My Foster Care Training #AdoptionReality #NAAM

I am sharing an excerpt from One Small Sacrifice about my experience getting foster care certified in Oregon.  This month is National Adoption Awareness Month (#NAAM).  I am blogging about my own experiences. I was like so many foster care providers and future adopters, filled with the exciting prospect of taking in a young child and giving them a better life.

I still have the binder and info from my 12 week course in 1994. There is nothing in there about how a child reacts to being abandoned. I was starry-eyed at the idea of becoming a foster mom then adoptive mom. NOTHING was taught about how an adoptee reacts to losing their identity! I was an adoptee myself and clueless, even though I had lived through it. When I started research in 2004 as a journalist, a whole world of adoption reality opened up for me. A light bulb went on and I could see how adoption propaganda had skewed reality and what adoption really is... keeping their billion dollar adoption industry going....

...What I learned and what surprised me most of all is the adoption industry was created for the adoptive parents by the adoption agencies. The system was actually designed to grow and to recruit potential parents. Churches handled immorality so there were plenty of babies to distribute. States opened and operated secret places called maternity homes and facilities for girls and women to wait out their pregnancy until they deliver. Babies were farmed out like fresh produce. Over time it became a booming billion dollar business for someone.

I tried to imagine how it must feel to give up a child. I watched a few television movies about birthmothers who would change their minds, then fight in courtrooms to regain custody using lawyers. People on both sides would argue who was more deserving, which mother had bonded more with the baby.

America finally instituted a six month waiting period for a birthmother to change her mind, before the adoption decree was final. This made adopting a baby more difficult and scary, since a birthparent might want their baby back. Recent movies like Juno don’t mention the orphan who lives with trauma and sadness, nor do the movies relate what it’s like for the adoptee who grows up in a closed adoption.

Foster Parents

Since my adoption in 1957, couples who wish to adopt a baby still fill out paperwork, give references and have two or more home inspections and rounds of interviews. There are still caseworkers in the state-governed adoption systems. Now prospective parents are finger-printed. Most states, not all, perform extensive background checks on potential adoptive parents. In recent years, more and more adoptions are open.

Couples today take classes before adopting; first they must become foster parents.

I know this because I became a certified foster parent in Oregon in the 1994. Single and divorced people do adopt. Most important was income, if I could afford to raise a child.

It’s inconceivable to me that periodic checkups on adoptees are not mandatory, especially for children who come from a different culture or country prior to their adoption. After my adoption was final, all investigation stopped. No one came back to check on Joey or me. Since my original birth certificate was sealed by a court of law, I might never have found out I was adopted.

Again, it’s not about the adopted child.

Social Workers

Who is looking out for the orphans? They are the social workers. There are thousands of them. In my twelve weeks of pre-adoption training in Oregon in 1994, I learned that all children over age three are considered special needs because they have been abused sexually, emotionally or physically, or neglected in some way.

In America? They weren’t kidding. It’s true. One would think this would make adopting a child less attractive. Well, older kids are usually fostered and not adopted. People prefer cute cuddly babies.

Slap on a band-aid, write a prescription and it’s going to be alright. Place these special children with foster families, and move on to the next case, which they do every day.

We know social workers have hundreds of cases, and foster kids slip through the cracks; this makes the news from time to time. There was one story in Florida where children were caged like animals and their foster mother collected money on each caged foster child every month.

During my foster care training, one class debated if drugs and medication are best when it comes to behaviors in young adoptees and foster children, like those who have bonding problems, or they act out, get aggressive, or have the newly-discovered Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

My class heard medicating “troubled children” was the preferred option. To my astonishment (and horror), this is common in every state. Apparently bad behavior is just not tolerated – so at the first sign of trouble, special children are medicated.

I thank God I wasn’t medicated. I’d either be dead or drug-addicted, and definitely not sitting here right now.

Sometimes ideas are just plain scary. It’s easy to see why the pharmaceutical companies (and drug cartels) are so successful, with television campaigns on various drugs. We know what drug we need and tell our doctor.

Really, I use herbal medicine and natural healing and only their western medicine and first aid when absolutely necessary.

Social workers admit but seriously underscore behavior problems in adoptees. In many states, they’ll pay for psychiatric care and prescription drugs until the foster child or adoptee becomes an adult.

You won’t see a TV commercial about this.

 

(I never adopted a child in Oregon.)

Please share this...

Read more  about Lost Daughters NaBloPoMo/NAAM at  http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2012/10/adult-adoptee-centric-blogging-prompts.)

 

Adoption Reality: Nepal #NAAM2012

ADOPTION REALITY: It seems more and more countries are experiencing difficulties with child trafficking that I ever expected but of course this is not reported in American television. Adoption (international now) by Americans is still ongoing since America's supply of its babies dried up apparently!

Orphaned or Stolen? The U.S. State Department investigates adoption from Nepal, 2006-2008

Children abducted from their families for international adoption, so that middlemen could profit from Westerners' cash. Families that left their babies temporarily with a child welfare center during times of illness or financial distress--only to discover on returning that, to their horror, their children had been sent away forever to Spain, Italy, or the U.S.A. "demand and supply" effect: when international adoptions were suspended, reported "abandonments" drop. Fees that suddenly increase without rhyme or reason--unless orphanages needed more cash for bribes or just out of greed.

That's what the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu was seeing between 2006 and 2008 when it checked into how children had become available for U.S. citizens to adopt, as documented in official internal cables received by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

During 2006, the first year of the U.S. investigation, 394 children were adopted internationally from Nepal; 66 of them by Americans. In March 2007, because of allegations of rampant corruption in orphanages and adoption agencies, the Nepali government halted international adoptions. Even after Nepal allowed international adoptions to resume in early 2009, the U.S. government found that fraud and corruption persisted, causing such concern that the U.S. State Department suspended all adoptions from Nepal in August of 2010.
During the period between 2006 and 2009, 950 children from Nepal had been adopted internationally, 168 from the U.S.


Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/schuster-institute-for-investigative-journalism/orphaned-or-stolen-the-us_b_825451.html

Adoption Reality: China Adoption Scandal #NAAM2012

Adoption scandal exposed by muckraking Chinese journalists

Bo Gu / NBC News

Yang Libing (with his son) holds up a photo of his missing daughter, Yang Ling.

By Adrienne Mong

GAOPING, HUNAN PROVINCE – Until this year, Yang Libing, whose daughter was taken from him by family planning authorities, would receive visits from one or two Chinese journalists every year.
"They would come to interview me about my daughter," he recalled emphatically. "But nothing ever came of those reports. Still no one did anything."
In 2005, family planning officials in Longhui County, Hunan Province, took away Yang's daughter, Yang Ling, when she was eleven months old. They accused him of not registering her birth, thereby breaking the strict, nationwide one-child policy – even though she was his first and only offspring.

The authorities sent his daughter off to an orphanage. From there, Yang believes she was adopted by an American family, with the family planning officials receiving a few hundred dollars in return.

Yang has not seen her since.

Read more: http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/05/17/6659485-adoption-scandal-exposed-by-muckraking-chinese-journalists?lite

I have a male relative who adopted three little girls from China. They never investigated before their adoptions but spent thousands of dollars for each child. Knowing what happened to these girls and their families should be a top priority... Trace 

Adoption Reality: Kazakhstan #NAAM

DOS Adoption Alert: Kazakhstan Suspends Intercountry Adoptions

Kazakhstan

August 21, 2012 http://pear-now.blogspot.com/search/label/Bans%2FSuspensions%2F%20Moratoriums

Alert: Kazakhstan Suspends Intercountry Adoptions

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan informed the U.S. Embassy in Astana on August 9 that Kazakhstan is suspending intercountry adoptions to the United States, effective immediately. Ambassador Susan Jacobs, Special Advisor for Children’s Issues, met with government officials in Kazakhstan on August 16 to address the Ministry’s concerns. The Ministry clarified that the suspension involves a pause in adoption referrals, but does not affect Kazakhstan’s ongoing process to authorize U.S. adoption service providers. The Department of State is continuing discussions with Kazakhstan as a Hague Adoption Convention partner, and will provide updated information on adoption.state.gov as it becomes available.

http://adoption.state.gov/country_information/country_specific_alerts_notices.php?alert_notice_type=alerts&alert_notice_file=kazakhstan_5

Adoption Reality: Illegal Child Adoptions Guatemala #NAAM

Adoption Scandal: The Lost Children Of Guatemala

In recent years, authorities in Guatemala have tried to crack down on illegal child adoptions by foreigners. Corruption, however, is preventing the impoverished Central American country from eradicating the blight of child trafficking.

By Vincent Taillefumier, LE TEMPS/Worldcrunch

Maria Leticia Ispaché spent just one night with her son, Christopher, after giving birth in Guatemala City’s Roosevelt Hospital. Throughout the night she listened to his small hesitating cries. The next morning, one by one, the women next to her in the maternity ward room were allowed to leave with their newborns. “I was alone with my baby when a nurse arrived,” she says. The stranger asked if the baby had already been vaccinated. She took the child and never came back. Leticia Ispaché alerted the hospital, the police and television channels. One year later, she says sadly: “We don’t even have pictures to look for him.”

Corruption and complicity

In 2007, Guatemalan authorities for the first time stiffened the country’s adoption laws. Corruption, however, remains rampant, meaning children are still being shuttled out of the country under questionable circumstances. The trade is said to bring in $200 million a year.

Other efforts to further regulate adoption of Guatemalan children have been led by concerned interest groups. Sobrevivientes led a hunger strike in 2008 that pushed the government to suspend foreign adoptions altogether. And with the help of a UN judiciary body called the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), authorities are working to dismantle the networks that are thought to falsify at least six out of 10 adoption records. The networks are thought to include an army of scriveners, judges, doctors and directors of orphanages who falsify identities, DNA tests and photos.

Read more here: http://www.worldcrunch.com/adoption-scandal-lost-children-guatemala/world-affairs/adoption-scandal-the-lost-children-of-guatemala/c1s3512/

Adoption Reality: Largest Adoption Scams in US History: Samoa

Samoan Adoption Scandal

December 13th, 2009

You might have heard (or perhaps you saw it air on CBS) about the Samoan adoption scandal–a scandal believed to be one of the largest of its kind in U.S. history:

CBS News will present, “The Lost Children,” a “48 Hours” special, on Dec. 12, 2009 – the culmination of a two-year investigation by “48 Hours” into one of the largest foreign adoption scams in U.S. history.
Anchored by “48 Hours” correspondent Maureen Maher, who herself was adopted, “The Lost Children” profiles three families – Patti Sawyer, Mike and Kari Nyberg, and Elizabeth and Gary Muenzler – who adopted children from the South Pacific island of Samoa through the Utah-based Focus On Children adoption agency, only to face a heartbreaking decision years later.
Click here for video: http://youtu.be/Jmk7RvAPYQY

Adoption Reality: Illegal Child Adoption Guatemala #NAAM

Adoption Scandal: The Lost Children Of Guatemala

In recent years, authorities in Guatemala have tried to crack down on illegal child adoptions by foreigners. Corruption, however, is preventing the impoverished Central American country from eradicating the blight of child trafficking.

By Vincent Taillefumier, LE TEMPS/Worldcrunch

Maria Leticia Ispaché spent just one night with her son, Christopher, after giving birth in Guatemala City’s Roosevelt Hospital. Throughout the night she listened to his small hesitating cries. The next morning, one by one, the women next to her in the maternity ward room were allowed to leave with their newborns. “I was alone with my baby when a nurse arrived,” she says. The stranger asked if the baby had already been vaccinated. She took the child and never came back. Leticia Ispaché alerted the hospital, the police and television channels. One year later, she says sadly: “We don’t even have pictures to look for him.”

Corruption and complicity

In 2007, Guatemalan authorities for the first time stiffened the country’s adoption laws. Corruption, however, remains rampant, meaning children are still being shuttled out of the country under questionable circumstances. The trade is said to bring in $200 million a year.

Other efforts to further regulate adoption of Guatemalan children have been led by concerned interest groups. Sobrevivientes led a hunger strike in 2008 that pushed the government to suspend foreign adoptions altogether. And with the help of a UN judiciary body called the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), authorities are working to dismantle the networks that are thought to falsify at least six out of 10 adoption records. The networks are thought to include an army of scriveners, judges, doctors and directors of orphanages who falsify identities, DNA tests and photos.

Read more here: http://www.worldcrunch.com/adoption-scandal-lost-children-guatemala/world-affairs/adoption-scandal-the-lost-children-of-guatemala/c1s3512/

Adoption Reality: Stolen as Babies Spain #NAAM

300,000 babies stolen from their parents - and sold for adoption: Haunting BBC documentary exposes 50-year scandal of baby trafficking by the Catholic church in Spain

There are men and women across Spain whose lives have been turned upside-down by discovering the people they thought were their parents actually bought them for cash. There are also many mothers who have maintained for years that their babies did not die – and were labelled “hysterical” – but are now discovering that their child has probably been alive and brought up by somebody else all this time.’

Reunited: Randy Ryder with Manoli Pagador, who believes she may be his real mother

Experts believe the cases may account for up to 15% of the total adoptions that took place in Spain between 1960 and 1989.
It began as a system for taking children away from families deemed politically dangerous to the regime of General Franco, which began in 1939. The system continued after the dictator’s death in 1975 as the Catholic church continued to retain a powerful influence on public life, particularly in social services.
It was not until 1987 that the Spanish government, instead of hospitals, began to regulate adoptions.
The scandal came to light after two men, Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno, discovered they had been stolen as babies.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049647/BBC-documentary-exposes-50-year-scandal-baby-trafficking-Catholic-church-Spain.html#ixzz2AzVVp7ZO

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It's becoming more obvious that many countries took part in baby selling but call it adoption... Trace

Adoption Reality: Adoption Scandals 2010 #NAAM

What is surprising to me is you really have to search hard to find adoption reality. This month is National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM) and I am going to share more research I found when writing my memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE. There is a longer list of international adoption scandals on Wikipedia.   

Go here to read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_adoption_scandals

2010 International Adoption Scandals

• United States and Russia - Russia temporally suspended all child adoptions by U.S. families after a 7-year-old Artyom Savelyev (Justin Hansen) adopted by a Tennessee nurse Torry Hansen was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was "mentally unstable".^[9] After this incident Russian Children's Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said: "We must, as much as possible, keep our children in our country".^[10] The Chairwoman of the Russian parliamentary committee on family and children Yelena Mizulina meanwhile pointed out that 30,000 children were sent back to institutions by their Russian adoptive, foster or guardianship families in the last three years.^[11]

• United States and Russia - Russian officials called for a suspension of adoptions to U.S. parents after a Pennsylvania couple were charged for beating to death their adoptive child from Russia.^[12] According to official Russian statistics, a total of 19 adopted Russian children have died worldwide as a result of beatings or negligence since 1991, while 2,000 children are killed every year in Russia itself due to domestic child abuse.^[13]

• New Life Children’s Refuge case. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, ten Baptist missionaries are arrested and charged with kidnapping. The group had gathered 33 children in devastated areas and intended to move them to a temporary orphanage in the Dominican Republic. The missionaries did not have proper authorization to take the children out of Haiti. It later became clear that most of the children were not orphaned.

Reality: Child Slavery #NAAM

"There are an estimated 27 to 30 million enslaved in the World today - as many as 50% are believed to be Children, the most ever in recorded history and 50% of these victims are children under the age of 18. The exploitation industry profits over $20 billion yearly. These methods of trafficking include: hard labor, drugs and/or the illegal trafficking of weapons, sweat shops, children used in war, and/or the most previlant type, prostitution. The selling and purchasing of human beings is illegal in every part of the world however it occurs anywhere and everywhere. These survivors are NEVER paid; they are beaten, raped, starved, and overall brutalized. Those that fight these crimes against humanity are known as Abolitionists. Together we can end this horror & stop the traffic. God bless you..." from their Tumblr blog· http://27millionslaves.tumblr.com/

 

On Facebook: "Help be a voice for the 50 million girls who have “gone missing” in India over the past three generations due to female feticide, infanticide, and dowry murders. Please sign the petition demanding that the Indian government end this silent gendercide."

 

I was thinking of many Third World Countries who supply and sell babies for adoption to Americans. (I am posting about adoption scandals all month on this blog.)

I was thinking of Haiti who still practices a form of child slavery and indenture.

I was thinking of religions who spawn hate, intolerance and murder.

I was thinking of Malala, a child, who was shot in the head.

I was thinking of Indian Country and centuries of oppression and poverty.

I was thinking of babies around the world who will suffer, who may become slaves.

What are we going to do about this?

Is adoption the solution?

Is America and democracy the better way to raise children?

Is this the big reason why so many Americans decide to adopt intercountry in this century?

Is "adoption" and "Americans adopting from Third World Countries" the answer again and again?

If we are to fight for the safety of babies across the world, what other options are there?

Thinking that I am a human rights activist, what are the solutions for child slavery and human trafficking?

 

Please leave a comment.... Thank you, Trace

Adoption Reality: Ireland 2012 #NAAM

Fresh scandal erupts over Irish children sold to America for adoption (Sept. 2012)

New investigative report reveals how Irish nuns profited from child adoption scheme

"...Irish nuns who sent and essentially sold orphans to America during the fifties and sixties benefited by up to $50 million in today’s money, a new investigative report and book has claimed.

The report published in The Sunday Business Post also stated that many of the parents chosen had been turned down by other adoption agents, and some children were sent directly to pedophiles.

The shocking new investigation was carried out by Mike Milotte, who has published his finding in a new book entitled Banished Babies.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/New-scandal-erupts-over-Irish-children-sold-to-America-for-adoption-168588836.html#ixzz2AzJiGqub

The Magdalene Sisters (2002): Adoption themes in the Movies #NAAM

One movie I highly recommend you see is the masterpiece  The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

         , Mary Murray , Britta Smith , Frances Healy , Eithne McGuinness , Phyllis McMahon , Rebecca Walsh , Eamonn Owens , Chris Simpson , Sean Colgan , Daniel Costello , Julie Austin , Sean McDonagh , Phyllis MacMahon

MrMarakai wrote this review: Writer/Director Peter Mullan follows up his surreal and blackly humourous Scottish family drama "Orphans" with this hard-hitting account of the agonising and torturous true-story of the abuse of young women from Ireland in the name of religion.
In 1960's, young women where incar... read morecerated in a Irish convent, run by the Catholic church, for committing such 'misdeeds' as flirting with boys, becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and being raped. They are physically and psychologically abused by the head nun and her sadistic staff, who are convinced they are doing the Lord's work.
Having based his screenplay on actual Magdalene inmates' experiences, Mullan achieves an authenticity of what life was like for the young women that had to endure the injustices, humiliation and brutality of these asylums. At times it's very difficult to stomach, such is the sheer power and uncompromising telling of this harrowing story and it's full of overwhelmingly excellent performances. 

Geraldine McEwan as Sister Bridget, the head nun, gives one of the most absolute personifications of evil ever commited to the screen and Eileen Walsh is heart-breakingly compelling as the naive, downtrodden and religiously devoted Crispina.  Her performance was worthy of so much more recognition than she recieved. Speaking of which, the entire cast and crew deserved more awards attention on it's release. Had this been directed by someone with a higher profile than Mullan and his crew, this film would have been hailed as a masterpiece. As it is, it's had to rely on word-of-mouth to find an audience but this doesn't lessen the effect or superb work by everyone involved here.

Mullan's direction is flawless, the cinematography by Nigel Willoughby is stark, and almost de-saturated, adding to the overall feeling of desperation and loneliness of the women and as mentioned, the performances are perfectly pitched from a largely unknown cast. It may be hard for some to accept this behaviour went on but it's even harder to accept that these asylums lasted until 1996, when the last one was finally shut down.
A harrowing and emotionally charged drama that while based on fact, is highly subversive. If the Vatican condemns a film on it's release (which it did with this) then there's no doubt that you're in for a hard-hitting film.
Painful, provocative and important!

For a long list of movies with an adoption theme: www.adoptionhealing.com/AdoptionMovies.html

For a long time, movies send messages. Movies reach a wide audience. Movies like this one teach history and could help potential adoptive parents to understand what may have happened to the child they adopt and the mother who was forced to relinquish... Trace

Adoption Plotlines on TV #NAAM2012

ABC shows feature adoption plotlines

 

Cameron: ''Yes, I've gained a few extra pounds while we were expecting the baby. Which has been very difficult, but apparently your body does a nesting, very maternal, primal thing where it retains nutrients -- some sort of molecular physiology thing. But that's science, you can't fight it. So, ....''
Mitchell: ''I'm not saying anything.''
Cameron: ''You're saying everything!''

TV's newest gay couple, featured in the ABC insult-heavy comedy ''Modern Family.'' Cameron, the heavier of the pair, invites Mitchell's judgemental family over to announce their adoption of a baby girl from Viet Nam in the pilot episode. (Modern Family via HULU)

---

"A baby isn't like a Marc Jacobs suit. You can't return it if it doesn't fit.''
Scotty arguing with his husband Kevin on the ABC drama ''Brothers and Sisters'' about their interest in adopting a baby.

2011 shows with Adoption Plotlines: In Plain Sight, Glee, Parenthood, Once Upon a Time, NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, and Rizzoli and Isles.

We are going to look at movies and TV and all the ways the adoption industry portrays adoption this month (#NAAM 2012). 
If you have watched a TV show or movie with an adoption plotline, please add a comment on this blog... Trace

What has and has not happened..2012 #Adoption

Adoption = Perfect Product Placement

This was also posted on Lost Daughters blog.... National Adoption Awareness Month 2012

By Trace L Hentz

In south Chicago in the 1950s, my 22-year-old mother imagined my father, 28, would marry her since she was pregnant with me. That didn’t happen.

Did my birthmother’s family support her and allow her to keep me? That didn’t happen.

I was illegitimate but I wasn’t an orphan since I had two parents. Did the state contact my father and ask him to raise me? No. That didn’t happen.

After an orphanage then foster care, the damage done in those months is not something I can describe in words but I only wanted to be with my natural mother. That didn’t happen.

The couple who adopted me had miscarried twice and I was supposed to be the replacement. I had my own DNA and my own ancestors but that didn’t matter. They expected me to be their lost child. That didn’t happen.

I was not supposed to question anything. When I decided I wanted to know who I was, what happened and why I was adopted, I asked my adoptive family for information and the truth. That didn’t happen.

The social worker convinced my mother I was better off with new parents who she never met. Did the social worker tell my mother I would be emotionally distraught, devastated and mentally damaged from being abandoned? No. That didn’t happen.

The church and the state were supposed to conduct interviews and home inspections. Did they find out my adoptive father was a raging alcoholic. Did they stop him from molesting me? No. That didn’t happen.

My natural mother probably thought the church and state and the social worker would protect me after adoption. Did the social worker check on me? No. That didn’t happen.

Many of my adopted friends were sexually molested as teens by their adoptive fathers and other relatives. Will the adoption industry ever admit or release these statistics? No. That sadly isn’t happening.

The adoption industry peddles perfect product placement called babies to people who miscarried, some desperate to raise a child. Do they tell them babies are “blank slates” who will love them unconditionally? Yes. That does happen.

TWO WORLDS contributor publishes memoir!

Susan Fedorko had always known she was put up for adoption before she was even a year old. And she had always known she was Native American. But when she turned eighteen, she felt the need to know more about herself. She received some information about her birth parents through the adoption agency, but there was so little to go on. She gave up her search many times. For the next twenty years Susie was busy with marriage and motherhood. Finally, in 2002 and at the age of forty, she received the phone call that would change her life. Someone was looking to find her. And what she discovered was astonishing. Susan’s birth mother was the first Native American supermodel, Cathee Dahmen—an international fashion model with two celebrity marriages under her belt—and her great uncle was the famed Native American artist, George Morrison. Cricket is the incredible story of one woman’s journey to discover her roots and define her place in a newly complex and extended family—with her adoptive family, her birth family, and her husband and daughters. It’s the story of who she was “before,” who she became “after,” and how it all happened.

 

Ordering Information 6 x 9 paperback white ISBN: 9781432795009 $12.95 Instant e-Book Download $5.00 Book Information Genre: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs Publication: Nov 02, 2012 Pages: 169 Books by Susan Fedorko

About Susan Fedorko A lifelong resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Susan “Cricket” Fedorko (Grand Portage Band of Chippewa - Oijbwe) has contributed her writing to two anthologies on the subject of being adopted and has done numerous media interviews. This new memoir details her astonishing 22-year search for answers and describes touching reunions with both of her birth-families in two Minnesota tribal nations. Her Chippewa – Oijbwe, birthmother, a famous supermodel, died in 1997, a short distance from Susan’s current home. PLEASE SHARE THIS NEWS on Facebook and Twitter! Congrats Suzie - it's time adoptees write our own stories!...Trace

#431 -- Milestones in blogging



One Small Sacrifice photo

A blog about American Indian Adoptees was my vision and the history of the Indian Adoption Projects was finally unburied...   

Four years ago in November, this blog was born and the history of the Indian Adoption Projects was uncovered in my memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE.

On this anniversary, I wanted to share some milestones with you! This is my 431th post. It’s hard to wrap my head how this one little blog has had over 64,000 visits and over 2 million LIKES on Facebook.

The most important thing for me to say is: Thank you. Megwetch! WaDo!

Thank you for coming back week after week, reading, commenting, and sharing this blog. That means the world to me.

Thank you for spending your hard-earned cash on my memoir One Small Sacrifice and my new anthology TWO WORLDS.  You told your friends, talked about it on Facebook, and visited my Book Pages. You showed me my vision was not wrong.

It’s not every day I get to say this - THANK YOU.

To recap the life of this blog, I thought I'd highlight some of the biggest milestones of the past four years.

Top Search Engine: Google (they referred 6,600+ people to this blog)

Most SHARED POST: BLOG WEEK: MY TOP 5 http://splitfeathers.blogspot.com/2012/02/blog-week-my-top-5.html

Most read story: First Nations Children Still Taken from Parents (CANADA 2011) http://splitfeathers.blogspot.com/2011/08/first-nations-children-still-taken-from.html

Most Searched Words: Split Feather Syndrome, American Indian Adoptees

Most Page Views: Split Feathers Study (1,930 people have read this study on Native American adoptees called Split Feathers which is incredible!)

Most Visitors from another Blog: Cassi’s blog “Adoption Truth” http://adoptiontruth-casjoh.blogspot.com/

Visitors around the world who regularly read this blog: USA, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Australia, India, South Korea, and the Netherlands.

I could go on and on, but for now let me just say that you all are the best.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Order a copy of my my memoir
Read an excerpt on Scribd
Watch the trailer for One Small Sacrifice

Adoption Reality: Adoptee put on plane to Russia #NAAM

Mother in Adoption Scandal Was Trying for Second Child

ABC news reported this on April 13, 2010

The Tennessee mother who horrified the adoption community when she put her 7-year-old son on a plane back to Russia was in the process of trying to adopt a second child.
Torry Hansen had turned to a second adoption agency to bring home a child from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, a source with the sheriff's department told ABC News.
She switched adoption agencies after the agency that arranged the adoption of her first child, World Association for Children and Parents, urged her to wait before adopting again, the source said. The association advised Hansen it would be best to settle in with the boy before adding to her family, the source said.
A few months later, Hansen, of Shelbyville, Tenn., and her mother, Nancy Hansen put 7-year-old Artyem Savilev on a plane back to Moscow in hopes of having the boy's adoption annulled.

Watch coverage here: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/russian-adoption-wrong-10349969


I admit I do not know if the Russians had done a pre-adoption home study on Hansen since she was American.  REALITY: Returning adoptees and annulling an adoption is not uncommon at all but the adoption industry does not ever promote this fact. I have found several stories about people who returned their adoptees or wish to have the child re-adopted by someone else.  I do wonder about all the attention adopters receive when they adopt from another country, how they are usually praised for it and I can see how they'd continue to adopt again and again.  The reality is not all adoptees can adapt or bond with their adopters, and this adoptive mother Torry Hansen was clearly not prepared for it... Trace

Academics debate ICWA and Baby Veronica case

archival photo

Quite a lengthy academic style of discussion is happening over at Family Scholars.org - here is an excerpt by John Culhane:

“Baby Veronica” Is No Longer a Baby

John Culhane 08.28.2012, 11:18 AM

You might have missed it, but there’s been a huge controversy over whether a little girl who’s been with her adoptive parents for about two-and-a-half years should have been returned to her biological father on the sole ground that he’s a member of the Cherokee tribe (and thereby qualifies to rescind his consent to the adoption under a piece of federal legislation called the Indian Child Welfare Act). She’s been dubbed “Baby Veronica” (perhaps by media eager to sentimentalize this important story), but that term is hardly accurate any more. She’s a toddler with emotional ties to her adoptive parents.... read the rest and comments here: http://familyscholars.org/2012/08/28/baby-veronica-is-no-longer-a-baby/

My friend Mark Diebel posted his reply and gave me permission to print it here on my blog. Thanks Mark - good words deserve a good audience like my blog readers....

Mark Diebel says:

08.29.2012 at 12:26 PM

JC writes, “voting in tribal elections, running for office, taking advantage of tribal scholarships and benefits, participating in customary and ceremony rights, plus [her] relationships with extended families.” Does anyone really think that these benefits—which Veronica might or might not take advantage of in any case—outweigh the psychological harm to a child taken from the only home she knows?”
Yes, there are some that think that the psychological harm taken from the “only home she knows” is less. Adoptees, for example, are aware that the significance of the battle being waged that pits biology against adoption is to misdirect attention from the deep significance of human origins and historical relations. Origins are always with us, no matter how old we are, and the reality is that having them removed from us for whatever reason does not remove the importance they have in later life. It is often only an adult who looks to know where he or she comes from. Children and young adults are more interested in the forward view. The time lost with original family, culture and language cannot be recovered. Ever. The case is not about biology or tribalism…it is about origins and historical continuity.
The harm caused by a separation of a child from the so-called “only home she knows” is in fact real, but already admitted. The child already lost her first mother. Harm is already affirmed and denied by the happy adoptive family myth. The myth is that adoption heals the earlier separation and loss. If so, then the child can heal yet another loss. If not, then the child was never really healed with the adoptive family. Yes, more harm is caused in the new separation, but now the separation and loss is raised to another and higher level that involves courts and claims by various adults that the child will have to evaluate for herself as an adult. She did not create this situation. The adult world made this stuff up. She will be the judge of it all.
I am ignoring for the moment abusive situations in order to reframe the discussion. Parents and children have rights to each other. Adoption must stop the practice of owning adopted children and learn to see that their adopted children are also the children of other parents whom the children have rights to.
I wish that good-hearted adopters would find out if there are adult adoptees who have lived situations like this and ask them what they think about what happened to them. (And, btw, not all adopters would do as Baby Veronica’s adoptive parents…some of them actually acknowledged the importance of the first family and returned children. makes for a very different story, more love and less anger.)

Mark stood up to them. Comments are closed over at the Family Scholar but I suggest you study the mindset of those who claim academic thinking on adoption. They're just not "getting" ICWA history and that is one of our biggest issues.... Trace

Tribunal will rule whether Ottawa retaliated against native rights’ advocate Cindy Blackstock

Cindy Blackstock

Cindy and I are friends on Facebook. The Canadian government has been monitoring her Facebook and Twitter page - something you'd expect from a desperate government who would rather take away First Nations Children than keep them with their tribal families and support tribal family preservation in Canada with $$ and sufficient funding - an issue that Cindy has worked for.
We can see governments will spend untold millions to fund programs that remove Tribal children in the US also, despite the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. Removing a child for adoption and foster care is still a huge problem on very poor reserves in North America.

"Instead of dealing with that funding gap, Ottawa has spent nearly as long searching for dirt on Blackstock. In total, it has spent more than $3 million trying to derail her bid to have the government’s funding policy ruled as discrimination against Native children."

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1275148--tim-harper-tribunal-will-rule-whether-ottawa-retaliated-against-native-rights-advocate-cindy-blackstock

NICWA responds to Dr. Phil's coverage

Read here: http://www.nativetimes.com/life/commentary/7962-nicwa-responds-to-dr-phils-coverage-of-sc-icwa-case

"Veronica’s pre-adoptive placement was kept secret by her mother and attorneys representing the Capobiancos. Her placement with them was not revealed to Veronica’s father for four months–just days before he was sent to Iraq. Upon learning of his daughter’s proposed adoption, the father quickly moved to affirm his rights to parent Veronica. After three decisions supporting his rights in the South Carolina courts, he has been parenting her since January 2012."

To learn more about how you can support the National Indian Child Welfare Association’s efforts to strengthen protections for American Indian children and families and to access more information on this case, please visit our website at www.nicwa.org.

Indianz.com: http://www.indianz.com/News/2012/006854.asp

Get the Story:
Marcia Zug: Doing What’s Best for the Tribe (Slate 8/23)

South Carolina Supreme Court Decision:
Adoptive Couple v. Cherokee Nation (July 26, 2012)

Related Stories:
Couple wants rehearing in ICWA case of Cherokee Nation girl (8/14)
Court supports return of child to Cherokee father under ICWA (7/26)
Terry Cross: Compliance with Indian Child Welfare Act needed (7/25)
New group lobbies Congress to change Indian Child Welfare Act (7/11)
Couple in ICWA case says Cherokee child is more 'Latino' (04/19)
South Carolina court hears ICWA case for Cherokee child (4/17)
Former Sen. Abourezk clarifies comment about ICWA case (01/24)
South Carolina Supreme Court pushed to take up ICWA case (01/18)
Cherokee Nation seeks gag order in ICWA dispute making news (1/5)
Cherokee Nation man wins custody of daughter in ICWA case (1/3)

Dr. Phil’s Hollywood-ized Adoption Propaganda

By Trace L Hentz (formerly DeMeyer)

Watching clips of today’s episode (10-18-12) of Dr. Phil, watching those teary adoptive parents show their anger, outrage and despair over losing their babies because of some (ridiculous) (unjust) Indian Child Welfare Act, I knew right away this was going to be a one-sided show touting the benefits of adoption, even if they had a few Indian experts on the show, too.

Dr. Phil was obviously not allowing enough time to teach about ICWA and the wholesale removal of Indian Children in Canada and America, ethnic cleansing via non-Indian adoptions, or explaining why Indian children are called Stolen Generations.

Until I wrote my memoir, I couldn’t find much information in one place and had to dig pretty deep. That’s another reason why I wrote two books hoping it will counter such ignorance and this Hollywood-ized adoption propaganda that still dominates TV.

As I watched, it was obvious how young adoptees being Indian citizens didn’t really matter to the non-Indians parents who adopted them.  All they really cared about is keeping them.

If these Americans had any knowledge of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the testimony of Indian leaders in 1976, or the history of America’s neglect of Indians (poverty, starvation and concentration camps called Indian reservations), and the legal theft of thousands of children, maybe then we’d stand a chance going on TV or entering the public courts. Maybe then America might catch a glimpse what 100+ years of theft of tribal children looks like.

Facing down teary adoptive parents who expect praise, not condemnation, we Indians are very familiar with their race-based judgments. Indians went direct to the Senate to get ICWA.  Indians won’t win any debates on public TV in three-minute segments. Our history on this topic alone could fill several library collections.

Can you see how not telling prospective parents about ICWA is working out in 2012?  Can you see how the lack of Indian history can fuel ignorance and inflame racism in America? Can you see how adoption-propaganda still sells the public on how these nice white people only want to raise (and save) these poor little Indian kids? 

Doesn't anyone realize children do not choose to be taken from their natural parents and tribe?

Oh - they also rolled out how some of these kids are part-Indians. There is no such thing as part-Indian. Which part, a foot? A finger? Blood is blood. That is the “racist construct” Indians hear all the time - blood this, blood that. It’s getting old….

Had these adopters ever met an adult Indian? Not likely. It’s like these adopters believe there is nothing greater than being American. In their minds, it's better to adopt these Indian kids and transform them into Americans? Really? (I was thinking of Tim Wise and his lectures on white privilege.)

The tribal judge/lawyer stated 30% of all children were removed and abducted. Dr. Phil, no expert on Indian history, jumped on the word “abducted” and quickly joins with the chorus of adopters with “what’s in the best interest of the child" and allow these nice people to keep their kids - and how it’s actually selfish for a tribe to want to keep their own citizens. (This show was not good for my blood pressure.)

Indian Children adopted as infants will not be able to explain the importance of blood, culture and connecting with their tribal relatives. As they grow up and see they are different in their white neighborhoods, and feel like they don’t belong there, then the truth will really matter. It will matter when the child meets other Indians and doesn’t know who he or she is or which tribe or clan.

Knowing who you are matters. Ask anyone in my new anthology “Two Worlds.” Ask them how much they wanted to find their first families and tribes.

Dr. Phil, are you ready to meet some adult American Indian adoptees?

[Join the boycott of Dr. Phil on Facebook: (They hope to get 1,000 LIKES)https://www.facebook.com/BoycottTheAntiNativeAmericanDrPhilShow]

Two Worlds contributor has story in British news

Native American hopes adoption story will give strength to others

 

Friday, October 05, 2012   Kent and Sussex Courier

          ​

A NATIVE American Indian who first told his incredible story in the Courier last year has contributed to a pioneering study on babies who, like him, were secretly adopted from Indian reservations.
Johnathan Brooks, who lives with his wife and daughter in Grecian Road, Tunbridge Wells, explained how he was adopted as a newborn baby by a German aristocrat and her husband, an American film producer.

Read: BACK TO HIS ROOTS: Tunbridge Wells life coach Johnathan Brooks tracked down his natural parents to an Indian reservation in Montana

http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Native-American-hopes-adoption-story-strength/story-17040537-detail/story.html


Johnathan has an incredible narrative in the new anthology "Two Worlds!" Click on the book link in the sidebar!

Victory for First Nations could cost Ottawa billions

Ottawa spends $3 million to battle First Nations child welfare case

Heather Scoffield,              October 01, 2012

 

OTTAWA - The federal government has been billed more than $3 million for its unsuccessful attempts to keep a high-stakes battle over First Nations child welfare out of the courts.
Invoices obtained through Access to Information show the Justice Department, acting on behalf of Aboriginal Affairs, paid out at least $3.1 million for legal services between 2007 and June 2012.
Government lawyers were trying to quash claims from First Nations child rights advocates that Ottawa is short-changing native communities by funding child welfare services at 22 per cent below provincial levels.
The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations launched a human rights challenge that dates back to 2007.
They say the federal government is discriminating by not providing the same level of child welfare support to First Nations children as other children in Canada receive from provincial governments.
Ottawa has challenged the advocates with legal technicalities at every step along the way, arguing that the case does not belong in the court system.
After much back and forth, and more than $3 million later, the Federal Court rejected the government's arguments, ordering a full hearing at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
"They've spent that trying to avoid this hearing on the truth," said Cindy Blackstock, the society's executive director.
"That really raises the question of what they're trying to hide. All we've wanted from the get-go is a factual hearing on whether they're discriminating or not."
Indeed, last week, the tribunal decided to set aside several weeks of hearings on the issue in February and March.
"I'm expecting Canada to really drag it out and use about any tactic they can to drag it out," said Blackstock.
Blackstock obtained the federal invoices through an Access to Information request and provided the documents to The Canadian Press.
At stake is far more than federal funding for child welfare.
If the First Nations advocates win the day, the case will put pressure on Ottawa to increase child welfare funding, as well as to match provincial funding in other areas of First Nations services, such as schooling, special education, policing and health.
Already, First Nations have started legal action on special education and policing in Ontario, using similar arguments to the child welfare case.
Victory for the First Nations could cost Ottawa billions.
"We think that after these cases go through, the federal government's programs for First Nations people will need a drastic overhaul in order to deliver services equal to what other Canadians receive," said Kent Elson, a Toronto lawyer who is involved in the policing and special education challenges.
But if the government wins, recently won powers for First Nations to launch human rights complaints would be severely restricted, the acting head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission has said.
"We think this is one of the most important human rights issues this decade," Elson added.
Aboriginal Affairs officials said Monday they don't intend to speculate on how much the case will cost at the end of the day, but spokeswoman Genevieve Guibert said in an email that the government hopes the tribunal will dismiss the complaint, putting an end to litigation.
The government has increased the funding from $449.5 million a year in 2006-07 to its current level of $580 million, Guibert said.
A spokesman for Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan said last week that the federal government does not believe the courts are the proper forum for differences over child welfare.
"We believe that the best way to ensure First Nations children and families get the supports and services they need is by working together — with First Nations, provinces and territories — and not through the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal," Jan O'Driscoll wrote in an email.
"Our commitment to supporting First Nations children and families is clear."
O'Driscoll said funding for family services has "significantly increased" and the quality of such services has improved to focus on preventing the problems that jeopardize the welfare of native children.
"As this matter is before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment further."
But Blackstock said she and the AFN worked for 10 years behind the scenes to negotiate a compromise with the government, before turning to legal action.
"The bigger question is, do we want to be a country where racial discrimination is a way that we save the government money? This case is fundamentally about the type of Canada we want," she said.
"It's not a legitimate fiscal restraint measure."
First Nations children are dramatically over-represented in the child welfare system, mainly because of poverty, overcrowded housing and poor parenting linked to substance abuse and neglect, research shows.
Recent census data shows there were nearly 30,000 children in foster care in Canada on a given day. Other research suggests about 70,000 children pass through foster homes at some point in a given year.
Up to 40 per cent of those children are First Nations kids, Blackstock said.
Last week, the United Nations committee on the Convention of the Rights of the Child took Canada to task over its treatment of aboriginal, immigrant and disabled children.
When asked about the criticism in the House of Commons, Conservative parliamentary secretary Bob Dechert lashed out at the UN committee rather than address the child welfare matter.
"The sad reality is that Syria is a member of this committee," Dechert said.
"Syria, a country whose rulers are stealing the innocence of an entire generation of its children, is criticizing Canada. Imagine that. This is no doubt to distract from the atrocities that Syrian children are currently facing every day."

© The Canadian Press, 2012

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