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A high-speed police chase. A 17-year-old Crow boy, dead. The police
report? Nowhere to be found. The entire police department? Vanished. The
excruciating question that emerged: What happened to Braven Glenn?
The hunt for answers is at the heart of our searing new short filmAfter the Crash, by reporter Samantha Michaels and filmmaker Mark Helenowski.
Blossom
Old Bull was raising her son Braven, a diligent student and passionate
basketballer, in the Crow Nation in Montana. On a dark, chilly night in
November 2020, a police pursuit began while Braven was driving to meet
his girlfriend. Blossom was told her son was speeding and collided with a
train, but she had few other details. Despite his cries for help,
witnesses say they didn’t see law enforcement offer him medical
assistance. He didn’t survive.
Within
days, the police department that pursued Braven shuttered, leaving
behind no answers, only taped-up windows and locked doors. The force was
formed to increase law enforcement presence on the reservation, but by
the time of Braven’s death, after just five months in operation, it was
still under-resourced. Its sudden disappearance soon after a deadly
chase left Braven’s family and community desperately searching for
answers—a familiar agony, since official silence after deaths and
disappearances on Native reservations is painfully routine. And it
speaks to the federal government’s more than century-long practice of
grossly underfunding public safety and law enforcement on reservations,
while also under-investing in tribal health care, education, housing,
and infrastructure.
Read the full investigation—the cover story of our March+April 2024 print magazine—here.
Imprisoned for what exactly, you might ask... Being Indian was enough of a reason... TLH
Contested Native Artworks Resurface at Art Fair, Drawing Scrutiny
The drawings, taken from ledger books made by Native people
imprisoned in the 19th century, were sold at auction in 2022 against
tribal members’ wishes.
Earlier this year, David Nolan Gallery in New York mounted the exhibition Fort Marion and Beyond: Native American Ledger Drawings, 1865–1900,
gathering over 100 works on paper by Native artists from the Arapaho,
Cheyenne, Hidatsa, Kiowa, and Lakota tribes. Co-organized with Donald
Ellis Gallery, the show prominently featured works by Nokkoist (Bear’s
Heart) of the Cheyenne Nation and Ohettoint of the Kiowa Tribe, two of
72 Indigenous warriors who were imprisoned without trial at Fort Marion
in Florida between 1875 and 1878 after the Red River War. The United
States military campaign “aimed at the forced displacement and migration
of Southern Plains tribes onto reservations,” according to a press
release. Art critics called the show “plaintive, pathos-filled” and “heartbreaking,” and Hyperallergic’s John Yau remarked that “the drawings of Nokkoist and Ohettoit … belong in an art museum.”
What was not mentioned, by either the galleries or critics, is that
the exhibition featured several drawings from ledger books that were auctioned off by Bonhams in Los Angeles in 2022. Representatives for the Kiowa and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes attempted
unsuccessfully to halt the sale, based on the arguments that the ledger
books represented “significant cultural patrimony” and were created by
incarcerated artists, calling into question the “chain of custody of the
objects,” as Chairman of the Kiowa Tribe Lawrence SpottedBird wrote in a
letter to Bonhams.
The auction house did not disclose the identities of the buyer or
buyers of the four books, which sold for a total of $908,700 including
premiums. However, drawings by Nokkoist and Ohettoint were taken from
three of the books — which had been unbound, and the artworks
individually framed — and included in the Fort Marion and Beyond exhibition.
This past weekend, they were also featured in the Expo Chicago booth of dealer Donald Ellis, who confirmed to Hyperallergic that he was the buyer of those three books at Bonhams in 2022.
Members of the Kiowa and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, as well as
other Native individuals with knowledge of ledger drawings, reacted with
alarm and frustration when they learned of the recent displays.
“When I read your email, my heart dropped,” Shannon O’Loughlin (Choctaw), the CEO of the Association on American Indian Affairs, told Hyperallergic.
“It provides another level of evidence of how people are taking control
of our cultural heritage, working to create their own narrative that is
separate from the Native peoples who should be the true holders of this
type of cultural heritage.”
“It just feels wrong that they’re here,” Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez
Pueblo/Korean), co-founder and director of exhibitions and programs at
the Center for Native Futures, a Chicago-based Native arts nonprofit that also had a booth at Expo.
Yepa-Pappan and her colleagues confronted Ellis at his booth, asking
him where the ledger drawings came from and whether any Native groups or
descendants of the artists were benefitting from the sales of the works
the gallery was offering at the fair, which she says were priced
between $8,000 and $80,000. She described his reaction as “defensive”
and “rude.”
On Saturday, April 13, Casey Brown (Ho-Chunk), an artist and member
of the Center for Native Futures, wrote an email to Expo Chicago staff,
raising concerns about the ethics of selling ledger drawings at the
fair.
“I was surprised to see ledger art outside of a tribal cultural
center, museum or archive and also available for purchase,” his letter
read. “This art was made under duress while these men were unjustly
imprisoned; ownership of any of these works is problematic.”
When members of the Center approached Ellis and his assistant, they
were “unable to explain where the collection came from and unwilling to
let them copy down the names of who created these pieces for further
study,” Brown said. “When asked if he had contacted any family of the
unjustly imprisoned men, Ellis said he has ‘strong relations’ with
‘plains tribes’ but openly said he’s the only person profiting from
these pieces.”
Within half an hour of sending the email, Brown was contacted by Tony
Karman, the president and director of Expo Chicago, who spoke with
members of the Center about their concerns.
“We are grateful to the Center for Native Futures for drawing our
attention to the Ledger Books and to Donald Ellis Gallery for
participating in a conversation with the Center around the complex
issues involved,” a spokesperson for the fair told Hyperallergic.
“Expo Chicago has committed to engaging with the appropriate
organizations on the development of guidelines on the display of these
types of materials, affirming our commitment to the proper handling of
cultural property.”
Max Bear, the tribal historic preservation officer of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, echoed the Center’s dismay.
“When the books were sold, they became art pieces in Pratt’s narrative, not ours,” he told Hyperallergic,
referring to Richard Henry Pratt, the Army officer who oversaw the
prison at Fort Marion. Pratt commissioned and purchased many of the
ledger books — which included depictions of battle, the warriors’
journey as detainees from the Plains to Florida, and prison life —
directly from the incarcerated artists, considering them examples that
his attempts to assimilate and “civilize” Native Americans were
successful.
Bear bristled at the term “ledger art,” adding: “These are historical
accounts from our people, and should be kept by our people.”
Although there has been a growing movement over the past several
years towards repatriation of objects, art, and artifacts to Native
Peoples, the ledger books reside in a legal gray area, said Ross Frank, a
professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of
California San Diego (UCSD).
“In the letter of law, as it stands now, it’s a hard row to ask all
ledger material to go back to the tribes. It is a kind of cultural
patrimony, but in these cases, there was some kind of sale, which was
legal at the time,” Frank told Hyperallergic. But the works’
legal status aside, Frank noted, “there may be ethical concerns about
coercion” because the artists were imprisoned.
Frank explained that there are seemingly two systems that apply to US
cultural institutions on the one hand, and private dealers on the
other. Institutions should adhere to best practices, involving
consulting with tribes regarding the exhibition and responsible
stewardship of objects related to their culture.
The tribal historic preservation officers of the Kiowa and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes told Hyperallergic that they had not been contacted by either gallery prior to the exhibition.
According to Ellis, he was approached by “an intermediary on behalf
of the Kiowa” after the auction and offered them the ledger book with
drawings by Ohettoint at his cost (it was sold for $138,975 with premium),
but received no response. He added that his gallery is “supporting
financially and with loans” an upcoming exhibition on Fort Marion which
“dozens of direct descendants of the Cheyenne prisoners” are involved
with.
“They are aware of my activities and involvement in the exhibition and we are not aware of any pushback,” Ellis said.
But as Frank of UCSD explained, “with private collectors, it’s a
whole different world. We’re at the mercy of a global capitalist
system…which values the pages separately far more than the book staying
together,” he said about the decision to unbind the books and display
the drawings separately. (Frank is the founder of the Plains Indian Ledger Art (PILA) project, which digitizes complete ledger books, making them accessible online.)
Ellis defended the choice to detach the drawings, arguing that “one
of the unique aspects of the Fort Marion sketchbooks is that there is no
narrative arch between individual sheets, linear or otherwise, unlike
most books that predate them.”
Karen Kramer, the curator of Native American and Oceanic Art and
Culture at the Peabody Essex Museum, offered a counter perspective,
telling Hyperallergic that “to separate these drawings is to dismantle cultural heritage.”
“Breaking apart ledger books that have Plains Indian drawings
short-changes the possibility of understanding each drawing as a part of
a whole story,” Kramer said. “In the context of Fort Marion, these
prisoner-warrior artists conveyed personal experiences and remembrances
of tribal rituals and histories within the broader story of colonization
and ledger art production under imprisonment and its radical aesthetic
evolution between 1875–78.”
It is also worth noting that at least two drawings that were
originally two-page spreads in the ledger books were framed and
exhibited as single sheets, splitting the original image in half, at
Ellis’s Expo Chicago booth.
In his communications with Hyperallergic, however, Ellis made clear that he considers himself more as a caretaker than a dismantler of Native cultural heritage.
“With the possible exception of Ross Frank and PILA, my gallery was
most instrumental in the preservation of complete ledger books over a
20-25 year period before the advent of digitization,” he said. “The
decision to exhibit the drawings as individual works (our first
experience in doing so) was a long and difficult process. Ultimately we
decided the end justified the means.” That end aim, according to Ellis,
is “to bring them to widespread institutional and private attention.” He
noted that PILA has complete files of the three books he purchased and
that he plans to produce facsimile versions.
Institutions that receive federal funding are bound by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA),
a 1990 law which facilitates the “protection and return of Native
American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of
cultural patrimony.” Private sales are not subject to NAGPRA, but they
do fall under the recently passed Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP)
Act, which helps prevent international trafficking of objects of
significant cultural patrimony, although that legislation would likely
not apply in this case.
Despite the technical legality of the books’ ownership, O’Loughlin
sees the original terms of the sales by the incarcerated Native artists
to Pratt as reason to reconsider grounds for repatriation.
“If the original transfer does not hold up, if it was considered a
kind of theft, then every transaction after that would be colored by
that,” O’Loughlin said. She considers the books’ current owners
complicit “because they know all the history, they know how the Tribes
fought the purchase.”
Top: “Cheyenne Feast”; bottom: drawing inscribed “Medicine Dance (Cheyenne),” from A complete Fort Marion drawing book (1876) illustrated by Bear’s Heart (Nockkoist, Tsis tsis’tas) and Ohet-Toint (Ohettoint / High Forehead) (Bonhams lot 20)
CT man taken from First Nation family as child finds purpose in sharing story: ‘I’m not the only one’
WILTON, CONNECTICUT
— Ripped from his sister’s arms and taken to a new country over a
half-century ago, Canada native Taber Gregory said he’s still
reconciling with how and why he wound up in Wilton.
About 20 years ago, the longtime Wiltonian and owner of Gregory’s Sawmill on Pimpewaug Road said he learned he was one of thousands of survivors of what’s known as the Sixties Scoop.
The
Sixties Scoop refers to a decades-long period in Canadian history, from
about 1951 and until as late as the 1990s, marked by the mass removal
of Aboriginal children from their homes — in most cases without the
consent of their families — into the child welfare system.
Many
of the children were placed in non-Indigenous households in Canada,
while others — including Taber Gregory, who was born Henry Desjarlais in
the Canadian province of Alberta in 1968 — were relocated and adopted
out to families outside the country.
Gregory,
now 55, said he always knew he was adopted but didn’t know about the
early years of his life until connecting with biological family members
in his early- to mid-30s.
“I
started getting some random calls saying somebody wanted to talk to me,
and the person claimed he was my father,” Gregory said. “I was a little
confused and didn’t accept the phone call because I didn’t know what to
think about it.”
The calls kept coming, and Gregory said he kept refusing.
Then
one day, he finally accepted and learned that the person calling was,
in fact, his biological father, Louis Desjarlais. Gregory said his
biological father has since died, but he has stayed in touch with one of
his biological siblings in Canada.
Through
telephone conversations, Gregory said he learned he was the youngest of
seven children and had been taken from his family’s home in Canada when
he was about one-and-a-half years old. He said his adopted parents had
been unaware that he had been forcibly removed from his biological
family.
“My sister walked me through everything, and it kind of snowballed from there,” he said.
Gregory showed Hearst Connecticut Media an August 2001 letter from the Cold Lake First Nations,
verifying his Cold Lake First Nation Registry List membership and
identifying his biological parents, as well as their own membership. The
letter said that since his biological parents were “of 100% North
American Indian Blood Quantum,” Gregory “has at least a 100% North
American Indian Blood Quantum” himself.
One
of Gregory’s four biological sisters, Alicia Minoose, claimed to have
been holding him when social service workers came into the house, took
him out of her arms, put him in a vehicle and left.
“She
told me she ran out the door, chasing after me, and that was the last
time she ever saw me,” Gregory said. “She was the last one to hold me.”
According
to Tony Merchant — a Canadian attorney whose law firm was involved in a
Sixties Scoop survivors class-action lawsuit several years ago that
Gregory benefited from — government-funded social services agencies
involved in the removal of Indigenous children from their homes were not
closely supervised and “intensified their search for likely
candidates/victims for adoption” over time.
“Grabbing
children became a need-for-supply phenomenon, and this was particularly
true for boys,” he said, noting that they were “significantly more
popular for adoption than girls.”
According
to Gregory’s sister, two of their siblings were taken as well. She said
they were placed with foster parents and eventually brought home — but
the family couldn’t find Gregory, whom she still refers to by his birth
name of Henry.
“Somehow,
mom found David and Margaret ... but they couldn’t find you,” she said
over the phone during Gregory’s interview. “They didn’t know what
happened to you. We were searching and searching, but there was no
information.”
Gregory
said he was told that his biological mother, Bella Desjarlais, “cried
and cried” after he was taken and he believes stress and heartbreak from
what happened may have contributed to her death — which he said
occurred before he reconnected with his biological family.
Later learning what he and his family in Canada went through, Gregory said he “went into survival mode.”
“I
went through some depression, but I was able to get help and kind of
turn that around and stay motivated and positive,” he said. “I did have
to take a step back and kind of digest everything.”
Adoption and life in Wilton
Wilton has been the only home he knows — or at least remembers.
Gregory
said he has no recollection of his time in the Canadian foster care
system, traveling to the U.S. or when his name was changed from Henry
to Taber — but he knows he ended up at an adoption agency in
Pennsylvania.
From
there, Gregory said he was adopted by Steve and Judy Meier when he was
around 3 years old, moved to Wilton and had two brothers — both of whom
were also adopted, but from different places. One was born in Vietnam,
and the other was born in Bridgeport, he said.
Gregory said his adoptive parents didn’t know he had been forcibly taken from his home.
“The
Welcome House in Pennsylvania was like the first stop, and they just
adopted me from there,” he said. “They had no idea how I got there, so I
can’t blame them for anything like that. They had no idea what
happened.”
According to the website of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation
— the parent organization of Welcome House — the adoption program
“matched more than 7,000 orphans and children from around the globe with
adoptive families in the United States,” and was phased out in June
2014 “because of changes in international adoption regulations.”
Samantha
Freis, a curator with the foundation, said the organization does not
know what the adoption process was like during that period.
After
his adoptive parents divorced, Gregory said his mother Judy Meier ended
up working at Gregory’s Sawmill and meeting John Gregory.
“They
made a connection, and we ended up here with Mr. Gregory and kind of
became a family,” he said. “We grew up on the Gregory farm (where) we
had draft horses, oxen, pigs and chickens.”
After
their adoptive mother died in 1985, Taber Gregory said he and his
brothers stayed with John Gregory, whom he considered a father figure
and legally changed his last name from Meier to Gregory at his request.
When
John Gregory retired in the mid- to late-1990s and moved to Ohio, where
he later died in 2006, Taber Gregory said he took over the sawmill
business — which has been in the Gregory family since the 1850s — and has been keeping the family legacy alive ever since.
“I became a Gregory and have been continuing the family business,” he said.
Gregory
said he never knew, nor suspected, that his separation from his
biological family and subsequent adoption were forced — but he’s
grateful to have learned the truth about his past, “survived the ordeal”
and reconnect with his family in Canada, who he said he has not yet
visited in person but hopes to see in the near future.
In
the meantime, he said his sister keeps him informed about what’s going
on with family members in Canada — many of whom Gregory said still
reside on a First Nations reservation and speak Chipewyan.
Class-action settlement
Several
years ago, the Canadian government reached an $800 million class-action
agreement with Sixties Scoop survivors — $750 million of which was set
aside for individual compensation — the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported in 2017.
The
settlement, through which all First Nations and Inuit children who
“were removed from their homes — and lost their cultural identities as a
result — between 1951 and 1991 (were) entitled to compensation,” was
less than the $1.3 billion sought on behalf of about 16,000 Indigenous
children in Canada’s Ontario province, according to the CBC article.
The
settlement agreement followed an Ontario Superior Court judge’s
February 2017 ruling that the Canadian government not only “breached its
‘duty of care’ to the children and ignored the damaging effect” of the
child welfare program, but also “breached part of the agreement that
required consultation with First Nations” about it, the CBC reported.
Gregory
— who showed Hearst a questionnaire he filled out for Merchant Law
Group LLP, one of the law firms involved in the class action — said his
claim was among the ones approved. He wouldn’t disclose the exact payout
amount he received — saying only that it was over $10,000.
“Everything I know is consistent with him being a (Sixties) Scoop survivor who received compensation,” Merchant said.
He
said Gregory did not become a client “because obtaining compensation
was something done directly with the claims service providers,” but said
his firm did provide assistance to Gregory.
Gregory,
who feels the Sixties Scoop settlement payout isn’t enough to
compensate for the harm caused to those taken from their biological
families, said he shares his story not for pity, but for purpose — to
raise awareness about what he and thousands of other Indigenous children
went through and help prevent something like it from ever happening
again.
“I know I’m not the only one, and I don’t want anybody going through what I did,” he said.
During eclipses Navajo people must stay indoors, with closed windows and
doors, and not look outside, limit consumption of food by fasting, not
drink water, not sleep, not bathe, brush hair or groom themselves, no
intimacy with families or partners, exception between mothers and
children. Arts and crafts during solar eclipses are not allowed. Lightly
cleaning or remote work at home is allowed.
A new multimedia package produced by The Imprint and Voices of
Monterey Bay takes readers, viewers and listeners deep inside rural
Oregon’s Indian Country, where elders are Indigenizing social work
through equine therapy for young people who have experienced foster care
and youth justice systems.
“Horses take us all the way back to our history before our land
was taken away,” explains John Doug Spence, who leads equine therapy
sessions across Oregon. “It’s a way of taking back our power.”
The project, Healing the Children of Horse Nations, is a
collaboration between The Imprint’s Indigenous Children and Families
Reporter Nancy Marie Spears, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation
of Oklahoma; podcast producers Julie and Mara Reynolds; and visual
storyteller Josué Rivas, who is Mexica and Otomi.
This season, we’re hearing from elder survivors of systemic injustice and historical trauma. They’re showing newer generations what they’ve learned about how to address and prevent those kinds of harm.
Our first
episode for this season is titled Uncle John, and it was co-produced by
Julie Reynolds, Mara J. Reynolds, and Nancy Marie Spears in partnership
with The Imprint, as part of the multimedia project Healing the Children of Horse Nations.
LISTEN NOW: Episode 1 | Uncle John READ: Healing the Children of Horse Nations at The Imprint VIEW: The photographs of Josué Rivas
Even
if our forebears arrived in what we now call Americas in the 1600s, and
our predecessors have lived on the continent for the last 14
generations, we can all trace our ancestry back to some group of
Indigenous people.
Maybe
your people were Celts who lived in what’s now Austria during the ninth
century BCE. Or perhaps your biological line was Jewish Egyptian three
millennia ago, or Chinese as far back as the ancient Xia Dynasty, or
Mycenaean in the Aegean area of what we now call Greece circa 3200 BCE.
One
fact is indisputable: In a literal sense, every one of us has
Indigenous roots. At some point, our ancestors fit the official
definition of Indigenous: “a culturally distinct ethnic group that is
native to a particular place.”
Let’s
go further. Mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade tells us that
whether or not we know our own Indigenous past, we can and should strive
to be in close touch with our inner Indigenous person.
What
does that mean? Meade says we can benefit from seeing the world through
an Indigenous perspective, with a reverence for nature and receptivity
to the teachings available to us from the non-human intelligences of
animals and plants as well as the spiritual realm.
Here’s
the sticky part. Even if we have not personally participated in
damaging the Indigenous cultures of the land we now live on, our
destinies are defined and shaped by the fact that those cultures were
damaged. Everything we do is built on the results of the damage.
When
most of our fellow Americans came of age, our education included little
about the calamity committed against the native people. If the evidence
for the desecration appeared in our history textbooks, it was dealt
with cursorily. We grew up with a carefully cultivated amnesia about the
tragic origins of the United States. The story of African American
slavery was almost equally suppressed.
Our
hypothesis is that this amnesia, this failure to fully acknowledge the
roots of our civilization, dampens our ability to be, as Michael Meade
recommends, in close touch with our own inner Indigenous person.
We
may not feel guilt, remorse, and shame on a conscious level. But like
all suppressed emotions, they churn and burn in our deep psyches,
alienating us from the Indigenous perspective we all need.
And
yes, we need that perspective if we hope to reverse the juggernaut of
humanity’s ecocidal ways—and preserve our earthly paradise for the
generations to come after us.
On
a personal level, we need a full, generous communion with our inner
Indigenous person because it has tremendous power to keep us grounded.
It potentially provides us with essential support in our lifelong labor
to ensure our mind is anchored in earthy practicality.
It
was a bracing morning being brought back to reality about how the world
see the woman who gave up a child for adoption. Not nicely is the short
answer.
A ten-minute morning interview for drive-to-work
radio show in the New York/New Jersey area led to be being mentally
whacked for having a relationship with a married man, which I did, and
his having an Irish Catholic background was another reason to pile on
the criticism. She gave the listeners advice--don't have an affair with
a married man, look where that led for this stupid person I'm
interviewing.
We did cover that I found her, that her adoptive
parents had already tried to find me, that her epilepsy was almost
certainly caused by the birth-control pills I took when I was pregnant
but did not know...and then she asked how my relationship with my
daughter was today.
I had to say that she died. Since the next
question was going to be about that--I told the truth. She died by
suicide. Mincing words is not my style. I was able to say some more but
since people listening today might come to the blog to read about
suicide,
While
there are no good statistics on adoptees who actually commit suicide,
research on adopted populations shows that a disproportionate number
are likely to. No matter how you slice the numbers, adoption increases
the
probability of suicide, no matter how many adoptees never have a thought
of
it, no matter how many adoptees are successful, smart, and may one day
end
up on the Supreme Court. It is unlikely there will ever be good
statistics on
how many adoptees commit suicide because “adopted” is not noted on death
certificates.
What we do know is that more adoptees than
non-adoptees think about
suicide quite often. Google “suicide and adoption” and what pops up is
an
entry from the medical journal Pediatrics, “Adoption as a Risk Factor
for
Attempted Suicide during Adolescence.” That study unequivocally states,
“Attempted suicide is more common among adolescents who live with
adoptive parents than among adolescents who live with biological
parents.” The
connection between adoption and suicide persisted even after the
researchers
adjusted for depression, aggression, and impulsive behavior. Not
surprisingly, “family connectedness,” whether among the adopted or
non-adopted, did
decrease the likelihood of suicide attempts.
Researchers at the
University of Minnesota reported that adopted teens
were almost four times more likely to attempt suicide than those who
lived with
their natural parents, even after adjustment for factors associated with
suicidal
behavior, such as psychiatric disorder symptoms, personality traits,
family environment, and academic disengagement. Girls were more likely
than boys to
attempt suicide. About 75 percent of the adopted teens in the study
(more than
1,200, all living in Minnesota) were adopted before the age of two and
were
foreign born—mostly from South Korea.
This deep dive into suicide and
adoption followed a study by the lead researcher and others who concluded that
being adopted approximately doubled the odds of having a disruptive behavior
disorder and having contact with a mental health professional. Interestingly,
international adoptees were less likely to exhibit behavior disorders.
B.
J. Lifton wrote that at a seminar for adoptive parents when she brought
up the fact that the percentage of adoptee suicide was statistically
high, a prominent psychiatrist asked if that nasty bit could be deleted
from the tape, which
was to be later sold as a record of the talk. Lifton agreed but later
wrote she was
sorry she had. --from Hole In My Heart.
OK,
as promised, I have more thoughts after I went to the hallowed halls of
Yale Law School last Friday to hear a review of the Baby Veronica Case -
and to hear what NCAI, NARF and the Tribal Supreme Court Law Project at
Yale were doing while this major case was going on... and I reported to
you yesterday what they said essentially…
There
weren't any surprises for me unless you count how these panelists
didn't use the time to discuss the genocide that actually occurred prior
the passing of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and the child
abductions by social workers and missionaries - nor did they mention
human trafficking and the Nightlight Adoption Agency dealings with Maldonado, the birthmother. They did mention boarding schools.
So,
I was truly upset. From what I heard, it appears American Indians are
eons behind in civil rights and we can't seem to win a case in the
Supreme Court. I’d
heard that warning years prior but this time at Yale was a bit more in
my face. This case was about adoption by non-Indians, something I lived
myself.
We
had Justice Alito writing an opinion that Veronica is 1.2% Indian.
NARF attorney Joel West Williams asked the Yale audience, "Who in
America is 1/16 or 3/256th anything?" Yet
we have a judge issuing his opinion by measuring an Indian for their
Indian-ness which equates to measuring a child’s blood? This is still
happening?
·JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court:
This
case is about a little girl (Baby Girl) who is classified as an Indian
because she is 1.2% (3/256) Cherokee. Because Baby Girl is classified in
this way, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that certain provisions
of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 required her to be
taken, at the age of 27 months, from the only parents she had ever known
and handed over to her biological father, who had attempted to
relinquish his [**736]parental rights and who had no prior contact with the child. The provisions of the federal statute [*2557] at issue here do not demand this result.
·Jun
25 2013: Judgment REVERSED and case REMANDED. Alito, J., delivered the
opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Thomas, and
Breyer, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., and Breyer, J., filed concurring
opinions. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Sotomayor, J., filed a
dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in
which Scalia, J., joined in part. Read more here
·
I
couldn’t sleep ... Dusten Brown never had a chance. He went to Iraq
knowing the Capobiancos had his daughter but he had to serve a year and a
JAG lawyer took his case.The puzzle remains why Maldonado
mysteriously breaks up with him and severs all communication. Was she
punishing her high school sweetheart Dusten by selling his baby or was
she manipulated by the adoption agency to take their money?
Then it hit me - keeping America ignorant of Indians, culture, actual history - this all works to take Indian children. Judgment is easy. Third World poverty (which we didn’t create) somehow equates to abuse of children. Add
their general ignorance of sovereignty and culture, what it means to be
Cherokee or Lakota or Navajo or any tribe - and it means you can't win
public opinion polls or cases before the Supreme Court?
Ignorance about Indians? Exactly!
It's
been going on since colonial contact. Please, let's not call them
settlers anymore but invaders. America has always been the Great
Divider, building its fences, writing its laws, counting on classism and
racism to divide us.
America wins every time when it perpetuates this ignorance of Indians. Do Indians do a good job of educating others about culture, or what's important to us? Not really. We're way behind in any civil rights movement. We've
had movies romanticizing us over 100 years and it's hard to kill those
"savage" “redskin” stereotypes drilled into all our heads!
What do Americans know about Indians? Nothing.Practically zilch.
America's
"taking care" of Indians only works to create HATE among Americans who
view us as privileged in some way that they are not. Like why do we even have a law that keeps nice white people from adopting Indian babies? Trust me, ICWA is under attack.
I
do know that Indians are way ahead in surviving every broken treaty and
then fighting each other over small scraps of power. Some tribes even
subscribe to "blood quantum" as if they need to purge their citizen
rolls of those who may be too white or too black.
We
have Supreme Court Justices using the blood quantum argument and you
see that is not entirely their fault (they all went to law school but
didn’t even have a course on Indian Law at those Ivy League schools) but
it tells me - do not go anywhere near them. They are not even aware of their ignorance. Dusten Brown didn't have a chance, not in that court.
We
Indians shouldn't go anywhere near that court or any court with that
level of stupidity. No, you can't tell Americans they are stupid.
What
the panel did say was each and every tribe needs to create and have
their own child protection network. I agree since it's pretty evident
that you can't trust any non-Indian social worker to go to the
reservation and use their mother- father “family unit” example. Only Indians can decide who the right people are to care for its children. That person might be an auntie, grandmother or another relative, depending on who in the tribal family is willing and able.
And the panel said we need more American Indian lawyers who become judges - because the way it is now - Indians can’t win.
For
many years Vine Deloria and others did try very hard to educate others
(with their brilliant books) on the white man’s level, even earning
degrees in white man’s colleges like Yale and Harvard, but it all comes
down to this:whites don’t really care.
And if we really think about it, this is a very dangerous situation to be in.
Footnote:I
attended white schools like most everyone else - Really nothing I
learned was true or real about Indian culture or history. I learned more
sitting at the kitchen table of my friend Ellowyn who is Oglala Lakota,
who gave me an education about Indians not written about anywhere.Then
there was my one adoptive aunt (a first-born American) who calls me a
liar when I told her there were Indian Boarding Schools, and this was
right after I visited Haskell in Kansas. No, Americans are not learning
about Indians or the truth of our history.
The
Baby Veronica case is the sign, whether we wish to see it that way or
not - but we can no longer ignore the ignorance or the danger
surrounding this case.
THIS BLOG HAS MANY POSTS ABOUT THE BABY V CASE... Yes, she was adopted out...
Kevin Ost-Vollmers and Shelise Gieseke at Land of Gazillion Adoptees Blog said Feb. 26th begins BLOG WEEK to answer this question: “Why ...
Bookshop
You are not alone
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
Diane Tells His Name
click photo
60s Scoop Survivors Legal Support
GO HERE:
https://www.gluckstein.com/sixties-scoop-survivors
Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie
We conclude this series & continue the conversation by naming that adoption is genocide. This naming refers to the process of genocide that breaks kinship ties through adoption & other forms of family separation & policing 🧵#NAAM2022#AdoptionIsTraumaAND#AdopteeTwitter#FFY 1/6 pic.twitter.com/46v0mWISZ1
As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.
NEW MEMOIR
Original Birth Certificate Map in the USA
Why tribes do not recommend the DNA swab
Rebecca Tallbear entitled: “DNA, Blood, and Racializing the Tribe”, bearing out what I only inferred:
Detailed discussion of the Bering Strait theory and other scientific theories about the population of the modern-day Americas is beyond the scope of this essay. However, it should be noted that Indian people have expressed suspicion that DNA analysis is a tool that scientists will use to support theories about the origins of tribal people that contradict tribal oral histories and origin stories. Perhaps more important,the alternative origin stories of scientists are seen as intending to weaken tribal land and other legal claims (and even diminish a history of colonialism?) that are supported in U.S. federal and tribal law. As genetic evidence has already been used to resolve land conflicts in Asian and Eastern European countries, this is not an unfounded fear.