Our Children are Sacred by Judge Tim Connors

Seven generations ago someone was praying for us. We are the answer to their prayers. We take this responsibility seriously. When you are working with our children, it is sacred work.  Our children are sacred.

My mother Donna Lou was born in 1939. She and her family lived on Beaver Island in Michigan. After my grandmother died, my mother was separated from her brother and sent to be a domestic servant for a Mennonite minister and his wife in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This happened despite the fact that we had literally dozens of tribal family members who could have cared for her. Her Uncle Leo and his wife, for example, always wanted a daughter and would have loved to raise my mother. Unfortunately, she was sent away without any notice to her Indian family. While she was living with the Mennonites, she was forced to cut her hair outside of her Native tradition, prohibited from practicing Native
American traditions, and prohibited from any contact with her Native American family and tribe. When she turned 17, she was forced into a loveless, arranged marriage. The marriage didn’t last very long and she was on her own, alone in the world. She never had the courage to return home to her tribe because she felt so different and damaged. With her dark skin, black hair, and brown eyes she stood
out as different from the majority of her peers in the 1950s and beyond. She never felt like she belonged anywhere. Without good examples of parenting, raising her children was a struggle for her. If my mother had been born after the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and ICWA had been followed, she would’ve had a very different life and I would’ve had a very different mother.

Our Children Are Sacred
Why the Indian Child Welfare Act Matters
By Judge Tim Connors

http://turtletalk.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/jj_spr11_connors.pdf

[Please read this powerful paper by Judge Connors.. I am amazed at his eloquence on this topic. We need more judges like him  ...Trace]

Once Was Von: The Hot Potato

Once Was Von: The Hot Potato: "Here's a more detailed look at what I've come to call 'the hot potato'. For those of you who have experienced it too, or are concerned that ..."

Lawsuit filed for 60s Scoop First Nation adoptees in British Columbia (NEWS)

new link: http://ipolitics.ca/2011/06/01/b-c-natives-sue-federal-government-for-millions-over-sixties-scoop/

Postmedia News June 1, 2011

A class-action lawsuit that could cost Ottawa millions of dollars has been filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on behalf of aboriginal children affected by the "Sixties' Scoop."
The "Scoop" refers to the thousands of Native children who were allegedly taken between 1962 and 1996 after the federal government signed over its responsibility for Indian child welfare to the provincial government.
The B.C. government received money for each status Indian child taken into care. This is the first Sixties' Scoop class-action suit filed in B.C. and only the second in Canada. An Ontario case was given court approval in 2010.
A Vancouver lawyer representing victims said the Sixties' Scoop victims could win "millions of dollars in federal compensation," such as that given to residential school survivors.
"But the purpose of this lawsuit is for the survivors to seek justice for the wrongs that were done to them," said Jason Murray. "Just as the residential schools closed, aboriginal children were again taken away, into foster care.
(c) The Victoria Times Colonist
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/life/Lawsuit+filed+Sixties+Scoop+kids/4872693/story.html#ixzz1O6B5YF8a

[This is only the beginning... the abuses here in America will come to light, too  ...Trace]

Washington state ICWA passed today

WASHINGTON INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT PASSED (6-1-11) NEWS!!

After a multi-year tribal effort to make this Act a reality, Governor Chris Gregoire has signed the Washington State Indian Child Welfare Act (WICWA) into law. AAIA has worked closely with Washington state tribes on Indian child welfare issues for many years and we believe this is an important step forward in the ongoing efforts to promote the safety and well-being of Indian children and families.

WICWA has two main purposes. First, it codifies in Washington law the main provisions of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). This helps to make sure that state courts, attorneys and others involved with the state legal system incorporate ICWA protections for Indian children, families and tribes into their everyday practice. AAIA has long been involved in Indian child welfare advocacy. Studies and efforts by the AAIA were the catalyst for the enactment of the ICWA in 1978.

Second, WICWA clarifies how the federal law should be implemented and expands upon its protections. Among the most meaningful additions are provisions which define important legal terms, such as “active efforts,” “best interests,” and “qualified expert witnesses,” modify the placement preferences and improve procedures for identifying Indian children, including recognizing tribal decisions on membership as conclusive.

AAIA provided technical legal assistance to Washington tribal leaders and attorneys drafting and advocating for WICWA. WICWA builds upon previous tribal efforts to implement ICWA in Washington State which AAIA has assisted, including negotiation of a landmark tribal-state Indian child welfare agreement with the state, incorporation of provisions in the agreement into state practices and procedures, and legislation requiring the state to recognize tribally-licensed foster homes.

WICWA will help to advance the central goals of ICWA – namely to keep Indian families together and to ensure placement with extended family or tribal members whenever possible.
http://turtletalk.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/washington-icwa-passes/

[Great news...now we need other states to do this... Trace]

Registry for NY adoptees

Many adoptees are looking for their Chapter One in their lives. They want to know where they came from. Who they look like. Laugh like, and medical background.  If you are a sibling, or adoptee or parent, you can sign up at the NY State Registry.  Also check at www.nyadoptees.com


If anyone had any dealings with an attorney called Seymour Fenichel contact us at www.nyadoptees.com 
If you want search help with all other states: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theregistry 
from ...Joan

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/new-hartford-ny/TFNAT4VIHDHQUI80T

If any adoptee needs help, I am also here and will help you! Email me: tracedemeyer@yahoo.com

OP-ED: Birth Certificates at center of Adoptee Rights Bill (New Jersey)

http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Birth-certificates-at-center-of-bill-1396377.php

The time has come in New Jersey to vote for The Adoptee Rights Bill which grants adoptee's access to their original birth certificates. This editorial (op-ed) by LORRAINE DUSKY said it perfectly. It is on the Governor's desk for his signature...
I wrote to every lawmaker in New Jersey and asked they approve unconditional access to the original birth certificate for adoptees born in New Jersey. One by one, this is how we change the world for adoptees...Trace

Intergenerational Trauma in Indian Country

Press Release

Historical Boarding School Healing Symposium provides

framework for moving forward

Boulder, Colo. – May 19, 2011 – More than 30 representatives from the Boarding School Healing Project, Native American Rights Fund, American Indian Law Clinic at the University of Colorado Law School, and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Wyoming and other organizations came together on May 14-15, 2011 to create a framework for healing from the abuses suffered by American Indian children as a result of the U.S. boarding school policy.
“This is a historical event, one that gives optimism that something is really going to happen,” said Don Coyhis of White Bison, Inc.
The goal of the two-day conference was to discuss and craft a national strategy to achieve both national recognition of and an apology for the wrongs visited upon individuals and communities of Indian Country by the U.S. boarding school policy. The strategy would also seek reparations to provide the framework for healing the wounds from these historic and enduring wrongs.
“Intergenerational trauma was a huge theme of the conference,” said Jill Tompkins, director of the American Indian Law Clinic at Colorado Law. “American Indian children forced into the boarding school system later on unintentionally imposed onto their children and their children’s children the scars of growing up without knowledge of their language and their culture, without affection and without a loving family support network.  When they finally returned to their tribal communities, they did not know who they were or where they fit anymore. “
Many point to the proliferation of alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide among Indians as evidence of the on-going effects of this period.
Although early in the planning stages, three key themes were expressed at the conference: acknowledgement, justice and healing.
Some of the ways expressed to achieve these themes included:
-          The desire and need for a meaningful apology
-          Support for language and cultural revitalization
-          The implementation of healing programs in each tribe, controlled locally so as to be significant and effective within each community
“All school children graduate knowing about slavery in the United States and its devastating effects on black people and the human toll of the Civil War,” said Coyhis. “No student should graduate high school without knowing about this period of American history and its devastating effects as well.”

The symposium participants agreed to formally establish the Boarding School Healing Coalition which will move forward with a plan for gathering support and implementing the results of the symposium.  This may include, but is not limited to: public education efforts, litigation, remedial legislation, and international policy advocacy.

Beginning about 1880 and continuing for nearly the next century, the U.S. government began to promote boarding schools for American Indian children, modeled on Colonel Richard Henry Pratt’s militaristic Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, as a primary means to assimilate Indian children.   By 1902, 154 boarding schools housed 21,500 American Indian children. In some instances the U.S. government subcontracted the operation of these schools to churches.  Some of these children were held at the boarding schools from age 5 to 18, many never being allowed to return home to their parents or tribal communities.
They were generally forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity instead of their native religions, and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Indian identity and adopt European-American culture. They were taught to be ashamed of being Indian, of their culture and religions. Tragically, many cases of mental and sexual abuse have been documented.
Important participants at the Symposium were Chief Wilton (Willie) Littlechild and Marie Wilson, Commissioners of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Canada modeled its Indian Residential School system on the U.S. model. Thousands of individual and community lawsuits were brought against the Canadian government for abuses, particularly sexual abuse, inflicted on Aboriginal people.  The cases were eventually resolved in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, the largest class action in Canadian history, in 2007.
The settlement provided for a payment to all former students who were held in federally supported residential schools, additional compensation for those that suffered sexual or serious physical abuse or other abuses. The Canadian government also made a contribution to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation to support commemoration projects and to establish the TRC. The TRC’s three-prong mission is:  to inform Canadians of what happened in the schools; to honor the lives of former students and their families; and, to create a permanent record of the Indian Residential School legacy. Although the Settlement has made some progress in bringing healing to residential school survivors, Chief Littlechild told the U.S. Symposium attendees, “You have a chance to do things better.”
To date, no U.S. Presidential apology or plan to provide redress for American Indian boarding school survivors has been proposed by the federal government. “The time to seek justice and healing for our ancestors and families who suffered the boarding school experience is long overdue, The establishment of the Boarding School Coalition and the development of a mutual shared vision for future action are critical steps forward,” said Tompkins.

[I am still reading "White Mother to a Dark Race" and making notes. Intergenerational Trauma affects Indian Country in so many ways- land loss, loss of children to residential boarding schools, massive adoption of Native children to non-Indians, and outright aggression toward Indian people by the American government. This press release and the seminars are a good sign of progress and healing... Trace]

Adopted Native Americans/Real ID ACT: My Identity returns!

Adopted Native Americans/Real ID ACT: My Identity returns!: "by Leland P. Morrill Adopted Native American Citizenship Affected by The REAL ID Act of 2005 on Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 3:31am Great NEWS..."

Once Was Von: Be Word Wise

Once Was Von: Be Word Wise: "According to adoption clubhouse : being wordwise involves using this 'positive language' on the left instead of the 'negative language' on ..."

Amazing reunion story... Getting Adopted Again

Tears (of joy) welcome in adoption hearing

May 12, 2011 by Marc Hansen

It was a long time coming. Some would say decades.
Whatever, the highlight of the proceedings might have come at the end when District Court Judge Carla Schemmel, faithful to adoption-court tradition, jokingly asked the adoptee if she wanted to pick out a toy.
Though Bethards, 41, declined the invitation, her grandson, one-year-old Carson Jones, came away with a new stuffed turtle.
Carson was about the only person in the tiny courtroom who wasn’t crying. Judge Schemmel, however, said crying was allowed on this day because the tear ducts were operating “for happy reasons.”
Here’s the full, happy story of White and Bethards, birth mother and daughter. How they were separated shortly after Bethards was born. How they found each other 35 years later. Why they decided to become family again:
This was a different kind of adoption hearing. Though the great majority of adoptees in Iowa and beyond are children, a surprising number of adults are adopted, too.
In most cases, adult adoption comes without a home-trial period. Past parents (Bethards’ adoptive mother and father are deceased) don’t have to give up their parental rights. A child 14 and over must consent to the adoption. Both parties sign an agreement and tell the court why they’re taking this big step.
Today was the formal hearing, the culmination of a process that began a year ago when everyone agreed this was the way to go. Around 20 friends and family members showed up to offer support.
The supervising attorney was Drake University law professor Sally Frank, who told the gathering that this courtroom was usually reserved for more solemn occasions – divorces, drug abuse hearings, child support recovery. The families who walk through the door are more likely to be falling apart than coming together.
“That’s why we have this box of tissues,” Frank said. “Adoptions are just a small part of what we do on the family law docket.”
First to take the stand was White, who talked about how she and Bethards found each other in 2006 and how close they’ve grown.
“She’s my biological daughter,” White said, tearing up, “and I love her very, very much.”
Her husband was next. Fulmer isn’t Bethards’ biological father, but he said he’s wanted to be her adoptive father for a long time.
“We want to make her part of the family,” Fulmer told the court, “and we want her to know we’ve always wanted her to be part of the family.”
Then Bethards stepped to the plate. She said she’s been hoping for this reunion with with White “since the day we met.”
A little later, Schemmel said she would be happy to sign the papers, White and Bethards hugged and out came the tissues.
“We’re all a bunch of crybabies in this family,” said Tina Brooks, one of White’s four eye-dabbing sisters. “If Mom could hear what they were saying, she’d be the worst.”
Joan White, 84, could feel the joy and see the significance. Hearing was optional.

Good news? More Native Foster Parents needed?

Foster families incorporate Native American culture


Social Services workers and families agree there is a definite need for more foster care families, especially Native American foster families. http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/article/id/47703/
 
I am struck by this headline.  If a mother is unable to care for her children, then a relative like a grandma or auntie steps in, to provide kinship care for the child. Why are states involved in this when it is a soverign tribe with soverign tribal members? When did we lose this idea of caring for our own people? Why was the ICWA passed? To keep children within their families and clans? Yes.
 
North Dakota Stark County Foster Care Supervisor Debra Trytten believes this: She doesn’t feel that the children miss as much as Lowell Nation from Ft. Peck, Montana, claims in this story. 
“Native American ways are different from non-Native American ways and we need to respect that,” Trytten said. “We make every effort to make sure children get to see their families and be involved in activities and events important to them.” 
Trytten added social workers, foster care supervisors and foster care families work closely with the tribes and children’s families to make sure the children are learning about the history, culture and teachings of their family.
“The foster families we have in Stark County are great,” Trytten said. “We have children from North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana and their foster families have always taken road trips to take them to different activities. They understand how important all those things are to helping a child’s self esteem, character and understanding.”
Dunn County Social Services Worker Mary Lou Manz agrees, adding if a family is unable to get the child to events, the overseer of the case will try and make other arrangements to make it possible for the child to do so.

Tribes need money to manage their own programs and their own children. That is what I believe... Trace

Our Indian Program, operated by Louise Wise, 1960

Louise Wise Services, Different Eligibility Requirements for Different Children, 1961


In this form letter, Louise Wise Services Executive Director Florence Brown clarified something about adoption that has been as easy to see as it has been uncomfortable to admit: supply and demand shape the “market” for children and parents alike. Her agency, like most others, had different requirements for Jewish couples wishing to adopt healthy infants, for those willing to consider older children with special needs, and for “Negro” families interested in African-American children. Brown’s mention of native children in need of adoption was a reference to the Indian Adoption Project.

Dear _____

We have your inquiry expressing your interest in adoption. We appreciate how much this means to you and hope we may be able to help you.

Since the number of young Jewish children in need of adoptive homes is so small compared to the number of couples applying, it has been necessary for us to set up certain eligibility requirements for adoptive applicants. Infants, as well as the occasional pre-school age child, are placed only with childless Jewish couples where the wife is under thirty-five and the husband over forty years of age, who live in any of the five boroughs of New York, Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and in a small area of New Jersey close to Manhattan. . . . Since it is required that couples be married at least three years and that they be citizens of the United States, we suggest that those who do not presently meet these requirements should write us again when they have been fulfilled.

If you do meet the requirements outlined above, we will appreciate your filling out and returning the enclosed form. You will hear from us as soon as we are able to invite you to a group meeting. This is the first step in our application procedures. . . .

Exceptions to our eligibility requirements are made for families applying for children of school age (6 to 14); for those who may be ready to consider a child with a physical disability; and for families interested in children of interracial background. Included in the latter are a group of American Indian children who have been referred to us through a special program of the Child Welfare League of America and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In addition to helping Jewish families interested in adoption, the Louise Wise Services also places children for adoption with Negro families. Here, again, the eligibility requirements with respect to age, childlessness, residence, as well as the procedures outlined above, do not apply and we are able to offer immediate appointments.

We do hope that we can be of help to you.

Sincerely yours,

(Mrs.) Florence G. Brown
Executive Director

Source: Louise Wise Services, form letter explaining eligibility requirements, June 30, 1961, Viola Bernard Papers, Box 116, Folder 5, Archives and Special Collections, Augustus C. Long Library, Columbia University.

[I added the bold for emphasis... This letter is from my archives.. I have the description of "Our Indian Program" in my memoir...Trace]

Best and Worst Places to be a Mother (global poverty)

To all the women in my life, may this Mother's Day be full of love, laughter and infinite blessings ....Trace

The World's Best and Worst Places to Be a Mother | | AlterNet http://bit.ly/inBBVp

http://www.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6743707/k.219/State_of_the_Worlds_Mothers_2011.htm

Adoption Truth: Here We Go Again

Adoption Truth: Here We Go Again

Adoption is big Busine$$ - please read and follow this blog!

Elder's Meditation: Native Spirituality

Elder's Meditation of the Day - May 6
"We must remember that the heart of our religion is alive and that each person has the ability within to awaken and walk in a sacred manner."  -- Thomas Yellowtail, CROW

The Native Spirituality is full of life. When we seek it, we become alive. Even if we
have gone astray and have conducted ourselves in a bad way, we can look within and have a new awakening to life. Maybe we have drunk too much alcohol; maybe we have cheated on our spouse; maybe we have done things that  make us feel guilty and ashamed. If we look outside ourselves, we will not find life; if we look inside, we will find life. Anytime we choose to change  our lives, we only need to look inside. How do we do this? Take some sage and light it, close your eyes and say to the Great Sirit, I'm tired, I need your  help. Please help me change.

Great Spirit, I know you exist inside of myself. Let me awaken to your teachings.

visit http://www.whitebison.org/ for more of these meditations.

Yesterday I attacked the kitchen!

Yesterday I attacked the kitchen!  It’s a sure sign when I start tearing apart a room, cleaning, washing and moving stuff around. Hours later it hit me I am in the throes of processing again.  Stories in my second book haunt me, visit my dreams, keep me awake, yet fill my heart with a sense of urgency and compassion for each and every adoptee I know and do not know.
I read and reread their stories and words and in their sincerity, find my own grief re-ignited. We were long silenced by deliberate secrecy. I’ve met so many adoptees and children of adoptees with the same questions and concerns I had.
When adoptees from closed adoptions email and call me, I feel their pain - like it is my own. When I first hear their stories, I tell them we are all related. I relate what I can about our shared history as “removed Indians,” why we are called Lost Birds and Split Feathers, and describe my own "wound" of being adopted by strangers. I share how my adoptive parents did not help me or encourage me to find my other parents or my tribes.
It kills me too many adoptees are still very desperate to find answers and a family name. Just one detail, just one name, which tribe, could change everything. I send them prayers they find what they need. I send links to search angels. I listen and email and offer to help.
Like my story, many other adoptees stubbornly refuse to accept secrecy, even defying laws and religions and the wishes of their adoptive parents. They’ll risk everything to find their tribal families and identities.
There were too many years I was so desperately alone, not knowing any adoptee who had
successfully opened their adoption and had a reunion with relatives. Today I know several. I have many friends who have gone full circle and met all their families.
There are some stirring voices in my new book Split Feathers: Two Worlds; this book is almost ready to be born. I cry reading these stories by Native American adoptees who were placed in closed adoptions, but celebrate them like war heroes who fought laws and sealed adoption records in North America to find their way back to their sacred sovereignty and tribal relatives. My co-author Patricia Bearden (also an adoptee) and I have bonded like sisters doing this project. I thank her for her deep caring compassion to do this book with me.
There is a new book by Margaret D. Jacobs I want to recommend, though I have not finished reading it yet. The title is: White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940. This is the book I wish I had written. It is mind-blowing history. I have to say, just 100 pages in, I am in such a rage, I decided to put the book down awhile, to cool off and absorb what I already read. Margaret’s work will probably ignite you as it did me. You may also find yourself tearing apart your house!
I know why adoptees are some of the strongest people I have ever met. We truly are the child survivors of an ethnic cleansing campaign, when colonial dictators did battle with tribes for more and more land. Taking Native American children was just one more horrific tactic.
But in the end, every adoptee who finds their tribe and family wins this war and those governments who may have tried to kill our identity will not succeed as planned. This story is still being written in 2011, and will be until all adoption files are open and exposed.
I will post details here when Split Feathers: Two Worlds is published. I assure you, you will never forget these stories or these very brave adoptees.