I filed this week and paid $13 - now I wait... Trace
More information about the new law, as well as required forms and fees, are available on the Minnesota Department of Health website at www.health.state.mn.us/people/vitalrecords/adoption.html.
You can file online as well... I wrote a check and mailed it.
Earlier post: https://blog.americanindianadoptees.com/2024/05/reminder-minnesota-adoption-records.html
US REP TOM COLE
BY D. SEAN ROWLEY
Senior Reporter
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Recently, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers announced their introduction of legislation intended to add some reinforcement to the Indian Child Welfare Act.
The “Strengthening Tribal Families Act of 2024” would require the Department of Health and Human Services to create a technical assistance plan using six metrics of data to assess the strengths and weaknesses of states’ implementation plans of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
The measure was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, along with Reps. Judy Chu, D-California; Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma; Sharice Davids, D-Kansas; and Dan Kildee, D-Missouri.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, will introduce the legislation in the U.S. Senate.
“The Indian Child Welfare Act protects vulnerable Native American children from being taken from their tribal communities and culture during custody or guardianship proceedings,” Cole said. “However, due to such a high rate of Indian children entering into our foster care system, ICWA is not enough. I am proud to have partnered with Congressman Bacon, Congresswoman Chu, Congresswoman Davids, Congressman Schweikert and Congressman Kildee to lead the Strengthening Tribal Families Act of 2024, which will strengthen ICWA protections and ensure Native American children remain in their own communities.”
Congress passed ICWA in 1978 to address the high rate of Native children being removed from their homes and separated from families. The ICWA established federal standards for the removal of Native American children from their homes while prioritizing placement in homes with their Indian culture. ICWA also sets federal requirements for state child abuse and adoption cases for Native children.
In June 2023, the ICWA received a boost when it was ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court with a 7-2 decision in Halaand v. Brackeen.
“Brackeen was a landmark decision and a major victory for Native tribes, children and the future of our culture and heritage,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said. “But more needs to be done to strengthen the Indian Child Welfare Act and protect the law from future attacks. I applaud Reps. Bacon, Chu, Cole, Davids and Kildee for introducing this important legislation, and Sen. Baldwin for carrying this effort in the Senate. Cherokee Nation supports this bill and will advocate for its passage.”
The implementation of ICWA continues to vary between states and Native tribal interests. Estimates have suggested Native American children are 2.5 times more likely to enter the foster care system than non-Native children. This bill is intended to allow HHS to be able to provide states with evidence-based assistance to improve their plans for implementation of ICWA.
“The Strengthening Tribal Families Act of 2024 will help states improve their compliance with ICWA, which will help more Indian children remain within their tribal culture,” Bacon said. “With Indian children disproportionately represented in the foster care system, this bill will help us achieve better outcomes for Indian children. Research shows us kinship placement helps children develop a stronger attachment to their extended family and culture.”
Chu cited the “unfinished work” of helping Native children who enter the foster care be placed with homes that have a familiar culture.
“I’m leading the Strengthening Tribal Families Act of 2024 … so we can assist state child welfare agencies in implementing those critical ICWA federal protections for tribal children,” Chu said. “By strengthening the relationships between these agencies and the courts and comprehensively analyzing data supplied to HHS by states at regular intervals, the federal government can secure better outcomes for tribal children everywhere and support Indian Country.”
Most of the time adoption is viewed as a rescue in a sense. A child in need of a home is given one with a family who will raise that child as their own. That simple story often doesn’t resemble the reality of what adoption can mean for a child or that child’s first mother. That is even more true if a child was a part of a Native American tribe at any time over the history of our country.
The number of children adopted out of Native American tribes is so unclear that journalist and Native American Adoptee Trace Lara Hentz has embarked on an ambitious plan to get a count of every Native American adoptee she can this year. She tries to explain just how far-flung Native Adoptees can be.
“The United States adoptees, some of them were sent to Canada and some of the Canadian adoptees were sent to the United States, but like the story I published on the American Indian adoptees.com. There was a young woman from Canada who was taken to Scotland. I mean, literally, these adoptees are everywhere. I had a friend who found an adoptee in Iceland, So that’s why this count means so much to me. No one has ever published an actual count, one that we can look at and trust. It’s long overdue.” (1)
How did we get here? The tension between America’s original inhabitants and European settlers has been present since before America as a nation existed. Europeans tried to control or destroy the Native population in a variety of ways over the years. It was in the 1800s that they began to take the tribes’ children As Elizabeth Hidalgo Reece so aptly said in her article in Harper’s Bazaar, “The United States figured out a long time ago that it is impossible for a tribal nation to survive without its next generation.” (2) Native children were placed into boarding schools. The language and culture of their tribes of origin were forbidden. Children were dressed in the costumes of traditional European children and taught a whitewashed curriculum. More than 75% of the Native children who were in school at the turn of the century were in these boarding schools. (3) Life in a Native American boarding school wasn’t just harsh in the sense that the children there were deprived of their Native community. These schools were prone to disease outbreaks. Abuse of all kinds was known to plague these schools. The combination of lack of health care and abuse led to the deaths of hundreds of Native children throughout the existence of these schools. The number of dead in America is still not completely known. (4)
Even when the boarding school movement began to wind down in the late 1950s to 1960s that didn’t mean that efforts to separate native children from their families using adoption was over. In this period the Indian Adoption Project began. (5)This was another government policy. Rather than shuffling Native children into boarding schools, this policy sought to get them placed into white families. It is said that social workers sometimes came to native homes and just took children without talking to the adults involved. (5)The criteria for taking children was often questionable, but Native people didn’t have the standing to speak up for themselves or their families. As many as ⅓ of Native children during this time were taken from their homes and placed with non-native families. (6) Before better protections were in place it is said that 75-80% of families living on a reservation had lost at least one child to adoption outside of their tribe.
In 1978, less than 50 years ago, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act. (7). Finally, potentially for the first time in our Country’s history, the voice of Native people pleading for their right to exist was starting to be heard. Common sense minimum standards were set that needed to be met before Native children could be taken from their homes. If children did need to leave their first families this law required that homes within the tribe be sought first, then if one couldn’t be found it mandated that a home be sought in another tribe before any non-native family is found for the children. (8)
Native tribes can’t rest, though. Even as recently as recently as 2023 the Supreme Court weighed in on a case that may have meant that the ICWA was pronounced unconstitutional. In this case, a white family adopted a Navaho boy. The Navaho tribe stepped up, requesting that the boy be placed with a Navaho family. One of the arguments made in the case was that the white family was being discriminated against based on race. The tribe argued that tribal memberships were a citizenship designation and not a race. In the end, the ICWA was preserved. (9)
Children from Native tribes do sometimes legitimately need to be placed outside of their homes. When they do, compliance with the ICWA isn’t always followed as well as it should be. Part of the reason might be that those involved in the placement might not understand fully what is at stake (10) People, social workers especially, need to comprehend the importance of preserving Native tribes by making sure the children of tribes are immersed as fully as possible in their birth culture.
As much as non-Native families want to help the children of Native tribes, their place may not be to care for Native children themselves. Non-Native placements are looked at as a last resort by the ICWA after extended family, or Native American foster homes, whether those are within the child’s tribe or from another tribe. (11)
If we look back over the history of the Native people in America and the many attempts that this country has made to extinguish them and their culture, it starts to make sense that placing a Native child anywhere they cannot easily access their tribe and culture is much more than an inconvenience. Making sure Native children know their heritage can in some ways mean the life or death of their tribe and the tribe’s unique ways. (12)
Knowledge of the history of this issue is necessary to be a true ally of Native people today. Making sure a child is in a safe home is necessary, but when we understand how the future of Native tribes rely on the ability to pass their culture and language down to the children of that tribe, that should change how non-Natives support them. We should be striving to support keeping children within their culture rather than separating them.
“Try as he might to comprehend the life on the far side of the ocean that the white man described, the brown man was unable. Such a life was beyond belief. He could not envision one man or a small group of men and women owning all the land, all the animals, all who dwelt upon it, all the produce, man’s labor and his harvest, and men’s lives. But he felt sorry for his friend.” – Basil Johnston, THE MANITOUS (1995), Chapter 11, AUTTISSOOKAUNUK, describing the strangers with light complexions who landed on the brown man’s land and described Europe. Tribes had no concept for what he described, which was colonization and slavery.
(👆this is my favorite quote)
What has been written about the European’s arrival is for the most part sinister. In rock art, scrolls and oral history, tribes recorded, understood and remembered the events of early colonial contact by means of symbolic images: Manitous (or spirits), floating islands, flying and underwater ships, giant birds, thunder and lighting, sounds of music in the air, a strange white whale, dreams, premonitions and warnings. Early tribes viewed Puritan disregard for ritual to mean earthly disaster and punishment. The tribes believed these aliens were Manitous possessing a powerful spirit. (This is according to missionaries who knew the tribes here in the northeast. And of course, this was written from their perspective…) (I use “Indian” in this text, as they did.)
Anishinaabe say: After the French came the Zhaaganaash (“Off-shore ones”) of Great Britain. But out of the Zhaaganaash came the Gichi-ookomaan (“Big-Knives”)—the Virginians (i.e. pre-Americans) via WIKI Wonder if the Anishinaabe have a word for serial killers?
The Indians lack of material wealth and simple lifestyle was viewed as a character flaw; Puritans could not comprehend their apparent lack of interest in wealth. (The “Indian” had no concept of being owned or owning land.)
**
President Thomas Jefferson
“This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.”
Jefferson
owned many slaves, had offspring with slaves, and had a fancy plantation, of
course. (In Virginia)
These are real crimes and real atrocities against Indigenous First Nations People yet no one involved has been charged or put in prison? Their goal?
When details of the Indian Adoption Projects were sealed and files were closed after adoptions, a child would not have his/her name or tribal identity anymore, with their birth certificate altered and falsified. Tribal membership might exist for some adoptees on paper but with secrecy and sealed files, the adult adoptee would never know or be able to find out.
It appears that was the plan.
Connecting
Threads: Five Siblings Lost and Found is a powerful story of identity,
belonging, and the resilience of the human spirit. All were separated by
foster care and closed adoptions. One sibling’s life and search for first family, belonging, and culture, one thread at a time.
1. REJECTING
Narcissistic Parents or caregivers who display rejecting behavior toward a child will often [purposefully or unconsciously] let a child know, in a variety of ways, that he or she is unwanted. Putting down a child’s worth or belittling their needs is one form these types of emotional abuse may take. Other examples can include telling a child to leave or worse, to get out of your face, calling him names or telling the child that he is worthless, making a child the family scapegoat or blaming him for family/sibling problems. Refusing to talk to or holding a young child as he or she grows can also be considered abuse.
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Wilfred Buck by Lisa Jackson | 92 min
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/wilfred-buck
New trailer: vimeo.com/942488273/38a2dbba43
Wilfred Buck is an Ininiw (Cree) astronomer, author, educator, Knowledge Keeper and lecturer originally from Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN). He graduated from the University of Manitoba with two degrees in Education and has 25 years of experience as an educator, working with students from kindergarten to university. Considered the foremost authority on Indigenous astronomy in the world, Wilfred is the author of Tipiskawi Kisik: Night Sky Star Stories (2018), the semi-autobiographical I Have Lived Four Lives (2021) and Kitcikisik (Great Sky): Tellings That Fill the Night Sky (2021).
The film was screened in June featuring a live Q&A with filmmaker Lisa Jackson.
Weaving together moments of his life today as an expert in Indigenous cosmology and his past as a troubled young child and teen, charismatic Cree Elder Wilfred Buck shares his embodied wisdom and profound reflections on colonial trauma in this expertly crafted adaptation of his autobiographical memoir, I Have Lived Four Lives.
When his family is cruelly torn from their land during the Sixties Scoop, Buck is left to survive on his own, falling into the darkness of addiction, until he discovers the cosmological teachings of his people and finds his way, guided by the celestial beings that become his compass and the focus of his life’s work. Using archival footage, stylized re-enactments, poetic imagery and vérité, director Lisa Jackson brilliantly jumps between genres to craft a constellation of Buck’s key life moments and memories, charting his journey to a knowledge system that survived colonization by going underground, now revived by Buck’s endless curiosity and marvel of the Ininew night sky.
About Lisa Jackson
Lisa Jackson is an Anishinaabe (Aamjiwnaang) filmmaker whose work has garnered two Canadian Screen Awards, been nominated for a Webby and screened at top festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Berlinale and Hot Docs. Her NFB VR experience Biidaaban was viewed by more than 25,000 people, while her film Indictment won Best Doc at imagineNATIVE and is one of CBC’s top watched documentaries. She won the 2022 Chicken & Egg Award and the 2021 DOC Vanguard Award, and has an MFA from York University.
You can hear Buck tell the Mista Muskwa story here: https://soundcloud.com/scifri/wilfred-buck-tells-the-story-of-mista-muskwa
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| This webinar is the first of what will become a series. Facilitators recommended also learning from Native Skywatchers, the Anishinaabe Sky Star Map, and resources from Elder Wilfred Buck. |
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| Why do we accept as universal the teachings of constellations by their Greek names and stories? Indigenous peoples have their own stories and names for the star formations. These stories capture teachings about the land, medicines, animals and our relations. We don’t need to replace the Indigenous worldview. It’s just as valid. |
NABS is proud to announce the launch of the National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive (NIBSDA), the first-ever digital archives database on Indian Boarding Schools. NIBSDA is a groundbreaking project aimed at preserving and bringing to light the history of the U.S. Indian Boarding School era. Over the last four years, NABS has been dedicated to compiling and digitizing records from Indian boarding schools.
Through NIBSDA, survivors, families, researchers, educators, tribal leaders, and the general public will have the ability to access information that allows them to gain a better understanding of what happened at Indian boarding schools. This digital repository will include documents, photographs, and oral histories, offering invaluable insights into the experiences of those who attended these institutions and the impact they had and continue to have on Native communities.
"This initiative marks a significant milestone in NABS commitment to truth, healing, and justice," said NABS CEO Deborah Parker (Tulalip Tribes). "The majority of all Indian boarding school records are currently not available to the public, by making these records accessible, we are taking a big step towards honoring the history and strength of Native peoples and building a more just and equitable future."
