Immigration, Adoptees and The Identity Police: The REAL ID ACT of 2005

By Trace Hentz, Blog Editor

Have you tried to get a driver's license recently? I spoke to a cousin in Illinois who was not given a driver's license (renewal) but a piece of paper instead. She is not adopted. The Illinois Motor Vehicles people told her they are doing a background check first then will mail it to her. (My cousin has lived in Illinois all her life and she is over 60.)
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
We have seen this coming. (I was worried in 2005 when I went to get a passport and had to mail them my fake birth certificate.)
In 2011, Leland Morrill wrote this Facebook post on his concerns about the lack of original birth certificates for many Native adoptees like him. Leland did not have a birth certificate but a Certificate of No Birth Record.
READ HERE 

Leland contributed to the book series Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects. In the first book TWO WORLDS he shared he had not found his mother or father and was adopted by Mormons. In the second book CALLED HOME he found his mother's family. In STOLEN GENERATIONS, the third book, he found and met all his clans and his father.

Each year for an adoptee, information can drip drip drip and finally come. It's not a fast process. Each piece of paper helps.
You have two parents and two family trees. Never give up hope of finding the paperwork and the people.

ALSO::: If you adopted a child, request their adoption file as soon as possible. If you signed these documents you have the right to have a certified copy of the adoption proceedings and court documents. You and your adopted child will need ALL this information, when they reach adulthood. If you adopted a child from another country, did you get them their US citizenship records? If not, they could be deported. It is that serious.

If you do not have documentation of any kind, call the local FBI right now and explain your situation and remind them of the REAL ID ACT - and how it affects you as an adoptee.


This is what Leland shared about the REAL ID ACT of 2005:

REAL ID ACT of 2005 passages affecting me and possibly other Native Americans:
(pg 42) TITLE II—IMPROVED SECURITY FOR DRIVERS’ LICENSES AND PERSONAL
IDENTIFICATION CARDS
(pg 43) Minimum document requirements:
(pg 44) (2) The person’s date of birth.
(pg 45) (B) Documentation showing the person’s date of birth
(pg 46) (C) TEMPORARY DRIVERS’ LICENSES AND17 IDENTIFICATION CARDS

(i) IN GENERAL.—If a person presents evidence under any of clauses (v) through (ix) of subparagraph (B), the State may only issue a temporary driver’s license or temporary identification card to the person. (ii) EXPIRATION DATE.—A temporary driver’s license or temporary identification card issued pursuant to this subparagraph shall be valid only during the period of time of the applicant’s authorized stay in the United States or, if there is no definite end to the period of authorized stay, a period of one year.
There will be undocumented Native Americans who will find through their respective state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) they no longer have the eligible documentation to maintain or be issued an Identification Card or Drivers License.  Some will be issued a temporary "paper" 1 to 6 month extension, up to one year, as per The Real ID ACT of 2005.  Others will not.  Once the State issued temporary extension, Identification, Drivers License expires, these Native Americans (me included) will become undocumented, thus illegal with no papers.
One of the main reasons for me setting up this Facebook page is because I never received correspondence from Representative Sensenbrenner. In addition, through 22 years of research, my own research has resulted in obtaining a State of Arizona Certificate of No Birth, keep in mind the Navajo Nation adopted me out in Chinle, Arizona.
My State of Arizona "Certificate of No Birth," was issued December 21, 2010, the result of my continuous research since September 07, 1989.
So far, with the help of my close friends, and people willing to help, my own financing, tens of thousands of US dollars later, I now have a State of Arizona Certificate of No Birth and a second State issued 6 month temporary paper Drivers License expiring July 13, 2011. My United States of America CITIZENSHIP expires on that date, again JULY 13, 2011. By virtue of the REAL ID ACT of 2005, States may only issue temporary Drivers Licenses and Identification for those who currently have one for an additional year. I am one of those cases.

Representative Sensenbrenner's Real ID ACT of 2005 will make me an ILLEGAL ALIEN who cannot work, and cannot access medical care, obtain a credit card, bank account, vote, and any right that is afforded a United States Citizen because of not having a current State issued Identification Card or Drivers License. My citizenship expires July 13, 2011 after my second 6 month temporary State issued Drivers License does.  (Leland was able to get this resolved.) Commissioner Chai Feldblum delivered a copy of my version of the Real IS Act to Jim Sensenbrenner.. The same day I talked to Chai Feldblum at UCLA School of Law, the Navajo Nation called me to tell me they were going to issue my Birth Certificate.

*** My Final Thoughts

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) originally estimated that REAL ID will cost $23.1 billion over 10 years. DHS planned to extend the deadline in 2013. Now it's 2017 and states must put it into effect.
In 2017, tell your governor to boycott it!  If you are an adoptee, explain why you cannot access your original birth certificate (if you live in a state with sealed adoption records.) Tell them what you stand to lose!
When an adoption is finalized, a new birth certificate for the child is customarily issued to the adoptive parents. The adoptive parents names are listed on our amended birth certificate.  The original birth certificate is then sealed and kept confidential by the State registrar of vital records. In the past, nearly all States required a court order for adoptees to gain access to their original birth certificates. In approximately 26 States, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, and Puerto Rico, a court order is still required.

Read more about your state's adoption laws here (2009 report):
www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/statutes/infoaccessap.cfm

Lawmakers ignorance about adoptees is not only dangerous, it's another SCARY chapter of adoption culture!

The Identity Police are asking for our identification and they are the ones withholding it for adoptees?

If anyone reading this blog has been denied a driver's license because you are an adoptee and do not have a copy of an original birth certificate  - please email me: laratrace@outlook.com.  You can also read about Navajo adoptee Leland Morrill on this blog - use the search bar to find his posts. He had difficulty replacing his lost driver's license...but was successful and is now an advocate for all of us adoptees.

Human Trafficking in Indian Country

The General Accounting Office has published a report, HUMAN TRAFFICKING: Information on Cases in Indian Country or that Involved Native Americans.

Human trafficking—the exploitation of

a person typically through force, fraud,

or coercion for such purposes as

forced labor, involuntary servitude or

commercial sex

—is occurring in the

United States and

involves vulnerable

populations. Native Americans are

considered a vulnerable population

because of high rates of poverty and

abuse, and other factors. GAO was

asked to research human trafficking

taking place in Indian country and

trafficking of Native American persons

regardless of where they are located in

the United States

.

PDF

NOTE: If you are an adoptee and do not have papers, and your adoptive parents have died CONTACT THE FBI immediately. Many adoptions were done by private attorneys and you could be a victim of human trafficking and were sold into adoption. 

https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/victims-human-trafficking-other-crimes
 

Who Holds Your Truth?

TRIBAL JUSTICE DOCUMENTARY: reexamine the current definition of justice in America

New PBS Documentary on Native American Judges Focuses on Rehabilitative Justice

TV News Desk 

"We are village people. We have village values. And those values compel us to take care of each other, our families and our country," says Abby Abinanti, chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Court and the first Native American woman admitted to the State Bar of California. Tribal Justice spotlights tribal courts that incorporate indigenous customs and beliefs into their justice systems. The film follows Abby Abinanti and Claudette White, chief judges in two of the more than 300 tribal courts across the country, as they navigate cross-jurisdictional issues in their courts and communities.

Tribal Justice has its national broadcast premiere on the PBS documentary series POV (Point of View) on Monday, August 21, 2017. POV is American television's longest-running independent documentary series, now in its 30th season.  

TRAILER: http://www.pbs.org/pov/tribaljustice/

White is the chief judge of the Quechan Tribal Court in the Southern California desert. She says the affiliated tribe has been "vastly diminished," but never removed from its homeland. "We have a lot of social ills in our community based on our location and the limitation to services," she says. "In my capacity as chief judge, what I'm fighting for is our people, our independence, our sovereignty, our existence."

White sees Abinanti as a mentor, and both women are focused on restoring their communities rather than punishing offenders. The Yurok and Quechan tribes are the two largest in California. Each faces its own unique issues, but Abinanti and White share the goal of increasing safety and decreasing incarceration in an effort to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. Both judges are passionate about preserving their cultures and creating new pathways to justice for families dealing with historical trauma and intergenerational addiction.

"You guys could be leaders in our community or you could help destroy our community," White tells two teenage boys in her court.

Studies show that rural areas and American Indian reservations are plagued by the manufacturing, trafficking and use of crystal methamphetamine. Reservations are targeted by non-Native drug cartels. Native Americans have the highest meth usage of any ethnic group in the nation, resulting in extremely high crime and incarceration rates. Abinanti remarks, "The state has a lot of responsibility for all the people. I have responsibility to one set of people-6,000 Yuroks and their families. And that's what I'm responsible for: for that and for this land."

Viewers first meet Taos Proctor, a large and gregarious young man, in Abinanti's tribal court in 2013. While out on parole from San Quentin State Prison, Proctor was arrested with methamphetamine on his person; he is facing a third-strike conviction and 25 years to life in prison. Over two years, the film follows Abinanti and her staff as they take on Proctor's case and help him to complete court programs and rebuild his life.

A thousand miles to the south, White invokes the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 to reunite an autistic and epileptic 9-year-old boy with his family. She also takes on a more personal case when she becomes the legal guardian to her troubled teenage nephew, Isaac Palone. Palone has recently left a group home and faces two felony charges for breaking into cars; his case is in state court rather than tribal court, and he is at risk of beginning a life shuttling in and out of prison.

Tribal Justice contradicts the entrenched mainstream narrative that depicts Native Americans as locked in hopeless circumstances as their tribes vanish. Abinanti and White's struggles and triumphs tell a different story, one of strong female leaders working alongside their people to affirm tribal sovereignty and break free of the systems of poverty and inequality confronting Native Americans today.

Director Anne Makepeace says that she was immediately moved by the two judges upon meeting them in 2013 and felt that audiences needed to know about their work. "I realized the film would educate a broad audience about something few Americans know about-tribal courts-and that it could have a tremendous positive impact on our criminal justice system."

"Tribal Justice challenges viewers to reexamine the current definition of justice in America," says POV executive producer Justine Nagan. "Through the often personal experiences of two powerful women striving to elevate their people through the tribal court process, Anne Makepeace gives us the opportunity to watch a rarely seen justice system effectively at work."

SOURCE

'It's a way of moving forward': Innu leaders praise announcement of inquiry into children in care

Innu leaders say there needs to be more of an effort to keep troubled Aboriginal children in Labrador, with treatment that includes a focus on their culture and roots.
The removal of children from their homes in Labrador has also been flagged by the province's child and youth advocate who has called for a new community-based approach to child welfare in the region.
In March, CBC News reported that 265 children from Labrador were living in foster care — including many from Inuit communities who had been sent to foster homes on the island of Newfoundland.

Uprooted: Why so many of Labrador's children are in foster care so far away from home

In Natuashish, a community of 963 people, there are 60 children in care of provincial government agencies.
Sheshashiu, the other Innu community in Labrador, with a population of 671, had 90 children in care.

"This is unacceptable that your children are being taken from you," Carolyn Bennett told him at the time. "We are going to change it."

Source: 'It's a way of moving forward': Innu leaders praise announcement of inquiry into children in care - Newfoundland & Labrador - CBC News

Powwows, rodeos, homecomings today

How do Indians observe the 4th of July? Do we celebrate? 

To answer, let’s turn back the pages of time. A reasonable chapter to begin in is July 1776, when the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence and 13 colonies became the United States of America. With the emergence of a nation interested in expanding its territory came the issue of what to do with American Indians. History tells us that as the American non-Indian population increased, the indigenous population greatly decreased, along with their homelands and cultural freedoms.

From the beginning, U.S. government policy contributed to culture and land loss. Keeping our focus on the 4th of July, however, let’s jump to the early 1880s, when Secretary of the Interior Henry Teller developed what has come to be called the Religious Crimes Code—regulations at the heart of the Department of Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, Code of Indian Offenses that prohibited American Indian ceremonial life.

Bottom of Form

Teller’s general guidelines to all Indian agents were to end tribal dances and feasts. Enforced on reservations, the code banned Indian ceremonies, disrupted religious practices, and destroyed or confiscated sacred objects. Indian ceremonial activities were prohibited under threat of imprisonment and/or the withholding of treaty rations.

The Secretary of the Interior issued this Code of Regulations in 1884, 1894, and 1904 through Indian Affairs Commissioner’s circulars and Indian agent directives. Indian superintendents and agents implemented the code until the mid-1930s. During this 50-year period, Indian spiritual ceremonies such as the Sun Dance and Ghost Dance were held in secret or ceased to exist. Some have since been revived or reintroduced by Indian tribes.

KEEP READING 

All across Indian country, tribes hold modern celebrations— including powwows, rodeos, and homecomings—that coincide with the United States’ Independence Day celebrations. 

READ July 4th Facts 

Indian Humor

History: Britain’s Futile Attempt to Keep American Colonists From Taking Tribal Land

A Unique Moment in American Mapmaking

In a futile attempt to keep American colonists from taking tribal land, British surveyors and Native American leaders drew a border along the Appalachian Mountains. Then the Revolutionary War happened.

***

In the 1760s, the government in Britain was taking a new approach to its vast colonial holdings, and in 1763, colonial governors and tribal leaders met in Fort Augusta, Georgia, for the first of 10 congresses at which they negotiated a geographic separation. The king had ordered that there should be a limit to colonial expansion—if a tribe claimed a stretch of land, a colonial governor was not supposed to grant it to settlers. The Fort Augusta meeting began with the tribal representatives describing what they believed to be the extent of their territory. Over the course of several congresses, the diplomats agreed on a boundary between tribal lands and the seaboard colonies. This negotiated line was supposed to limit conflict for the foreseeable future.

LINK 

***

Royal Proclamation of 1763 (wiki)

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian 

US Tribes Call for Testimonies on Missing American Indian & Alaska Native Boarding School Children

Published June 30, 2017

WASHINGTON – On June 15, 2017, at its Mid‐Year Conference in Connecticut, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) adopted a resolution, sponsored by the Chickasaw Nation, encouraging American Indian and Alaska Native Tribal Nations, families, and descendants to provide information on children who never returned home from Indian Boarding Schools.

Source: US Tribes Call for Testimonies on Missing American Indian & Alaska Native Boarding School Children - Native News Online

They Called Me Number One

Like thousands of Aboriginal children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school.
These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. Perhaps the most symbolically potent strategy used to alienate residential school children was addressing them by assigned numbers only—not by the names with which they knew and understood themselves.
In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family—from substance abuse to suicide attempts—and eloquently articulates her own path to healing. Number One comes at a time of recognition—by governments and society at large—that only through knowing the truth about these past injustices can we begin to redress them.



Reviews

"Deeply personal, sorrowful and ultimately triumphal, They Called Me Number One is an important addition to the literature on residential schools, and Canada's reckoning with its colonial past."
- Winnipeg Free Press

"Her memoir provides invaluable insight into the enduring effects of a tragic and shameful part of our collective past, and also helps to begin the process of healing."
- Danna Hansen, Quill & Quire

"Much of what has been written about the residential schools system, however, is so densely academic or historical that many readers simply tune it out. But Bev Sellars' memoir, They Called Me Number One, is neither, which is what makes it so accessible."

- Tyrone Burke, Canadian Geographic

About the Author

Bev Sellars: Bev Sellars is Chief of the the Xat'sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in Williams Lake, British Columbia. She holds a degree in history from the University of Victoria and a law degree from the University of British Columbia. She has served as an advisor to the BC Treaty Commission.

“Indian Children and the Federal-Tribal Trust Relationship” Now Available

Final Version of Fletcher & Singel’s “Indian Children and the Federal-Tribal Trust Relationship” Now Available

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Matthew L.M. Fletcher | Turtle Talk

Fletcher and Singel will published “Indian Children and the Federal-Tribal Trust Relationship” in the Nebraska Law Review.

Newly Released Census Numbers

American Indian & Alaska Native Population Growing

Published June 25, 2017

WASHINGTON – On Friday, the U.S. Census Bureau released new estimates on the population in the United States. Estimates released Friday, indicate the American Indian and Alaska Native population grew by 1.4 percent to 6.7 million between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016.






The American Indian and Alaska Native Population – Other Key Statistics:

• California had the largest American Indian and Alaska Native population of any state in 2016 (1.1 million), while Texas had the largest numeric increase since July 1, 2015 (10,800). Alaska had the highest percentage (19.9 percent) of the American Indian and Alaska Native population.
• Among counties, Los Angeles County, Calif., had the largest American Indian and Alaska Native population of any county in 2016 (233,200), and Maricopa County, Ariz., held the greatest increase from the previous year (4,100). Kusilvak Census Area, Alaska, had the highest share for this group (91.8 percent).

Safeguarding Tribal Sacred Items

Senator Udall said: “Native Americans have been the victims of theft and looting for generations. We have passed laws to stop it, but people are exploiting the loopholes in our current laws to sell these objects as art. They are not pieces of art – theft not only robs Tribes of sacred objects, it robs them of a piece of their spiritual identity. This bill is the strong action we need to put a stop to theft and sale and ensure Tribes have a seat at the table in the fight.”
READ 
A copy of the bill is available here.

The Standing Rock Sioux Claim ‘Victory and Vindication’ in Court #NoDAPL

A federal judge issues an important ruling for environmental-justice law in the United States.
READ: Standing Rock Sioux Claim 'Victory and Vindication' in Court - The Atlantic

HuffPo: “America Spent Centuries Mistreating Native American Children. Trump Is Making It Worse.”

A new look at the president's budget reveals devastating cuts to education.
READ: America Spent Centuries Mistreating Native American Children. Trump Is Making It Worse. | HuffPost

Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native Boarding Schools

Boys pray before bedtime with Father Keyes, St. Mary’s Mission School, Omak. © Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture/Eastern Washington State Historical Society, Spokane, WA

Native scholars describe the destruction of their culture as a “soul wound,” from which Native Americans have not healed. Embedded deep within that wound is a pattern of sexual and physical abuse that began in the early years of the boarding school system. Joseph Gone describes a history of “unmonitored and unchecked physical and sexual aggression perpetrated by school officials against a vulnerable and institutionalized population.” Gone is one of many scholars contributing research to the Boarding School Healing Project.
Rampant sexual abuse at reservation schools continued until the end of the 1980s, in part because of pre-1990 loopholes in state and federal law mandating the reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse. In 1987 the FBI found evidence that John Boone, a teacher at the BIA-run Hopi day school in Arizona, had sexually abused as many as 142 boys from 1979 until his arrest in 1987. The principal failed to investigate a single abuse allegation. Boone, one of several BIA schoolteachers caught molesting children on reservations in the late 1980s, was convicted of child abuse, and he received a life sentence. Acting BIA chief William Ragsdale admitted that the agency had not been sufficiently responsive to allegations of sexual abuse, and he apologized to the Hopi tribe and others whose children BIA employees had abused.
The effects of the widespread sexual abuse in the schools continue to ricochet through Native communities today. “We know that experiences of such violence are clearly correlated with posttraumatic reactions including social and psychological disruptions and breakdowns,” says Gone.

Read the full article here

Christians Only: The New Anti-Native Adoption Law in Texas

The Freedom to Serve Children Act, an anti-Native adoption law in Texas, protects the rights of child welfare providers to discriminate.

This law is unlikely to create problems for Indians who are willing to hew to the Christian line, but Texas is home to lots of Indians who follow the Native American Church. It appears to me from the outside that NAC people are as Christian as Mormons are, but I doubt that most Christians in a position to place children for adoption would see it that way, or know the difference between peyote and heroin.
Then there are always some Indians still doing their best to follow traditional beliefs. (Where we say “traditional,” many Christians who demanded this bill would say “heathen.”) Other Indians let go of their traditional beliefs but still did not buy what the missionaries were selling. They end up like a lot of white people: not atheists or even agnostics but rather “unchurched.”

Source: Christians Only: The New Anti-Native Adoption Law in Texas - Indian Country Media Network

American Indian Children Still Removed From Homes ...

REBLOG:  AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: American Indian Children Still Removed From Homes 



By LEX TALAMO

SOURCE (2015)
Almost 40 years after the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) passed,
American Indian children are still being removed from their homes in
highly disproportionate numbers– at a rate almost three times higher
than any other ethnicity, excepting African American children.
Minnesota leads the list of states with the worst rates of
disproportionate removal– where American Indian children are overly
represented in the foster care system– according to a June 2015 report
from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.  Other
states with high numbers of disproportionate removal include Nebraska,
Iowa, Idaho, Wisconsin, Washington, South Dakota and Oregon.

Even in states without dramatic removal rates– like Arizona and New
Mexico– many American Indian children find themselves removed from their
families and placed in group homes, treatment centers or foster care.

In McKinley County, New Mexico,  American Indian children make up 73
percent of all children in foster care, according to a 2015  third
quarter report from the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families
Department (CYFD).  And in Arizona, over 1,300 American Indian children
were in the foster care system as of March 31, 2015, according to a
Department of Child Safety Child Welfare Report.

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 applies to any child of American
Indian descent who is an enrolled member or eligible for enrollment in
any federally recognized tribe. When an American Indian child enters
state custody, the state must contact the child’s tribe, and the tribe
has the right to transfer the case to tribal court or to participate in
court proceedings.

In order to help American Indian children stay connected to their
tribal cultures and identities, ICWA also established a placement
preference that starts with the child’s extended family and clan
relatives and then progresses to enrolled members of the child’s tribe
and enrolled members from any tribe– with placement of the child in a
non-Indian family as a last resort.

“Any child who might be Native American, they have a [cultural]
identity,” said Regina Yazzie, Program Director of the Navajo Nation
Division of Social Services.  “It’s a benefit.”

Yazzie added that across the country, state agencies struggle to find
American Indian foster families for children.  Finding placement
families on reservation land can prove equally challenging.
Data from the Children, Youth and Families Department of New Mexico
shows there are currently 43 American Indian foster care providers who
have 79 placements available– nowhere near enough for the 262 American
Indian children in New Mexico’s foster care system.  Melissa Otero from
AdoptUsKids.org also said through an email correspondence that less than
1 percent of all AdoptUsKids placement families identify as American
Indian.
When speaking with the Navajo Post, several tribal members mentioned
hardships on reservations that negatively impacted families’ ability to
foster– including poverty, poor housing, poor mental health care,
suicide, and addiction.
“Part of what’s going on [is] drug and alcohol numbers are sky high,”
said one tribal member, who wished to remain anonymous in order to be
able to speak freely. “There are not a lot of healthy families. There
are tons of families that care, but it takes structure, it takes money
[to foster], and so many families are overwhelmed with the day to day
living, how could they bring another child into their home?”
For the San Carlos Apache Tribe, methamphetamine poses a particular
devastating problem.   Social services Director Terry Ross said that the
reservation currently has an “epidemic of mothers with meth-exposed
babies.”
“We try to work with the family, but when mothers are addicted to
meth… it’s hard,” Ross said. “We can’t make people do anything. They
have to want to change for their child.”
Many tribes offer social services like counseling, parenting classes,
detox centers and emergency supplies to American Indian families in
need. But representatives from several tribes mentioned that funding is
limited and resources are stretched thin, so that American Indian
children continue to find themselves in foster care– where many undergo
significant trauma and loss of identity when growing up separated from
their tribes, communities, and cultures.

A Sense of Belonging

Sandra White Hawk, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota of the
Rosebud Sioux Tribe,  was adopted into a white missionary family when
she was 18 months old in the days before ICWA. The only Indian girl in
her community, she grew up with a sense of being “different.”

“My adoptive mother constantly reminded me that no matter what I did,
I came from a pagan race whose only hope for redemption was to
assimilate to white culture,” wrote White Hawk, now executive director
of the First Nations Repatriation Institute, on her website.

White Hawk added that people in her community were ignorant of her
culture when she was growing up; they would ask her to do rain dances or
give war whoops.  Susan Devan Harness, a member of the Confederated
Salish and Kootenai Tribes, was also adopted into a non-Indian family at
18 months. Harness said she was called “Squaw Girl” growing up and that
she had trouble finding dates in high school because her male
classmates’ mothers believed stereotypes that American Indian women were
promiscuous– and that dating one would get their sons in trouble.

“I have had privileges,” said Harness of her adoption. “Living in a
nice neighborhood, going to college, I have a Master’s Degree…a place at
the table. But I have paid a huge price for those privileges."

As part of that price, Harness said she was always fighting for a
place of belonging, and that many adoptees exist in an “in between
place” between their tribal communities and their adoptive families.
White Hawk’s website states that many adult adoptees also show traits of
survivors of trauma: anxiety, impulsivity, nightmares, guilt, and
unresolved guilt– and that much healing of these issues takes place for
adoptees when they reconnect with their tribal identities or “come
home.”

“In the beginning I didn’t see the importance of why anyone would
want to know my story as an adoptee because I didn’t understand the
prevalence,” said White Hawk. “I get it now.”

White Hawk added that reconnecting with her biological family and
tribe later in life allowed a “whole new part” of herself to awaken. 
She sees similar transformations in the adoptees she works with– as does
Karen Vigneault, a librarian who uses her research skills to search
genealogy records and connect adoptees with their families.

Vigneault said that adoptees face many obstacles back-peddling
through their pasts: opening sealed court documents, misspellings in
their ancestors’ names or lack of names which makes tracing families
difficult, and apprehension at returning to their communities and
families decades later. Despite the challenges, Vigneault provides her
help to adoptees free from charge.

“If Creator has people asking me for help, I can’t charge them for
that,” Vigneault said. “To help them come home… it should be a free
ride.”

A 2009 report published by the Annie E Casey Foundation found that
resilience– the ability to bounce back after a traumatic or difficult
experience– increases dramatically for American Indian individuals who
have seven protective factors in their lives, including: a sense of
belonging to a culture, spirituality, connections to the tribal language
and extended family, a sense of humor, a mindset of forward thinking or
“moving forward to the seventh generation,” and what authors Charlotte
Goodluck and Angela Willeto describe as “responses from the culture”–
which could include beadwork, drumming, sweat lodge, talking circles,
smudging, pow wows and other ceremonies.

The association between resilience and strong rootedness in tribal
culture have significant implications for American Indian children
within the foster care and adoption systems today.

Tania Valdez, associate director of the voluntary treatment foster
care program La Familia-Namaste, Inc in New Mexico, described the change
she saw occur in a young woman in care when an ICWA worker sent her
music and books from her Oklahoma tribe.

“I think it plays a tremendous role in her cultural identity. It’s
part of who she is,” Valdez said. “She’s removed from her community, but
it gave her a piece of her culture, and she embraced that.”

Nikki Kull, executive vice president of The Ranches in New Mexico,
said that children in care struggle to transition from one culture to
another, regardless of their race.

“We had some siblings from the Yuni tribe who were very connected to
their culture… and it was hard for them to be separated from their
culture. It’s heart-breaking to see,” Kull said. “I desperately
understand the need for kids to stay within their culture, but the fact
remains there aren’t enough homes.”

The Indian Child Welfare Act Today


Several judges who spoke with the Navajo Post said that ICWA was
meant to be a gold standard for family law cases– that active efforts to
work with families before removing children from their homes would be
in the best interest of all children regardless of their race.

But lawsuits in several states– Minnesota, Arizona, Oklahoma and
Virginia– challenge the constitutionality of ICWA. Common arguments
include that the Act’s language discriminates against American Indian
children on race alone and that the Act violates due process and privacy
rights guaranteed by the Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Judge Tim Connors, who teaches at the University of Michigan Law
School and helps train new judges in handling ICWA cases, said that
family law is mainly an issue for state courts, so that applying  ICWA– a
federal law– to American Indian family cases is a “foreign concept” for
many judges.  But he added that American Indian children are
particularly harmed when removed from their families.

“Data shows the trauma when we separate children from their
communities and their culture and their lineages,” Connors said. “And it
is particularly harmful for Native American children.”
Judge William Thorne, vice-president of the National Indian Justice
Center and a former member of the Board of Trustees for the National
Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, said that while some judges
and lawyers see ICWA as a violation of their code of ethics regarding
fairness, ICWA was created with American Indian children’s best interest
in mind.
“In tribal communities, if you cut a child off from their family,
grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, that really is almost active
abuse against that child, because in Indian communities things happen
based on relationships,” Thorne said in a video produced by the
Mississippi Administrative Office of Courts.
Judge Leonard Edwards, a retired judge who served for 26 years as a
Superior Court Judge and six years as Judge-in-Residence at the Center
for Families, Children & the Courts, stated that the adversarial
processes prevalent in courts– where two or more sides argue their cases
and then a “winner” is declared– go against traditional American Indian
practices of resolving conflict.  Edwards said that the intention
behind ICWA was to help make sure that all of an American Indian child’s
resources were being considered.
“Social workers can be creative,” Edwards said. “It’s not mum and
dad, it’s the extended family and community. It’s different [in tribal
communities] and that can be difficult for our judges to understand.”
While ICWA has been acknowledged by many judges as a difficult law to
understand and implement, tribes across the country insist keeping
American Indian children connected to their tribes is of utmost
importance.
“[If not] They lose the language, the culture, the integrity of what
it is to be Native American and the values system,” said Doris Bailon,
director of Social Services of the Santo Domingo Pueblo.
Sandra White Hawk and Susan Devan Harness had a suggestion to reduce
the number of American Indian children entering the foster care system:
providing “front end services.”
“Instead of the money going to clothe and feed kids in foster care,
have that money going to strengthen Native families and communities,”
Harness said.  

The Invisible Indian

The Invisible Indian

Shelby Lisk 
May 23, 2016 
Poetry

It’s strange to me how people always want me to be an “authentic Indian” when I say I’m Haudenosaunee. They want me to look a certain way, act a certain way. They’re disappointed when what they get is…just me. White faced, red haired. They spent hundreds of years trying to assimilate my ancestors, trying to create Indians like who could blend in. But now they don’t want me either. They cant make up their minds.
They want buckskin and face paint, drumming, songs in languages they can’t understand
recorded for them- but with English subtitles, of course. They want educated, well-spoken,
but not too smart. Christian, well-behaved, never questioning. They want to learn the history
of the people, but not the ones who are here now, waving signs in their faces,
asking them for clean drinking water,
asking them why their women are going missing,
asking them why their land is being ruined.
They want fantastical stories of Indians that used to roam this land.
They want my culture behind glass in a museum.
But they don’t want me.
I’m not Indian enough.
They say I’m fake, but they don’t realize that every time I have to write and speak to them in English, the language of the colonizer, I am painfully aware of what I’ve lost. So I sneak around quietly, gathering pieces- beads here, a word there, a dance, a song, until I’m strong enough to stand tall and tell them who I am.
They tried to make Indians like me who could blend in.
My great grandmother moved her children out of their community into the big city of Toronto to try hid in plain sight.
Keep it.
Hush.
Hush.
I will break the silence.
I am clinging to every piece of my mom, my grandma, my great grandma that I have. I am clinging to any bit of tradition that found its way through the cracks, like a plant growing towards the light.
I have always been in love with these small pieces of resistance.
My great grandmother told my dad to bury my umbilical cord in the dirt behind my home, Now a trees grows from that piece of me. I am connected.
When my aunties gather around tea I will absorb every story they tell.
I will stare at photos of my Akshotha until they speak to me.
I will scavenge all the bits of knowledge from here and there and pull them together.
Close to my heart.
Cover them.
Protect them.
Bundle.
I will knit with my grandma’s needles. The only piece of her I have.
I will knit until I know her.
I will forgive. Forgive my mom, her mom, and her mom, for what they couldn’t teach me. They
always did the very best they could.
I will hold on for dear life.
I will dig my hands into the dirt.
I will let them drag
and pull on me
until the earth is embedded under my fingernails.
But I won’t let go.