One Choinumni man's adoption horror story

I have physical reminders of my intro into the system

Lauren Sue November 01, 2022

· DAILY KOS

Emerson
Gorman (right) was one of the thousands of Navajo children taken from
their families and sent to Christian schools to erase their beliefs. His
daughter Naiyahnikai, wife Beverly, and grandchild Nizhoni are pictured
(left to right) on his Arizona property May 23, 2020.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Nov. 9 in a case
questioning the legality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA),
legislation passed to prevent Native American children from being
stripped from their communities and cultures. Kendall Ciesemier, host of
the ACLU's At Liberty podcast, said that in Brackeen v. Haaland, “Texas,
together with individual plaintiffs, allege that ICWA is
unconstitutional” because “it violates the equal protection clause and
discriminates against non-Native families looking to adopt Native
children.”

“But honoring tribal sovereignty isn’t about discrimination or
race. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of Indigenous rights,” Ciesemier said in an episode meant to draw attention to what’s at stake for Native children.

Jaimie Nelson, a Choinumni Yokuts man from Fresno, California, was
once one of those children. He detailed on the podcast abuse he
encountered at the hands of a white family who adopted him. For Nelson,
legal experts, and activists, the Supreme Court challenge is an
outgrowth of an intentional and systematic effort to whitewash Native
Americans.

"I am not a victim of some odd set of circumstances where I lost my
sister and my brother," Nelson said. "It was an intentional act built
around ‘Kill the Indian, Save the Man.’"

Nelson referenced words
uttered in 1892 by racist American Army Capt. Richard Henry Pratt.
He tried, along with the federal government, to strip Native Americans
of their beliefs, cultural histories, and traditions. And though Pratt
made the speech 130 years ago, the sentiment he championed is far from
extinguished.

Nelson said eliminating the very constitutional right that attempts
to protect Native children from such cultural atrocities is “a genocidal act.” And he would know exactly what that feels like, because it was attempted on him. 

Nelson told the ACLU of his adoption:

There’s a lot of muddy water in there. I know that it happened
at a very young age in the late seventies. My biological parents, they
were, my mom was either addicted to drugs, my dad was a pretty bad dude.
But it didn’t mean that they had to take us away from our native
family. Our native family wanted to keep us, but the courts indicated,
essentially that there’s nothing you can do about it. They specifically
told my grandmother that there’s nothing that you can do about it. And
from what I understand, from what I was told, it destroyed her that she
was not able to keep us in the home. I don’t have very many memories of
my of my time in the foster care system or any of the sort of lead up to
the adoption. What I do have, I have physical reminders of my
introduction into the system. I have a tracheotomy scar on my neck and
on my sides from apparently when I was abused, like immediately after
being taken from my Native family.

Nelson said when he learned of the case that will be before the
Supreme Court, he knew he had to do something "because there cannot be
another Jamie."

"There cannot be another child that is taken away because of some
archaic, just genocidal, bigoted ideas," he said. "It’s unbelievable.
It’s unconscionable to me that we still have to go through these
hurdles, but we do."

Dr. Twyla Baker, president of the Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College,
tweeted about the case five days before Native American Heritage Month
began today. "The thing I can’t get off my mind—it’s about to be Native
American Heritage Month, as SCOTUS is about to hear a case that has the
potential to knock down the Indian Child Welfare Act," Baker said in the
tweet. "This kind of existential dichotomy pops up way too often for
Native people here."

She later added:

“My bad, actually this didn’t ‘pop up’—it was a situation
crafted, intentionally, over years with much larger implications and
intentions to follow. Superficial acknowledgments of our humanity as
other structures work to dismantle our Native Nationhood is really
pretty standard.”

Stephanie Amiotte, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe and legal
director for the ACLU of South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming, said
when the Indian Child Welfare Act was proposed, 25 to 35% of American
Indian children were being raised in adoptive or foster homes or other
institutions.  About 90% of Indigenous children were being raised by
people who were not Indigenous, Amiotte said.

She explained that, historically, the federal government’s position
and policy has been “to remove Indian children from their families in an
attempt to assimilate” them “to white dominant culture.”

“It is something that actually threatens the very existence of future
tribes and Indigenous peoples as a population,” Amiotte said.