Brackeen Case | New York Times and #ICWA

https://www.avcp.org/brackeen-v-zinke-tribal-amicus-brief/

By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

FIRST UP:  The New York Times headline yesterday:  Who Can Adopt a Native American Child? A Texas Couple vs. 573 Tribes

Here

 I posted my comment which became a NYT Pick:

I am an adoptee and journalist who has documented the history and narratives of Native adoptees in three Lost Children anthologies. If the Brackeens had done any research prior, they would know the outcomes for Native adoptees are not good. Adoption gets pretty ugly when it doesn't work. Once kids are out of diapers, they start noticing and feel the isolation without kin. There are medical terms for our damage. The adoption industry will not advertise that most patients in psychiatric care are adoptees. They don’t warn adoptive parents their new child will suffer from “Severe Narcissistic Injury” or “Reactive Attachment Disorder.” This news would not be welcome. LINK

Of course some readers slam me for using the word "kin" ...or ask how do I know about the damage we suffer...  No shock... I get it: they don't get it and they don't know the history or the Native adoptees I  know personally... (There were 775 comments before they shut it off today and many are amazingly correct!)

An earlier comment from Ellen gets it:

This country has a long brutal history of removing Native children from their families with the intent of culture genocide. There is nothing different about this case. I am sure that the Brackeens are lovely (wealthy) people who care for Zachary, and the new baby they selfishly wrested from her family. Still, it does not undo the damage done to the Navajo nation, in losing 2 precious children, not to mention the damage done to the children in growing up apart from their culture...while being quite different in appearance from the rest of this family. But skin color is not the issue - the erasure of culture and sense of self is.

After reading the NYT story I am not surprised that the Navajo tribe and the Brackeens will share custody, as Judge Kim declared, but the Brackeens would have primary possession.  Taking Indian children off the rez and changing their identity to white and ending their sovereignty and treaty rights and a connection to tribal lands:  the old playbook is the new playbook.  

It is always about possession.

We have covered this case on this blog for the past few years. (please look at Goldwater Institute (34 posts) for more insight on this case.)
 

Hundreds of tribal nations vehemently oppose the lawsuit Brackeen v. Bernhardtthat splits Texas, Indiana, Louisiana and a coalition of conservative legal groups, including the Goldwater Institute, against the federal government, hundreds of tribal nations, 21 state attorneys general, Native American civil rights groups and child welfare organizations, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Children’s Defense Fund.

The NYT story reports:

So much remains suspended.

The decision about the act’s fate from the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is imminent.

The Navajo are appealing Judge Kim’s custody order. 

What about the BRACKEENS:

Potential Adoptive Parents (PAPS) Chad and Jennifer Brackeen might want to learn Navajo history during this lengthy court battle in Texas. (Try this one in 2011: Illegal aliens? Deported adoptees?)

The total population of the Navajo people residing in their land is approximately 180,462 having a median age of 24 years old.   Navajo Nation is situated over a 27,000 square miles of large land within the vicinity of the state of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. It is considered to be the largest land that is primarily covered by the jurisdiction of the Native American within the territory of the United States.

What most people don't know:  The Navajo are survivors of a barely-known Mormon assimilation program from 1947 to the mid-1990s. 

Year after year, missionaries of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints approached Navajo families and invited children into Mormon foster homes.  As part of the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, children would live with Mormon families during the school year to “provide educational, spiritual, social, and cultural opportunities in non-Indian community life,” according to the Church.  

Typically, the Mormon foster families were white and financially stable.  Native American children who weren’t already Mormon were baptized.  Although the LDS Church reached out to dozens of Indian tribes, most participants’ families lived within the Navajo Nation.

Roughly 50,000 children participated in the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, according to Matthew Garrett, a professor at Bakersfield College.

Rather than improving conditions on the Navajo reservation, the LDS Church asked that children assimilate to the way its white members lived.  Some Church leaders interpreted the Book of Mormon literally and expected that Native American children’s skin would turn lighter as they grew closer to God.  

The Church now admits that not all Native Americans are descendants of the Israelites, or Lamanites, as described in the Book of Mormon.   (Oh really, thanks)

In addition to the claims of damage done by sexual abuse, the lawsuits involving the Indian Student Placement Program assert that the culture of the Navajo Nation was “irreparably harmed” by the LDS Church’s “continuous and systematic assimilation efforts.” Although the last student in the Indian Student Placement Program graduated in 2000, plaintiffs are asking the Church to do all it can to enhance and restore Navajo culture and create a taskforce for that purpose.

SOURCE:  

Why Several Native Americans Are Suing the Mormon Church

Participants in the Church-sponsored Indian Student Placement Program have filed at least three sexual-abuse lawsuits. Lilly Fowler Oct 23, 2016

***

Practices of adopting Native American children directly followed the residential/boarding schools.  Such adoption practices, which came into fruition through forms such as the forced removal of Native American children during Canada’s 60s Scoop and its parallel in the United States, the Indian Adoption Projects, exemplify the adaption of adoption as a settler colonial tool for dispossession and disenfranchisement. 

***

Narragansett author John C Hopkins wrote about his Navajo mother in law on his blog:

Chilocco Indian School opened in 1884 with 123 students. Its first graduating class was comprised of six boys and nine girls. The school finally closed its doors in 1980. The name Chilooco comes from the Choctaw word “chiluki” and the Cherokee word “tsalagi,” which means “cave people” in both languages.

A long, hard-used tarred road turns off Route 166 and ends where the abandoned, ivy-covered stone buildings stand in disrepair haunted by the ghosts from memories past.

Bernice Austin-Begay, a Navajo, recalled the long ride down the road when she was a child returning to school after a rare family visit.

“I’d be sad because I knew it would be a long before I would see them again,” Austin-Begay, Class of 1965, said. “I’d be thinking about my family, thinking about my sheep.”

Austin-Begay was 10 when she was first taken to Chilocco. More than 50 years later she still recalls the day the government agents came to Black Mesa, Ariz. and took her away.

“I was captured,” she said.

Many Indian families resented how the government swooped in and took the children away from their families and did all they could to thwart the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Austin-Begay’s family was one of those. Whenever her mother saw a car coming up the road she would send Bernice running, to hide in the hills until the “biliganas” left. (Biligana is the Navajo word for white man)

But one day the car arrived unexpectedly and young Bernice never reached the woods.

“I was too slow,” Austin-Begay said.

**

'CATASTROPHIC AND UNFORGIVABLE'
Starting in 1958, the Indian Adoption Project placed Native American children in non-Native homes, in what it said was an effort to assimilate them into mainstream culture and offer them better lives outside impoverished reservations.
The project was run by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal government agency, and the nonprofit Child Welfare League of America, in partnership with private agencies.

 There was a reason Indian leaders went to the Senate in the 1970s and demanded an inquiry into the staggering number of children disappearing in Indian Country. It was not just boarding schools creating this mass exodus of children. Adoption programs in 16 states removed 85% of Native children. Programs like the Adoption Resource Exchange of North America (ARENA), established by the Child Welfare League of America in 1967, funded in part by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, paid states to remove children and place them with non-Indian adoptive families and religious groups like the Mormon Church.  ARENA expanded to include all Canadian and United States adoption agencies and offered them financial assistance.  

ICWA (the Indian Child Welfare Act) prioritizes placing Native children into Native homes or with kin or with families that are willing to keep them within a certain proximity to their cultures.

***

Associate Attorney General Tony West Delivers Remarks at the National Indian Child Welfare Association’s 32nd Annual Protecting Our Children Conference ~ Monday, April 14, 2014

 "...There's more work to do because every time an Indian child is removed in violation of ICWA, it can mean a loss of all connection with family, with tribe, with culture.  And with that loss, studies show, comes an increased risk for mental health challenges, homelessness in later life, and, tragically, suicide."

READ

Battle Pits Native American Tribes Against White Couple Over Adoption of Native Child in Case With Potential Affirmative Action Implications

THE ROOT
(to be continued)

A Place Between – The Story of an Adoption #60sScoop

By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

I run across comments by adoptive parents and PAPS (potential adoptive parents) all the time on why is it wrong for non-Natives to adopt Native kids? Volumes have been written about this, on this blog, and in medical studies and published reports but we STILL have people who don't understand.

Here is an example on Adoption.com:

SupaModel

April 15, 2011

I'm watching this documentary right now on demand. Its about these two Native American boys (now adults) who were adopted from foster (care) in Canada to an American (CC) family in Redding, PA. They were adopted as young boys so they remembered being with the bmom and now one of the boys is making a film about being between both families. I thing that bothers me is the younger brother has basically at 18 yrs old left his adoptive family and went back to Canada to bio family and he hasn't talked to his AP's in 8 years. His issues are growing up without his NA identity and racism he dealt with being NA in a all CC environment. Actually both boys are living in Canada now. The older brother still has a relationship with his AP's. As an AP I would take it as a slap in the face if my kid just left and wouldn't talking to me for 8 yrs. Its like these boys bio mom was an alcoholic who had her kids taken away because she was neglecting them. She said herself she would be drunk for 6 weeks straight and have no idea what day or month it is. Also leaving these babies at home by themselves while she's out partying and they have to change each diapers etc... So you have this family come in and give you a stable home and love and yet because they are CC you just leave?? Im wondering if this something that happens more often with older kids adoption from foster care? Like I said earlier it really annoys me but a great watch anyways. LINK

A Place Between - The Story of an Adoption, Curtis Kaltenbaugh, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

 WATCH   

A Place Between – The Story of an Adoption is a 2007 documentary film dealing with cross-cultural adoption and aboriginal life in Canada. It was directed by First Nations adoptee Curtis Kaltenbaugh and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Curtis and Ashok Kaltenbaugh were born in Manitoba and are of First Nations ancestry. After the 1980 death of their younger brother, at ages of 7 and 4 respectively, they were removed from the custody of their birth mother and placed for adoption with a middle-class white family living in Pennsylvania.

The film chronicles their search for identity and the meeting of their adoptive and birth families.
The film won Best Public Service Award at the Annual American Indian Film Festival, held in San Francisco during November 2007.^[wiki]

"This is genocide": Full statement on MMIWG report

MMIWG inquiry's final report and its 'calls for justice' | CBC Power & Politics

Inquiry into MMIWG issues final report, sweeping calls for change

Canada Blamed for ‘Genocide’ Against Indigenous Women

An inquiry concluded that high rates of violence against indigenous women in Canada amount to a genocide fueled by government abuses

 

WALL STREET JOURNAL

Mr. Trudeau has said the relationship between the Canadian government and indigenous people needs to be rebuilt and the process will likely take decades.

Monday’s report isn’t the first time Canada’s treatment of indigenous people has been labeled a genocide. A separate inquiry released in 2015 found Canada’s centurylong practice of forcibly removing indigenous children from their homes and educating them at government-funded residential schools was a “cultural genocide.” (We call this the 60s Scoop but it was before and after the 1960s)

Matthew Fletcher, who directs the indigenous law and policy center at Michigan State University, said Native Americans have faced similar wrongs in the U.S., including the forced removal of children from Native American families. He said Canada has done more in recent years to recognize the problem publicly.


READ: Canada Blamed for ‘Genocide’ Against Indigenous Women - WSJ

Democracy Now on 6-4-19

The New Genocide #MMIWG #AMINext

National Inquiry Deems Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women Canadian Genocide; Leaked Report

by Red Power Media, Staff

The final report from the national inquiry into cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across Canada has deemed the situation a genocide.

Read more of this post

WHAT IS HAPPENING in North America: I wrote an article in May HERE

PAGE #MMIWG 2019 (click on this)

When will tribes determine this to be urgent enough and assign bodyguards for these young women who are being hunted and murdered? 

Approximately 1,200 indigenous Canadian women have been murdered or gone missing since 1980. Holly Jarrett began the hashtag #AMINext to put more pressure on the Canadian government to investigate the high murder rate of First Nations women after her cousin, Loretta Saunders was found killed. 

The Truth Sharing Podcasts (Partage des vérités)

Monique Hurteau interviews people throughout British Columbia who are changing the narrative around MMIWG.

Original artwork by Monique Hurteau (@moniquehurteau)
The Truth Sharing Podcasts (Partage des vérités) is available now on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play pic.twitter.com/oXmX4PkoH9

— Sacred MMIWG / FFADA sacrées (@sacredmmiwg) May 30, 2019

 LISTEN

about The Truth Sharing Podcasts

I added a page MMIWG in the reference section(above)...Trace

Our Sisters In Spirit (MMIWG Documentary)

Court Ruling Creates New Uncertainty for Adopted Native Children

Court Ruling Creates New Uncertainty for Adopted Native Children: “The crazy thing is that the Indian Child Welfare Act is forty years old, and it’s still one of the least well-understood pieces of federal legislation, even by judges, in the country.”

Sending Them Home #ICWA

“The prayers of the children are very powerful, and I believe the prayers of the children are what brought us here,” LaMere said during his opening remarks. “Our children feed the system, and all of us let it happen. We make it easy for them, but that time has to stop.”

Researchers in the 1960s had found that up to 35 percent of all Native children were being taken from their families and tribes and placed in white homes or institutions.  ICWA, passed in 1978, aimed to curtail that practice, and to preserve Native culture and tribes by placing children with Native families when their biological parents could not care for them. A few states – including Iowa and Nebraska, where American Indian children are removed from their families at higher rates than their white peers – have adopted their own versions of ICWA.

GOOD READ: Sending Them Home

ICWA case update

2018 ICWA Case Update PowerPoint

Posted on May 11, 2019 by Kate Fort

I get this request a lot, here so is a pdf of a PowerPoint with detailed citations and information for 2018/annual TICA update.

Seminole hold adoption ceremony

Participating in the Seminole Tribe’s first family adoption finalized on
a Seminole reservation are, from left, Chief Justice Willie Johns,
Associate Justice Moses “Bigg Shot” Jumper Jr., Loraine Marie Stewart
Jumper, Joshua Jumper, Andrea Jumper, Circuit Court Judge Jose Izquierdo
and Chief Judge Moses B. Osceola. The ceremony was held April 18 in the
auditorium at Tribal headquarters in Hollywood. (Photo Damon Scott)

“This is a rare moment and occasion that we’ve been working for for
almost 10 years,” Chief Justice Johns said. “That we would come
collaboratively with the state and the Tribe to do the adoptions and to
work with families and children through the [Florida Department of
Children and Families]. This is our very first. It’s a moment that we’re
going to all treasure.”

Chief Justice Johns congratulated the Jumpers on their latest addition to the family.

GREAT NEWS: Adoption ceremony marks a first at Tribal Court • The Seminole Tribune

Seminole hold adoption ceremony

Participating in the Seminole Tribe’s first family adoption finalized on a Seminole reservation are, from left, Chief Justice Willie Johns, Associate Justice Moses “Bigg Shot” Jumper Jr., Loraine Marie Stewart Jumper, Joshua Jumper, Andrea Jumper, Circuit Court Judge Jose Izquierdo and Chief Judge Moses B. Osceola. The ceremony was held April 18 in the auditorium at Tribal headquarters in Hollywood. (Photo Damon Scott)

“This is a rare moment and occasion that we’ve been working for for almost 10 years,” Chief Justice Johns said. “That we would come collaboratively with the state and the Tribe to do the adoptions and to work with families and children through the [Florida Department of Children and Families]. This is our very first. It’s a moment that we’re going to all treasure.”
Chief Justice Johns congratulated the Jumpers on their latest addition to the family.

GREAT NEWS: Adoption ceremony marks a first at Tribal Court • The Seminole Tribune

OP-ED: Preserve the Indian Child Welfare Act

Preserve the Indian Child Welfare Act

By Darlene Byrne, For the Express-News

Published May 5, 2019

• 

  Photo: Courtesy Photo

  The adoption case of “Baby Veronica” in 2013 shone a light on the Indian Child Welfare Act. Another case is now threatening the ICWA — an act that is in the best interests of children and Native American communities.

Navigating the U.S. child welfare process can be a highly emotional venture. As a judge who works in child welfare I know this better than most. Our end goal will always be to protect children’s best interests and ensure they have the love and support of a family so they flourish as they grow to adulthood. But the process of trying to protect children can be as painful and difficult as it is rewarding.
Because child welfare cases are so complex, a number of laws and legal practices are specifically designed to ensure the best outcomes. Perhaps one of the most highly regarded among these laws has been the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, which at its core helps keep Native American children within their families, communities and heritage.

KEEP READING 

Take it from someone who sees the benefits of ICWA in her own court. Or take it from the Native American tribes, the people most invested in the well-being of their own children. Or take it from the history books. ICWA supports the best interests of children and our Native American communities, and losing this law would set our country back decades.

Darlene Byrne has served as presiding judge of the 126th Judicial District Court in Travis County since January 2001. She is a commissioner on the Texas Children’s Commission, a past president of the National Council for Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and a past Judge of the Year of National CASA, Texas CASA and CASA of Travis County.

National Day Of Awareness | INVISIBLE NO MORE #MMIWG - Vital Billboard Campaign VIDEO

National Day Of Awareness For Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women (& Girls) #MMIWG

Guest Commentary Published May 5, 2019

“I stand before you today, a full-blooded Native American woman, a Northern Arapaho/Hunkpapa Lakota. The statistics that hang over my head are these: I am among the most stalked, raped, murdered, sexually assaulted, and abused of any women in any ethnic group, and I am among those who suffer domestic violence 50 times higher than the national average.” 

I use that statement to open my presentations on the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis. I travel around Indian Country, as I have for years, to raise awareness and inform our people of the scale of the tragedy and, crucially, how to make a safer environment for their communities and families. I have done this work for over a decade, and when I committed to it the term “MMIW” had not been coined.

I am somebody who works with data, but Chairman Gerald Grey of the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council (RMTLC) recently made a statement that should resonate with us all, that speaks to more than numbers: “I choose not to quote statistics because our women and girls are human beings not statistics. This is mom. Auntie. Sister. Niece. Daughter. Cousin. And sometimes, grandma. We know the names of some of the victims, but study after study shows that MMIWG cases are underreported, so there are many, many names we do not and may never know.” This is personal. When we learn of another victim near or far, in our reservations communities we can relate on a deep, emotional level. We may not know the victim or their family, but we know the socio-economic conditions; we know the struggle.
READ MORE



Visit: www.mmiw-gic.com

Lynette Grey Bull is Senior Vice President of Global Indigenous Council and the founder of Not Our Native Daughters. In 2017, Lynette provided statistics and research on missing and exploited Native women and children for the UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples. She previously served as Chair of the Arizona Commission of Indian Affairs at the Governor’s office, and on the Arizona Governor’s Human Trafficking Task Force.

67 years ago

67 Years Ago#INDIGENOUS #TAIRP pic.twitter.com/afr0O7GKuZ

— Indigenous (@AmericanIndian8) April 29, 2019

67 years ago

67 Years Ago#INDIGENOUS #TAIRP pic.twitter.com/afr0O7GKuZ

— Indigenous (@AmericanIndian8) April 29, 2019

The Traumatic Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

Statutes of limitations for civil or criminal cases make any legal action impossible in the United States, according to the Native American Rights Fund attorney Donald Wharton. Lawsuits against Christian denominations would need to take place in individual state courts, and would likely be costly and burdensome. Attempts at gaining reparations at the state-legislature level have failed, too; in February, the South Dakota legislature killed a bill that would have extended the window for childhood survivors of boarding-school abuse to file suits against organizations such as the Catholic Church.

READ: The Traumatic Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools - The Atlantic

Has anyone read a book by Boarding School Survivors who were molested in the Catholic Churches? Please leave a comment.

**

Brooklyn Diocese Ignored Protocol And Unwittingly Accepted Priest Accused Of Abuse

link

After the Boston Globe’s 2002 Spotlight investigation of sexual abuse, the USCCB created the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which called on church leaders to more thoroughly vet priests in order to prevent sexual abuse. In 2003, the USCCB published guidelines for vetting international priests, acknowledging the unique difficulties of conducting cross-border background checks. Despite the attention to more thorough vetting, a 2007 USCCB audit found that half of the credible sexual abuse allegations from children that year who were still minors were made against international priests.
Last year, the Diocese of Brooklyn posted names of 13 priests on its website who have been accused of sexually abusing minors and have been laicized, the most serious punishment in Catholicism. In the interview with W Radio earlier this year, Tobón said he referred the sexual abuse allegations against Cadavid to the Vatican after suspending him in 2012, and that he was no longer a priest. The 13 priests named on the diocese website are priests from the Diocese of Brooklyn, so Cadavid is not included.

Oglala Lakota Nation: After the Deluge

Navajo Nation Wins Appeal in Indian Child Welfare Act Case #ICWA

The Arizona Court of Appeals decided the juvenile court did not meet the requirements of the act. by Emma Gibson

Navajo Code Talker Memorial at Window Rock, Arizona.

Photo: Ron Cogswell/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

LISTEN

The Arizona Court of Appeals ordered a new hearing Thursday over the guardianship of a 6-year-old child who is subject to the Indian Child Welfare Act.
The Navajo Nation appealed the case, The Navajo Nation v. Department of Child Safety et al., in October 2018 after the juvenile court failed to hear the testimony of a qualified expert witness as required by the ICWA in the child's guardianship case.

The child, R.Y., falls under the act because his mother is a member of the Navajo Nation.
Tamara Shanker, the attorney who represented the Navajo Nation, said the act is an effort to rebuild indigenous culture after centuries of the removal of indigenous children from their families.

When an indigenous parent cannot care for his or her child, the ICWA prioritizes the placement of the child in the custody of a relative or someone from the same tribal nation.
Shanker said that since the juvenile court awarded permanent guardianship without the testimony of an expert witness, it opened the door for future courts to disregard other aspects of the act.
"A Diné individual is as different from a Pascua Yaqui, as an Italian is from a Dane," Shanker said. "Just because they may all just be European doesn't mean that they're the same individual and have the same child rearing practices."
She said cultural experts are necessary to accurately assess an adult's ability to care for a child by his or her cultural standards.
The act allows for three types of qualified experts to testify in its cases. One type of expert is a fellow tribal member who is a specialist in the culture's childrearing practices. The person could also be someone who provides child and family services to tribal members and is an expert on the tribe's familial organization. The court will also hear testimonies from a specialist with extensive experience and knowledge on a certain topic pertaining to the case.
The expert or experts testify as to whether the parents or an indigenous relative could raise the child without causing severe emotional or physical harm.
"We needed to have this decision, because to not get this would have set a very dangerous precedent. If you start chipping away at critical requirements under the ICWA or any law, it's like, 'If we can chip away that requirement, we can chip away this one next time,'" said Shanker.
She said that since the juvenile court did not follow all of the act's requirements, R.Y.'s custody was legally unstable. Someone could appeal the ruling and possibly remove him from his guardian's care. She said this was not the Navajo Nation's goal in pursuing the appeal.
Shaker said she hopes the new hearing solidifies the boy's custody and reinforces that even permanent guardianship cases must follow all aspects of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

In "Bitterroot," a Native transracial adoptee explores identity, race, and belonging

By Rose Aguilar & Laura Wenus • Apr 23, 2019 

LISTEN 

• 

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll speak with oral historian Susan Devan Harness about her book Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption.

The memoir explores her search for answers to difficult questions about race, identity and family as an American Indian woman adopted by a white couple. She also chronicles her reconnection with her biological family and conversations with other transracial adoptees.

Guest:

Susan Devan Harness, writer, lecturer and oral historian, and author of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption

Web Resources:

High Country News: Adoption didn’t solve the ‘Indian Problem’

The Denver Post: Forcibly adopted American Indians torn between cultures

Hippocampus Magazine: Review: Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption (American Indian Lives) by Susan Devan Harness

Too Burdensome to report or keep data on #ICWA (really?)

Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) Notice of Proposed Rule Making. Again.

Posted on April 19, 2019 by Kate Fort

 

Here.

We cannot currently track on a national level in any way how ICWA works, where children who are involved in ICWA cases are placed, what their outcomes are, or how many cases are transferred to tribal court, as examples. There is barely statewide data available, and most of it is on a county-by-county level. As just one example, Michigan is in a federal lawsuit over its data collection system.

I am deeply tired of hearing that tracking this information is simply too burdensome for the states that are putting children in care, and then getting hit in lawsuit after lawsuit with claims that are not supported by any data, but also cannot be refuted by data we refuse to collect.

If your tribe wants to submit comments, there will be model comments available before the deadline of June 18.

**
Consider this: The states pay foster parents - the bureaucracy secures money and keep those records, right?
Why not keep data on the kids they place? And did you know that once a child is adopted, no one from the state goes to check on the child(ren)?

read this:

Peter Lengkeek is one of 14 members of the Crow Creek Tribal Council. He said he is enraged by the number of children that the Department of Social Services has removed from his reservation. The Tribal Council recently passed a resolution saying that the state cannot remove children without the council's approval.
John Poole/NPR

Incentives And Cultural Bias Fuel Foster System : NPR

https://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141662357/incentives-and-cultural-bias-fuel-foster-system

Oct 25, 2011 · Every time a state puts a child in foster care, the federal government sends money. Because South Dakota is poor, it receives even more money than other states - almost a hundred million dollars a ...

The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services - Parental ...

https://parentalrights.org/child_protective_services/

The children were taken to another county and placed in foster care. The foster parents were told wrongly that they could adopt the children. The grandmother then jumped through every hoop known to man in order to get her granddaughters.

 

Proposed California law would make it easier for Native Americans to argue their side in child custody cases

California lawmakers are considering a proposal to make it easier for Native American tribes to make their arguments in child custody cases.
Technically, the proposed legislation, AB 686, would let lawyers or other representatives of Native American tribes appear by phone or electronically in cases involving the possible removal of Native American children from their families and tribes.Such hearings are held as part of the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law enacted in 1978 to stem the systemic removal of tribal children from their families and cultures — a practice that at one time touched as many as one in three Native American children. But the problem AB 686 aims to fix is as much about geography as culture.
Often, the hearings that determine where Indian children are placed are held hundreds of miles from tribal lands, making it difficult for all sides to be well represented in court. And without tribal presence during those proceedings, judges are denied information that might make their decision more compliant with the federal law, according to a statement from the Juvenile Court Judges of California to the Judiciary Committee, which passed the bill April 2.

GREAT NEWS: Proposed California law would make it easier for Native Americans to argue their side in child custody cases

American Indian adoptees deal with painful past and family separations

Larry Brown, Navajo, prepares for the November powwow ceremony at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. The ceremony provides a space for American Indian families to heal after decades of family separation. (Photo: Camille Erickson. )

byCamille Erickson

The Indian Child Welfare Act has faced numerous constitutional challenges in federal courts since its enactment in 1978, attempts to undermine tribal nations’ authority in child welfare matters

Jane Harstad gave birth in 1986 to her first child, a son. Soon after, a pediatrician asked for her family’s medical history. She didn’t have a clue. She didn’t know who her biological mother or father was, let alone what medical conditions they had.
Harstad, who is Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, was adopted shortly after birth through Catholic Charities adoption services in 1965. The agency placed her in a white, middle-class family living in St. Paul, Minn.
After obtaining her biological mother’s address through the adoption agency, Harstad sat down to write a letter. She felt immediately overwhelmed.
“It took me a long time, you know, days or weeks [to write]. Even the first word like, ‘Hello,’ or ‘Dear Mom,’” she said. “It took a long time to carefully choose my words.” Harstad provided her phone number in the letter and said she wanted to meet her mother.
Harstad, now 56, would later reflect on that moment: “I was searching for a part of myself that was missing, and I knew she was the answer whether it was good or bad or ugly. It was like a puzzle and you’re missing one piece. You’re just never going to be complete.”
KEEP READING

Announcing the first comprehensive study on child removal in Native communities

READ PRESS RELEASE

If you have any questions about the study, you can visit www.boardingschoolhealing.org or contact members of the research team at info@nabshc.org or liebler@umn.edu. You may also request a paper copy of the survey or the research report when the study is completed.  

Visit us online to learn how you can join the Coalition. 

Mountain West Tribes And States Join #ICWA lawsuit

By Melodie Edwards • Apr 4, 2019

The Mountain West News Bureau

• 

  Children dancing on the Wind River Reservation.

  Flickr Creative Commons/Show Us Your Togatee

So far, 325 tribes and states, including Montana, Idaho, Utah and Colorado, have joined forces to preserve a law that gives Native families preference in adoption of Native children.
Texas, Indiana and Louisiana argue the Indian Child Welfare Act creates a special and unequal status for Native children that's unconstitutional. A Texas judge sided with them last December, but a federal appeals court is keeping the law in place while it considers.
Eastern Shoshone councilman Leslie Shakespeare from the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming said, before the 1978 law was adopted, there was a long history of removing Native children from the reservation. Even after the boarding school era, there was the Indian Adoption Project of the 1950's and 60's.
"It was actually a term, Indian extraction, where they took Indian children," said Shakespeare. "They adopted them primarily to non-Indian families in order to reduce reservation populations and to reduce spending time at boarding schools."
Back then, almost a third of all Native children were removed from tribal communities through boarding schools and adoption.
"I think that is the very heart of the Indian Child Welfare Act is children losing their identity and then further, because they're our next generation, the tribe losing our identity through that process."
Shakespeare said almost 40 percent of his tribe lives somewhere other than the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and half of those members are children. He said if they came up for adoption, it's critical to the survival of the tribe they maintain their identity as Shoshones.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUER in Salt Lake City and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado.

Fate of Native Children May Hinge on U.S. Adoption Case

Stateline: Indian Child Welfare Act likely headed to Supreme Court

Tuesday, March 19, 2019  

Fate of Native Children May Hinge on U.S. Adoption Case

By Teresa Wiltz
Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts
pewtrusts.org/Stateline

A case before a federal appeals court could upend an historic adoption law meant to combat centuries of brutal discrimination against American Indians and keep their children with families and tribal communities. For the first time, a few states have sued to overturn the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which Congress enacted in 1978 as an antidote to entrenched policies of uprooting Native children and assimilating them into mainstream white culture. Now, in a country roiled by debates over race and racial identity, there’s a chance the 41-year-old law could be overturned by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the country’s most conservative court. (The law applies to federally recognized tribes.) Overturning the law, its proponents say, could significantly increase the number of American Indian children adopted into non-Native families.

Hundreds of tribal nations vehemently oppose the lawsuit. They say it threatens the sovereignty of Indian Country and seeks to “return Indian children to the arbitrary and discriminatory whims of state courts and state agencies, unfettered by the centuries-old trust obligations this nation owes to Indian tribes and Indian peoples.” Meanwhile, some states and private adoption attorneys pushing for change argue the Indian Child Welfare Act interferes in state affairs and “requires them to place Indian children in accordance with statutory requirements based on race, rather than the children’s best interests.” Oral arguments in the case were heard last Wednesday in New Orleans. Whatever the outcome, the case is likely headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Graphic © The Pew Charitable Trusts

 

Brackeen v. Bernhardt pits Texas, Indiana, Louisiana and a coalition of conservative legal groups, including the Goldwater Institute, against the federal government, hundreds of tribal nations, 21 state attorneys general, Native American civil rights groups and child welfare organizations, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Children’s Defense Fund. The plaintiffs, who include several families interested in adopting Native American children and a non-Native biological parent who wants her American Indian child to be adopted by a non-Native family, argue that the law, often called ICWA (pronounced ICK-wah), is race-based and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Tribal nations counter that “Indian” is a political, rather than a racial, designation. The Supreme Court agrees with that classification. In 1974, it said that with federal hiring preferences for American Indians in federally recognized tribes, “preference is political, rather than racial in nature.” The plaintiffs also charge that in enacting the law, Congress exceeded its authority over federal affairs with tribal nations. “I want to see ICWA overturned completely,” said Mark Fiddler, co-counsel on the Brackeen case representing adoptive families, and an enrolled member of the Chippewa Nation. “ICWA has been a miserable failure.” 

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Brackeen v. Bernhardt: Listen to a federal appeals court debate the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act. #ProudToProtectICWA https://t.co/lE8R1YAyNW

— indianz.com (@indianz) March 13, 2019