What do you call THIS?

By Trace Hentz  (adoptee and editor of the book series Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects)

What do you call it when a woman has a baby and a social worker/ judge/ government has pre-judged her, then decides to take that baby, then it happens again and again… each and every time she gets pregnant. What if this happened 5 times, or 9 times? What do you call that?

Debby, Mitzi, Elizabeth (and countless other Native adoptees) your mothers lost you and other children.  What do you call this?  How do you tell people or explain to people a history like this?   

What did they call your mother? Did they demean her, label her crazy, to justify this?

How does anyone define genocide?  What is Human Trafficking?  Choosing one segment of the population for this treatment? Placing American Indian First Nations Indigenous babies with a non-Indian family? This had a purpose. The government paid for this. And until the Indian Child Welfare Act, this decimated tribes to near extinction.

We know with slaves, children were sold. Families separated. Rebellions quashed. Resistors hung from trees. Millions of dollars were made selling human life, with fortunes created, mansions built, and enough wealth for generations.

Who in their right mind would find this acceptable?

What do you call taking babies from their own mothers? Do you give this a name, like adoption. Do you market it as something else? How do you sell people on this? Why did people accept this? 

How did mothers survive losing their children? How do children survive without them?

If this feels like slavery and heinous and insanity and genocide and cruelty, that’s because it is. It is all this.

I will be publishing a new updated second edition of TWO WORLDS this month!  Please tell your friends and other adoptees.  We'll post more on this blog when it comes out.  Please get in touch if you are an adoptee and still searching. Pray for mothers across the planet that they can keep and raise their children.