We Clock You from a Mile Away #NAAM2016

SOURCE

Dear wealthy, white, entitled moms of adoption: Adult adoptees see you, and some of us don’t find your words “inspirational.”


The thing is, I knew you right away. I recognize the fierce determination. The grit. The fight. Because everything about what you have was a decision, and nothing about what you have was easy. You are the kind of woman who Makes.Things.Happen. After all, you made this happen, this family you have.
Maybe you prayed for it. Maybe you had to convince a partner it was the right thing. Maybe you did it alone. Maybe people told you to just be happy with what you had before. Maybe someone told you it simply wasn’t in God’s plans for you to have a child, this child whose hair you now brush lightly from his face. Maybe someone warned you about what happened to their cousin’s neighbor’s friend. 

Maybe you ignored them.

Maybe you planned for it for years. Maybe an opportunity dropped into your lap. Maybe you depleted your life-savings for it. Maybe it was not your first choice. But maybe it was.
Regardless, I know you. And I see how you hold on so tight. Sometimes too tight. Because that’s what we do, isn’t it?

See, we recognize you from a mile away because your interactions with your child suggest you are a complete control freak–one who believes pregnancy and childbirth are a cakewalk that “just happens” to women, but that having “an opportunity dropped into” your righteous lap requires grit, fight, determination.

I know about all those books you read back then. The ones everyone reads about sleep patterns and cloth versus disposable, yes, but the extra ones, too. About dealing with attachment disorders, breast milk banks, babies born addicted to alcohol, cocaine, meth. About cognitive delays, language deficiencies. About counseling support services, tax and insurance issues, open adoption pros and cons, legal rights.

We recognize you from a mile away because it’s obvious you believe your sweet precious angel child is defective because s/he wasn’t homemade. No matter how loudly you shout that the opposite is true…we see you, and we recognize you.

I know about the fingerprinting, the background checks, the credit reports, the interviews, the references. I know about the classes, so many classes. I know the frustration of the never-ending paperwork. The hours of going over finances, of having garage sales and bake sales and whatever-it-takes sales to raise money to afford it all.

We recognize you from a mile away because some people who had to undergo one lousy home study and a background check–the kind you undergo when you want to lease an apartment or go to college–wear a look of butthurt resentment about it FOREVER. I mean… you had to CLEAN YOUR HOUSE! Who does that?!

To be fair, I don’t know anything about the “so many” adoptive parenting classes. I don’t understand why anyone would resent them, either. Don’t we all joke that children should come with instruction manuals? Well, you get one! Lucky you! Don’t we all complain from time to time that parents ought to have to pass some kind of test before they can have children? Oh wait, I get it: you meant parents who are not of your class should have to do that. You are supposed to get the benefit of the doubt.

And I know about the followup visits, when you hadn’t slept in three weeks because the baby had colic.

We recognize you because you think you’re special for being sleepless and dealing with a colicky baby. And no, most mothers don’t have “followup visits” (how many exactly?), but if they aren’t of your class, if they have the misfortune to be the wrong race or too poor or not married, mothers face constant public scrutiny and shaming. They often do face a lot of followup visits from people and agencies that don’t believe they are worthy of their own children. And they have a lot fewer resources to defend themselves against those people and agencies than you do.

And yes, you probably get asked some rude questions if your child doesn’t look like you, but for every one of those questions, you get articles like this all November and people telling you how wonderful you are all year round.

I know how you wanted so badly to show that you had it all together, even though you were back to working more-than-full-time, maybe without maternity leave, without the family and casseroles and welcome-home balloons and plants.

We recognize you because you seem to believe doing what other mothers do makes you exceptional. Plenty of non-adoptive mothers work full-time, do without maternity leave and never receive balloons and plants or the support of their families.  And seriously: Balloons soon sag or pop, and plants often don’t get cared for and are tossed out. Your suffering, I am not feeling it. (Mothers’ suffering, yes: It’s a hard world to raise a child in. Women’s suffering, yes: It’s a hard word to be female in. Your super special adoptive mommy suffering, no.)

We recognize you from a mile away by your insistence upon actual superhuman powers, like your magical ability to survive without inhaling an iota of oxygen “for months. Months.”

And I’ve seen you in foreign countries, strange lands, staying in dirty hotels, taking weeks away from work, struggling to understand what’s being promised and what’s not. Struggling to offer your love to a little one who is unsettled and afraid. Waiting, wishing, greeting, loving, flying, nesting, coming home.

We recognize you by your insistence that the luxury of being able to take weeks off work to fly overseas without going hungry or being evicted is a horrible burden.

I’ve seen you down the street at the hospital when a baby was born, trying to figure out where you belong in the scene that’s emerging. I’ve seen your face as you hear a nurse whisper to the birthmother that she doesn’t have to go through with this. I’ve seen you trying so hard to give this birthmother all of your respect and patience and compassion in those moments—while you bite your lip and close your eyes, not knowing if she will change her mind, if this has all been a dream coming to an abrupt end in a sterile environment. Not knowing if this is your time.

We recognize you because you have to force yourself to offer respect and compassion to a woman who is about to lose her child forever. We recognize you by your willingness to hurt your fellow woman in order to get what you want…and then congratulate yourselves for it.

We recognized you before we’d read a complete paragraph of this mess. Maybe we’re superhuman, too.

This was published in November 2015... and still true...

SnarkUrchin Adopto-Snark · Not amused? Fuck right off.

#NAAM2016 memes | What is Your Story?

...if you have something to share and your story, send an email to laratrace@outlook.com



Here is the link to the 60s Scoop story, photos, profiles and video in the Toronto Star HERE

EXPLAINED: Dakota Access Pipeline IS ON Treaty Land

Two Worlds, Called Home, Stolen Generations: November 16 BOOK TALK #NAAM2016

Two Worlds, Called Home, Stolen Generations: November 16 BOOK TALK

Called Home: The RoadMap: We Will Always Dream in Indian

By LT Hentz

Our job as humans is to connect the dots. I published this link on the ACE STUDY and learned about that important study while I was writing my memoir One Small Sacrifice.

What does it mean for an adoptee to be raised outside your ancestry and culture that isn’t white/American? I have some answers in this new anthology CALLED HOME: The RoadMap. [ ISBN-13:  978-0692700334 (Blue Hand Books) ]

Here’s an excerpt of the PREFACE

No matter who adopts us, new parents will never erase our blood, ancestry, DNA… or our dreams…

No matter how much I want to believe things have changed for the better in Indian Country and in our world, the reality is there is still an “adoption-land” waiting to scoop up more children and more children who need healthy moms and dads.  This anthology and this entire book series will be their roadmap.

This is why Patricia and I chose the title CALLED HOME for this anthology. Roadmap was added to the second edition you are now reading.

There are many adoptees called home, but very few are back living on tribal lands.  It’s a testament to the courage to be in reunion as adult adoptees, as survivors who were part of the government plans to rid the world of Indigenous and First Nation People.  Adoption didn’t kill our spirit but it hurt us deeply.

After ten years of researching the topic and history of adoption, sadly, states like South Dakota and South Carolina are still violating federal law called the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 when Native children are supposed to be placed with family, close kin, a relative, or with a different tribe.  “Stranger adoptions” with non-Indian parents is supposed to be the absolute last resort or rare occurrence.  However, it can still happen, you can read the chapter on Baby V.

Let’s face it: With a shortage of Native adoptive and foster homes in the US and Canada, children will be lost and later called Lost Birds, adoptees and Stolen Generations.  Indian Country as a whole is still impoverished, living with daily reminders of broken treaties, remote reservations, soul-crushing poverty, loss of land, shortages of language speakers, and generations who are dealing with post-traumatic stress after centuries of war, residential boarding school abuse, food scarcity and neglect.  Since so many are still subjected to Third World conditions, Indigenous children will continue to be taken and placed into foster care and adoptions.  (Wasn’t this the original plan to erase all Indians?)  Native American moms and dads can still lose their child (or all their children) in courtrooms of white privilege and cultural insensitivity.

On a visit to Brock University in 2014, my co-editor Patricia Busbee and I learned how foster and adoptive parents are invited to bring their Native child to First Nations Friendship Centres in the Niagara, Ontario area.  Children are invited to hear stories, learn their language and songs, while their new adoptive parents can participate in activities, too.  The entire family is welcome and nourished in this cultural exchange.

Indian Country needs to look to its northerly neighbors in Canada and start its own US-wide “Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC),” and reinvent and redesign its own child care protection systems for the sake of its own future generations.  Maine is the only state with a TRC.

After many adoptees contacted me wanting to find their first families, I can say with certainty adoptees are CALLED HOME, called in dreams to be reunited with family members and their many nations.  These adoptees do find a way to reconnect despite difficulties with archaic laws, a clueless public, biased lawmakers, closed adoptions, sealed court documents and falsified birth records.

It’s long overdue that North America opens their closed adoption files.  When this happens, if this happens, the entire world will finally comprehend how adoption was actually colonization and the trafficking of Indigenous Indian children by the “Nation Builders” who call themselves America and Canada.  We in North America are literally educated to be ignorant of the true history of our colonization, by the nation builders who use it and what really happened here.  Hiding it only perpetuates continued racism and intolerance.

The fog is lifting now and it’s time we shine a light on the hidden history of the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs like ARENA, the Indian Adoption Projects, Operation Papoose, Project Rainbow and the 60s Scoop.  You will read about these programs in this book.

For the writers in this book, adoption was the tool of assimilation, erasing our identity and sovereign rights as tribal citizens, intending it to be permanent.

For too many of us, states still won’t release our files to us, even as adults.  We have included a section in this book for adoptees who are still searching for clues after their closed adoptions.  Many adoptees are doing DNA tests with relatives and to find relatives..

As these books travel to new lands and new hands, I pray that adoptive parents accept that we cannot be the child they want us to be, or dream us to be, and that we are born with our own unique biology, ancestry and characteristics.  We will always dream in Indian.

LINK

In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending

Attention! Keeper of Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Imparts Sacred Message for the Future of the Earth

I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations, ask you to understand an Indigenous perspective on what has happened in America, what we call “Turtle Island.” My words seek to unite the global community through a message from our sacred ceremonies to unite spiritually, each in our own ways of beliefs in the Creator.

We have been warned from ancient prophecies of these times we live in today, but have also been given a very important message about a solution to turn these terrible times.

To understand the depth of this message you must recognize the importance of Sacred Sites and realize the interconnectedness of what is happening today, in reflection of the continued massacres that are occurring on other lands and our own Americas.

I have been learning about these important issues since the age of 12 when I received the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and its teachings. Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the beginning of time. These places have been violated for centuries and have brought us to the predicament that we are in at the global level.

Look around you. Our Mother Earth is very ill from these violations, and we are on the brink of destroying the possibility of a healthy and nurturing survival for generations to come, our children’s children.

Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site called the Sacred Black Hills in South Dakota, “Heart of Everything That Is,” from continued violations. Our ancestors never saw a satellite view of this site, but now that those pictures are available, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and, when fast-forwarded, it looks like a heart pumping.

The Diné have been protecting Big Mountain, calling it the liver of the earth, and we are suffering and going to suffer more from the extraction of the coal there and the poisoning processes used in doing so.

The Aborigines have warned of the contaminating effects of global warming on the Coral Reefs, which they see as Mother Earth’s blood purifier.

The indigenous people of the rainforest say that the rainforests are the lungs of the planet and need protection.

The Gwich’in Nation in Alaska has had to face oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, also known to the Gwich’in as “Where life begins.”

The coastal plain is the birthplace of many life forms of the animal nations. The death of these animal nations will destroy indigenous nations in this territory.

As these destructive developments continue all over the world, we will witness many more extinct animal, plant, and human nations, because of mankind’s misuse of power and their lack of understanding of the “balance of life.”

The Indigenous people warn that these destructive developments will cause havoc globally. There are many, many more indigenous teachings and knowledge about Mother Earth’s Sacred Sites, her chakras, and connections to our spirit that will surely affect our future generations.

There needs to be a fast move toward other forms of energy that are safe for all nations upon Mother Earth. We need to understand the types of minds that are continuing to destroy the spirit of our whole global community. Unless we do this, the powers of destruction will overwhelm us.

Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. Back then this was hard to believe, since the water was so plentiful, so pure, and so full of energy, nutrition and spirit. Today we have to buy pure water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it’s just empty liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford.

Not everyone will have the right to drink safe water. We fail to appreciate and honor our Sacred Sites, ripping out the minerals and gifts that lay underneath them as if Mother Earth were simply a resource, instead of the source of life itself.

Attacking nations and using more resources to carry out destruction in the name of peace is not the answer! We need to understand how all these decisions affect the global nation; we will not be immune to its repercussions. Allowing continual contamination of our food and land is affecting the way we think.

A “disease of the mind” has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring peace.

In our prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unite spiritually as a global nation, or be faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives’ eyes.

We are the only species that is destroying the source of life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land. Using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.

I ask you to join me on this endeavor. Our vision is for the peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace.

As each day passes, I ask all nations to begin a global effort, and remember to give thanks for the sacred food that has been gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.

This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war, and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the great myth of progress and development that ruled the last millennium.

To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth, falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. You yourself are the one who must decide.

You alone – and only you – can make this crucial choice, to walk in honor or to dishonor your relatives. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World.

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?

Know that you yourself are essential to this world. Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are desperately needed to save the soul of this world. Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse is the author of White Buffalo Teachings. A tireless advocate of maintaining traditional spiritual practices, Chief Looking Horse is a member of Big Foot Riders, which memorializes the massacre of Big Foot’s band at Wounded Knee.

Source http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/08/26/important-message-keeper-sacred-white-buffalo-calf-pipe

twenty years later

20 years later the inquiry of the Royal Comm. on Aboriginal Peoples is still relevant #digitization https://t.co/GaRZmAFDFs @GCIndigenous pic.twitter.com/GuF29ITKkU

— LibraryArchiveCanada (@LibraryArchives) November 3, 2016

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is proud to announce the release of documents related to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) on the 20th anniversary of the RCAP. This new database is now available on LAC's website. It will provide enhanced access to over 600 RCAP documents, including transcripts of more than 175 days of public hearings, consultations and roundtables; research studies by academics and community experts; and submissions by non-governmental organizations. Over its six-year mandate, the RCAP amassed thousands of hours of recorded testimony and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, culminating in the publication of the 1996 RCAP final report. Until now, clients could only access this collection in person at LAC’s downtown Ottawa location, or by submitting a reprography request. LAC hopes that the new RCAP database will stimulate even more interest in this important topic.

Quick facts 

• This announcement was made at the Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future National Forum in Winnipeg on November 3, 2016. 
•  The RCAP archival fonds at LAC includes 72 metres of textual records; approximately 20,000 photographs, video and audio cassette recordings; and over 900 computer diskettes. 
•  The RCAP documents selected for digitization include copies of 641 distinct items, including 175 days of hearings; nearly 200 research reports; more than 100 submissions from tribal councils, organizations and interest groups; and RCAP publications including its final report.

Associated links

• Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (database)
• Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (archival records)
• Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future National Forum
• Read more on Library and Archives Canada’s blog

New Zealand: Stolen Generations 2016

Removal
REMOVAL: The law change scrapping priority placement of tamariki (our children) with whānau (family) is 'Stolen Generations 2016'. We will fight this racist NZ Government position. Our tamariki deserve whānau, whānau deserve our tamariki. PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION to support https://our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/hands-off-our-tamariki-1?bucket&source=twitter-share-button #HandsOffOurTamariki NO REMOVAL For more information Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Hands-Off-Our-Tamariki-680110502158407/?hc_location=ufi
Posted by Fires of Kiwa on Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Dodging Bullets

Dodging Bullets is New Documentary Film on Historical Trauma

October 30, 2016

READ

No one would contest that Native American families are struggling with disproportionately high rates of substance abuse, diabetes, physical violence, suicide, imprisonment and poverty. However, when we get into the reasons for these epidemics the public tends to rationalize it according to their own experiences and personal opinions--dismissing the cumulative and ongoing trans-generational injuries that Indigenous Peoples have faced.
Dodging Bullets is a documentary film that explores the root cause--the consequences of history--and the ongoing effort to facilitate healing from the epidemics that plague so many native communities across North America.

http://www.dodgingbullets.org

Narratives of Adoption: My Dream #NAAM2016

By Trace Lara Hentz (author of One Small Sacrifice)

Every year we commemorate the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and I too have a dream.

I dream we’ve moved past sexism, racism… classism… and white privilege.  My ongoing prayer is adoption will no longer move any child outside their own culture and ethnicity …I pray everyone knows of the Indian Adoption Projects and 60s Scoop with its intended disastrous results and how my own story is woven into this mess.

In my dream, I pray all adoptees are CALLED HOME, called to be with all our relations, many nations and first families!

I dream that we now live in a new world where adoptees and first parents have educated others far beyond the fallacies… mistruths… myths created by a billion dollar adoption industry who benefits financially even now from trans-racial, international and closed adoptions.

I have a dream the entire world has finally realized children were sold like commodities in many countries and trafficked – too often adoption files were filled with falsehoods and lies to SELL a child to their prospective adopters.  These legal files were sealed to hide an adoptee’s identity, name and ancestry on paper, to conceal the truth. For too many of us, states still won’t release our own names and files to us, even as adults.

I dream all states in America open their closed adoption files in the near future, in 2016 and beyond.

I dream the world sees how this was a money-making operation… a business of baby selling and “creating” orphans; how this is trafficking in human life when mothers and their children are FORCED into this situation with pressure from society… religion… governments with little regard to those same women and children and the health effects on their minds and bodies.

I dream that adoptive parents know and accept we cannot be the child they want us to be or dream us to be – that we are born with our own biology and parents. If you do adopt us, then never lie to us. It’s your job as our loving guardian to share knowledge and truth about our first parents and recognize the lifelong health effects and the fog of stress that we adoptees endure under secrecy and the primal wound our adoption creates.

I dream the entire world sees how children feel like imposters in their adopted family.  As an adoptee, I was posing as a DeMeyer, when I know the falsehood of that name was legally forced upon me.

I want the world to know GOD had nothing to do with creating this torturous invention and experiment but rather adoption was invented to maintain power in ruling families in Roman times and this idea traveled to other lands.

I dream that open adoptions are working better for children who cannot stay with their first parents but we are not there yet. Read this important blog: http://birthmamawasteland.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/if-you-dont-like-what-i-have-to-say-why-are-you-here/

Closed adoption left adoptees like me lodged between two worlds yet not quite fitting in any world.  This is why I have chosen the title CALLED HOME for the new anthology...  I have two close friends who were called home and are back living on tribal lands and they are a testament to the courage needed to be in reunion as adults, as adoptees who were part of these government plans to rid the world of Indigenous and First Nation people.

I dream this new world is one where children and their safety are top priority, not who adopts them.  I dream we are now working harder to unify families, preserving family units, helping parents care for their own children, not separating them unless absolutely necessary. Children should not be placed with paying strangers or paid caretakers if there is kin, other family members who are willing.

[Called Home: The RoadMap is published on Amazon in 2016.]

{I wrote this on 2014 and still have this dream...]

Heritage Minutes: Chanie Wenjack

Gord Downie's The Secret Path

TK totem: Binding Regulations Issued for the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)

TK totem: Binding Regulations Issued for the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)

It has been
a long time coming—nearly forty years after the enactment of the Indian Child
Welfare Act (ICWA)—but at long last there will be binding regulations that must
be followed.  Signed on June 6, with entry into effect
forecast for December 2016, this is a big step forward to ensure the proper
application and adherence to the Indian Child Welfare Act.  This link is not to the official rule ( which
will be published in the Federal Register) but rather is a copy of the document
which was signed and “submitted …for publication in the Federal Register.” 

It
did not take long after ICWA’s enactment for state courts to begin to find ways
to evade its application—most notably with the so called “ existing Indian family exception”—which enabled a state court judge to apply his or her own standard
of how connected a child and family must be to a tribe and to American Indian
culture to apply the law. This is despite the fact that the plain language of
ICWA entertains nothing of the sort as a threshold requirement for the
application of the Act.

is hoped
that these new binding regulations will strengthen the application of the Act,
and put to rest state court efforts to devise doctrines to evade ICWA’s
requirements.

A variety
of commentary on the new binding regulations can be found here. 

Raising The Spirit: Cultural Connections Plans for Aboriginal Children (video)

First Nations

right click these photos to save and enlarge

#adoption #Lost Daughters #NAAM #flipthescript

READ: Lost Daughters: In My Next Life

November is Native American Heritage Month and National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM).

If you have twitter, follow this moment...


If I could fix #adoption


We'll be posting more each week...
Stay tuned... Trace



GOOD WIN: #ICWA

Washington Supreme Court Opinion Clarifies Rights of Parents under ICWA, WICWA

By Emily Schwing 

• 

  
  

  File photo of The Temple of Justice in Olympia, Washington.

  Harvey Barrison / Flickr - tinyurl.com/zhj7uae

State and federal law protect the rights of Native American children even when one of their parents is not Indian. That’s the word today from the Washington state Supreme Court.
A woman with a child remarried. A court in southwest Washington agreed to terminate the parental rights of the child's father -- her ex. He was in prison and had problems with drugs.
But in this case, the state high court said that shouldn't have happened -- at least, not so fast. Because even though the child, the mother and the stepfather are all Indian and the father is not, the child's rights are protected under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act and the Washington Indian Child Welfare Act.
Craig Dorsay represented the Samish tribe as a friend of the court. He called the opinion “a very good win for tribes, Indian families and Indian children.”
“The fact that the child may have an Indian parent and a non-Indian parent, should not avoid or reduce protections that the act is designed to afford to the child,” Dorsay said.
But Mark Fiddler, counsel for the child’s mother, argued the opinion lays out guidelines that “no other father would have to follow.” For example, he said if no parties had been Indian, the father’s rights would have likely remained terminated.
In the long run, Dorsay said it sets a precedent for all private adoption cases involving Native American children.
The Supreme Court has sent the case back to the trial court for reconsideration.

NOW ON AMAZON

Called Home: The Roadmap (Vol. 2): Lost Children on the Indian Adoption Proje... https://t.co/aSysiv0j8Q via @amazon

— http:LaraTraceHentz (@Trace15) November 5, 2016

The Adoption of Frances T #CANADA #60sScoop

An Interview with Allyson Stevenson, the recipient of the 2016 Arrell M. Gibson Award

by Lauren Naus for AMERIND

Allyson

An interview with Allyson Stevenson, author of “The Adoption of Frances T: Blood, Belonging, and Aboriginal Transracial Adoption in Twentieth-Century Canada” is now available on the UTP Journals Blog!

Learn about the inspiration behind her article and about her research as a Historian of Canadian Indigenous History.

For excellence in Native American History, this article was given the 2016 Arrell M. Gibson Award from the Western Historical Association. Stevenson’s article appeared in the Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire, and to celebrate this award-winning research, this article is Open Access until November 4. Read her article here - http://bit.ly/CJH503d. 

This article offers a case study of a transracial adoption involving a mixed-heritage child and a legally Indian adoptive couple. The legal adoption of “Frances T” in 1937, considered to be “in the best interests of the child” by social welfare professionals, took on gendered and racialized meaning in the discourse of the Indian Affairs bureaucrats who subsequently attempted to overturn it. The article uses the case to examine Canadian settler-colonial beliefs about blood and belonging. It also explores the complications that emerged as legally defined Indian people came into contact with provincial child welfare legislation. With the goal of eliminating Indigenous legal and kinship forms, the Indian Act colonized adoption so it could be used as a method of assimilation rather than as a traditional form of Indigenous alliance creation and childcare. The case highlights the themes of Indigenous kinship and sovereignty, legislated Indian identity, and the growing involvement of social workers in the lives of Aboriginal people in the mid- to late-twentieth century.

[I have the pdf and can email it if you don't make the download deadline... Trace]

#BabyV Case analysis: A tension as old as the country

Legal scholars put focus on Native American rights

By Liz Mineo/Harvard Staff Writer, October 25, 2016 Teaching & Learning

Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff PhotographerKristen Carpenter, the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law talks about the state of American Indian Law in light of the conference on indigenous rights.

Native Americans currently represent 1 percent of the U.S. population, but thousands of years ago they were the indigenous inhabitants of the territory known to some of them as Turtle Island and eventually to others as North America. Today, there are 567 federally recognized tribes. The largest are the Navajo Nation and Cherokee Nation.
Harvard Law School, the Harvard University Native American Program, and the Harvard Native American Law Students Association held a a two-day conference in October to examine relations between Native Americans and state and federal governments. Keynote speakers included University of Colorado Law School Dean S. James Anaya, Quinault Indian Nation President Fawn Sharp, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Keith Harper.
The Harvard Gazette interviewed Kristen Carpenter ’98, Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at HLS, Council Tree Professor at University of Colorado Law School, and one of the event organizers, on the history of American Indian law, the friction between federal and tribal laws, and the rise of the indigenous rights movement in the United States.  

GAZETTE: Can you describe the state of Native American rights in the United States?

CARPENTER: It is mixed. On the one hand, American Indian tribes are powerful, resilient communities, deeply steeped in tribal culture and ways of life, and continuing to live in their homelands and territories to this very day. As a matter of law, tribes have well-grounded and longstanding rights commemorated in treaties made originally with European nations and then with the United States. They also have rights that are established in the U.S. Constitution and in federal statutory law, which have long been recognized by the courts. In recent years, however, there has been somewhat of a retrenchment in federal courts, and especially in the Supreme Court, with respect to the recognition of tribal jurisdiction and tribal statutory rights that were enacted to remedy some of the past dispossessions American Indians endured.

GAZETTE: What are the main grievances of Native Americans toward the U.S. courts?

CARPENTER: My sense is that tribal governments are quite often seeking dignity and respect in the courts. Indian tribes were here before Europeans and others who came to what is now called North America. Tribal governments engaged in treaty-making with Europeans going back to the 1600s. Tribal rights to exercise their own laws over their territories and their members are traceable to treaties. One question in federal Indian law is often how to understand and implement those historic arrangements today. This is a question not unlike that faced in U.S. constitutional law, where a venerable document also presents questions of contemporary interpretation. Secondly, while federal Indian law clearly recognizes tribal self-government, various parties challenge the jurisdiction of the tribal courts and regulatory system. This sounds technical but what it really means is which government and whose values are able to regulate people’s lives, lands, and resources on a day-to-day basis. The foundational rules of federal Indian law provide that tribes generally retain jurisdiction within reservation boundaries, and especially over tribal citizens, and that states have authority off the reservation. That’s oversimplifying the situation and there are a lot of situations where things are a little bit messier in reality.

GAZETTE: A few years ago, there was a messy case that highlighted the strain between federal and tribal laws. A Cherokee girl was given back to her adoptive parents after the Supreme Court ruled that the Indian Child Welfare Act didn’t apply. Could you explain what happened?

CARPENTER: Yes, this was the case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, decided by the Supreme Court in 2013. To explain it, I have to share some history. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was enacted to address the historic removal of Indian children from their parents for purposes of their religious and social “assimilation.” In various iterations, dating back to 1850, assimilation was a federal policy implemented in part by religious organizations, state child welfare workers, and private adoption agencies. One of the views animating these practices was that Indian children would be “better off” with white families. By the 1970s, one in four Indian children was being raised away from their families. Congress noted the “wholesale separation” of Indian children from their families had devastating consequences for the children, who suffered high rates of psychological and physical trauma, as well as the parents, siblings, and tribes who lost their children, and passed ICWA to address this situations. Under ICWA, Indian parents and tribes must receive notice of custody proceedings involving their children, tribal courts have jurisdiction in some cases, and there is a set of foster care and adoptive placement preferences prioritizing the extended family and tribe.
In the Adoptive Couple case, a Cherokee baby was put up for adoption by her non-Indian mother in a set of events that did not comply with ICWA, such that the father — who was an active-duty serviceman — was served with notice of the impending adoption four months after his daughter’s birth and days before his deployment. When he returned from Iraq almost two years later, the father was able to appeal the case and the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that ICWA had been violated, granting him custody. The little girl then lived with her father, siblings, and grandparents and Indian community for two years. But the Supreme Court ruled ICWA didn’t apply because, according to Justice Samuel Alito, the statute required a parent show “continuing custody” to be eligible for ICWA’s protections. The little girl was then relocated back to South Carolina with the adoptive couple.

GAZETTE: What’s your opinion about the outcome of the case?

CARPENTER: In my view, the case was wrongly decided. ICWA is supposed to protect Indian families and remedy the legacy of federal policies that disrupted Indian family custody. The Supreme Court, completely missing Congress’ intent, created a new and narrow reading of the statute to deny a fully capable, fit, and loving Indian father the opportunity to bring up his daughter. Many in the Indian child welfare community are working in domestic and international venues for reform that will prevent this kind of outcome in the future.

GAZETTE: So the question is what’s the importance of Indian laws in U.S. jurisprudence?

CARPENTER: Indian tribes pose a lot of hard questions for the U.S. legal system. They’re governments and communities that predate the United States, but through conquest and colonization, they came to be dispossessed of many rights, whether it’s land, jurisdiction, culture, or family. Yet, those tribes still remain 500 years later through the resilience and determination of their people as well as the strength and beauty of their culture. Today Indian law tests the capacity of the U.S. legal system to acknowledge and respect the pre-existing rights of Indian tribes and to account for those interests and norms of legal pluralism in a democratic system that is more comfortable with individual rights. Those are real challenges. In my view, the answer lies in the framework established by treaties and the Constitution, specifically to respect the sovereignty and jurisdiction of tribes, for the United States to negotiate with Indian tribes on a government-to-government basis, and for cooperative approaches among all three sovereigns to address the problems contemporarily facing us.

GAZETTE: Can you tell us whether those principles are being used in the Dakota Access Pipeline situation, the most recent case of friction between the federal government and tribal communities?

CARPENTER: The Standing Rock Sioux tribe opposes the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline less than half a mile from its reservation. The pipeline is slated to travel under the Missouri River, the tribe’s main source of drinking water, right through some of their sacred sites. So when the Standing Rock people claim that their very way of life is threatened now by the pipeline, I think they mean it quite literally. These lands and waters were originally protected by the tribe’s own laws, and later by the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851, which the U.S. later violated, such that the contested lands are now owned by the United States, managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Various statutes require federal agencies to “consult” with tribal nations about federal undertakings that would affect their resources. The Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes affected by the pipeline are litigating those rights in the federal courts right now. In recognition of the spirit of those laws, the Obama administration, through the Departments of Justice, Interior, and the Army, has called for a halt to construction in order more fully to consult with the affected tribes.

GAZETTE: What can the United States learn from other countries with indigenous populations?

CARPENTER: Currently in the United States, tribes’ aboriginal title, meaning the land they have occupied since time immemorial, is not recognized as “property” pursuant to the Fifth Amendment. The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights has held, in a case involving the Western Shoshone people, the rule of law in the U.S. thus violates basic norms of property, equality, and non-discrimination. In cases involving Nicaragua, Ecuador, Belize, Suriname, and others, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights has recognized that property rights grow out of indigenous peoples’ land tenure. Some of these countries have, in turn, reformed their national laws to recognize tribes’ customary land tenure as a source of property rights and begin the process of demarcating and titling those rights. While those reform efforts are not without difficulty, I’d like to see the United States also recognize Indian tribes’ aboriginal lands as being eligible for the full set of property rights protections.

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This story was originally published in the Harvard Gazette on October 21, 2016. 

The untold story of "Bean" Swain and Roderick Taypaywaykejick, residential school runaways | Chanie Wenjack

It's 50 years ago today that #ChanieWenjack needlessly died along a train track on his way home. #SecretpathGD pic.twitter.com/OhlSLXGB1c

— Mitch Champagne (@MitchChampagne) October 23, 2016

The untold story of "Bean" Swain and Roderick Taypaywaykejick, residential school runaways: https://t.co/UQdHJO7eYE

— Maclean's Magazine (@MacleansMag) October 22, 2016

How Chanie Wenjack chose @JosephBoyden https://t.co/To0EOjO9Gd via @macleansmag #FirstNations #ResidentialSchools

— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) October 22, 2016

In the coming months, Maclean’s will tell each of their stories, piecing together accounts from reports, relatives and archival material. To learn more, and to contribute to this report, visit www.macleans.ca/therunaways.

Facebook event poster leads to reunion for #60sScoop sisters in Saskatoon

Melika Popp recognized birth mom's last name on birthday party poster

By Stephanie Cram, CBC News  Oct 22, 2016

Sisters Melika Popp and Kimberly Switzer-Ashong were separated from each other as children - a result of the Sixties Scoop. They reunited for the first time on Oct. 6, 2016.

Melika Popp was surprised to see her birth mother's last name on a poster on Facebook for the 80th birthday party for Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Senator Luke Nanaquetung.
It was a chance sighting that led her home.
Popp, 41, is a survivor of the Sixties Scoop who was taken away from her mother in 1976, when she was two. She was placed in foster care and later adopted by a Métis family from Saskatoon.

• The Sixties Scoop
• Indigenous children for sale: The money behind the Sixties Scoop

"There was always something missing. I didn't know where I came from," said Popp.
"I was probably around eight years old when I recognized that I didn't really belong anywhere."
After she saw the name on Facebook, Popp decided to call the phone number on the poster and ended up speaking to her aunt.
From the conversation, Popp found out that Senator Nanaquetung is her grandfather, and her sister Kimberly Switzer-Ashong was living in the same city as she was — Saskatoon.
"It was a miracle, in a way. I think it was God's work of keeping us so close together," said Popp.
Popp was given a phone number for her sister, but she doubted calling it would lead to anything concrete.
"I had anticipated that I would just leave a message and we would play phone tag back and forth, but it happened so quickly.… She answered the phone and we talked," said Popp.
"It's a huge blessing to come across her, but at the same time, it's bittersweet, because we were both removed from each other's life due to being colonized."

'The timing was right' 

The sisters ended up meeting in person on Oct. 6.
Switzer-Ashong, 39, said she always imagined meeting her sister would be emotional, but she was surprised by how calm she was.
"I'm almost 40 years old. I think I was just ready for it," said Switzer-Ashong. "It was natural. I embraced her. The timing was right."
The sisters only met two weeks ago, but they are already spending lots of time together.
"Our children are going to be part of each other's lives, and we plan on making up for time lost," said Popp.
Popp has shared her story with audiences, speaking about the Sixties Scoop and the practice of coercive sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada, which also happened to her.

• Another Saskatoon woman says she was sterilized against her will
• Aboriginal women say they were sterilized against their will in hospital

Popp is part of a class-action lawsuit against the federal government for Sixties Scoop survivors from Saskatchewan. Currently she is helping her sister join the lawsuit.

"We lost our culture, we lost our identity, we lost our language, we lost our family," said Popp. "And you know, that really impacted our self-concept and our self-esteem as Indigenous women."

The sisters hope their story will inspire other survivors of the Sixties Scoop to find their family members.
"With raising national awareness, it helps encourage and inspire transformative change and healing for survivors and people who suffered at the hands of the federal and provincial governments," said Popp.

Related Stories

• The time they took us away: faces of the Sixties Scoop
• 'Alex, where are you? Do you know you're loved?' Sixties Scoop siblings seek brother
• Sixties scoop survivors: 'I was told I don't exist'
• Sold as salvation, Sixties Scoop placed children in abusive system