Adoptee shares her story as Ohio adoption records become available this Friday

Adoptee Kimmie Sapp shares her story of finding her birth parents. Sapp noted that adoptees should consider that real life is not like the movies before launching their own search.

“You’re always looking for people that look like you. I don’t care how good your parents were, or how close you were with your siblings, it’s odd growing up not looking like anyone,” Kimmie Sapp said.

March 16, 2015 |  by Candace Harrell

MANSFIELD, Ohio - Beginning March 20 of this year, Ohio adoptees whose adoptions were finalized between Jan. 1, 1964 to Sept. 18, 1996 may gain access to their adoption file and original birth record from the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) thanks to Senate Bill 23.

Kimmie Sapp didn’t need to wait for this legislation to find her parents, because she was adopted in 1957. Adoption records prior to Jan. 1, 1964 have been open to adoptees and linear descendants.

Sapp, now a Mansfield resident, said she began the search to find a missing piece of her history; not only for medical information, which was important, but a piece of herself. “You’re always looking for people that look like you. I don’t care how good your parents were, or how close you were with your siblings, it’s odd growing up not looking like anyone,” she said.

The search would have been easier today, with the internet at her fingertips. But in the late 1970s, a telephone book and directory assistance had to suffice. At the age of 21, after obtaining a copy of her birth certificate and finding her birth mother’s name and home town, she simply started calling everyone listed in that town with the same last name.

“The second person I called was her uncle,” said Sapp. “He said, ‘That’s my niece…but she never had a baby.’ But he gave me her phone number.”

“I called her. I cried, she cried, and yes, that was my birth mother,” Sapp said.

She said they corresponded, and even met. But life is not a fairy tale, Sapp noted.

Sapp’s birth mother had moved on with her life and had three sons. None of them knew of Sapp’s existence, and the birth mother preferred to keep it that way. “I didn’t live in her shoes. I don’t know what she went through in her lifetime,” said Sapp. “I don’t judge. She just couldn’t handle a relationship with me because she was too worried her boys would find out and lose respect for her.”

Sapp said she understood, because her adoption took place in a time when counseling was not offered to birth mothers.

She recalled her birth mother relating the experience, “She had a baby, she got to hold me, she counted my fingers and my toes, and kissed me goodbye,” said Sapp. “She said, ‘I memorized your face. I cried and cried. But when I came back to [my hometown], I had to pretend like you never existed, so I thought of you as being dead.”

“She’s not a bad person. She’s just dealing with things the way she has to deal with them,” said Sapp.

Her birth mother discouraged her from contacting her birth father, so it was ten years later that Sapp tracked him down. That experience turned out better, she noted.

“He was ecstatic. He has two daughters, and he told them immediately,” said Sapp. She said she is very close to the youngest sister, and they have much in common.

Sapp said her adopted family is wonderful, but she just needed to know where she came from. She added that for some adoptees, just finding a name is enough.

Her advice to those seeking their birth parents, “I think it’s very important. People need closure. I just don’t think anyone should go into it without thinking about it deeply.”

She said that often those parents have moved on, and it is hard for the adoptee to find where they fit into that new family.

ODH has created a video to explain the law and how adoptees may go about obtaining information. Instructions may also be found at the website.

***

http://www.sanduskyregister.com/news/government/7758736

Adoption records for 400,000 Ohioans available Friday

Adopted people can learn about their origins (sucks that some will apply and still won't find out who their parents are due to the fact the parents are still afforded the chance to remove their names)

****

 

 If you find a story about an adoptee who has found her/his family, share the link in a comment or let us know about your own reunions...Trace

State of Alaska asks for more time #ICWA

The state on Monday asked the Alaska Supreme Court for more time in a case involving the adoption of a Yup’ik child, a case that tribes say will determine how the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, will be implemented in Alaska, and show whether Governor Bill Walker is serious about campaign pledges he made to work cooperatively with tribes.

READ MORE

Disposable Child: Madness in America #DRUGGINGKIDS

http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/03/drugging-children-foster-care/

The Drugging of Children in Foster Care

By PHILIP HICKEY, PHD | Featured Blogs | March 16, 2015

It's no secret that here in America, foster children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs, especially neuroleptics, as a means of controlling their behavior.  A great deal has been said and written on the matter.  Politicians have declared the practice deplorable.  Children's advocacy groups have expressed concern, and, of course, those of us in the antipsychiatry movement have screamed till we're hoarse.  But the problem persists.

For the past six months or so, the San Jose Mercury News, a California newspaper, has been running frequent articles on this topic, calling for oversight and corrective action.

On February 24, 2015, Karen de Sá, a reporter with that newspaper, published an article titled Senate panel examines why California foster care system 'addicted' to psychiatric drugs.  It's an excellent article, which highlights various aspects of the problem, and provides updated information on this matter.

Here are some quotes:

"California's foster care system 'has grown more addicted to mind-altering medication,' the chair of a powerful Senate committee told a packed public hearing in the state Capitol on Tuesday, adding that 'here in California, we've done little to act on this alarming issue.'"

"Lightbourne said two state-sponsored panels have spent years working to develop guidelines that would protect foster children from the excessive use of psych medications and to house fewer kids at residential group homes, where drugs are most frequently prescribed. Foster children deserve 'nonmedical treatments whenever possible,' Lightbourne said."

"'We need to shift our thinking away from the primacy of psychiatric medications toward relationships,' testified George Stewart, a Berkeley child psychiatrist who has spent much of his career tapering severely traumatized children safely off high-risk drug cocktails. 'We are going to look back on this era of great enthusiasm for psychiatric medications and either scratch our heads or beat our heads. We will look back in 20 years and say, 'What were we doing?'"

"Senators also said they were alarmed by the newspaper's analysis that showed how pharmaceutical companies lavish the state's foster care prescribers with millions of dollars for meals, gifts, travel, speaking engagements and research grants -- a practice Lightbourne called 'deeply troubling.' The newspaper found the doctors who prescribed the most, typically were rewarded the most."

All of which tells a familiar story.  Pharma-psychiatry systematically targets foster children as potential customers.  They do this because the residents of foster homes, group and individual, are a "captive audience," in the sense that the foster parent or staff member will ensure that the resident takes the pills.  In this way, non-compliance – the great drain on pharma revenue – becomes a non-issue.

Karen de Sá's article is cogent, articulate, and powerful, and undoubtedly she and her colleagues are raising awareness on this matter.  But there was one paragraph in her article that I felt warranted some additional discussion.

"Tuesday's four-hour hearing before the Human Services Committee highlighted a package of bills being introduced this month, following this newspaper's investigation 'Drugging Our Kids,' which revealed nearly one in four foster care teens take psychiatric drugs -- often to control behavior, not to treat mental illnesses. Most are prescribed antipsychotics, a powerful class of psychiatric drugs with the most harmful side effects."

Note the phrase  "…often to control behavior, not to treat mental illnesses."  What the author is missing here is that, within psychiatry's spurious domain, misbehavior is a mental illness.  In fact, it is several mental illnesses.  If a child is frequently defiant, he has a mental illness called oppositional defiant disorder.  If he is given to outbursts of anger, he has a mental illness called intermittent explosive disorder.  If he is given to violating rules or infringing on the rights of others, he has a mental illness called conduct disorder.  If he is given to setting fires, he has a mental illness called pyromania.  If he is persistently angry and given to very frequent temper tantrums, he has a mental illness called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.  And, of course, if he is disruptive and inattentive in the classroom, he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  If the child's misbehavior can't be shoe-horned neatly into any of these categories, psychiatry has two residual categories:

other specified disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorder; and unspecified disruptive impulse-control and conduct disorder.

Contrary to popular opinion, no neurological pathology is required to establish these "diagnoses."

So, by neatly re-labeling every conceivable kind of misbehavior as a mental illness, psychiatry has established turf in this field, and has legitimized the use of drugs to "treat" this misbehavior.

This is the crux of the entire debate.  There is literally no significant problem of thinking, feeling, and/or behaving that is not listed, either directly, or by implication, in the DSM.  So, Karen de Sá is incorrect.  In the looking-glass world of psychiatry, practitioners are notprescribing major tranquilizers to control children's behavior.  Rather, they are "treating mental illnesses," with medications that have been proven by highly questionable pharma research to be "effective and safe."  We have actually reached the position in our society where a physician who does not follow these practices could be held liable for failure to treat.

And this is the problem.  Every attempt to eliminate, or even reduce, this widespread and persistent practice, is doomed to failure as long as psychiatry's spurious diagnoses are accepted as bona fide illnesses.  Because if childhood misbehavior is an illness, then psychiatrists and other physicians are not using drugs to control behavior, rather they are "treating," compassionately and effectively, these "disabling illnesses."

Psychiatry, over the past five decades, has systematically and deceptively pursued a self-serving policy of medicalizing virtually every significant problem of thinking, feeling, and/or behaving.  Their pharma allies have provided the money, and psychiatry has provided the credentials, in what is arguably the most widespread and destructive swindle in human history.  And they have been enormously successful.  Their spurious notions are widely accepted today as reality.

No significant progress will be possible in these areas until the swindle is finally and utterly exposed, and sanity is restored to our conceptualizations of human activity.  Until then, despite the protests of politicians, advocates, journalists, and others, the pharma-psychiatry maw will remain wide open, and the ranks of "the mentally ill" who need "treatment" will continue to grow.

Philip Hickey, PhD

Behaviorism and Mental Health: Philip Hickey is a retired psychologist.  He has worked in prisons (UK and US), addiction units, community mental health centers, nursing homes, and in private practice.  He and his wife, Nancy, live in Colorado, and have four grown children. His posts can also be seen on his website,Behaviorism and Mental Health.

We lost a hero #ICWA

Evelyn Stevenson Walks On — Original Proponent of ICWA

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Evelyn Stevenson, longtime tribal attorney, advocate and original proponent of the Indian Child Welfare Act, passed away on March 12, 2015 at 9:11am in Ronan, Montana on the Flathead Indian Reservation.  Evelyn was a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and was the second tribal member, and first tribal member woman, to become a licensed attorney.
A wake will begin at noon on Sunday, March 15, 2015 in the Elmo Community Hall in Elmo, Montana (phone number: 406.849.5505).  A rosary will begin at 8:00pm that evening.  The funeral will be held at the Elmo Community Hall on Monday, March 16^th at 11:00am, followed by burial at the Ronan Cemetery.
Details on her career here.

Alaska Governor accused of undermining adoption of Native children by tribal members #BABYDAWN

3/11/15 - By Joaqlin Estus SOURCE

LINK

Alaska Native advocates ask Walker to ensure the Indian Child Welfare Act is properly implemented in Alaska

The Alaska Federation of Natives, and all the regional Native nonprofit organizations in the state are asking Governor Bill Walker to change his position in a case involving the adoption of an Alaska Native child. They say the state’s position in the case Tununuk II vs. the state of Alaska erects barriers between tribal children and tribal homes. The state has said it’s only arguing for compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Under the terms of the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, Alaska Native children must be placed for adoption with their relatives or tribal members unless it’s clearly in the child’s interests to do otherwise.

An Alaska Supreme Court ruling last December allowed the non-Native Smith family to adopt "Baby Dawn" even though her Native grandmother wanted to adopt her. The state had successfully argued the grandmother failed to file a petition to adopt required under a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Lloyd Miller is a partner in the law firm Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Miller and Munson, which is representing Elise, of Tununuk, the grandmother in the case. He says the state is misinterpreting the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling. Miller says it requires formal action, a standard he says the grandmother met when she told the state’s Office of Children’s Services, and testified in court that she wanted to adopt her grandchild.

The village of Tununuk requested a rehearing in the case. Briefs to the Alaska Supreme Court on that request are due Monday.

An earlier post about Alaska: http://splitfeathers.blogspot.com/2014/12/children-in-crosshairs-emerging-battle.html

Manitoba opening adoption records in 2015

Manitoba Adoptees - finally good news

http://www.gov.mb.ca/fs/childfam/adoption_search.html

Open Birth and Adoption Records
The Manitoba government is moving ahead with proposed legislation that will open birth and adoption records.

What Changes when the Legislation Passes?
The amendments to The Adoption Act and The Vital Statistics Act allow for more openness with respect to birth records and adoption records, subject to certain privacy rights. The amendments will give registered birth parents and adult adoptees access to pre-adoption birth registrations, as well as substituted registrations of birth.
The amendments will take effect one year after the legislation is passed, likely in June 2015. This will allow time for people to understand the changes and, most importantly, to file disclosure vetoes if they wish to keep their information private.

Who do these amendments affect?
An adult adoptee born in Manitoba and adopted in Manitoba
An adult adoptee born in Manitoba and adopted outside Manitoba
An adult adoptee born outside Manitoba and adopted in Manitoba
A registered birth parent who is named on the pre-adoption birth registration and whose adult child was born in Manitoba and adopted in Manitoba
A registered birth parent who is named on the pre-adoption birth registration and whose adult child was born in Manitoba and placed for adoption outside Manitoba

Fee
There is no fee to access birth or adoption records.

Contact Manitoba Post Adoption Services

If you have any questions, please email or call the Manitoba Post-Adoption Registry at:

Manitoba Post-Adoption Registry
2nd Floor – 777 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg MB R3G 0N3
Email: cfsd@gov.mb.ca
Phone: 204-945-6964
1-800-855-0511 for the Manitoba Relay Service

New Brunswick pressured to unseal adoption records

Thousands of people are waiting for the provincial government to unseal adoption records

CBC News | Mar 10, 2015  

People trying to open adoption records in New Brunswick say the process has stalled under the new Liberal government.

Garth McCrea, the chair of the Coalition for Open Adoption Records, said he has been trying for three years to get the law changed so that these records can be unsealed. (Facebook)

Garth McCrea, the chair of the Coalition for Open Adoption Records, said he has been trying for three years to get the law changed so these records can be unsealed.

He said the previous Progressive Conservative government held public consultations last year about the proposed change. He said they were ready to move ahead and have a new law in place by now.
However, McCrea said the election in September of the Liberal government has put everything on hold.
McCrea said he's frustrated that the file seems to be forgotten because of the government's priority on public finances.
"I'm 50 years old, I'm an adoptee. The information has been kept from me for 50 years," he said.
"I'm a pretty patient man, I've been at this for well over three years so I know in terms of government making change that these things can take time."
New Brunswick's refusal to unseal adoption records is hampering many people from trying to reconnect with birth parents or their adopted children.
Edmonton's Susan Cockle is seeking help in New Brunswick to track down her birth parents, nearly 50 years after she was adopted in Moncton. She is making the public request for assistance because she cannot access her adoption records.
The Coalition for Open Adoption Records is being supported by many other similar groups. McCrea said he has members from across Canada, the United States and Puerto Rico, who want New Brunswick to open up its adoption records.
He said all New Brunswick has to do is to adopt the rules that already exist in Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador or some of the western provinces.

Children search for birth parents

Susan Cockle has taken out advertisements in Moncton in the hopes of finding her birth parents. Groups say the New Brunswick government should open up adoption records. (Submitted by Susan Cockle)

There are many other New Brunswick cases where people are advocating for the opening of these records.
Kathy Reid was born Carol Joy Marina Stewart at the Salvation Army-run Evangeline Home for unwed mothers in Saint John in 1956.
She was adopted in 1958 and when her adoptive parents died in 1962, she was sent to live in Ontario with a guardian. She grew up with another adopted child, her stepbrother.
He was born in Ontario and has access to his birth parents.
Reid and all other adopted children born in Quebec and the Maritimes don't have that right because those provinces continue to seal adoption records.
Reid said she's frustrated by the pace of change in New Brunswick and she wrote to Social Development Minister Cathy Rogers in January.
The minister responded in February to say the department is still evaluating the information.
Rogers said the opening of adoption records is an extremely personal matter for individuals and the government must ensure the interest of all parties is taken into consideration with any proposed legislative change.

Heart-wrenching cases

Marie Crouse, the president of Parent Finders New Brunswick, said this policy of sealing adoption records affects thousands of people.
Parent Finders is a private group that is trying to put adopted children in touch with their birth parents.
She said just in her database she has roughly 4,500 people who were adopted who are actively searching for their birth parents.
She has another 850 birth parents or relatives who are looking for the child that was put up for adoption

Crouse says there are heart-wrenching cases.  

"Right now, I am researching an adopted man who married his blood sister, had a baby boy who is severely mentally handicapped because they were brother and sister," she said.

"They did not know this when they were married."

Alberta woman seeks help in N.B. to find birth parents

Founding Fathers attitudes about Native Americans

Many of the founding fathers believed American Indians would die out within a few generations.

Founding Fathers' attitudes toward Native Americans:

From the very beginning of US history, the founding fathers believe they are at a higher stage of Adam Smith's "four stages of history" than American Indians. George Washington favors treaties over force, writing that when forced off his land, the "savage," like the wolf, always seeks to return.


Johnson v. McIntosh determined that American Indian's land title could be extinguished "by purchase or by conquest."

February 28, 1823|  In a land dispute, the Supreme Court determines that titles purchased from tribes do not supersede titles awarded by the federal government, because the indigenous occupants lost their "right of occupancy."



Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion calls American Indians "fierce savages," stating: "Discovery is the foundation of title, in European nations, and this overlooks all proprietary rights in the natives."


Even now, this "Doctrine of Discovery" continues to creep into the policies and mindset of today.


Chief Justice John Marshall composed several early and influential opinions on the relationship between American Indians and the United States.


Chief Justice John Marshall's majority opinion states that the tribe is not an independent nation, but a "domestic dependent nation" with a relationship to the United States "like that of a ward to his guardian." This ward-guardian mindset has carried into modern-day American Indian-US relations.


Congress passes the General Allotment Act, authorizing the president to divide up tribal land and parcel it out to individual American Indians. In the process, tribes are dispossessed of 90 million acres.


Meanwhile, American Indian children are forced to assimilate at mandatory boarding schools. (And Indian Adoption Programs would also begin)


Col. Richard Pratt, founder of the first off-reservation Indian Boarding School, gives a speech in 1892 where he adovcates to "kill the Indian in him, and save the man."


(Videos: UAF Tribal Management Program)

In this video, American Indian scholar and advocate Ada Deer calls the terminations a "cultural, economic and political disaster" for American Indians.
Congress terminates tribal status for more than 100 tribes in the 1950s. When tribes lose their status, their lands become subject to taxation and members lose access to federal programs and services. The government further weakens tribes by relocating American Indians from reservations to cities and expanding state jurisdiction over reservations.

TRIBAL NATIONS - The Story of Federal Indian Law
More Info: https://www.tananachiefs.org/about/our-history/


READ MORE HERE

1928 Meriam Report: The Affairs of Indians in the US

Archive Photo

By Trace Hentz

My friend and scholar Dr. Carol A. Hand (Ojibwe) shared this comment on my latest post at my Lara Blog: "AND SO IT GOES" #Orphan Asylums #Native Lives Matter - read it here.

Even more heartbreaking are the documented consequences for most of the institutional settings on child development. These consequences were even cited in the 1928 Meriam Report (The Problem of Indian Administration) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meriam_Report.

EXCERPT: Authorized by the Institute for Government Research on June 12, 1926 at the request of the Secretary of the Interior, the Meriam Commission was charged with investigating the affairs of Indians in the United States. To maintain unbiased standards for the survey, it was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, not by any government agency or agent.^[7] “The investigation would cover nearly all reservations and would deal with educational, industrial, social, and medical activities of the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs], as well as with Indian property rights and economic conditions.”^[8]
The team conducted seven months of field work to gather its information. They conducted field work in 23 states, selected based on a report by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that arranged states in order of number of Native American inhabitants. The report showed 23 states having more than 1,000 Native American inhabitants, the top three being Oklahoma, Arizona, and South Dakota.^[9] The team visited a total of 95 reservations, agencies, hospitals, and schools.^[10] At least one member of the survey team visited each of these 95 locations; often members of the team were forced to work independently in order to complete the required work in the shortest possible amount of time. “[Interior Secretary] Work insisted that the survey be completed within one year, so that he might effect changes before a new administration took office in Washington.”^[11] This field work produced a report of 847 pages consisting of the following eight sections:

1. A General Policy for Indian Affairs
2. Health
3. Education
4. General Economic Conditions
5. Family and Community Life & the Activities of Women
6. The Migrated Indians
7. The Legal Aspects of the Indian Problem
8. The Missionary Activities among the Indians

The report is concise and unbiased in its analysis: it states the facts of Indian conditions of the 1920s. The conclusion of the report reflects the opinions of the survey team. For example, the report states that “any policy for Indians based on the notion that they can or should be kept permanently isolated from other Americans is bound to fail.”^[12] In the report, the survey team included extensive recommendations for the correction of deficiencies, notably in health, education, and government cooperation for legal and social issues.

Health

The report states, “the health of the Indians compared with that of the general population is bad.”^[13] It said that the general death rate and the infant mortality rate were high. Serious diseases, such as tuberculosis and trachoma, were very widespread both on reservations in general and specifically at off-reservation boarding schools. In its section on health care services provided by the government to Native Americans, the report states: “The hospitals, sanatoria, and sanatorium schools maintained by the [Indian Health] Service, despite a few exceptions, must generally be characterized as lacking in personnel, equipment, management, and design.”^[14] The government, although it had numerous on- and off-reservation health care institutions, did not provide sufficient care for Indian patients. The report noted, “the most important single item affecting health is probably the food supply.”^[15] A further setback facing healthcare on Indian reservations was a general lack of knowledge of the Indian languages by healthcare providers.^[16]

Economy

The report concluded that “The income of the typical Indian family is low and the earned income extremely low.”^[17] The report addressed the poverty thought to have resulted from the individual allotment policy of the Dawes Act. It found: “In justice to the Indians it should be said that many of them are living on lands from which a trained and experienced white man could scarcely wrest a reasonable living.”^[18] Not only was loss of land a factor in reservation poverty found on reservations, but the land they held was largely unsuitable for family farming and agriculture. The survey found that “the economic basis of the primitive culture of the Indians has been largely destroyed by the encroachment of white civilization.”^[19] A culture that previously had depended on its environment as a sustainable economy was losing the very land on which they survived. The report identified the problems with changing political appointees under elected presidential administrations. Elections tended to bring about a change in top political appointees and changes in economic development programs; thus, the BIA supported no long-term development on reservations. The report also states: “Little attempt has been made to formulate a broad constructive program for the service as a whole, extending over a long term of years, and having for its goal the general improvement of economic conditions.”^[20]

Education

The Meriam Report emphasized the need for education but it suggested that such education should be based on integration of Indian children into the majority culture, rather than educating Indian children in separate institutions, as previous education policies had stressed. The first line in the education section states, “The most fundamental need in Indian education is a change in point of view.”^[21] The report was particularly critical of Indian boarding schools: “The survey staff finds itself obligated to say frankly and unequivocally that the provisions for the care of the Indian children in boarding schools are grossly inadequate.”^[22] The survey team concluded that the boarding schools provided poor diet, were overcrowded, did not provide sufficient medical services, were supported by student labor, and relied on a uniform curriculum rather than raising teacher standards. While the report drew attention to the gross deficiencies of Indian boarding school education, the assimilationist policies of Indian education, dependent on such boarding schools, continued for another 40 years. The schools reached their peak student enrollment of 60,000 in the 1970s.

Results

The Meriam Report can be seen to have affected several aspects of government policy. “Acting upon the emergency recommendations of the Meriam Report, President Hoover requested additional funds to supply adequate food and clothing for pupils in the Indian schools.”^[23] Additionally, Charles J. Rhoads and J. Henry Scattergood (Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs, appointed by Hoover), accomplished or initiated many of the recommendations of the Meriam Report.^[24] President Hoover appointed Rhoads to put together a reform package which included the closure of unpopular reservation boarding schools and improved medical facilities.^[25] However, nothing was immediately done to change the allotted land situation which caused disappointment among Native Americans. They would have to wait until 1934 for the policy of allotment to come to an end.
The most significant and influential effect of the Meriam Report was from its strong criticism of the Dawes Act and analysis of its failings.^[26] Also known as the General Allotment Act, the Dawes Act of 1887 had sought to break up the communal Indian land by allocating allotments to individual Indian households, encouraging families to undertake subsistence farming, the model of European-American culture.

“The immediate result of the report’s attack on [land] allotment was a decline in the issuance of allotted lands. In the four fiscal years prior to the initiation of the study, 1922–1926, approximately 10,000 Native Americans were allotted over 3 million acres from their Reservations. In comparison, during the fiscal years 1929-1932, the 4 years immediately following the publication of 'The Problem of Indian Administration,' a little over 2,800 Native Americans were allotted less than 500,000 acres.”^[27]

Within five years of the Report, the policy of allotment was abandoned altogether. On June 18, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Indian Reorganization Act into law.^[28] Although the Meriam report did condemn allotment and had an impact on the Indian Reorganization Act, the Act was actually largely attributed to John Collier who had been appointed by Roosevelt as Commissioner for Indian Affairs.^[29] This new act ended allotment and permitted tribes to organize their own governments and to incorporate their trust lands communally.

• Meriam, Lewis. The Problem of Indian Administration: Report of a Survey made at the Request of Honorable Hubert Work, Secretary of the Interior, and Submitted to Him, February 21, 1928/Survey Staff: Lewis Meriam...[et al.]. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928.
• Parman, Donald L. and Lewis Meriam. "Lewis Meriam's Letters during the Survey of Indian Affairs 1926-1927 (Part 1)." Arizona and the West 24, 3 (Autumn, 1992), 253-280.
• Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
• Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father, one volume abridged edition, 1986

External links

• 1928 Meriam Report, full text online, hosted at Alaskool.org

(2015) Breaking News for Tribes in South Dakota #NativeLivesMatter #ICWA

Support for Lakota children and families is building. After years of working to get national attention on these serious problems, all of the work we have done together is bearing fruit! Here is a quick update on exciting national developments.

We are not only on the right path, we are gaining momentum. Our "Free the Lakota Children" petition to Obama just clicked over 50,000 signatures. We are in close contact with officials in the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Interior, and we will foray the petition to further leverage the discussion around federal planning support for the South Dakota tribes. With each signature, our combined voice gets louder and harder to ignore. Please sign, share, and encourage at least one of your friends to sign the petition: http://lakotalaw.org/action. Let’s go from 50,000 signatures to 100,000 as fast as we can!

 

Native Lives Matter: Two recent incidents in Rapid City inflamed the Indian community. First, the police shot and killed an Indian man in his home doorway because he had a small parring knife in his hand. No justice was forthcoming. Second, fifty-four Native honor roll kids between eight and twelve years of age were taken to a hockey game as a reward for all their hard work. In a VIP box above them, the people started pouring beer on the kids, saying “go back to the res” and other slurs. As this got worse, the teachers took the kids, who were being emotionally traumatized, out of the stadium. No justice was forthcoming.

 

 

Following these incidents, the Lakota People’s Law Project released a fifteen page report, “Native Lives Matter”, detailing the unequal treatment of Native Americans by the national criminal justice system. The release paralleled a passionate march, led by Lakota People’s Law Project Attorney Chase Iron Eyes, who has spearheaded the Native Lives Matter movement that is gathering momentum in Rapid City, South Dakota. “This fact-based report unequivocally shows that at best the institutions in South Dakota are culturally biased, at worst they are blatantly racist and bent on perpetuating a slow genocide,” said Chase Iron Eyes. “The recent anecdotal incidents along with the statistics presented in this report demonstrate that racism against Native Americans is palpable. It will not go anywhere unless we unite as a people and stand together against it.”

Please read the full report by clicking here.

---

Updated ICWA Guidelines: On February 24, Kevin Washburn and the Bureau of Indian Affairs released new guidelines for the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to ensure that the rights of Native American families and children are met. Some of these guidelines, among many others, include:

• State courts and agencies must ask in every child custody proceeding whether ICWA applies
• Courts should follow ICWA procedures even when the Indian child is not removed from the home in order to allow tribes to intervene as early as possible to assist in preventing a breakup of the family
• Information on how to contact a tribe
• Notice is required for each proceeding in a child custody case, and tribes have the right to intervene at any time

For the entire updated guidelines to ICWA, please go to: http://www.bia.gov/cs/groups/public/documents/text/idc1-029447.pdf

Relevant news coverage: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com and http://www.redlakenationnews.com

We applaud these guidelines, and we know they will help many people in Indian country. We and our tribal allies, however, have stopped hoping that South Dakota will ever follow the ICWA and are working on “Moving the Money” from the state to the tribes for Child and Family Services.

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Although Attorney General Marty Jackley has publicly stated that he was not connected to the Mette case, Black states, "For Jackley to say that he was not involved in the decision making process with respect to my investigation is ludicrous."

Black states that, "I will not pretend to have any solutions to correct the plight of Native American children in the South Dakota Justice system, I will say, it is obvious that changes need to be made now and that the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act needs to be readdressed by the U.S. Congress."

For the entire interview, go to:

http://broughttolight.com/2015/02/24/extra-mark-black-statement-on-mette-rape-scandal/

Click here to read our report on the Mette Scandal, "Abandoned and Forgotten,"

We do have the solution: Create foster care for Lakota, by Lakota. The corruption will not stop until this solution is realized! We have been working daily with the Department of Justice since our delegation returned from their trip to Washington DC in December. Please help us if you can by donating to keep the work moving forward. Our Lakota staff and the five remaining tribes are depending on your compassionate heart.

Blessings and thanks to all who watch over these efforts.

Lakota People's Law Project

Why It's Illegal for Me to Find My Birth Mother, and How I Found Her

By Trace

The idea to open your adoption is full of technicality and cost. You have to know where you were born, which state, their laws and most importantly what you can do legally to find your first family. Many states are now changing their laws, making them partly open records, allowing the mother to say yes or no to contact. It's not easy out there. In my memoir One Small Sacrifice, I described how I did it. How it took years, how my mother refused to meet me but she finally gave me information to find my father Earl Bland....I wish it were easier to do this whole process but in the end, I did meet my dad and we had reunion. I wish that for every adoptee out there...

Janice Howe: Grandmother fights to preserve families #ICWA

'We get the kids back': Native American grandmother fights to preserve families

In South Dakota, 51% of children in foster care are Native American but one woman turned de facto legal counselor is using the law to change that

Janice Howe at home, showing family pictures. The South Dakota grandmother turned her outrage into a mission to help families on reservations know their rights. Photograph: Sue Purchase

Laura Rena Murray | 2 March 2015 | The Guardian

Sitting on the quiet plains of South Dakota, the Crow Creek reservation is buried in snow. Janice Howe’s tiny home, nested in a sparse enclave of houses, is a warm haven against the winter chill. She slips bits of dough into a sizzling pan as her granddaughter and nieces joyously chase one another. As the girls tumble over one another, Howe talks about her work: her role is to bring Native American children back to the reservation. They were, she says, stolen by the state – and the story starts with her own family.
“They take children away [from families] because there’s no food in the house so I find a way to help them get food, keep their lights on, get their rent paid,” she says. “I remember that heartache. I don’t want any other families to go through that.”
The former public health nurse is still outraged about the day, five years ago, representatives from the state’s department of social services (DSS) showed up on her daughter’s doorstep without warning and hauled her grandkids away. Howe says the allegations of neglect were flimsy, and ultimately unsubstantiated. By placing her grandchildren in state foster homes outside the tribe, DSS also violated Howe’s rights under the Indian child welfare act (ICWA), a federal law that is supposed to protect children of Native American tribes from state interventions and removals.
That law, experts say, is a way to shield native families from allegations of neglect based on poverty. It reads:

In judging the fitness of a particular family, many social workers, ignorant of Indian cultural values and social norms, make decisions that are wholly inappropriate in the context of Indian family life and so they frequently discover neglect or abandonment where none exists.

It took 21 months for Howe to get her grandchildren back – enough time for her to study and use the act to her advantage by transferring her case to a tribal court. Afterward, she started a support group on Facebook for Native American mothers and grandmothers who are fighting their state courts for custody of their children.
“Is very comforting to know that there are others who have walked down this path in regards to our children,” posts Brenda Charger, a Lakota grandmother from Pierre, South Dakota. “So thankful to have found this group helps to know that I am not alone in this deal. Wopila, ladies!”

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