This blog was a backup for American Indian Adopteesblog
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If you need support
Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ .
MY EMAIL: tracelara@pm.me
Reveal illustration; Charles Deluvio/Unsplash; Dukas/Universal/Getty
In
2017, David Leavitt drove to the Northern Cheyenne reservation in
Montana to adopt a baby girl. A few years later, during an interview
with a documentary filmmaker, Leavitt, a wealthy Utah politician, told a
startling story about how he went about getting physical custody of
that child.
He
describes going to the tribe’s president and offering to use his
connections to broker an international sale of the tribe’s buffalo. At
the same time, he was asking the president for his blessing to adopt the
child.
That
video eventually leaked to a local TV station, and the adoption became
the subject of a federal investigation into bribery. To others, the
adoption story seemed to run afoul of a federal law meant to protect
Native children from being removed from their tribes’ care in favor of
non-Native families.
This
week on Reveal, reporters Andrew Becker and Bernice Yeung dig into the
story of this complicated and controversial adoption, how it
circumvented the mission of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and why some
of the baby’s Native family and tribe were left feeling that a child was
taken from them.
Brandon
Friendship Centre’s Eagle Healing Lodge program co-ordinator Denise
Sinclair says the camp is helping people reclaim their Indigenous
languages through land-based activities. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
Nestled in
a ceremony site east of Southwestern Manitoba's biggest city, a group
of language keepers is working to strengthen and grow fluent Dakota,
Cree, Anishinaabemowin and Michif speakers.
They're part
of the Brandon Friendship Centre's Eagle Healing Lodge's first
land-based language camp. Four teepees have been set up between the
forest and prairies, each home to an Indigenous language in Westman.
"Language
has always been connected to the land," says Denise Sinclair, program
co-ordinator for the healing lodge. "Everything that we're doing here is
specifically land-based ... in the language so that you can hear it
[and] you can pass that on."
The three-day camp, held
Tuesday through Thursday, was an opportunity for participants to learn
and speak Dakota, Cree, Anishinaabemowin and Michif, she said. They
would speak their languages for different activities like setting up
tents, smoking meat or medicine picking.
Julia Brandon, left, and Martina Richard crush chokecherries as a way to learn Anishinaabemowin. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
It's
powerful seeing connections forged as people learn and speak their
languages, Sinclair said. It's important work that has to carry on to
help with language revitalization.
"Whatever you're
learning you're going to remember … you're building that core memory
with the language, that you needed growing up," Sinclair said.
Language as strength
The
healing lodge has been cultivating a community centred on strengthening
Indigenous languages since 2021, Sinclair said. It began as a program
for Sixties Scoop survivors and grew to include residential school
survivors and others.
Language serves to reconnect people with their culture and identity in a safe place centred on healing, Sinclair said.
"We
have to remember that there's still that sense of …. something being
taken," Sinclair said. "Now they feel safe to talk to us as learners
because they feel that importance of passing on that language."
Martina
Richard, from Waywayseecappo First Nation, camped out at the site for
two days to immerse herself and her family in language and culture.
Participants could choose to camp, or to go home for the night.
Eagle
Healing Lodge Cultural support worker Lacey Hotain says she wants to
strengthen her Dakota to pass it on to future generations. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
Richard's
focus was on learning Anishinaabemowin. As she gets older, Richard
says, she feels the need to be a fluent learner to help strengthen the
language for future generations.
"Just like how it was
spoken around me, I'm starting to use the language more around my
children and they're starting to understand and use the words too,"
Richard said.
"It feels like home ... It's good to be around what feels like family."
Julia
Brandon, also from Waywayseecappo, was one of the language helpers at
the camp. She teaches Anishinaabomowin through cultural activities like
smoking moose meat, beading and crushing chokecherries.
It's
exciting getting out of the classroom and onto the land, Brandon said.
It's a more hands-on experience for everyone involved no matter their
language skill level.
She still considers herself a learner, because other women are expanding the words she knows in Anishinaabemowin.
"I'm getting strength from being around the other speakers to keep going," Brandon said.
Building Community
Lacey Hotain from Sioux Valley Dakota Nation is a Dakota speaker who works as a cultural support worker at the healing lodge.
Hotain
visited each of the teepees to participate in different cultural
activities and learn about different Indigenous languages.
"I
definitely feel a sense of importance here because everybody who comes
here has a role," Hotain said. She says she's always felt "a calling, of
an obligation" to go back to language as a priority.
Hotain
wants to help teach Dakota to young people in the future. She says her
knowledge is being strengthened by working on the land at the camp.
Brandonite Shirley McKay beads a wolf willow necklace. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
The
Eagle Healing Lodge is planning on hosting a second language camp in
the spring. It's important to keep activities like this accessible –
through being welcoming and available – for those struggling with their
identity and their connection to language and culture, Sinclair said.
Brandon
hopes the next camp will be fully immersive for participants, with
Indigenous language spoken the whole time, to help keep languages
thriving in the community.
She
wants her grandchildren and the next generations can help carry the
language forward, Brandon said. But, it's challenging because she wants
them to be engaged and curious about Anishinaabemowin, but doesn't want
to force them to learn the way she was forced to learn English.
This
means they need more language options outside the camp so First Nation
children can stay connected to their culture and traditions.
"The
First Nations, we don't have our language because it's not promoted,"
Brandon said. "How do you promote your own language if you're if you're
not talking it yourself?"
Brandon camp connects language, culture and land
VIDEO: Duration 1:55
The
Brandon Friendship Centre's Eagle Healing Lodge hosted its first
three-day language camp this week. The camp's goal is to help people
reconnect to their Indigenous language through land-based and cultural
teachings.
If you can take 10 minutes, this animated film (above)
is a good overview of that history. There is so much information to
understand, that this animated film can reinforce some of the details.
If you haven't yet called or written your congressperson to support these two bills, here it is again. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPERSON AND SENATOR TO
SUPPORT THE TWO BILLS PROPOSED BY SEC.DEB HAALAND TO INVESTIGATE AND
BEGIN TO BRING HEALING TO NATIVE AMERICANS ADVERSELY TRAUMATIZED BY THE
BOARDING SCHOOL ERA.
If you would like to be part of educating the public, please consider hosting our film NATIVE WOMEN AND ALLIES SPEAK: What You Weren't Taught in School
As hurtful truths come to light regarding historically operated Federal Indian boarding schools in the United States, many Native Nations are reclaiming their voices. For the Upper Sioux Community (“Yellow Medicine Nation”) living in Minnesota, these historical truths are known to have cast profound ripples that impact their present. This mini documentary explores community interpretations of this boarding school past and offers hope for justice and healing.
NEW YORK (AP) — Tucked within the expansive Native American halls of
the American Museum of Natural History is a diminutive wooden doll that
holds a sacred place among the tribes whose territories once included
Manhattan.
For more than six months now, the ceremonial Ohtas, or
Doll Being, has been hidden from view after the museum and others
nationally took dramatic steps to board up or paper over exhibits
in response to new federal rules requiring institutions to return
sacred or culturally significant items to tribes — or at least to obtain
consent to display or study them.
Museum officials are reviewing
more than 1,800 items as they work to comply with the requirements while
also eyeing a broader overhaul of the more than half-century-old
exhibits.
But some tribal leaders remain skeptical, saying museums
have not acted swiftly enough. The new rules, after all, were prompted
by years of complaints from tribes that hundreds of thousands of items
that should have been returned under the federal Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 still remain in museum custody.
“If things move slowly, then address that,” said Joe Baker, a
Manhattan resident and member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians,
descendants of the Lenape peoples European traders encountered more than 400 years ago. “The collections, they’re part of our story, part of our family. We need them home. We need them close.”
The leader of the tribe in Oklahoma said he visited the Peabody this year after the university reached out about returning hair clippings collected in the early 1930s from hundreds of Indigenous children, including Cherokees, forced to assimilate in the notorious Indian boarding schools.
“The
fact that we’re in a position to sit down with Harvard and have a
really meaningful conversation, that’s progress for the country,” he
said.
As for Baker, he wants the Ohtas returned to its tribe. He
said the ceremonial doll should never have been on display, especially
arranged as it was among wooden bowls, spoons and other everyday items.
“It
has a spirit. It’s a living being,” Baker said. “So if you think about
it being hung on a wall all these years in a static case, suffocating
for lack of air, it’s just horrific, really.”
This story was first
published on Jul. 29, 2024. It was updated on Jul. 31, 2024, to correct
the scope of repatriations to tribes undertaken by the Field Museum in
Chicago.
Nearly 1000 Native American Children Died in Abusive US Boarding Schools, Report Finds
Angie Jaime8/1/2024
An investigation commissioned by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools where Native American
children were forced to assimilate into white, American society. While
the report found that at least 973 Indigenous children died while
attending schools in the system, it also acknowledges that the actual
number of deaths is likely higher.
“The
federal government – facilitated by the Department I lead – took
deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school
policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their
identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections
that are foundational to Native people. These policies caused enduring
trauma for Indigenous communities that the Biden-Harris administration
is working tirelessly to repair,” Haaland said in a statement.
In
the 150 years between 1819 and 1969, thousands of Native children and
youths were forcibly taken from their homes, as part of systemic efforts
from the federal government and Christian religious leaders to
eradicate Indigenous culture and identity. The report estimates the U.S.
federal government spent $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars
over the 150 years that the government supported the boarding school
system and similar assimilation policies.
It
wasn’t until 1975 that tribal nations received the right to manage
tribal schools, many of which were on tribal land, and parents could not
prevent their children’s placement in off-reservation schools until the
Indian Child Welfare Act passed in 1978.
“For
the first time in the history of the United States, the federal
government is accounting for its role in operating historical Indian
boarding schools that forcibly confined and attempted to assimilate
Indigenous children,” Assistant Secretary and citizen of the Bay Mills
Indian Community (Ojibwe) Bryan Newland said in the same statement.
“This
report further proves what Indigenous peoples across the country have
known for generations – that federal policies were set out to break us,
obtain our territories, and destroy our cultures and our lifeways. It is
undeniable that those policies failed, and now, we must bring every
resource to bear to strengthen what they could not destroy. It is
critical that this work endures, and that federal, state and Tribal
governments build on the important work accomplished as part of the
Initiative.”
The
findings follow listening sessions held by Haaland throughout the U.S.
over the past two years, in which dozens of boarding school survivors
described what they endured while separated from their families.
“I thought there was no God, just torture and hatred,” Whirlwind Soldier testified during a 2022 event
on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation led by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
“The only thing they didn’t do was put us in (an oven) and gas us,” she
said, invoking Holocaust atrocities.
Within
the report, Assistant Secretary Newland includes a number of steps that
aim to support a path to healing the nation, including among its
recommendations: issuing a formal apology from the U.S. government and
“investing in remedies to the present-day impacts of the federal Indian
boarding school system.”
The report, Haaland said, just the beginning of a long road to healing.
Anna says she feels like she was "trafficked" (ABC News: Luke Bowden)
Hundreds of thousands of babies sent abroad
For Anna, the allegations that adoption agencies paid for babies confirm her feeling that she was part of a trade.
From
her records, she estimates her Australian adoptive parents paid around
$US4,500 in adoption costs in 1987. Other agencies were charging
$US5,000 per child at the time — more than $21,000 today.
"It just felt like I was a commodity — like I was being sold," Anna says.
Australia still has an adoption arrangement with South Korea and ESWS
specifically, but ESWS has informed Australia that they are not
currently accepting new adoption applications.
For intercountry adoptees impacted by unique or difficult adoption practices, specialist support is available through the Intercountry Adoption Family Support Service (ICAFSS).
I
remember having a daydream about the opening acoustic guitar part of
“All Along The Watchtower” ending with a Native American scream and a
big native drum on the downbeat. That was the spark to assemble one of
our biggest and deepest Songs Around The World. From Beirut to New
Orleans to the Lakota Nation, musicians play and sing like a musical
army determined to stop suffering and greed all over the world. As a
society, we need to get back to our roots and connect deeper with our
ancestors and native people in general so we can find the wisdom we need
to move forward as a human race. As Jimi Hendrix once said, “If there
is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen
through music.”
-Mark Johnson, PFC Co-Founder
The Indian Child Welfare Act is a federal policy that seeks to keep Indigenous families and communities intact by regulating the removal of Native American children from their homes and the placement of children in foster care or adoptive homes. The goal of ICWA is the preservation of Indigenous communities and the safety and health of Native children.
In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed ICWA through the case Haaland v. Brackeen, which challenged the constitutionality of ICWA based on discrimination. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ICWA is constitutional.
During this time, the South Dakota Legislature considered adopting state-based protections similar to ICWA but decided to hold off until after the Supreme Court ruling. During the 2024 legislative session, the Legislature passed a bill to establish an advisory council to reflect on ICWA proceedings and begin to spark change.
This is the first step in a necessary approach to increasing protections for Indigenous communities, families and children. South Dakota is the only state in the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains that does not have state-based ICWA protections. This demonstrates a lack of attention to ICWA and the issue of the removal of Indigenous children from their homes.
In South Dakota, Native American children account for 13% of the child population but represent 74% of the foster care population. This reflects disparities faced by Indigenous children and their families and the importance of strengthening ICWA protections on a state level.
This is a systemic issue, and it is also deeply connected to the mass incarceration of Indigenous people in South Dakota.
There is a foster care-to-prison pipeline. Children placed in foster care are faced with a disproportionately higher risk of being incarcerated later in life. In South Dakota, Native Americans account for at least 35% of the prison population, but only 9% of the state’s adult population.
This shows that the disproportionate use of foster care placement for Indigenous children may be connected to the disparities in the incarceration of Indigenous individuals. There must be an effort made to conduct research on this connection and to craft policies that protect Indigenous children, families and communities.
The Lost Children
Read The Lost Children,
a series exploring the causes, effects and potential solutions to the
decades-long overrepresentation of Native American children in South
Dakota’s foster care system.
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.
Marilyn Ringland longs to know circumstances of her birth: 'Maybe I'm hoping that you'd found someone'
*
Dear Irene,
I must apologize for using your
name instead of calling you "mom." I didn't get the chance to know you
in the way a child knows their mother.
I do hope you
had the opportunity to hold me, and that you got to choose my name —
a name that my parents, the ones who raised me, kept as is to honour
you. I was promised to people who you knew would love me as their own.
I am slowly finding out your story through records and archives. I don't know which residential school you went to.
Marilyn
Ringland shows a photo of her birth mother, Irene Monias, who was a
patient at the sanitorium in Ninette, Man. 'I hope that I can be the
voice that you didn’t have the chance to be,' Marilyn writes in a letter
to the mother she never knew. (Trevor Brine/CBC)
I only knew that you contracted tuberculosis and were residing at the Ninette, Man., sanatorium when you got pregnant with me, and were there until your demise.
Demise. I can't even say the words "death" or "dying."
Maybe
it's because of what you went through in the short time that you were
here. Spending your adulthood in an institution should not, cannot be
the end. I can only say that you do live on through me and my children.
Did you know you have three grandchildren? I wish you had the chance to meet them.
Also,
my husband. We've been together for more than 30 years. I smile and
think that he's crazy to be stuck with me all this time.
I am doing more sleuthing to find out about your life.
- Marilyn Ringland
I
was very fortunate to be with the family you picked out for me.
You knew my mom was Anishininikwe, like you, and my dad a WASPy kind of
guy. Both of my parents came from large families. I don't know how much
stigma they went through as a mixed couple, but my grandparents were
accepting, and that was what mattered to my parents.
I
was told at a very young age that I was adopted, and I felt comfortable
enough to let people know that it wasn't such a big deal, and no one
asked me if it was. My brother was also adopted, though under different
circumstances. I also had an older sister and two other siblings, and
all three have since died.
'Finding out bits and pieces'
My
search for you in earnest happened after my mom passed away. I don't
know how she would have felt, but I do know that I would have let her
know what I was doing. I guess because I knew I was adopted and my
family life was content, until that point, there wasn't that need or
want to find out where I came from.
Finding out bits and
pieces of your life has been frustrating. The people who might have
known you and your family are gone. I know that I had an uncle, your
brother Walter, and a grandmother when you passed.
I have a picture of you at a hospital, but I'm not sure of which one — either Brandon or Ninette.
A
photo of Irene Monias, taken at a hospital. Ringland hopes her mother
found companionship with 'someone with the shared experience of being
away from home.' (Submitted by Marilyn Ringland)
I
don't have the patient records, but I am doing more sleuthing to find
out about your life. I do know where your resting place is — Glen
Eden Memorial Gardens.
I had mentioned to my daughters
that you might be buried in one of the cemeteries that line Highway 9,
north of Winnipeg. My mom had mentioned this one time and that stayed
with me. I didn't have the courage to ask which cemetery, but my
daughter was inquisitive enough to phone around and find you.
'Maybe you had a moment with each other'
Now I am looking for information on my birth father. What will I find once I have his name?
At first, through Manitoba Post-Adoption Services,
the post-adoption registry could give me his age but legally, nothing
else. At least, not until he turned 101 or had died. (Really? That was
the remarkable information that I received from the registry.)
Well,
if he is still alive, he would have turned 101 this spring. So now I
can find out his name, but that won't tell me what kind of person he
was.
Maybe
I'm hoping that you found someone who, like you, was stuck in a place
that wasn't of your choosing. You found someone with the shared
experience of being away from home, lonely and not being able to have
the life that you should have had.
And so maybe you had a moment with each other — and that was enough.
Finding
out that information is what I'm willing to risk, in order to find out
the circumstances of what you went through to have me. A lot of
questions that might not be answered.
As I close this letter to you, I hope that I can be the voice that you didn't have the chance to be.
Your loving daughter,
Marilyn
This First Person article is the experience of
Marilyn Ringland, an Anishiniew woman who has family roots in Garden
Hill First Nation and was raised in Selkirk, Man. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see this FAQ.
FILE - The ruins of a building that was part of a Native American
boarding school on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in Mission, S.D., are
show here Oct. 15, 2022. Federal officials with the Interior Department
called on the U.S. government Tuesday, July 30, 2024, to apologize for a
nationwide system of boarding schools in which Native children faced
abuse and neglect. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)
SEATTLE
— More than 60 children from tribes with homelands in Washington,
Oregon and Idaho are among the nearly 1,000 Native American children who
died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system that tore
families apart and devastated Indigenous communities, according to the
results of a federal investigation released Tuesday.
Between
1819 and 1969, thousands of children were taken from their homes as
part of a targeted effort by federal officials and religious leaders to
eradicate Indigenous culture and identity. The report estimates the
federal government spent $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars
over the 150 years supporting the boarding school system and similar
assimilation policies.
There
were at least 17 boarding schools in Washington, up and down the
Interstate 5 corridor, on the coast, and dotted through the arid
grasslands of the eastern parts of the state, according to the Interior
Department. Many of them were on present-day tribal land.
Tribal
nations did not gain the right to run their own schools until 1975, and
parents could not prevent their children’s placement in off-reservation
schools until the Indian Child Welfare Act passed in 1978.
The
report, commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, found marked
and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools
that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children
into white society.
The
actual number of burial sites associated with Indian boarding schools —
and the number of Indigenous children who died there — is likely far
greater, the Interior Department acknowledged. The report also doesn’t
include details on how each child died, but officials noted the causes
of death included sickness, accidents and abuse.
The
findings come after Haaland embarked on a two-year “Road to Healing”
tour conducting listening sessions at tribes across the United States.
The
tour included a stop at the Tulalip Tribes’ gathering hall last year,
about 35 miles north of Seattle, where the secretary heard survivors
share stories of their brutal experience at Native American boarding
schools.
Deborah
Parker, a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes and chief executive of the
National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, welcomed the
release of the report, but said the federal government and her
organization ultimately need more time and access to records to
understand the full picture.
“The
department was able to identify, by name, 18,624 Indian children —
that’s only a beginning,” Parker said. “That’s a beginning.”
There
were an estimated 523 of these boarding schools in the U.S., according
to research by the National Native American Boarding School Healing
Coalition. The Interior Department report accounts for 417.
The
report does not include burial sites affiliated with other institutions
like day schools, orphanages or stand-alone dormitories, or boarding
schools operated by churches and groups that didn’t receive federal
funding. More than 1,000 institutions involved in the education of
Indigenous children did not meet the criteria used in the department’s
investigation.
A
number of children from Washington who died in the schools were
identified, including one child from the Confederated Tribes of the
Colville Reservation, one from the Muckleshoot Tribe, one from the
Puyallup Tribe, two from the Quinault Indian Nation, one from the
Suquamish Tribe, one from Skagit, one from Snohomish and two from
Yakama. The report also accounts for the deaths of 15 Nez Perce
children, and others across the West.
The tribal affiliations of more than 200 children who died at boarding schools were not identified in the report.
Suquamish
Tribe Chairman Leonard Forsman said his tribe is still reviewing the
report and working to uncover more information about the Suquamish
student identified to offer a “proper resolution.”
“We
hope this will contribute to the healing of our people from the trauma
resulting from the assimilation policies imposed on us by the U.S.,” he
said in a statement.
At
these boarding schools, children were forced to follow militaristic
schedules, performed agricultural and manual labor, and in some cases,
experienced physical and sexual abuse.
Survivors
have recounted stories of having their mouths washed out with soap and
their hair cut, or of school leaders whipping them with ropes and belts.
They were punished for speaking their language and practicing their
traditions.
By
1969 — when the federal support for Native American boarding schools
ended — 25% to 35% of all Native American children had been separated
from their families, according to studies conducted by the Association
on American Indian Affairs.
Growing
up, Parker said she witnessed how the schools disrupted healthy family
relationships, traditions and how people viewed the educational system.
Children
ripped away from their parents were left struggling to create stable
homes for their own children years later, said Tulalip Tribes Chair Teri
Gobin. Studies have found that the childhood experiences at boarding
schools left adults with serious physical and mental health issues, ones
that could also be seen among their children.
“This
historical trauma has moved from one generation to the next,” said
Gobin, whose father attended Cushman Indian Hospital, a boarding school
that performed medical experiments on students. “They destroyed their
lives, their children’s lives.”
The
healing coalition has been central to the Interior Department’s
research and is advocating for the creation of a federal commission
through Congress to find and analyze the records from the government and
church-run boarding schools and uncover the horrific truth publicly.
Parker said the coalition hopes the bill’s passage would coincide with
an apology from the sitting U.S. president, and a commitment to
meaningful action.
The
healing coalition and tribal nations are still looking for records of
children who never returned home and of unmarked, or poorly marked,
burial sites. These are stories and records that have largely been
withheld from Indigenous people, Parker said.
“We
deserve truth, we deserve justice and ultimately, we want to heal from
this long legacy of abuse,” said Parker, whose relatives attended
boarding schools.
In
addition to a formal apology, the report calls for the U.S. government
to invest in programs that could help tribes heal from the
intergenerational trauma caused by boarding schools, such as violence
prevention and language revitalization.
That
funding should be “commensurate with the investments made in the
Federal Indian boarding school system between 1871 and 1969,” according
to the report’s recommendations.
“We’re
bringing back our culture, we’re bringing back our canoes, we’re
bringing back our longhouse way of life, and I’m incredibly proud of
that,” Parker said. “I hope that we continue to do that, and then others
learn from Native American people, because we have a lot to give.”
If
you are a boarding school survivor or a descendant, resources are
available from the National Native American Boarding School Healing
Coalition at boardingschoolhealing.org.
Dear Relative,
The
Franciscan Friars of California, Inc. has determined that at least
seven Native American tribes in Arizona and New Mexico are eligible to
file claims against the Franciscan Province of St. Barbara for clergy
sexual abuse as part of its ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.
🗓️ Key Information:
The
Franciscan Friars of California, Inc. filed for bankruptcy on December
31, 2023, due to facing 94 new abuse claims, mostly from California.
The Bankruptcy Court has extended the deadline for filing proofs of claim to August 30, 2024.
Your Voice Matters: The strength and courage to report abuse is vital.
If you or someone you know is a survivor, please file your claim to
receive support.
To
find information about the Franciscan Friars of California's bankruptcy
case, including instructions on proofs of claim click HERE.
Vice
President Kamala Harris announced Tuesday her selection of Gov. Tim
Walz (D-MN) as her running mate in the 2024 presidential election. Their
victory in November would make Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (White Earth
Nation/D-MN) the first Native female governor in the U.S. history.
T he Métis National Council and the Government of Canada will be working collaboratively, Nation-to-Nation, to develop a process to engag...
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
OUR HISTORY
BOOK 5: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects
