Standing Rock awarded grant for foster care, adoption programs #ICWA

FORT YATES, North Dakota — The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota has been awarded a $300,000 federal grant to develop a foster care and adoption assistance program, The Associated Press announced today.
U.S. Sen. John Hoeven (R- ND) announced the grant on Thursday from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Republican senator says the program will help ensure that better systems and safeguards are in place to protect vulnerable children in the tribal court's care. He says the grant will support efforts to help children find "permanent, safe and loving homes" on the reservation, which straddles North Dakota and South Dakota.
The money can be used to develop data collection systems and agency and tribal court procedures. The tribe has two years to submit programs to HHS for approval.
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Two More South Dakota Lakota Tribes Advance Toward Their Own Foster Care Systems, Intending to Replace the State DSS System

by Native News Online Staff / 22 Aug 2014

“This is an important step for our tribe as we attempt to regain control of our children’s future and make sure they grow up with pride in their own culture and heritage...”- Lower Brule Sioux Tribe Chairman Michael Jandreau

RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA — The Lakota people have taken another positive step toward preserving their cultural sovereignty and solving the persistent foster care crisis in the state as two more tribes have joined the movement to apply for available federal funding to plan their own tribal-run foster care system.
“The addition of Flandreau and Lower Brule Sioux Tribes to the growing list of South Dakota-based Lakota tribes applying for federal funding demonstrates that the goal of establishing independent foster care systems is within reach,” said Chase Iron Eyes, attorney for the Lakota People’s Law Project and a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “The Lakota tribal governments have done their part, it is time for the United States government to meet its obligation to Indian Country. No more broken promises, no more unfulfilled agreements.”
The Lower Brule and Flandreau Sioux Tribes became the two latest tribal governments to complete their Title IV-E Federal Planning Grant Applications to fund the planning of their own foster care programs. The two tribes, joining a coalition of South Dakota tribes attempting to wrest control from scandal-wracked South Dakota, brings the total number of tribes to seven, with another tribe, Rosebud, already having received their planning grant.

“We want to make sure this historic solution is realized,” Chase Iron Eyes continued. “The people best situated to care for our children are our own families and extended family network, which we call Tiospaye.”

Native-American advocacy group specializing in federal grants pertaining to tribes, A Positive Tomorrow, has worked tirelessly alongside members of tribal governments to assist in the submission of the applications.
“This is an important step for our tribe as we attempt to regain control of our children’s future and make sure they grow up with pride in their own culture and heritage,” said Lower Brule Sioux Tribe Chairman Michael Jandreau. “We are pleased to be part of this sovereignty movement in South Dakota.”
The federal government has expressed a willingness to help South Dakota tribes assert their rights as set forth in federal legislation.
“The Indian Child Welfare Act is a very important statute and it was enacted for a very important reason,” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn during the May 2013 ICWA Summit held in Rapid City, at which officials from South Dakota conspicuously did not attend. “It was designed to address a very real problem, and in South Dakota at least, the problem still seems to exist.”
The tribes have been prompted to run their own foster care institutions after a 2011 report by National Public Radio asserted that the South Dakota Department of Social Services repeatedly and persistently violates the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.
ICWA is federal legislation passed in 1978 and intended to give Native American tribes a strong voice in child custody issues with the ultimate aim of ensuring tribes rights to maintain and preserve their language and culture. ICWA mandates that Indian foster children be placed with relatives, extended relatives, or other tribal members in the country.
The NPR report asserted that 9 in ten native children were being placed into non-native homes in South Dakota by the DSS. This prompted tribal officials to identify ways to divert federal funding away from South Dakota’s social service agencies and transfer it into native foster care systems.
“We are losing our children to the system in South Dakota and sometimes in other states,” said Chairman Tony Reider from the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe. “We may not ever see them again, and they will not know who they are. Our children are sacred, and we have many relatives capable of raising them, but the DSS almost always says ‘no’ to our people. In an historic effort, we are determined to qualify for federal funding and run our own Child and Family Services Programs.”
Furthermore, the report states that due to the designation of all Native children as “special needs” by the federal government, South Dakota financially benefits from the placement of Indian children in state-run foster care facilities. Almost all such facilities in South Dakota have become psychiatric institutions collecting approximately three times as much federal money per day as the foster care facilities.
The planning grant applications are being submitted for funding under the terms of the 2008 Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, commonly referred to as the Baucus Act. The law introduced major changes to the Social Security Act, primarily in Section IV-E, regarding foster care and adoptions assistance payments to the states. This is one of the major changes that made it possible for federally recognized tribes to receive direct IV-E payments to support their own child and welfare programs without state intervention. Previously Section IV-E monies could only be given to state agencies.
The planning grant program under the Baucus Act can award individual planning grants up to $300,000 and has a total annual budget of $3 million. According to the Tribal Directory of the Bureau of Indian Affairs there are 566 federally recognized tribes. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe received a Baucus planning grant in 2013.

Along with Flandreau and Lower Brule, five more Sioux tribes are submitting applications under the Baucus Act this year: Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, Standing Rock, Yankton and Pine Ridge. In total, eight out of the nine Lakota tribes in South Dakota have already received or have applied for the grants.

Tremendous progress is underway to protect future generations...Like prisoners of war, Rez Poverty is a crime that colonizers still use to take our children, poverty conditions they created and perpetuate... as Buffy Sainte-Marie said, this ongoing genocide is HORROR HISTORY... Trace

Child-buying masquerading as adoption in Oklahoma, panel told #Adoption #HumanTrafficking

At one time adoption was about finding parents for orphans. Not anymore. Stranger Adoption is about finding children or babies for people who wish to buy one, conducted and advanced by social workers, judges, lawyers and adoption agencies whose livelihood and income depend on it. Remember this is a billion dollar industry! When money is exchanged, babies are product, with a dollar value. Yet rarely is adoption called human trafficking. We can recall Baby Veronica to understand trafficking is still happening in 2013/2014. We know the older infertile Capobiancos paid money for Veronica Brown...It's a disgrace on humanity. Trace

By BARBARA HOBEROCK TULSA World Capitol Bureau 

OKLAHOMA CITY — The selling of children is masquerading as adoption in Oklahoma, a House panel was told Wednesday.

Many of the children are placed out of state, making them difficult to track, said Holly Towers, president of the Oklahoma Adoption Coalition and executive director of Lilyfield Christian Adoption and Foster Care in Edmond.

She was one of the presenters during an interim study on human trafficking by the House Public Safety Committee.

“We get calls from women who say they placed a child for adoption with an attorney,” Towers said. “The adoptive parents have paid rent, refurnished the apartment and given her a car. Now the payments have stopped.”

The women are facing eviction and want to know what they can do, Towers said.

“The answer is nothing,” she said. “These women have been set up to be homeless.”

Some fees are allowed, such as those for living and medical expenses, she said.

But in some cases, women expecting are offered outright cash for their children, which is illegal, Towers said.

Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics Director Darrell Weaver said that several years ago, his agency began monitoring human trafficking.

A significant portion of those involved in human trafficking have been involved in drug trafficking, Weaver said.

His agency has seen an increase in the number of heroin addicts who become trafficking victims, Weaver said.

The problem is not isolated to Oklahoma City or the metropolitan areas, Weaver said.

“Drug traffickers are shifting from drugs to human trafficking,” he said. “The profit margins are so much higher.”

If the state can save one person from trafficking, it will be worth it, Weaver said.

“The one may just be somebody you love,” he said.

Sen. Sean Roberts, R-Hominy, requested the study and said some good ideas came out of the information gathered.

Barbara Hoberock 405-528-2465
barbara.hoberock@tulsaworld.com

60s Scoop adoptees find 'some kind of belonging' at national gathering

Taken from their families as children, aboriginal adoptees find hard road to reconnect with culture

By Waubgeshig Rice, CBC News 

Leslie Parlane (left) and Colleen Cardinal are part of a group of aboriginal adoptees who are organizing a national gathering this weekend. (Waubgeshig Rice/CBC)

Aboriginal adoptees support network 2:25

When Colleen Cardinal and Lesley Parlane met in Ottawa a year ago, they bonded right away as adoptees reconnecting with their aboriginal roots. It’s been a long, often difficult journey for both women.
“I didn’t even know that I was indigenous until I was a teenager,” says Cardinal, now 41. Originally from Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, she was adopted by a non-indigenous family when she was two, and raised in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
“I didn't even know what it meant to be indigenous because of the stereotypes and stigma towards indigenous people, that I would say my adoptive family perpetuated,” she said, “that we were drunks and bums and stuff like that. So I grew up with this really negative image of what Indians were.”

• Compensation, counselling sought for '60s Scoop victims
• Visit CBC Aboriginal for more top stories

From the 1960s up until the 1980s, Canadian child welfare authorities apprehended an estimated 20,000 aboriginal children and placed them in non-aboriginal homes. Many consider the '60s Scoop an extension of residential schools, which aimed to "take the Indian out of the child."
Cardinal didn’t reconnect with her birth parents and older sisters until she was 16. It’s a breach that Parlane is painfully familiar with. She’s originally from Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation in Saskatchewan. She was adopted when she was four, and after a stint in Alberta, spent most of her childhood in Toronto.
“It's one thing to be adopted,” says Parlane, 36. “But it's another thing to not know your language and your culture. And that has had the biggest impact on my life.”

Finding 'some kind of belonging'

Cardinal and Parlane are part of a group of indigenous adoptees who meet regularly in Ottawa. Last year, they decided to organize a national gathering for other adoptees like them.
This weekend, nearly 100 people from across the country and as far away as New Zealand will be in Ottawa for the Bigiwen Indigenous Adoptee Gathering. They’ll participate in workshops, network and, most importantly, make new friends.
“Adoptees are looking for some kind of belonging, some kind of place to talk about their stories and share their stories with others,” says Cardinal.

'It may seem like it's easy to just integrate back into your biological family … but if you go back to it without your songs, your ceremonies, and your language, it's really hard to reintegrate.'— Colleen Cardinal

For many adoptees, returning to their roots after being raised away from their communities is hard.
“It may seem like it's easy to just integrate back into your biological family," she says. “But if you've been raised a certain way, and you go back to it without your songs, your ceremonies, and your language, it's really hard to reintegrate.”
But with a growing support network, both Cardinal and Parlane believe it’s becoming easier to share experiences and return to birthplaces. Parlane spent the summer with some of her birth family back in Saskatchewan.
“I made a connection with my mom's side of the family, and I recently went powwow dancing for the very first time this past summer,” she says. “It was amazing, because for me that was … all these years of not having a connection to my culture, the doorway just suddenly opened through my aunt.”
By sharing their own stories, they hope to open the door for other adoptees.

Related Stories

• Compensation, counselling sought for 60s Scoop victims
• P.E.I. aboriginal families still affected by '60s Scoop

External Links

• Bigiwen indigenous Adoptee Gathering

Disproportionate number of aboriginal children in care in Canada

Joanne Bernard says issue needs to be addressed in collaboration with federal government

CBC News 

Joanne Bernard says, according to departmental numbers, about 22.5 per cent of children in care are aboriginal, but only 2.7 per cent of the population in Nova Scotia is of aboriginal ancestry. (CBC)

Nova Scotia's minister of community services says she's concerned about the disproportionate number of aboriginal children in community care.
For the first time in eight years, Department of Community Services ministers met to discuss social issues, the most worrisome perhaps being the high numbers of aboriginal children in care.

Joanne Bernard, Nova Scotia's minister of community services, worries the federal government is not doing more to help provinces with this problem.

​Joanne Bernard says, according to departmental numbers, about 22.5 per cent of children in care are aboriginal, but only 2.7 per cent of the population in Nova Scotia is of aboriginal ancestry. "It’s clearly an issue in this province," Joanne Bernard told CBC’s Information Morning.
"There are all kinds of issues of why aboriginal children are taken into care, just like there are of all children taken into care. In my personal experience, and the work that I used to do, you can't look at the issues surrounding children in care, unless you look at the vulnerabilities of families, especially the mothers. We all know of the ongoing vulnerabilities and complexities that aboriginal women in Canada [face] today, including in our own province."
In Manitoba the numbers are even higher. Seventy-eight per cent of children in care in that province in care are of aboriginal descent. According to 2013 figures from Statistics Canada's first National Household Survey showed that 16.7 per cent of the province's population identified as aboriginal.
Bernard is back in Nova Scotia after sitting down with ministers in charge of social services from across the country in Calgary late last week.
She worries the federal government is not doing more to help provinces with this problem.
"That collaboration starts with coming to the meeting of, quite frankly, the social policy leaders of the country. So when you have everyone of us at the table and you don’t have your federal counterpart, clearly a piece of the puzzle in moving forward and addressing all the intersectional issues that surround aboriginal children in care — in addition to aboriginal women, it’s just so pivotal that that partnership not only be maintained but strengthened," she said.
The provincial community services ministers last met in 2006.

Related Stories

• Poor kids hit hard by school strike
• Shawn Atleo agreed to 'substantive amendments' to First Nations education bill
• National aboriginal child welfare strategy needed says former B.C. judge
• Child welfare discussed at Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs forum
• First Nations should control own child welfare, inquiry told

Not just in Canada...Trace/Lara

Indigenous Resistance: Tribunal on Indian Boarding Schools

Indigenous Resistance: Tribunal on Indian Boarding Schools Oneida, WI, October 2014...:

October 22 -- 25, 2014: Wisconsin event to focus on U.S. Indian boarding schools, promote healing

Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School
More than 200 undocumented deaths of
children including Anishinaabe. 

Blue Skies Foundation has scheduled a Tribunal to focus on the experiences of Native children who were forced at early ages to attend Indian boarding schools. This Tribunal is scheduled for October 22 through the 25, 2014 at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center, at Oneida, Wisconsin.

Blue Skies Foundation is working with the staff of the Human Rights Action Center, from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, Jack Healey of the Human Rights Action Center, Bill Means, co-founder of the International Indian Treaty Council, and with Sheron Leonard, Pele Films, as well as numerous other individuals interested in documenting the history of the Indian boarding schools.

A panel of qualified Native judges will be listening to the witnesses as they provide first hand testimony of the abuse and mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the federal government, and of the Council of Churches, while being forced to live away from their families and Nations. In the words of the founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School, General Richard Henry Pratt, “Transfer the savage born infant to the surroundings of civilization and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit.”

At the conclusion of the Tribunal the Judges will issue an executive summary with their findings, which will be shared with the Native communities.

This Tribunal will be live-streamed by professionals out of California and the contents will be formatted into DVD form to be used as an educational tool in the schools, especially the Tribal schools. We are trying to provide a clear history while we have some of the witnesses able to tell their stories.

One reason to put together a Tribunal on the boarding school era is to bring an

Haskell, where children were beaten and tortured,
and buried in the marsh.

awareness of the treatment of Native children while in those schools and try to begin to understand the effects this treatment had on the survivors. We are told of the physical punishment the children suffered for speaking the language, and of the sexual assaults, the physical and mental violence that took place in the name of “educating” our children in order to strip them of the “savage upbringing” and introduce them to civilization.

We feel that while we have the ability to capture the first hand documentation from some of our people, it is vitally important because we will have in their own words, the harsh reality of the boarding school experience.

MORE  

NPR coverage in 2008 

FILM CLIP: HERE

‘We found you in a catalogue of Native children’ #60s Scoop

CLICK ‘We found you in a catalogue of Native children’

I also want to share this link to a recent post on my Lara blog about adoption>>>here

Real ID Act? They didn't think of adoptees with fake birth certificates?

Americans will soon be barred from boarding airplanes unless they surrender to federal 'Real ID' card

by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: REAL ID cards, airline travel, states'' rights

(NaturalNews) Residents of nine states who attempt to use their driver's license to enter some government agency offices will be denied, because their legislatures have not agreed to accept a federal law called REAL ID. In fact, according to The Boston Globe, if those states do not accept the law, residents will also eventually lose their ability to use driver's licenses to board commercial flights.

The paper reported that the federal REAL ID essentially forces compliance by states to ensure citizenship verification and to update their security standards when they issue driver's licenses. Lawmakers in D.C. initially believed that the law would deter terrorists who make it into the country illegally from being able to board flights.

However, officials in the nine states have chosen to forego the program because of a number of factors: It costs millions, there are privacy concerns, and the law violates the 10th Amendment by impinging on states' rights.

The Globe said states that did not accept the REAL ID are not penalized -- directly -- but their citizens suffer. Some of the law's restrictions began in late July.

'Papers please?'

"It was bizarre, and then I really felt embarrassed," Susan Podziba, who was prevented from entering a federal building near Washington, D.C., told the Globe. "It was like wow, I am a US citizen and suddenly my Massachusetts ID isn't good enough?"

Her state is one of the nine that has not accepted the REAL ID; because of that, she was forced to conduct a high-level meeting in a cafeteria outside the security gate.

The Globe further reported:

Governor Deval Patrick's office referred questions to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, an agency spokeswoman, said the state has applied for an extension to give it enough time to meet the law's requirements.

"DHS is asking the states to do something radically different with their licensing systems," she told the paper, without elaborating on the delay. "We want to make sure we do it right and do it well."

In order for Massachusetts to comply with REAL ID, the state has to meet a series of benchmarks when issuing driver's licenses -- checking a person's legal status, securing images and doing background checks on employees who have access to sensitive materials. The law ostensibly aims to boost security and prevent fraud.

Passed in 2005, the Department of Homeland Security put off its implementation for a number of years but began gradually implementing it in April of this year. Phase two began in July.

The Globe said that 20 states had received extensions; 21 are considered to be in compliance. Three others have not made the required changes but will issue special licenses that citizens can use.

That leaves six states: Massachusetts, Maine, Oklahoma, Arizona, Alaska and Louisiana.

Since July, when the second phase took effect, it has been unclear how many Americans it affects or how many federal facilities are strictly enforcing it. The REAL ID law has varied effects; for instance, tourists can still gain access to Smithsonian museums and defendants can get into courtrooms for appearances.

But Americans who live in states that do not participate in REAL ID and who don't have other acceptable identification will not be able to visit the White House by next year; they won't be able to board commercial planes by 2016.

Here's your 'national ID' card

"It's an entirely foreseeable result of Massachusetts' failure to comply with a federal law," Republican Sen. Bruce Tarr, Massachusett's Senate minority leader, told the Globe, adding that he has inquired of the Patrick Administration about compliance but has gotten "very little response" thus far.

"The only thing you could speculate is that somehow compliance with REAL ID would thwart the administration's attempt to give driver's licenses to those who aren't here legally," he said.

But what the law represents is yet another method by which the federal government blackmails states into complying with its edicts. While there is no penalty for non-compliance, per se, obviously the law punishes citizens nonetheless.

It's just another way that the federal leviathan seeks to control rather than serve.

"For any American citizen, they should find this whole program completely laughable and ridiculous," Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap told the Globe.

Critics call REAL ID the "national ID" that privacy advocates have long feared. And for anyone keeping score about which of the political parties have most usurped constitutional rights in recent years, REAL ID was passed during the Bush Administration, when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House.

Sources:

http://www.bostonglobe.com

http://www.wcsh6.com

http://www.dmv.org

I'll be posting more on this topic soon - as it concerns adoptees who have fake birth certificates...  Leland Morrill has been working on this nightmare issue for adoptees a long time... Lara/Trace

ICWA violations in Illinois?

Notice Violation Case out of Illinois

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Kate Fort at TURTLE TALK

That’s right–out of Illinois. According to Westlaw (ICWA & “Indian Child Welfare Act”), there are a grand total of 11 ICWA cases from the Illinois appellate courts.

Here is the most recent. The appeals court reversed and remanded due to ICWA notice violations (for one child–the other was not the biological child of the father):

At the dispositional hearing on April 26, 2011, the trial court found Dwight to be unfit and awarded guardianship of N.L. to DCFS. Among the reports submitted for the court’s consideration was a social history report, dated March 23, 2011, indicating that Dwight is a registered member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation (the Tribe).

***
The trial court questioned the State about the children’s eligibility for tribal registry and was advised that the State had already received notices that both minors were ineligible for registry with the Tribe. The State was ordered to provide documentation of its compliance with the statute at the status hearing on December 18. No documents addressing the issue of tribal registry for the minors were submitted at that or any subsequent proceeding until the hearing on the State’s motion to supplement the record during the pendency of this appeal.

***
The State’s Tribe letters suggest that the Tribe was provided with the minors’ names and dates of birth and imply that Dwight’s name was provided with reference to N.L. The State’s Tribe letter for N.L is dated September 16, 2011, and that for M.L. is dated February 25, 2013. In its order granting the State’s motion to supplement the record, the court expressed concern with Dwight’s solicitation of new evidence while the case was on appeal. However, many of the documents the State was allowed to include with its supplementation were dated after the termination hearing and after Dwight’s notice of appeal.
Dwight filed a motion with this court to supplement the record with his own Tribe letter– from the same person who had signed the State’s letters– showing that N.L. and M.L. were eligible for tribal membership. He acquired this letter as a result of his solicitation for evidence related to the appeal. This court allowed Dwight to submit his Tribe letter with his case pending our decision of the propriety of its inclusion in the record. Dwight’s Tribe letter states that the minors are eligible for tribal membership and suggests that the Tribe was provided with the dates of birth for both minors, the correct spelling of N.L.’s name, and the names and dates of birth for both Dwight and Emily.

For reference, here’s the list of the Illinois appellate ICWA cases:

1. In re N.L. Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District.    September 09, 2014    — N.E.3d —-    2014 IL App (3d) 140172
2. In re K.T. Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District.    June 07, 2013    2013 IL App (3d) 120969    990 N.E.2d 1260
3. In re D.D., Jr. Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District.    November 05, 2008    385 Ill.App.3d 1053    897 N.E.2d 917
4. In re H.D. Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District.    September 30, 2003    343 Ill.App.3d 483    797 N.E.2d 1112
5. In re Cari B. Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.    February 01, 2002    327 Ill.App.3d 743    763 N.E.2d 917
6. In re C.N. Supreme Court of Illinois.    May 24, 2001    196 Ill.2d 181    752 N.E.2d 1030
7. In re M.S. Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.    February 05, 1999    302 Ill.App.3d 998    706 N.E.2d 524
8. In re Adoption of S.S. Supreme Court of Illinois.    October 19, 1995    167 Ill.2d 250    657 N.E.2d 935
9. In re Adoption of S.S. Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.    October 22, 1993    252 Ill.App.3d 33    622 N.E.2d 832
10. Matter of T.I.S. Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Fourth Division.    December 31, 1991    224 Ill.App.3d 475    586 N.E.2d 690
11. In Interest of Armell Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Second Division.    January 16, 1990    194 Ill.App.3d 31    550 N.E.2d 1060

Justice Department Supports Native Americans In Child Welfare Case : NPR

Justice Department Supports Native Americans In Child Welfare Case : NPR

The Justice Department has weighed in on a class-action lawsuit inSouth Dakota pitting Native American tribes against state officials, and come down resoundingly in support of tribes.

It's the first time the department has intervened in a federal district court case involving the Indian Child Welfare Act, a law meant to keep Native American families together. The department filed an amicus brief in the case concluding that the state is violating the rights of Native American parents.

In the suit, tribes claim the state is failing to abide by the 36-year-old federal law, removing hundreds of Indian children from their families in court hearings where parents are rarely allowed to speak, and that often last less than 60 seconds.

Momentum builds for gathering of aboriginal adoptees

Gathering for people who were adopted or lived in foster care as children

CBC News Posted: Aug 21, 2014

Related Stories

• Sixties Scoop adoptees share emotional stories, seek apology

External Links

• Bi-giwen Indigenous Adoptee Gathering 2014

(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)

Lesley Parlane, one of the organizers of an upcoming gathering for aboriginal adoptees was in Regina to talk about the event. (CBC)

An upcoming gathering of aboriginal people who were adopted or lived in foster care as children is gathering momentum as organizers visited Regina to talk about their plans.
The event, set for Ottawa, is called the Indigenous Adoptee Gathering 2014 and takes place Sept. 20 to 21.
One of the organizers of the event is Lesley Parlane, who was adopted as a small child.
Parlane says the idea for the gathering arose when she and other friends, who were also adopted, discovered they had many things in common because of that background and felt that sharing their experiences and providing support could be valuable.
She said she wishes such a community was available to her, as she was growing up.
"It would have been good to get together with people like me," Parlane said. "My experience wasn't bad but it wasn't good either, but everybody had a different experience but where do you go with that?"
The gathering will offer a variety of healing circles, workshops, and talks by people who have also been adopted.
Parlane explained that she learned much about her own history - and family connections - when, as an 18-year-old applying to get her Status Indian documents, she was contacted by a Saskatchewan First Nation and told they had various records relating to her adoption and news that she had a number of sisters who had been looking to find her.
It was a lot of information to process all at once, Parlane said and it took several years for her to feel comfortable delving into her family history. Now she says, she has been visiting family on the Standing Buffalo First Nation on a regular basis for the past three years.
She is hoping the upcoming gathering will help others who may be facing similar situations.
The Ottawa event has enough room for 80 participants and is just over half full.

More information about the event is available on a Facebook page and online, through this link.

Shocking admission by former DOCs worker

LINK: Shocking admission by former DOCs worker | Apology Alliance Australia

What constitutes “good”. When I worked at the Dept of Community Services I came across a lot of teen adoptees who were very damaged because of the adopted parents that had been chosen for them.
Honestly you would not have given them the worst kind of pet let alone a
child. (name withheld).

Brother Alex MacDonald worked with street kids in Melbourne in the
1980s.  He made the astounding comment published in a news article that
out of 149 drug related suicides he attended – 147 were adoptees.

click link above

Aussie adoptee statement

NOTE: There is no way for me to know how many Native American adoptees committed suicide but from what I am told, it's a staggering amount, which is why we don't have statistics... Lara/Trace

Called Home gifted in California

Tribal STAR News

Blessing of ICWA Court in Los Angeles
On the morning of July 25, 2014 the courtroom in which Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) cases are heard was blessed. The blessing of the court was organized by members of the stakeholders committee that has been meeting with the Honorable Amy Pellman, the judge who presides in that court. The stakeholders committee has been meeting for nine months to develop collaborative working relationships that will further the work of the court in insuring that the requirements of ICWA are implemented. The blessing was coordinated by Roberta Javier who works in the Indian Unit for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. The blessing was given by Julia Bognay, a member of the Tongva Tribe of Los Angeles. Gifts were presented to the court including a Cradleboard, a Dream Catcher gourd and a book, “Called Home” by Trace A. DeMeyer, relating the stories of Native American Adoptees. The blessing of the court is an annual event and insures that the Spirit of ICWA is present in the court when cases are being heard. 

PHOTO: Judge Amy Pellman, Los Angeles ICWA Court and Leland Morrill, Navajo Adoptee

Margaret Jacobs: A Generation Removed #ICWA #BABYVERONICA

Read an Excerpt (pdf)

May 5, 2015: watch interview with Author on Cspan

On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case Adoptive Couple vs. Baby Girl, which pitted adoptive parents Matt and Melanie Capobianco against baby Veronica’s biological father, Dusten Brown, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Veronica’s biological mother had relinquished her for adoption to the Capobiancos without Brown’s consent. Although Brown regained custody of his daughter using the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Capobiancos, rejecting the purpose of the ICWA and ignoring the long history of removing Indigenous children from their families.

In A Generation Removed, a powerful blend of history and family stories, award-winning historian Margaret D. Jacobs examines how government authorities in the post–World War II era removed thousands of American Indian children from their families and placed them in non-Indian foster or adoptive families. By the late 1960s an estimated 25 to 35 percent of Indian children had been separated from their families.

Jacobs also reveals the global dimensions of the phenomenon: These practices undermined Indigenous families and their communities in Canada and Australia as well. Jacobs recounts both the trauma and resilience of Indigenous families as they struggled to reclaim the care of their children, leading to the ICWA in the United States and to national investigations, landmark apologies, and redress in Australia and Canada. 

Margaret D. Jacobs, Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is the author of the Bancroft Prize–winning White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940 (Nebraska, 2009) and Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879–1934 (Nebraska, 1999).

"[A Generation Removed is] a solid account that calls for "a full historical reckoning" of this devastating chapter in the treatment of Native Americans."—Kirkus

“Using compelling stories and weighty evidence, Jacobs has uncovered a modern and ongoing story of child-stealing in the United States. She lays out the shocking history of Native American adoption and the good liberal logic that enabled it in a page-turner of a book.”—Anne F. Hyde, Bancroft Prize–winning author of Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860

“Jacobs brings deep scholarship to a topic of searing national and transnational importance. In a respectful, clear voice, she guides the reader on a journey into the most intimate corridors of settler colonialism. This is a complex and often heart-wrenching history that provides salutary lessons for the future.”—Ann McGrath, director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at Australian National University and coauthor of How to Write History That People Want to Read

“Margaret Jacobs once again demonstrates her genius for writing history that combines penetrating analysis with heart-wrenching stories. Beautifully written, deeply researched, this important and amazing book examines a subject largely unknown to the public at large but all too familiar to Indigenous peoples who have suffered the pain and indignity of child removal.”—David Wallace Adams, author of Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928

“A Generation Removed will find a large and interested readership among researchers, university students (of all levels), as well as the broader community of people involved in adoption. This book is also clearly written and is sophisticated without being overly specialized or jargon-ridden. . . . An admirable book, compelling to read despite the tragic stories it recounts.”—Karen Dubinsky, author of Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas 


I will be posting a review here as soon as I finish it! Amazon has lots of good copies (new and used)...We have been waiting for this book, believe me - this brilliant academic has found the proof of genocide via adoption, Lyslo's work and so much more............ Trace/Lara

NEW BOOK: A Generation Removed #Adoption #ICWA #BABYVERONICA

This incredible author Margaret Jacobs and I met at Yale last fall in Connecticut. We had the longest hug and I felt the greatest humility and beauty in this renown scholar who knew of THIS blog and our work here as adoptees. Read an Excerpt (pdf) On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case Adoptive Couple vs. Baby Girl, which pitted adoptive parents Matt and Melanie Capobianco against baby Veronica’s biological father, Dusten Brown, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Veronica’s biological mother had relinquished her for adoption to the Capobiancos without Brown’s consent. Although Brown regained custody of his daughter using the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Capobiancos, rejecting the purpose of the ICWA and ignoring the long history of removing Indigenous children from their families. In A Generation Removed, a powerful blend of history and family stories, award-winning historian Margaret D. Jacobs examines how government authorities in the post–World War II era removed thousands of American Indian children from their families and placed them in non-Indian foster or adoptive families. By the late 1960s an estimated 25 to 35 percent of Indian children had been separated from their families. Jacobs also reveals the global dimensions of the phenomenon: These practices undermined Indigenous families and their communities in Canada and Australia as well. Jacobs recounts both the trauma and resilience of Indigenous families as they struggled to reclaim the care of their children, leading to the ICWA in the United States and to national investigations, landmark apologies, and redress in Australia and Canada.  Margaret D. Jacobs, Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is the author of the Bancroft Prize–winning White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940 (Nebraska, 2009) and Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879–1934 (Nebraska, 1999). "[A Generation Removed is] a solid account that calls for "a full historical reckoning" of this devastating chapter in the treatment of Native Americans."—Kirkus “Using compelling stories and weighty evidence, Jacobs has uncovered a modern and ongoing story of child-stealing in the United States. She lays out the shocking history of Native American adoption and the good liberal logic that enabled it in a page-turner of a book.”—Anne F. Hyde, Bancroft Prize–winning author of Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860 “Jacobs brings deep scholarship to a topic of searing national and transnational importance. In a respectful, clear voice, she guides the reader on a journey into the most intimate corridors of settler colonialism. This is a complex and often heart-wrenching history that provides salutary lessons for the future.”—Ann McGrath, director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at Australian National University and coauthor of How to Write History That People Want to Read “Margaret Jacobs once again demonstrates her genius for writing history that combines penetrating analysis with heart-wrenching stories. Beautifully written, deeply researched, this important and amazing book examines a subject largely unknown to the public at large but all too familiar to Indigenous peoples who have suffered the pain and indignity of child removal.”—David Wallace Adams, author of Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 “A Generation Removed will find a large and interested readership among researchers, university students (of all levels), as well as the broader community of people involved in adoption. This book is also clearly written and is sophisticated without being overly specialized or jargon-ridden. . . . An admirable book, compelling to read despite the tragic stories it recounts.”—Karen Dubinsky, author of Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas  I will be posting a review here as soon as I finish it! Amazon has lots of good copies (new and used)...We have been waiting for this book, believe me - this brilliant academic has found the proof of genocide via adoption, Lyslo's work and so much more............ Trace/Lara

California Appeals Court Upholds ICWA in Choctaw Foster Case - ICTMN.com

 CLICK: California Appeals Court Upholds ICWA in Choctaw Foster Case - ICTMN.com

Last Friday, the Second District Court of Appeals in California unanimously ruled against a non-Native foster couple seeking to adopt the Choctaw child in their care. The three-judge panel rejected their argument that they have the same constitutional rights and standing as biological parents, and ruled that the application of the “existing Indian family exception” did not apply in the case of Children and Family Services v. J.E., et al.


RELATED: Broken: Choctaw Father in California Thwarted in Custody Battle With Foster Couple

Romanticizing Adoption and Reunion: The Modern Day Fairy Tale that Actually Isn't

LINK: Lost Daughters: Romanticizing Adoption and Reunion: The Modern Day Fairy Tale that Actually Isn't

People watch our stories and tell us, You are so lucky you’re adopted...You are so blessed to be reunited...You get the best of both worlds...You have a beautiful story...You must feel so loved...You can be whole now...You have found peace...

Stop. Please. Just stop.

Stop telling us how we are supposed to feel. Stop twisting our stories to be pleasing to you. Stop euphemizing our very real pain, our irretrievable losses, our irreconcilable dissonance.

Our stories are not a Hallmark card. Our stories are not fairy tales. Our very real, raw lives are not for you to box up in a nice, clean package.

After reunion, life gets all the more complicated. Reunion is only the beginning. It is not the end. Challenges we never anticipated overtake us. Emotions we never knew we could feel engulf us. Confusion that we thought had been tamed begins to flail and kick so hard it knocks us
unconscious.

Even in the most “ideal” of circumstances, reunion precipitates complex pain and new grief. It surfaces emotions that can swallow you up until you see nothing but darkness.

Reunion does not bring closure.

...

Our stories are our lives. 

And they belong--not to you to judge and to scrutinize--but they belong to us. 

And to us alone.

(link is at top of post) please share this! ...Trace

GOOD NEWS: Judge accepts feds' comments on Indian Child Welfare case

Andrea J. Cook Rapid City Journal staff AUGUST 18, 2014

RAPID CITY - SOUTH DAKOTA -- In what is being called a rare move, the Department of Justice last week threw its support behind two South Dakota tribes and two Native American mothers that have accused state officials of violating the Indian Child Welfare Act by taking custody of their children for 60 days after only a brief hearing.

Chief United States District Judge Jeffrey Viken on Friday granted the Department of Justice's motion to comment as a friend of the court in the lawsuit filed in 2013. In doing so, Viken acknowledged the department's amicus brief outlining its interpretation of the rights Native American parents have under the Indian Child Welfare Act when their children are removed from their homes.

The South Dakota Department of Social Services often is called to take custody of children when law-enforcement officers handle a domestic situation, during a criminal investigation or when a warrant is served. Under state law, a custody hearing is required within 48 hours of a child's removal from a home. Such hearings are referred to as "48-hour hearings."

Viken's decision is good news, according to Rapid City attorney Dana Hanna, who, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the Oglala Sioux and Rosebud Sioux tribes and mothers Madonna Pappen and Lisa Young in the 2013 lawsuit. The suit was filed on behalf of all Native American parents whose children were taken through the actions of the Department of Social Services, Pennington County State's Attorney's Office and the Seventh Circuit Court.

"The Indian plaintiffs in this case and their attorneys are delighted that the Department of Justice has supported virtually all our legal arguments that we have raised in our lawsuit against the state officials," Hanna said in an interview on Friday.

"We are confident that the brief filed by the Department of Justice will be very helpful to the district court in arriving at a just decision in this case."

The DOJ's participation in the case is a "very rare and unprecedented event," Hanna said.

The action shows the importance of the case, according to ACLU attorney Stephen Pevar.
"This may be the first time since ICWA was passed in 1978 that DOJ entered into an ICWA case at the district court level," Pevar said in a news release Friday.

The National Indian Child Welfare Association, headquartered in Portland, Ore., also welcomes the DOJ's involvement in the South Dakota case.

"It is our hope that this is just the first of many actions the United States will take to better ensure Native children and families are treated fairly under the law and that non-compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act is no longer tolerated," Executive Director Terry Cross said Thursday in a statement. "As always, NICWA stands in support of South Dakota's Indian families, tribes and children. With today's development, we are one step closer to achieving justice for them."
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley's office represents the judiciary in this case. On Friday, his office said that he cannot comment on ongoing litigation.

The lawsuit accuses Seventh Circuit Court judges of conducting perfunctory 48-hour hearings and placing children in foster care when the Department of Social Services takes temporary custody of Native American children. The lawsuit criticizes the speed of the hearings and the treatment given parents during the hearings.

In the "Conclusion" section of its brief, the Department of Justice wrote: "ICWA imposes a specific obligation on state officials, including state courts and departments of social services, to actively investigate and oversee emergency removals of Indian children to 'insure' that the removal ends as soon as possible, and that Indian children are 'expeditiously' returned to their parents or their tribe, or that the state commences a child custody proceeding subject to all of ICWA's protections." That obligation, the brief continues, "applies to initial hearings such as the 48-hour hearings at issue here."
In July, the attorneys filed motions asking the federal court to hold as a matter of law that certain practices used in Pennington County's initial 48-hour custody hearings involving Native American families violate federal law.

Many such hearings last less than two minutes, according to Hanna.

A review of hearing transcripts filed in the case shows parents are given no meaningful opportunity to speak or questions the judges, Hanna said.

"They are expressly told by the judges that they are not allowed to give testimony in the 48-hour hearing," Hanna said in an email Friday.

The federal brief cites the plaintiffs' assertion that "the 48-hour hearings are, almost without exception, cursory affairs, and that no testimony or evidence is permitted." The brief added that under federal law, "(S)tate officials must conduct an inquiry into whether the emergency removal is still necessary to prevent imminent harm to the child, and must accept and/or present evidence on this issue, either at the 48-hour hearing or at another hearing soon thereafter."

Such a hearing, the federal brief said, "should include an opportunity to present witnesses and evidence on the parents' behalf."

At about 99 percent of the hearings, the court grants the state's petition for temporary custody, Hanna said.

Although, Congress recognized a need for states to be able to take emergency action to protect Native American children, it also imposes strict limitations on that emergency authority, according to the brief.

An emergency removal or placement should be terminated as soon as possible by either returning children to a parent, custodian or tribe or initiate a child custody proceeding within ICWA guidelines, according to the Department of Justice.

The brief was submitted by U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, Acting Assistant Attorney Generals Molly J. Moran, Sam Hirsch and other U.S. Department of Justice attorneys.

With this lawsuit, the Native American tribes and parents are trying to tell state officials that temporary custody hearings do not meet constitutional standards and violate ICWA, Hanna said.
"And now," Hanna said, "the Department of Justice has said that too."

Parents' rights, not money drive ACLU lawsuit

Every week, Native American families are torn apart in Rapid City in violation of their constitutional rights, attorneys representing two Sout… Read more

Tribes prepared to battle Department of Social Services' practices

With the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Oglala and Rosebud Sioux tribes will file a federal class action today in Rapid Ci… Read more

Native American child custody lawsuit advances

A federal judge has decided that Native American families deserve a chance to prove that South Dakota officials routinely ignore their rights … Read more

Circuit judges accused of ignoring federal judge's order in suit over Native children custody hearings

A federal judge has given four Seventh Circuit judges and one former circuit judge two weeks to either abide by his orders or explain why they… Read more

Judge orders transcripts produced in ICWA case

By the end of the month, attorneys representing Native American families and two tribes in a federal child welfare case will know more about w… Read more

 

BABY Alexandria: The new Baby Veronica?

EXCELLENT BOOK ON ICWA

ICWA Placement Preference Decision Out of California Involving Choctaw Tribe

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Kate Fort TURTLE TALK

 

Here.

This is a re-occurring and incredibly frustrating ICWA fact pattern – if the ICWA compliant placement is out of state, or far away from the parents, and the goal is reunification, it makes sense for the tribe and state to allow for a non-compliant ICWA placement near the parents. What happens, however, when reunification fails? As in this case, a court is often unwilling to remove the child from the home she has been in for anywhere from one to three years. Honest, actual, concurrent permanency planning could help with this, but while that is a best practice, it does not seem to be happening with any regularity at the state (California).

Concluding that the ICWA’s adoptive placement preferences do apply to this case, we then review the trial court’s order finding that the P.s failed to produce clear and convincing evidence of good cause to depart from those placement preferences. We determine that the court applied the correct burden of proof by requiring the P.s to prove by clear and convincing evidence that there was good cause to deviate from section 1915’s placement preferences. However, the court erroneously required the P.s to prove a certainty that Alexandria would suffer harm if moved, and failed to consider Alexandria’s best interests or her bond with the P.s in determining good cause.
***
We recognize that a final decision regarding Alexandria’s adoptive placement will be further delayed as a result of our determination of the merits of this appeal. That delay is warranted by the need to insure that the correct legal standard is utilized in deciding whether good cause has been shown that it is in the best interest of Alexandria to depart from the ICWA’s placement preferences.

As also often happens, the parties start arguing about the very constitutionality of ICWA, making this case a “not as bad as it could have been” case – the court didn’t find ICWA is unconstitutional, nor does Adoptive Couple apply (as the de facto parents argued) to this fact pattern. And yet, the trial court decision placing the child with her extended family is still overturned based on the child’s best interest standard. Getting courts to acknowledge that the best interests of a child ought to include the child’s whole life, not just the one transition in front of the court at that moment, is both vital and seemingly impossible.

(Happy to post redacted briefs if we receive any)

===============

Speaking of ICWA placement preferences, Here are the reports submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, the International Indian Treaty Council, and the National Indian Child Welfare Association:

Alternative Report A: Indigenous Children and the Legacy and Current Impacts of the Boarding School Policies in the United States and the Lack of Redress, Restitution and Restoration by the United States to Address these Impacts or to Acknowledge Responsibility for Them
Alternative Report B: The Continued Removal of Indigenous Children from Their Families and Communities and its Impact on The Right to Culture

EARLIER COVERAGE HERE