How much I changed (Part 6) #Starved into submission #Food Insecurity #Occupied Tribes

By Trace A. DeMeyer

My entire childhood I had plenty of food.

This is not true for all humans, I know. Look at the news across the world, like in Gaza.

When it comes to this blog or writing about adoption or world events, I know I’m doing something right if I am afraid.

I spent most of my life afraid of upsetting people, avoiding that. Some might say that is low self-esteem but I think being afraid, fear itself, is a call to action. If you are afraid, then you know you are doing something right.  You are challenging yourself and breaking down your thoughts into something you can fix or not.

I could not change what happened in my childhood but I could change how I looked at being adopted. I could drop judgment. I could stop blaming my adoptive parents and my natural parents. I could turn “being adopted” into something good - or try to make my life and other lives better.

I heard Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now today describe how the occupiers of Palestine are using food insecurity to keep Palestine children alive but not enough to thrive! Too little food and starvation can be used as a weapon of war - with long-term consequences. Brains and bodies are affected long-term.

That is exactly what has happened here on American soil. YES! The American government only feeds American Indians junk with commodities (boxed or canned food and very little vegetables). The diabetes epidemic is living proof it’s working. Plus there are not enough jobs to feed ourselves. That way we Indians will be too weak to protest reservation living conditions. That way we’ll stay depressed or immobile. That way we’ll self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. That way many of our men will be imprisoned. That way we won’t be in the way when the government and industry wants to take more resources like copper, coal, uranium and shale gas.  Reservations were purposefully isolated so American (and Canadian) governments could totally controlwhat we received - especially food, blankets, housing, medical care, etc.

Governments still keep Indians poor. The occupiers claimed they wanted Indians to be farmers, settle in one place, but not exactly on “farm-able land.” Think of the Badlands, a dry arid remote place, not exactly farmland.

Most of us Lost Birds who were adopted out didn’t have food insecurity or starvation growing up. It was not something we had to worry about.  SplitFeathers/Adoptees need to realize the WAR is still being waged on Indians in many subtle ways.  And if we use our minds in a good way, and come together, maybe WE can tackle food insecurity on reservations that still exists!

Maybe just maybe being adopted out was destined to give us the mind and ideas and courage necessary to feed our tribal families who have been occupied and starved into submission.

Also published on LAST REAL INDIANS: http://lastrealindians.com/starved-into-submission-food-insecurity-occupied-tribes-by-trace-a-demeyer/

How much I changed (Part 5) #adoptionsurvivors

I gave this interview some time ago but my thoughts still stand...Trace
Take a read:

Excerpt:


Interview with Australian blogger ONCE WAS VON in 2011
old link: http://eag-oncewasvon.blogspot.com/search?q=One+Small+Sacrifice

Trace DeMeyer published her first book ONE SMALL SACRIFICE on the Split Feathers, the children taken from the First People of Turtle Island or the United States of America as it was renamed by those who claimed it. The Split Feathers (adoptees) were taken for education and for adoption in planned destruction of their Peoples. Many have not been found or found their way home. Trace includes the story of her own journey and tackles the difficult areas of adoption and the adoptee experience.

Von: In your life was there a pivotal event that changed you from being a victim of adoption to a survivor?

Trace: That is a great question because lots of people won’t recognize there is a definite shift from victim to survivor.
When laws restrict opening adoption records, these policymakers make us victims. There are many adoptees ready to know their family name, meet relatives and have reunions, but cannot because of adoption laws. Other adoptees, lulled by gratitude, may fear upsetting their adoptive family, and may not see themselves as victims of a corrupt unjust system.
The adoptee moves from victim to survivor when they decide to break the law, when they decide to regain and restore their own identity, and get their name. That’s a giant leap forward.
My becoming a survivor happened in stages, in a sequence of events. As a child I grieved. I promised myself as a teenager that I would find answers but it looked impossible with sealed records in Wisconsin. I felt overcoming my low self-esteem was first. In my 20s, I realized there would be “emotional processing” I’d need to do, slowly, over time. Opening my adoption records was very important in 1978 but troubling since I had no help to locate my parents. This was before the internet. I also had to face reality that I might not find them or my parents might not be willing to meet me. I never met my mother Helen which felt like a second rejection in the 1990s. I was almost 40 when I met my father Earl in 1994. Reunions (or not having a reunion) take time to process. Over the years, other adoptees were great teachers for me since there are no guidebooks for dealing with adoption trauma. There is so much to understand, obviously.
Writing my memoir, remembering everything again and adoption research changed me most – like a light bulb went on. I started to see adoption as an industry and a measure of control over a mother’s maternity and placed orphans in a state of emotional disgrace. Recognizing adoption as an institution, one that has outgrown its purpose, one that is damaging for mother and child, was perhaps my biggest transforming moment.

Von: You say in your book, that adoption involves many traumas, not just the one of the loss of a mother. Many of the things that happen to us, the damaging relationships, breakdowns and illness result from those traumas. How do we move from being vulnerable, to strength and survival?

Trace: In my book, I mention four distinct traumas for adoptees and I know there are more. Adoptee and natural parents are vulnerable to the billion dollar adoption machine that still manipulates us. I felt manipulated. Restricting us from meeting, laws which prevent our meeting, then add a dose of shame, judgement and misunderstanding, all deeply affects and even harms adoptees. I do write about this in depth in “One Small Sacrifice.”
Adoption is very isolating. Many adoptees like me suffered in silence. I see many adoptees create stories for their missing parents. If they do not know the truth, and never meet them, adoptees can stagnate emotionally and get trapped in illusions, lies and excuses. That is a very hard way to live. It’s very difficult to tell an adoptee what to do, or how to heal and overcome this vulnerability. I took small steps on my own and finally realized that there was only one solution – find the truth.
A closed adoption is the ultimate act of disruption. Because of my disgrace and orphan-status, I was not living emotionally well. I was not empowered as a human since the very act of adoption removed my identity. I made a decision to not live this way or accept the fantasy-land my adoptive parents and adoption industry created for me. I had to open my adoption, period. I would not give up.
It took me a long time to see how I failed myself with very troubling decisions and blamed Helen my birthmother for misery I had as a child. I fought the idea of being a disgrace. I fought feeling rejected by Helen when I finally found her. I fought very hard to heal myself, know myself and release judgment. Even as a teenager, I thought it was ridiculous to be expected to live a fantasy and project gratitude.
Finding the truth and meeting relatives moves you from feeling vulnerable to empowered, from victim to survivor.

(to be continued)

How much I have changed since the #CAICW story (Part 4)

LINK: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/baby-veronica-christian-evangelicals_n_3916683

By Trace A. DeMeyer

The story Christian Evangelical Groups involved in Federal Indian Adoption Policies was published in 2013, and blog readers are aware that Elizabeth Morris and her group CAICW were (and are) still lobbying to end the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), which is still disturbing to me and the thousands of Lost Birds who were adopted out in the last 100 years. We are called the Stolen Generations for a reason. Our Indian parents were harshly judged by non-Indians, then children were taken away to boarding schools and for adoptions.

What would happen if this was reversed and America suddenly decided that evangelicals are too radical so their children are taken? Wouldn’t that throw a twist in this debate and debacle? What if religious fervor, a savior complex and Christianity was judged in courtrooms and they were judged for not being good enough people to raise their own kids? Evangelical parents too fanatical about religion to raise their own child? What if anyone who is too religious was judged to be inadequate to raise a child?

This thinking throws a monkey wrench into the argument. I can imagine how easy it is for a non-Indian to say we don’t need ICWA protections. Many didn’t live through having their child taken. But Morris and others sure can believe and espouse they would be better parents than Indian parents.

Where did she get this notion? Morris was on the reservation and married to an Indian. Is she basing her belief that Christians are better than heathens? Is that what she thinks? Or is that Indians are too poor, too oppressed or depressed, or just plain savages?

Here was a comment from that article: cyanmanta

Allow me to explain what these people are really thinking: "We need to keep these children out of the hands of their heathen-devil redskin parents and save them through the grace of Jesus! We must steal their children from them in order to save their souls from eternal damnation for believing the false religion of the heathen devil red savage!" There, that's the only reason these people care about the children; not because they care about their actual welfare or living conditions, but because they want to wipe out the beliefs of the native people's of the US and turn them all into little obedient christians so they can use them to seize control of our government. Dominionism is hard at work trying to undermine secular democracy, make no mistake. 13 Sep 2013 4:31 PM

And this: Bill B. (alterego55)

We need to get Christian Dominionism out of our legal and political systems. It's been permeating it for so long that we've become desensitized to it.

The example case is a simple one. If the father is deemed unfit, then turn the children over to tribal authorities and let them determine the child's future.

This is a clear extension of the genocide of 30 million Indigenous Americans at the hands of Christians who wanted first their gold, then their land and then their heathen souls. Now that Indigenous Americans have no gold and have no land and Christians have converted as many adult heathens as they can, now they're after the adult heathens' children's souls. 13 Sep 2013 1:26 PM

And last: Kristine E. (KristineE)

I sure wouldn't want my daughter raised in an Evangelical home learning how to hate her Native American heritage along with other minority groups. 13 Sep 2013 12:46 PM

(to be continued) 

Ensure children stay with blood relatives #ICWA

Archive Photo

Tribe makes changes to children’s code

By Susan Field, sfield@michigannewspapers.com, 

Posted: 08/01/14, SOURCE

Saginaw Chippewa Tribal members are celebrating a change in one of its codes to help ensure that children stay with blood relatives.
Tribal Spokesman Frank Cloutier said Friday that changes to the “Title II Children’s Code,” made by the Indian Child Welfare Committee, are more in line with the Tribe’s traditional culture and values.
Calling the changes progressive steps so Tribal families won’t have to rely on traditional Western culture, Cloutier said the Tribal Council hopes the changes will be the model that other Native American communities use as a template for causing positive change in their communities and memberships.
In general, Cloutier said, Native communities have never had opportunities for children to stay with extended families rather than foster care in circumstances where children are removed from their parent’s homes.
Changes to the children’s code include issues regarding adoption, child abuse, detention shelter care facilities, foster care and child care licensing.
Passed by Congress in 1978, the “Indian Child Welfare Act” was created to remedy the problem of a disproportionately large number of Native children being placed out of their homes.
Cloutier said that typically amounted to foster homes without regard to the child’s extended family.
Indian Child Welfare Committee Chair Faith Pego-Carmona said the law recognized “that there is no resource...more vital to the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes than their children.”
Non-Native agencies had failed “to recognize the essential tribal relations of Indian people and the culture and social standards prevailing in Indian communities and families,” Pego-Carmona said, adding that the Indian Child Welfare Committee recognizes the importance of the federal act.
Cloutier said the changes are wonderful for Tribal members and that they solidify Native family values.

[We need more codes like this across Indian Country...Trace]

Tribes on child welfare: We can do it better

Archive photo

But ability to administer foster care has doubters in Indian Country

Jul. 27, 2013, Written by Steve Young

At issue

GRANTS: Members of the Lakota People’s Law Project, a nonprofit that advises Native Americans about Indian Child Welfare violations, say they have been talking to government officials in Washington about money for South Dakota’s nine tribes.
GOAL: Help tribes develop their own foster care and child protection programs.
DIVISION: Though the state says it would support such efforts, there are some involved in tribal child protection who question whether the tribes could successfully run those programs on their own.

Juanita Scherich remembers how they cut her hair, how they made her scrub and wash every day, as if a trim and a bath would take the “Indian” out of a 9-year-old child.
Though it was decades ago, Scherich can’t forget how no one in a string of Rapid City foster homes spoke her native language. How none of them prayed to tunkasila, great spirit-father of the Lakota. How no one offered her even a whiff of her tribal culture.
“I lost everything in 2½ years in foster care,” the Indian Child Welfare Act director for the Oglala Sioux Tribe says. “My language, my culture, I had to relearn it all. That wasn’t right.”
Today, she and tribal officials across South Dakota are prepared to change that. With 35 years of federal ICWA legislation on the books and 80 percent of Native children still showing up in white foster homes, the tribes insist they are ready to take over foster care and child protection services, and to keep more of their children on the reservations.
The key to accomplishing that, they say, is directly accessing federal dollars now being funneled through the state.
“If we had direct funding,” Scherich said, “we would see that more of our children are staying with relatives, staying with our own people.”
But how many federal dollars are they talking about? A National Public Radio series that aired in October 2011 suggested the state receives $100 million a year to subsidize its foster care program. The Coalition of Sioux Tribes for Children and Families and the Lakota People’s Law Project cited that number in a report to Congress in January.
Danny Sheehan, chief counsel for the Lakota People’s Law Project, a nonprofit that provides expertise to the Lakota about ICWA violations, suspects the amount is at least in the $56 million range.
“Federal money comes in now to the state under various provisions of Title IV of the Social Security Act,” Sheehan said. “Our best estimate is that 56 percent of the children in foster care are Native Americans. So we’re talking about a good percentage of that $56 million.”

continue reading

[I'm still writing more about HOW MUCH I HAVE CHANGED PART 4. This article is part of the research..Trace]

How much I have changed (Part Three) #PAL (positive adoption language)

By Trace A. DeMeyer  (start calling me Lara)  PART THREE


For the next week or so I am trying to give you a recap of what this blog is about, adoption history and the eye-opening research I did since 2004.  (It's like you and me taking a college course without paying the hefty tuition.)


Let's look at some of the terminology:

LDA= Late Discovery Adoptee (an adoptee who was not told they were adopted and somehow find out later) (many are in a state of shock, feel lied to, disappointed)

PAPs= Potential Adoption Parents (what some call Mr. and Mrs. Entitlement: we are entitled to a baby, we are infertile, we paid money and/or we are good Christians) (some use fundraising blogs) (most convinced they save an orphan)

APs= Adoptive Parents (though the amended (falsified) birth certificate lists them as biological parents which is not true) (legal parents)

AMom- Adoptive mother/mom

BM= Biological Mother, Birthmother, "Real" Mother (makes some Amoms angry), First Mother, Breeder Mother and Tummy Mummy.

A lucrative satellite industry has grown from the term “birthmother.” The billion dollar adoption industry promotes “Birthmother Packages” (offering everything from all expense paid trips to designer maternity wear), “birthmother” jewellery,” birthmother” stationery, “birthmother” gifts, and more.  Marketing firms aid prospective parents in drafting “Dear Birthmother Letters” designed to  catch the attention of a vulnerable pregnant woman in a sea of desperate infertile couples. If lucky enough to catch one, she is referred to as “Our Birthmother” similar to their car or other chattel. [SOURCE] 

This new language (PAL) not only psychologically destroys the existence of the natural mother, but also became a tool in the arsenal of the adoption industry for use on pregnant youth and women for coercion. By labelling a pregnant woman a “birthmother” BEFORE birth, the adoption industry had a new, powerful weapon in hand. She's a breeder and you buy from her. 

I found a new word: Adoptimist (an agency that connects expectant women considering adoption and qualified adoptive parents.) How clever of them!

To me the P stands for PROPAGANDA!

Example of terms used in Positive Adoption Language (PAL)

Non-preferred:	PAL term:	Reasons stated for preference:
your own child	birth child; biological child	Saying a birth child is your own child or one of your own children implies that an adopted child is not.
child is adopted	child was adopted	Some adoptees believe that their adoption is not their identity, but is an event that happened to them. ("Adopted" becomes a participle rather than an adjective.) Others contend that "is adopted" makes adoption sound like an ongoing disability, rather than a past event.
give up for adoption	place for adoption or make an adoption plan	"Give up" implies a lack of value. The preferred terms are more emotionally neutral.
real mother/father/parent	birth, biological or genetic mother/father/parent	The use of the term "real" implies that the adoptive family is artificial, and is not as descriptive.
natural parent	birth parent or first parent	The use of the term "natural" implies that the adoptive family is unnatural, and so is not a descriptive or accurate term. Although it can be seen as unnatural to conceive and relinquish children, the purpose is to present the adoption of those children in need as natural. The term "natural" in its origin means a family by the natural means of conception and birth and its primal bond which exists by itself since the beginning unless it's severed.
your adopted child	your child	The use of the adjective "adopted" signals that the relationship is qualitatively different from that of parents to birth children.
EXTRA CREDIT: I want you readers to google birthmothers seeking adoptive parents - it's all adoption agency and industry propaganda - you might be amazed! Over 70,000 hits!		(to be continued)

How much I have changed (Part Two) #IndianProblem

 

From 1830 to 1840, between 70,000 and 100,000 American Indians living in the East were forcibly resettled by the US Army. Many others were massacred before they could be persuaded to leave; an unknown number died from disease, exposure, and starvation suffered during the Trail of Tears as well as on other enforced, long-distance marches westward to Indian Territory.

While the removal policy helped to alleviate the immediate "Indian problem," as more and more Americans continued to move westward, they found other Indian tribes living in freedom throughout the continent. Because these Indians prevented non-Indians from settling in many desirable areas, and because many white settlers did not feel safe living amidst the Indian "danger," another new policy was created to deal with the Indians - they would be confined to a land reserved exclusively for their own use - areas that came to be called reservations.

 =================================

By Trace A. DeMeyer (Lara Hentz in the near future) PART TWO

Child "protection" is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12 billion a year on it. 

The people who are charged to look after abused and neglected children have an important job. I give them that. We all know some states have very high rates of poverty.  Most of those states have Indian reservations and based on statistics, most Native children in foster care live in those states. Foster care doesn't solve the poverty problem by taking children away from their parents! It feeds the system that makes money on children in state care. The amount of money spent on social worker salaries and all the other state jobs: billions per year. Read more HERE about Massachusetts, where I live.

Are these social workers and judges aware of this country's appalling Indian history? Maybe, some.

Children on some reservations do experience poverty.  The US government who created these reservations (some say concentration camps) know this, too.  [On this blog, we have covered how this is affecting many Indian families, when their children are taken away. We have also covered in depth what this does to the child who is adopted out or goes through the foster care system.]

We know "their" job as social workers is to make sure all children are safe.  When you have poverty, you have increased rates of all the bad things: not enough food, depression, crime, etc. It's a vicious cycle that sucks in new generations. I have been to enough reservations to know this first hand.


Has the government made life better for Indian people since the Indian Child Welfare was passed in 1978?  No.  The federal government is too busy dealing with all the other problems it creates. The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs has been making life miserable for all the tribes since the late 1700s... Back in those days "overseers" and Indian Agents (up until the 1970s) were just like the social workers of today. They removed children from their parents, citing "poverty." Who created this poverty?

WIKI: The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is the United States federal executive department of the U.S. government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal land and natural resources, and the administration of programs relating to American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, territorial affairs, and insular areas of the United States. 

I remember the Eastern Pequot tribal leaders told me they were "handled" by the Connecticut Dept. of Parks and Forests. Some of the overseers reports were kept in the CT state archives. If you wanted to buy medicine or cloth or anything, you had to ask the overseer.  I was told the Eastern Pequots would return home from work and their children would be gone (and they never saw them again.)  With all the dirty politics in that state, this tribe documented their entire history, only to be denied federal recognition! READ

Remember that Tribes deal with the federal government, not state governments. Treaties were legal, government-to-government agreements between two legitimate governments - the United States and an Indian nation. When an Indian nation signed a treaty, it agreed to give the federal government some or all of its land, as well as some or all of its sovereign powers. In return, the federal government entered into a trust responsibility with the Indian Nation in which the federal government promised to provide protection, benefits, and rights to the American Indian peoples in exchange for some or all of their land. The trust responsibility bound the United States to represent the best interests of the tribe, protect the safety and well-being of tribal members, and fulfill its treaty obligations and commitments. [Source]

If you read tribal newspapers, tribes have been fighting "states" over their treaty rights and the care of their own children ever since treaties - yet this was never supposed to happen!

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was instituted and passed to protect tribal children from state's social workers and other groups (missionaries and organized religions) who steadily removed children.  If you read the anthology TWO WORLDS, you will read testimony that was presented to the Senate about this horrific chapter of American history.

What changed my life was finding out the US government condoned and funded the Indian Adoption Projects, affecting thousands of Indian children who were adopted out to non-Indian parents for the sole purpose of erasing our identity and terminating our rights as sovereign citizens in our tribes.

It seems we still have an Indian Problem.

(to be continued)