Fawn Sharp and her family. Deepest thanks to her for being a leader unafraid to share her story to help Native families.
The Indian Child Welfare Act was borne out of the forced removal of one out of every three children from their homes in the late 1970’s. This issue is far from ancient history, as we continue to see the devastating effects of non-compliance with ICWA. That is why at NICWA, we are committed to keeping families together.
Becky (second video) contributed her story to the anthology STOLEN GENERATIONS... We thank everyone for making this series... AHO! MEGWETCH!
Saturday, December 17, 2016
South Dakota: Changes ordered
Changes ordered in '48-hour hearings' involving Native children
South Dakota and Pennington County officials must make changes in their handling of temporary custody hearings involving Native American children as the result of judgments issued Thursday by the U.S. District Court.
The suit, filed in 2013 by Native American parents and the Oglala and Rosebud Sioux tribes, claimed that procedures in the state’s so-called 48-hour hearings violated the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The defendants are the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office, the state Department of Social Services and the 7th Circuit Court.
An attorney for the plaintiffs, Dana Hanna, said the decision by Chief Judge Jeffrey Viken will “radically and fundamentally” change the way the hearings are being conducted, adding that the changes are supposed to take effect immediately.
In March 2015, Viken found that local court procedures violated Native American rights by not advising parents they had a right to contest the state’s petition for temporary custody and by not requiring the state to present live sworn testimony from a witness.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Jii-Anishinaabe-Bimaatiziwag Partnership Project
Federal grant for UMD aims to help Native American children
Minnesota has the most disproportionate rate in the country of Native American children in foster care, and St. Louis County's rate is among the worst in the state.
The University of Minnesota Duluth's social work department has been tackling that issue for some time, and was just awarded one of three federal grants to further its work.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded a five-year grant to UMD worth more than $2 million to create a better delivery system for the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law meant to keep Native American kids with Native American families.
"People in the systems care a lot about children and families, but there is something about the way the system is responding that is leading to high levels of disparity," said Priscilla Day, director of the Center for Regional and Tribal Welfare at UMD, and head of the university's social work department.
The center will lead the work and partner with Duluth's 6th Judicial District, St. Louis County Public Health and Human Services, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Leech Lake Tribal Court and both the Fond du Lac and Grand Portage bands of Lake Superior Chippewa.
UMD has been working with the county and local court system for several years as part of another grant to see how Indian child welfare cases are handled and to try to make that work more effective. The national grant was a chance to further those efforts. The ultimate goal, Day said, is to devise a system of policies and practices for social workers, the court system, tribes and the county to use when dealing with Indian child welfare cases.
"This isn't about blaming or pointing fingers," Day said, but about better outcomes for kids. The goal is to establish methods that can be used across the country.
The project likely will involve studying data and how it is or isn't shared between schools, tribes and the county. It could look at neglect — a driver of high numbers — and whether intervention can take place before it leads to a report, Day said. And training in historical trauma will most certainly be a part of it, building on training that already is being done.
"My grandmother was taken out of her family when she was 4 years old and sent to a boarding school," Day said, referring to federal boarding schools where Native American children were forced to assimilate, forbidden to use their native language. "That certainly impacted the way she went on to parent, because she missed all those formative years of interacting with a parent. And I am sure that impacted my parent. And so it goes on and on."
Boarding schools also introduced neglect and physical and sexual abuse. But native families are resilient, and many are working to revitalize cultural ways and traditions, she said, which is why it's so important to try to keep native children with their families as much as possible, and within their communities, if it's not.
The county is hoping for better coordination of responses to child safety and protection issues, and those that are culturally responsive. Are searches for relatives rigorous enough; is the Indian child welfare law being followed in the placement of kids? Those are questions that will be studied, said Holly Church, division director for children and family services for St. Louis County's public health and human services.
The idea is to reduce the disproportionality the county is seeing with out-of-home placements, and to find ways to stabilize families and get them the support they need.
"We want to see more kids remain in the family home, and for those kids who do need placement, we want them to be able to be with relatives when at all possible and to hasten unification of the family when kids are placed out of the home," Church said.
There are several barriers stemming from historical trauma that helped lead to the disproportionality, Church said, citing poverty, addiction, mental health, racism and a lack of resources to deal with those things.
"On top of that, we have a lot of work to do as a child protection workforce to continue to build our ability to work in culturally responsive ways with Native American families," she said, noting an already strong partnership with UMD, which has educated some of the Native American social workers on the county's staff.
"This is a really important issue to us," Church said. "It's a significant part of our work with families, and that's why we continue to devote a lot of time and energy ... to try to reduce these disparities."
The project is called Jii-Anishinaabe-Bimaatiziwag Partnership Project, which means "so they can live the Indian way of life."
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
NEW: ICWA guidelines | Standing Rock Art at IAIA
2016 BIA ICWA Guidelines Released
Here are the 2016 Guidelines. For those keeping track at home
February 2015, Updated Guidelines replacing the 1979 Guidelines (No Longer in Effect)
June 2016, Federal Regulations released (Became Binding on December 12)
December 2016, Updated Guidelines replacing the February 2015 Guidelines
What this means:
25 USC 1901 et seq (ICWA) has not changed in 1978, and provides the minimum federal standards for Indian families. State ICWA laws (and corresponding court rules) that provide higher standards still apply. The federal Regulations are now binding and are like the federal law. The December 2016 Guidelines are now in effect and non-binding interpretation of the Regulations.
*****
Eliza Moaranjo Morse hard at work. Photo courtesy of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts |
Standing Rock depicted in IAIA art exhibit: http://wp.me/p442Tb-8Uy
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
California Owes Reparations To Victims Of Forced Race & Intellectual-Based Sterilization, Study Finds
News One |FIRST NATIONS BLOG
Historians want to mobilize reparation efforts for California
sterilization victims who suffered under a government mandated program
in the early 1900’s. A new American Journal of Public Health report
titled, “California’s Sterilization Survivors: An Estimate and Call for
Redress,” examines the scope of the state’s sterilization
recommendations. Sterilization was an option spurred by eugenics–a
controversial practice aimed…
California Owes Reparations To Victims Of Forced Race & Intellectual-Based Sterilization, Study Finds
News One |FIRST NATIONS BLOG
Historians want to mobilize reparation efforts for California sterilization victims who suffered under a government mandated program in the early 1900’s. A new American Journal of Public Health report titled, “California’s Sterilization Survivors: An Estimate and Call for Redress,” examines the scope of the state’s sterilization recommendations. Sterilization was an option spurred by eugenics–a controversial practice aimed…
Dehumanizing myths and misconceptions hurt Native students
The Miseducation of Native American Students
Commentary By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Autumn, the beginning of the school year, is the cruelest season for Native American students in the United States. Between sports games where entire crowds chant about "redskins" and other school mascots and the federal holiday of the Indian-killing mercenary Christopher Columbus, there is the misguided national celebration of "Thanksgiving" to mark the arrival of the religious Europeans, who set the stage for Native American genocide.
These rituals dominate the first months of school, putting Native children in their place, holding up the traditions of white children, and championing the ideals of white supremacy and imperialism. As November's recognition of Native American Heritage Month ends, educators should resist the urge to regurgitate the usual narrative and instead discuss the reality of life, historical and current, for the more than 600,000 Native American students in our nation's K-12 public schools.
In researching and writing "All the Real Indians Died Off," our book about Native American myths and misconceptions, my co-author Dina Gilio-Whitaker and I were aware of how these Native American stereotypes affect all children in schools today. Internalizing harmful images most acutely damages Native children, but absorbing racist and dehumanizing ideas about fellow classmates also diminishes the understanding and compassion of non-Native children, warping their conception of a history that often erases Native Americans altogether.
Sadly, the education system lies at the heart of maintaining the erasure of Native Americans. Native children have been miseducated for generations under deliberately repressive federal policy, and all children in public schools are miseducated in U.S. and Native history. Education scholar Timothy Lintner wrote that U.S. history classrooms "are not neutral; they are contested arenas where legitimacy and hegemony battle for historical supremacy."
While distortions and myths of Native American culture plague many schools, textbooks often fail to mention Native history after the 19th century. In a 2015 study, scholars Antonio Castro, Ryan Knowles, Sarah Shear, and Gregory Soden examined the state standards for teaching Native American history and culture in all 50 states and found that 87 percent of references to American Indians are in a pre-1900s context. (Washington is the only state in the union that uses the word "genocide" in its 5th grade U.S. history standards and teaching of Native peoples' history.) In short, existing Native nations and land bases aren't identified, and Native people are dealt with as historical figures, implying their extinction.
"Indigenous students are vital and active participants in our society —not a vanished population."
No student can have a full understanding of U.S. history and contemporary society, nor can educators understand the inherited trauma Indigenous students still experience, as a result of this denial. From the colonial period to the nation's founding to the 20th century, Indigenous people have endured torture, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals from their ancestral territories, and forced attendance at military-style boarding schools. Both the U.S. Army and the federal government experimented with residential schools during the 19th century. In 1879, Richard H. Pratt established and became the superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania—the prototype for the many militaristic federal schools that would soon crop up across the continent. And dozens of Christian missionary boarding schools augmented this landscape.
The stated goal of the boarding schools was assimilation into the dominant culture, but the intent was cultural genocide. Indigenous children were prohibited from and beaten for speaking their mother tongues or practicing their religions, among other infractions that expressed their humanity. This while being indoctrinated in the beliefs of Christianity. Generations of Native students, stripped of the languages and skills of their communities, were traumatized—an effect that has contributed significantly to the family and social dysfunction still found in Native communities.
By the mid-1960s, educators developed multiculturalism in response to Native peoples' demands for decolonization. But in order to affirm the U.S. origin story of democracy and progress, Indigenous nations and histories were excluded. Treaty- and territorially based Native people in North America were transformed by multicultural education into an inchoate oppressed racial group.
Multiculturalism emphasizes the "contributions" of oppressed groups to the United States' presumed greatness. Indigenous people were credited with contributing corn and maple syrup, buckskin and parkas, log cabins and canoes, and even the concept of democracy. This idea of the gift-giving Native who enriched the development of the United States, still perpetuated in schools today, is an insidious smoke screen. It obscures the fact that the very existence of the country is a result of looting an entire continent and displacing Indigenous people.
It is essential that U.S. schools finally come to terms both with the profound miseducation of Indigenous students and with an inaccurate K-12 curriculum of Indigenous history. Indigenous students are vital and active participants in our society—not a vanished population. Though schools have not done right by Native students in the past, it is now, more than ever, the responsibility of educators to admit education's stereotypes and flaws; accurately teach Native students about the past; honor their history; and prepare them for their future. If schools begin to address the injustices of the past, they can start work toward a more just and equal future for Native students.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is the author or editor of eight books, including "All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans with co-author Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Beacon Press, 2016) and An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2014). Originally from rural Oklahoma, she is the daughter of a tenant farmer and a mother of American Indian descent.
Vol. 36, Issue 14, Pages 22-23
Friday, December 2, 2016
Blessing the Baby
Do your own Blessingway Ceremony: Invite a group of women friends/relatives for a relaxing time to share food, pamper mom-to-be and honor the new baby who is making the way to join the circle.
Our ancestors will help you remember how...
Ceremony for adoptees
Blessing the Baby
Do your own Blessingway Ceremony: Invite a group of women friends/relatives for a relaxing time to share food, pamper mom-to-be and honor the new baby who is making the way to join the circle.
Our ancestors will help you remember how...
Ceremony for adoptees
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
God's Plan? Mission Schools His-story
James Knowles argued in 1834 that it was God's plan for America for New Englanders
to wipe out the Native Americans, because they would not “obey the
great law of God” which “obliged them to become civilized, and to adopt
those modes of life which would enable their territory to support the
greatest possible number of inhabitants.” Knowles concluded the
Americans could achieve this “by saving from ruin the helpless
descendants of the savage.”[5]
Mission schools
There is a final, far more tragic means to convert the people. Kidnap the children.
- Rechristen them with English Christian names, forbid the use of their own names.
- Punish them for speaking their own language, or grab them when they are young enough not to have learned it very well.
- Force them to live at the Mission School and only visit home 1 or 2 days for the Christian Christmas.
- Cut their hair, strip them of their clothing and religious
artifacts, and denigrate the artifacts as uncivilized, backwards, or
"primitive". - Do this all when they are young enough to not fight back.
Native populations were decimated by illness, starvation, and war.
But the actual native cultures were more decimated by the mission
schools and "Jesus" than anything else done to the various Indian
peoples.
SOURCE
God's Plan? Mission Schools His-story
James Knowles argued in 1834 that it was God's plan for America for New Englanders to wipe out the Native Americans, because they would not “obey the great law of God” which “obliged them to become civilized, and to adopt those modes of life which would enable their territory to support the greatest possible number of inhabitants.” Knowles concluded the Americans could achieve this “by saving from ruin the helpless descendants of the savage.”[5]
SOURCE
Mission schools
There is a final, far more tragic means to convert the people. Kidnap the children.- Rechristen them with English Christian names, forbid the use of their own names.
- Punish them for speaking their own language, or grab them when they are young enough not to have learned it very well.
- Force them to live at the Mission School and only visit home 1 or 2 days for the Christian Christmas.
- Cut their hair, strip them of their clothing and religious artifacts, and denigrate the artifacts as uncivilized, backwards, or "primitive".
- Do this all when they are young enough to not fight back.
SOURCE
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
An Act of Genocide: Canada's Coerced Sterilization of First Nations Women
There are hundreds of indigenous stories in Canada that never make headlines. Some of them are taking place right now while others stem back centuries. In the case of Canada coercively sterilizing Indigenous women, we have an ongoing and almost completely unreported story that begins before the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, before the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, even before the holocaust. Courtney Parker digs deep to uncover the truth that no Canadian ever learned about in school.
KEEP READING
Monday, November 21, 2016
Sunday, November 20, 2016
AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: STOLEN GENERATIONS: #freebook #NAAM2016
AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: STOLEN GENERATIONS: #freebook #NAAM2016: FREE KINDLE VERSION November 21, 2016 - November 25, 2016 LINK You don't need a Kindle to read Free Reading APP is on the Kindle ...
STOLEN GENERATIONS: #freebook #NAAM2016
FREE KINDLE VERSION | November 21, 2016 | - November 25, 2016 | LINK | You don't need a Kindle to read |
Free Reading APP is on the Kindle page for this book - FREE!
If you don’t have a Kindle Reading Device you can still buy the books and read them on your iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android device. You can also read Kindle books on your PC or Mac with Amazon’s free software. Download your version.
PLEASE do share this post with anyone who is adopted.
Saturday, November 19, 2016
A Solution to the “Indian Problem”, 1887 | Records of Rights
CLICK: A Solution to the “Indian Problem”, 1887 | Records of Rights
The violence and racism of the new Trump administration is creating new trauma for those already traumatized. --An elder in Vermont
The violence and racism of the new Trump administration is creating new trauma for those already traumatized. --An elder in Vermont
A Solution to the “Indian Problem”, 1887 | Records of Rights
CLICK: A Solution to the “Indian Problem”, 1887 | Records of Rights
The violence and racism of the new Trump administration is creating new trauma for those already traumatized. --An elder in Vermont
The violence and racism of the new Trump administration is creating new trauma for those already traumatized. --An elder in Vermont
A Solution to the “Indian Problem”, 1887 | Records of Rights
CLICK: A Solution to the “Indian Problem”, 1887 | Records of Rights
The violence and racism of the new Trump administration is creating new trauma for those already traumatized. --An elder in Vermont
The violence and racism of the new Trump administration is creating new trauma for those already traumatized. --An elder in Vermont
Friday, November 18, 2016
Thursday, November 17, 2016
American warfare: Missionaries, Militia, Historical Trauma
This was published earlier on my other blog
By Trace Lara Hentz
American Indians know warfare. The hair stands up on the back of the neck at the mere mention of several deliberate massacres called Indian Wars in North America. It’s estimated 95% of the American Indian population was killed by war since first contact.
Every Indian has heard the words: the only good Indian is a dead Indian.
So if you can’t kill all the Indians, you civilize them. (Like in the residential boarding schools.)
The earliest form of America’s colonial warfare is when the missionary hand-delivers a message to a tribe: Christianize or die. Tribes in New England convert and call themselves the Praying Indians. For centuries, men in robes invaded with rosaries and crucifixes. God’s men erect churches so they can teach Indian communities their way and declare it’s illegal for Indians to do sweats or hold ceremonies. The white God gave these orders.
From east to west, government overseers and militias dole out rules, rations, and alcohol. The Great White Father (America’s president) amends traditional hunting territories and instructs Indians to farm, not hunt. Marched to isolated reservations on Trails of Tears, many Indians starve (or die) en route. Treaties fence in the Indians so rations of food and medicine would need to be delivered. One government agent in Minnesota says, “Let them eat grass,” and steals their rations. The 38 Lakota men who fight to get the rations back are hung in a mass execution, ordered by then-President Abraham Lincoln.
Then a new round of messengers arrived as religion-wearing ministries and government social workers. Their message: Indians are not good enough to raise their own children. The Hopi resist and 17 of their men get sent to Alcatraz. Wagon-loads of Indian children are carried east or far enough away to be assimilated and taught in schools like Haskell and Carlisle. Some kids never find their way back to their parents or reservations. Generations of Indian kids are targets to be Christianized and civilized by these schools.
In the same manner of warfare, Indian children are placed in orphanages, foster homes or with non-Indian parents. The American government creates the Indian Adoption Project (IAP) run by Arnold Lyslo. These little Indian kids aren’t black or Asian but exotic; their race is romanticized by Hollywood, and anxious adoptive parents sign up. Couples who had trouble conceiving a baby could have one or two Indian kids right away.
Lyslo travels to different states to convince the social workers to line up white parents for the flood of Indian kids being snatched for adoption. (In 16 states, 85% of Indian children were removed from their tribal parents). 395 parents agree to take part in Lyslo’s study and answer questions about their adopted Indian kids every year.
Lyslo claims poverty is the reason these children needed to be “saved” and adopted. ARENA continues and expands after the IAP. Thousands of Indian children are wiped from tribal rolls and disappear into white communities. States seal their records and amend the child’s birth certificate.
For over 30 years, Indian kids are the lab rats for Lyslo’s human experiment, to see how well Indian children will adapt being adopted. This warfare is called assimilation.
By 1976, American Indians go to Congress with these abduction stories and ultimately create the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Monday, November 14, 2016
My friends, do not lose heart
From writer/feminist/Native American elder and adoptee: Clarissa
Pinkola Estes
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times.
I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking.
Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times.
Yes.
For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one.
Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that.
There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear.
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.
It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing.
We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire.
To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged.
I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it.
I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you.
It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here.
The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours.
They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here.
In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times.
I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking.
Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times.
Yes.
For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one.
Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that.
There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know.
And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear.
Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.
It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing.
We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire.
To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged.
I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it.
I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you.
It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here.
The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours.
They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here.
In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.
↬
“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you
have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is
a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot
bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a
sane life, that is a door.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
CLICK OLDER POSTS (above) to see more news
BOOKSHOP
Please use BOOKSHOP to buy our titles. We will not be posting links to Amazon.
Featured Post
Does adopting make people high? #WonderDrug
reblog from 2013 By Trace A. DeMeyer Hentz I’ve been reading blogs by Christian folks who saved an orphan and plan to do it again. Appar...
Popular Posts
-
White Earth Nation welcomes adoptees home by Dan Gunderson , Minnesota Public Radio October 5, 2007 Listen to feature audio This weekend th...
-
2023 Editor NOTE: This is one of our most popular posts so we are reblogging it. (SEE COMMENTS) If you do know where Michael Schwartz is, pl...
-
I could on for an hour about this but I won't. Fathers have rights and this time, a father got his daughter back after a...
-
You know everything happens for a reason. I just received the book “Sudden Fury” about an adoptee who killed his adoptive parents in Marylan...
-
Boston Globe June 2, 1996 REUNION DAY AT 43: NAVAJO NATIVE FINALLY HOME Author: Royal Ford, G...
-
CLICK: AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: GUEST POST: Reactive Attachment Disorder by Levi E... : Levi EagleFeather (Lakota) This is one of the most...
-
T he Métis National Council and the Government of Canada will be working collaboratively, Nation-to-Nation, to develop a process to engag...
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.