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| adoptees tell their stories in Two Worlds |
From the website: Justia.com: The Verdict
Solomon’s Child: How Baby Veronica Came to Be Returned Home After a Long Legal Battle
The legal complications surrounding Baby Veronica’s custody arose from an apparent conflict between the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 1978 law designed to reduce improper removals of Indian children from their parents and their placement with non-Indian families, and South Carolina’s rules regarding the rights of unwed fathers. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, that the ICWA did not apply to Veronica’s case, a holding which paved the way for the South Carolina Supreme Court to terminate the parental rights of her birth father, and order her immediate return to her adoptive parents.
My thoughts:
Returned home? What? This is a story about a little girl who is now living with her dad Dusten. Writers are discussing how the courts are working to protect the adoptive parents rights...
Native American Adoptees have been ignored far too long. Our trauma and hurt is never mentioned (in articles and news coverage) and what we endure after being removed from our natural parents and what we feel living in an adoption with strangers. Even if our first parents are unfit or unable, we should be raised by relatives to minimize the impact of removal, so we can retain our culture and traditions as Native Americans. Add the pain we go through trying to open sealed adoption records is also hard on us...
Our adoptee voices must be heard in this Baby Veronica case.
In The Verdict opinion, its about the rights of everyone else but not the child Veronica. This is an ongoing tragedy and one fact the media ignores: Veronica has rights as a Cherokee child and citizen. Protecting future generations is why ICWA was written.
If someone had asked me if I wanted to be adopted, I would say no. I would never wish that lifelong pain on anyone...Trace
There is a petition to sign and I believe a senator to contact. My blog has a link to the petition. We need to wake up the adoption reform community on behalf of this little girl!
ReplyDeleteHi Jennifer - can you please send me the link to your blog in a comment? So grateful to you for letting us know.
ReplyDeleteTrace