Top Stories of 2023: Indigenous Rights Upheld

A selection of The Imprint’s most impactful stories from the past year

By The Imprint staff reports

Native leaders said the high court’s decision to uphold ICWA “will be felt across generations.” Photo by Rosemary Stephens.

In 2018, the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act was put in jeopardy by a case that would come to be known as Brackeen v. Haaland. A federal district court judge ruled that the 45-year-old law known as ICWA was unconstitutional in its entirety. As the case progressed, many supporters of the law — which is designed to maintain the bonds between Native children and their families and tribes — feared that the U.S. Supreme Court would gut or erase ICWA.

This June, the court did the opposite in a 7-2 ruling that strongly affirmed the Indian Child Welfare Act’s constitutionality.

“The bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners’ challenges to the statute, some on the merits and others for lack of standing,” wrote Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The Imprint’s five years of coverage on the Brackeen case includes Nancy Marie Spears’ reporting on the arguments considered by the Supreme Court and the prayers and protests outside that day.  And check out The Imprint Weekly Podcast episode from the week after the court’s decision for more insight from several leading experts on ICWA and tribal law.

But Spears’ reporting in 2023 went well beyond the Supreme Court case.  She profiled the Indigenous practices that ICWA is meant to protect, such as the My Two Aunties program developed by a group of tribes in Southern California.  Her recent three-part series, Born of History, explores the ways in which the colonization of the past, and the present constraints of federal funding, make it difficult for many tribes to make full use of ICWA’s protections. 

SOURCE:

https://imprintnews.org/best-of-2023/top-stories-2023-indigenous-rights-upheld/246657

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Adoptee Activist and Author Trace Hentz Announces “THE COUNT 2024,” a New Project to Coincide with the Release of a New History Book “Almost Dead Indians”

LINK TO AMAZON

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact Only:

Liz Hill; liz@lizhillpr.com

 

Adoptee Activist and Author Trace Hentz Announces “THE COUNT 2024,” a New Project to Coincide with the Release of a New History Book “Almost Dead Indians”

GREENFIELD, Mass., Dec. 27, 2023 — Adoptee activist, award-winning journalist and author Trace Hentz, who created the American Indian Adoptees website in 2009, has announced a new project, “THE COUNT 2024.” It will coincide with the release of a new history book, “Almost Dead Indians,” Book 5 in the Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects series.

When Hentz moved to Massachusetts in 2004 she began to tirelessly investigate numerous adoption programs, such as the Indian Adoption Projects and ARENA (The Adoption Resource Exchange of America). Both involved moving Native American babies and children across North America into adoptions with non-Native families.

After her 2009 memoir, “One Small Sacrifice” and a second edition, which followed in 2012,  Hentz met more adoptees and asked them to write their personal narratives, which resulted in three anthologies: “Two Worlds: Lost Children” (2012), “Called Home: The RoadMap,” (updated second edition, 2016), and “Stolen Generations: Survivors of the Indian Adoption Projects and 60s Scoop” (2016).  A poetry collection on the same topic, “In The Veins,” the fourth book in the series, was published in 2017.

“In these closed (sealed) adoptions, adoptees are unable to access the vital information they need to find their tribal families and communities,” Hentz said. “This new history book, “Almost Dead Indians,” with a lengthy chapter I wrote, titled “Disappeared,” which is about our history, ties in how these government-funded programs were run by churches and charities and were meant to erase children permanently from tribal rolls, making us dead Indians — almost.”

“Most people have heard how the governments of Canada and the United States ran residential boarding schools like the first U.S. school, which was Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania,” Hentz said. “Today, tribes are finding unmarked graves at these schools. I realized after 20 years that we deserve to see the numbers on these various federal and state-run adoption programs. We need “THE COUNT 2024” of Native American and First Nations adoptees to solidify facts and see actual numbers of adoptees in these government-funded projects that crisscrossed the U.S. and Canada.”

“Neither government has been forthcoming and some academics who looked at available reports claim nearly 13,000 children were adopted in the U.S., some by force and some by gunpoint,” Hentz said. “In Canada, they have already settled a class action lawsuit with adoptees called the Sixties Scoop.”

Hentz recommends the new PBS series “Little Bird” to understand what happened in Canada also happened in the U.S.

“Before first grade, I knew I was adopted, that these people were not my birthparents,” Hentz said. “I wasn’t sure what happened but it took me a lifetime to open my adoption file and finally meet my relatives.” Hentz had a reunion in 1994 with her birthfather Earl Bland in Illinois when she was 38 years old. Since then, she has found her ancestry includes Shawnee and Anishinaabe.

Hentz got the idea of a count when she could not find reliable information. “I set up a new website: https://thecount2024.blogspot.com. Native American and First Nations adoptees simply fill out a comment form and I will send them a survey.” She hopes people will share this link and get the word out. “The COUNT” begins January 1, 2024.

Hentz’s new book, “Almost Dead Indians,” will be available soon at Bookshop and Amazon. Visit: www.blueindianbooks.com or https://blog.americanindianadoptees.com

About Blue Hand Books:

Blue Hand Books, based in Greenfield, Massachusetts, on Pocumtuckland, celebrated its 12th anniversary on November 11, 2023. To date, the collective has published 28 book titles. Founder and award-winning journalist Trace Hentz (formerly DeMeyer) embraced and adopted the idea to decolonize book publishing for other Indigenous writers with a collective that supports each writer, helping them to produce a paperback book, providing proofing and editing and allows them to keep 100% of their book royalties.  Blue Hand Books was created to be community and a collective for Indigenous authors.  For more information, contact: Blue Hand Books, Trace L. Hentz, Publisher, 25 Keegan Lane, Suite 8-C, Greenfield, MA 01301.

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VISIT: https://thecount2024.blogspot.com/

Note to Editors Only: Photos are available. All photos provided courtesy Blue Hand Books.

 

READ: https://www.lcotribe.com/post/activist-author-announces-project-to-count-native-children-adopted-into-non-native-families