60s Scoop survivor strong advocate today #NDN

60s Scoop child turns horrifying experience into strong advocacy

 Saskatchewan Sage

Author:

By Shari Narine Sage

Contributing Editor SASKATOON

Forty-one years ago Lynn Thompson was stolen from off the Pine Creek First Nation in Manitoba.

“We were told by our grandparents, if white people come around, you run in to the bush,” said Thompson.
But the three-year-old could not run fast enough and she and her two sisters, one of whom she carried on her back and the other she was pulling, were apprehended by social workers. Her eight-year-old uncle, who kicked the men who were taking her, was also grabbed.
Thompson's three older brothers made it to the bush safely. Thompson would be 40 before she reunited with members of her biological family, but they still remain strangers to her.
Thompson was one of a conservatively estimated 20,000 children who were apprehended in the 1960s through to the 1980s. The “60s Scoop,” as this action became known because the majority of children were taken in the first decade, was a government-sanctioned program entitled Adopt Indian/Métis children. These Aboriginal children were placed in foster homes throughout Canada and the United States. Thompson said the uncle who tried to rescue her was sold for $500 to a family in the US. What ensued for Thompson were 25 foster homes in Ontario and Manitoba by the time she was eight years old and two failed adoption attempts. Like many of the children in her situation, she was abused. Eventually, she ended up being settled in a German Mennonite community in Manitoba. Seventy percent of the children taken were placed in non-Aboriginal homes.
“I would have given anything to have been in a residential school, to have other brown faces around,” said Thompson, who shot herself while in care.
The pain of Thompson’s childhood, which she classifies as “pretty messed,” followed her into adulthood.
Twelve years ago, Thompson accompanied a partner to Saskatchewan. Shortly after arriving in that province, she contracted HIV through intravenous drug use.
“I wouldn’t say I was a regular user. It was just something I experimented with and I ended up contracting HIV,” she said.
That was when she took control of her life.
“With HIV, it’s either fight or flight. I chose to fight. I educated myself,” said Thompson who spent two years learning all there was to know about the virus. She turned away from modern medicine and treated herself with a traditional tea and is also under the care of a healer from Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation.
“I’m kind of the White Buffalo of HIV. I’m the only one I know of in Canada that uses traditional meds (for HIV),” said Thompson. “Instead of getting sicker, I’m getting better.”
But she didn’t stop there. Nine years ago, Thompson became an advocate for those suffering from the virus, fighting against the stigma and discrimination HIV-positive people experience every day.
Saskatoon, where Thompson lives, and Prince Albert have the highest cases of HIV in the country. Young women present the highest numbers, contracting the virus through intravenous drug use. But in the next few years, Thompson expects to see those figures skewed as a larger number of older men become HIV-positive through unsafe sex. Thompson said men are paying $20 or $30 extra to do the act without a condom.
Thompson has amassed an impressive resume. She serves as consultant for such organizations as Persons Living With AIDS Network and AIDS Saskatoon; has been an advisor for working groups such as All Nations Hope Network and Public Health Canada; has spoken in schools both in the Saskatoon Public School system and Saskatchewan First Nations; has participated in the documentaries “Positive Women” (for Canadian AIDS Law Society) and “Silent Epidemic” (Indigenous Circle); and has written articles and been interviewed for various television programs.
Thompson is also one of two women named in a class action lawsuit launched last year against the federal government in the Court of Queen’s Bench in Regina. She and Valery Longman represent other First Nations and Metis children targeted in the “60s Scoop.”
For the past 15 years, Thompson has been collecting information and stories from and about children taken from their homes in this manner. After she was reunited with her youngest sister, who broke her back after running away from a foster home in the US, Thompson and others realized something needed to be done. It was then that a lawsuit was discussed.
Thompson is hopeful that the lawsuit can lead to support similar to what residential school survivors have received through the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement. She also hopes it makes Canadians aware of another dark part of Canadian history.
Source: http://www.ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/60s-scoop-child-turns-horrifying-experience-strong-advocacy

One Man Champions Adoption Rights On Hartford Street Corner

CT News Junkie | One Man Champions Adoption Rights On Hartford Street Corner

Please share this story with your friends - we have to work to change adoption laws and this man is doing just that! Bravo!
Trace

Adoptee - use this search method

Search Tips: Google Alerts (ehababes)
Google Alerts can be a useful tool for individuals in the process of searching for a family member.
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your queries. You decide a search query you wish to monitor. For example, if you are searching for a child born on December 1, 1990 in Illinois and surrendered to Easter House, you could set up the following alerts:
Born December 1, 1990 in IL
Born 12/1/1990
Easter House
Google will regularly search for your keywords and send you an email report containing links to any information that matches your alert. You should put in several variations of your information as you can not know how another person might enter it. You may write your DOB as 12/1/1990 and they would post to a registry under December 1, 1990.
Alerts are easy to set up. Simply visit the Google Alert page and start entering your keywords and phrases.
If you need help, visit the Google Alert Getting Started Guide.

Many adoptees who find their family name can then search on Facebook and Google - believe me, we can use all the help when we search!
Please post a comment on what search tips you recommend!
Trace

Why we have a Facebook Page SPLIT FEATHERS

Yup, it’s what all the experts say you need - and it’s the way to find new people who become new friends.

In fact, this blog Split Feathers has found many new adoptees (like Michael and his brother who are Native adoptees but don’t know their tribe yet).

That is the purpose of Facebook (FB) - to connect you with friends and let you comment and talk and like and share. I try and make time to read friend’s posts and I’m sure you do, too.

Because of Facebook I have reconnected with friends from school and college and friends I knew when I lived in various places but moved away. I have adoptees friends I have not met in person (yet) and Native American friends who are not adoptees. It’s a giant circle, really!

It’s a kind of meeting place - and you can have groups of people, business pages (like our Blue Hand Books) and lists of interests (I am figuring out Facebook like all of you are, yes.)

So if you haven’t been to our Facebook page, please do it now.

Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/Splitfeathers.

(There is a Facebook box in the right column on this blog where you can click like and it will add us to your FB list.)

Please LIKE the page so you can receive updates on your FB timeline. There will be more news and more stories in the coming days - so stay tuned!

Thank you! Chi Megwetch and Pilamaye!  Trace 

WA #NDN tribe gain full control on Child Welfare matters

Port Gamble S'Klallam Obtain Full Control Over Child Welfare Matters

Posted on March 29, 2012

After a decade-long effort in conjunction with the federal and state departments of Health and Human Services, the state Attorney General's Office, and tribal lawyers, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe has achieved a landmark goal -- complete control over the welfare of their own children. The 1,000-member Tribe in western Washington became the first in the nation to assume all control of guardianships, foster care, and adoptions for their children. Under an agreement with the federal government, the Tribe has disengaged the oversight by DSHS and is now solely responsible for its child-welfare cases.
The contemporary practice of removing Native American children from reservations in child-welfare cases has been likened to the infamous boarding-school era, when the federal government forcibly placed Native children in state or religious institutions to “assimilate” them into “American” culture.
To break away from this system, Port Gamble S'Klallam's children and families coordinator Jolene George has spent years working with DSHS to draft policies on how they would handle child-welfare protocols, which are listed under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act. "We will no longer lose our children," George said. "We didn't do this with a grant. We put our efforts, our money and whatever we could to do this."
Francine Swift, a member of the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribal Council, said it's vital to have children stay on the reservation so they don't forget their ancestry and traditions. She said that before the Indian Child Welfare Act, children were adopted out and lost complete contact with their relatives, ancestors, and culture. "We never want to see our kids go through this again," Swift said.

 

http://www.nativelegalupdate.com/admin/trackback/274803

 

 

This is one excellent example of tribes in action - and it is happening in more states! Happy Dance!

Trace

Anishinabe Elder Dave Courchene on the 8th fire and prophecy

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90_2qEXP1E&w=560&h=315]

Read about this elder here: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/03/15/on-prophecies-and-the-new-age-elder-dave-courchene-discusses-the-way-forward-103034

We are all related.... that is certain... Trace

Utah officials on Native children foster care statistics

American Indian children too often in foster care

Utah Officials try to keep children in their homes, out of system.

By Brooke Adams | The Salt Lake Tribune, Mar 24 2012   

More than 33 years after Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, American Indian children in Utah are still being removed from their homes and placed in foster care far too often — a troubling statistic that is the focus of the state’s tribes and government officials.

True, there has been a vast improvement in out-of-home placements over those decades. In 1976, two years before passage of the act, American Indian children in Utah were 1,500 times more likely to be in foster care than other children in the state, said Utah Appeals Court Judge William Thorne, who spoke March 16 at the first Indian Child Welfare Conference to be held in Salt Lake City.

Read story here:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53755655-78/indian-foster-american-care.html.csp?page=1

Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978

Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act to prevent breakup of American Indian families after a 1976 report showed “an alarmingly high percentage” of children were in “non-Indian” foster and adoptive homes or institutions. It governs what is supposed to happen if an American Indian child is placed in state custody, giving tribal courts jurisdiction for children who are members or eligible for membership in a recognized tribe.

Broken Circle: What is an orphan?

Adoption was invented for orphans, children who lost their parents and needed immediate attention and help - to save their lives literally. The family circle was broken with the death of parents.
Children were orphans because there were no other relatives to care for them.
We know how "adoption" created new families for these orphans. That makes sense - it was a safety net.

Ask yourself:  how is the word orphan to be interpreted today?
In the Third World and Indian Country, those places on Earth where the most destitute live in poverty, an orphan is not necessarily without parents: some of these children are without necessities: food, water, medicine and clothing.
We know Americans will rescue the child but not their parent. Americans will call these children orphans. Is that true? Is it not selfish for an American to choose a child over the parent of that child?
Are Americans OK with separating that child from their parent via closed adoption?
The numbers of adoptees (7-10 million) today answers that question - yes.

In Indian Country kinship adoption means an orphaned child is raised with an auntie, grandparent or other relative.  Families remain intact and the child will not lose their family, language or their culture.
America's closed adoption model for Indians was purely destructive, severing a child's contact with culture, language and tribal kin, erasing their sovereign membership and their treaty rights. A few Americans involved in the Indian Adoption Projects have apologized, so we know they admit they did this heinous thing.
Can you imagine - Native children (thousands!) removed by the Indian Adoption Projects for the sole purpose of destroying families and tribal nations? It happened and yes, it was devastating.

America still places a stranglehold on Indian people with its judgement of us. This has gone on many years. Every treaty that was made was broken; all because American leaders wanted to secure more land and what was on those lands (minerals, water and food).
Plot after plot, year after year, you see the American government screwing Indians and stealing from tribes, or turning us against one another, one way or the other.
It's about control. It's about creating poverty and making us fight each other over scraps. This America goverment does not want us to be united in our struggle. They'd prefer us fighting each other over what little we're lucky enough to be granted or given by them.
A Northern Cheyenne friend said they start a fire in your front yard so you don't know what they are doing in your backyard.  They divert our attention this way, and have used it many times successfully.
That is why states historically do not deal with Indians - only the federal government. This is supposed to mean the feds are more fair or the feds have a better grasp of treaties and history - yet they control us with their beauracy, laws and delays.

Fast forward. Do you see American kids being sent to Africa or Russia for adoption? No.
Americans are the biggest adopter in all the world.  It's their savior complex. Americans believe they offered a better life for Indians, International and Third World adoptees.
As an adoptee, it was real pain for me. I cannot grasp how deep that pain went or my confusion and fear when my mother disappeared after I was born. She never returned.  Eventually I stopped crying. I blanked out the hurt yet that deep pain reached into every aspect of my life. It took many years for me to step into the circle and rejoin my relatives... My mother was not dead but I was orphaned.

I hope you will leave a comment.

The day they took my baby...Australia news

The day they took my baby - ABC Sydney - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

As Australia and Canada reveals what coercion happened in their news programs, when will the USA admit what happened to our mothers?
One can only hope we see this happen here and soon... Trace

The Fight to obtain our Original Birth Certificates: Unsealed Initiative: NY's Adoptee Rights Bill

Adoptee Rights Coalition - the Fight to obtain our Original Birth Certificates: Unsealed Initiative: NY's Adoptee Rights Bill: Google+ Tweet This page was updated in March 2012; please refer to Unsealed Initiative for more information.

As some of you know, many Native adoptees were placed with Lois Wyse and Spence Chapin Adoption Agencies, who were part of the Indian Adoption Projects.  New York needs to open their adoption records - let the secrets and lies be exposed and made truth... Trace

Illinois Adoptees can open their records!

http://www.idph.state.il.us/vitalrecords/vital/non_certified.htm

Information on requesting a Non-Certified Copy of an Original Birth Certificate or filing a Birth Parent Preference form in Illinois Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Original Birth Certificates Public Act 96-0895 became effective May 21, 2010 and makes it possible for an adult adoptee or surrendered person to obtain a non-certified copy of his or her original birth certificate under certain circumstances. This same Public Act allows some birth parents to specify their wishes with regard to contact and the release of their identifying information. The bill includes the following provisions: As of May 21, 2010, any adult adopted or surrendered person who was born in Illinois before January 1, 1946, may request a non-certified copy of his or her original birth certificate using a special form (see link below.) Beginning January 1, 2011, birth parents of children born on or after January 1, 1946 who were surrendered may file a Birth Parent Preference form with the Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Information Exchange (IARMIE). This form allows the birth parent to express their wishes regarding the release of their identifying information on the original birth certificate and regarding contact. Starting on November 15, 2011, any adult adopted or surrendered person who was born in Illinois on or after January 1, 1946, may request a non-certified copy of his or her original birth certificate. The ability of an adult adopted or surrendered person born on or after January 1, 1946, to obtain identifying information listed on their original birth certificate may depend on whether his or her birth parents have filed forms with the Illinois Adoption Registry stating a preference regarding the release of their identity. If an adult adopted or surrendered person is deceased, their adult child or spouse (if there is a minor child) may request a non-certified copy of the adopted or surrendered person’s original birth certificate. Please note registration with IARMIE will be required before the non-certified copy of the original birth certificate can be released. Click here for the Surviving Relative of a Deceased Adopted Person registration forms.

THIS FORM is to be used by adopted or surrendered persons to submit a request for a non-certified copy of the original birth certificate. Once completed, the form, along with a legible copy of identification (driver's license, state issued identification card or passport) and a check or money order for $15 (made payable to Illinois Department of Public Health) should be sent to IARMIE. THIS FORM is to be used by birth parents to specify their wishes regarding contact and the release of their identifying information on the original birth certificate. This form, along with a legible copy of identification (driver’s license, state issued identification card or passport) and either a completed IARMIE Medical Questionnaire form or a check or money order for $15 (made payable to Illinois Department of Public Health) should be sent to the IARMIE . Either of these forms and required documentation should be sent to: Illinois Department of Public Health Division of Vital Records Attention: IARMIE 925 E. Ridgely Ave. Springfield, IL 62702-2737 Questions may be directed to the Illinois Adoption Registry at 877-323-5299. Get more information about the Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Information Exchange. Link to Chicago Tribune story:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-adoption-birth-certificates-20120318,0,7825341,full.story

#323 - Milestones in Blogging

Book cover photo

Three years ago, a blog about American Indian Adoptees was a dream and the  history of the Indian Adoption Projects was buried.  Now it’s out there.  

Three years ago, this blog was born.  I set it up in 2009 but I didn’t blog much that year since I was just getting my feet wet - it seemed daunting at first. It was the technical parts of blogging that were new to me. But I had plenty to say and lots of research, news and history to share.

This is my 323rd post. It’s hard to wrap my head around that and how this one little blog has had over 43,000 visits.

The most important thing for me to say is this: Thank you. I don’t think I say it enough. That you all come back here week after week, reading, commenting, and sharing this blog means the world to me. That you’ve spent your hard-earned money on my memoir One Small Sacrifice, told your friends about it, talked about it on Facebook, visited my Book Page, you’ve taught me my vision for this history to be told - it was not wrong.

It’s not every day I get to say this  - thank you.

To recap the life of this blog, I thought I would highlight some of the biggest milestones of the past three years.

Top Search Engine: Google (they referred 4,500 people to this blog)

Most Searched Word:  Split Feather Syndrome

Most Page Views: Split Feathers Study (1,253 people have read this study on Native American adoptees called Split Feathers which is incredible!)

Most Visitors from another Blog:  Cassi’s blog “Adoption Truth” http://adoptiontruth-casjoh.blogspot.com/

Visitors around the world who regularly read this blog:  USA, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Australia, India, South Korea, and the Netherlands.

 I could go on and on, but for now let me just say that you all are the best.  Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Order a copy
Read an excerpt
Watch the trailer

Coerced Adoptions in Canada NEWS

‘You suffered just as much’: Adoptees gain new insight into parents’ choices as coerced adoption stories come to light... Read this news story from Canada here: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/15/you-suffered-just-as-much/

Since a National Post investigation began uncovering stories about coerced adoption among unmarried women from the 1940s to the 1980s, several adoptees have contacted the newspaper saying the reports have validated their mothers’ accounts and helped prove that the choice to surrender was not fully hers. Some women had told their stories on the record for the first time, and they said their children have since expressed shock and compassion.

Does your path choose you?

What is your path in our world...

Even as a kid, instinctively I knew that until I had many life experiences, I didn't have the right to an opinion until I understood many other viewpoints and lived around the country awhile. After I graduated from high school and college, I lived in many different places and worked many kinds of jobs, that included singing in rock bands.

Did I know where it would lead?  I think I did! I followed my interests like a map.

Somehow I knew writing was my eventual path by age 10. I wrote in my journals religiously. No one ever told me to write... In those days I devoured magazines, a study of our strange and evolving American culture.  At one period in my 20s and 30s, I wrote three to 20 pages a day. That led to the discipline I needed to be a writer and have a solid "skill set" to do the work.

By early 1996 I did not choose journalism; it chose me. First I was hired as editor at a weekly newspaper in Hayward, Wisconsin. Then Paul DeMain, the publisher of News From Indian Country, hired me that fall.  It was obvious to me I only wanted to write about Native people and Native news.  Paul and I created Ojibwe Akiing about a month after I started.  After four years and a variety of duties on two Native newspapers, I had earned my unofficial degree in Native journalism from Paul DeMain.

Then the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation called and wanted to interview me for the editor position in June 1999. I flew to Connecticut for the interview and started work on August 16. That year I published a chapter in the book “Olympics at the Millennium: Power, Politics and the Games, 2000” based on my interviews with the family of Olympian Jim Thorpe, a Sac and Fox. It was published by Rutgers Press, in time for the Sydney Olympics.

One thing led to another. Yes, life experience shapes our thoughts and determines our path. The Old Ones visit in our dreams to guide us. We need to pay attention. Our path can take us down many new roads to many new people and we can learn so much in these challenges if we follow the signs which are our interests.  For me, being a journalist and blogger is a gift with power, one that I treat with respect and humility. If you abuse power, you lose it.

The poet warrior John Trudell's life is a source of my inspiration. Trudell suffered the loss of his entire family in a fire, which could have ended his life as a writer and activist. How he healed is how I intend to heal my own recent losses of close friends and beloved family members.

How we heal is entirely up to us, but we have to chose it. If we bury and deny our grief, it will inevitably hurt us more. Even our being adopted is a path. Where it leads is up to us.

After the tragedies, Trudell began to write in a manner as fearless and uncompromising as his political stance with the American Indian Movement, by picking up the pen... He said, "When I went to the writing, it was the most vengeful thing I could do. I won't say I started writing out of love. When I started out to write, I did not want to explode. Writing lines, poems, songs -- that became my explosion."

Can't escape the heat

Disguised as a memory

Howling at the sky

Always chasing almost love that way

Loaded heart in the need to run

Almost always chasing love that way

There's a way you're expected to obey

Don't bite the hand that feeds you

Don't you know what freedom means

Bad dog Bad dog

--John Trudell, "Bad Dog"

Please share how your path chose you in the comments section.... Trace

10 Things You Need to Know About Native American Women

February 5, 2012 by Laura Paskus

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It’s no exaggeration to say that American Indian women are missing from most media coverage, history books and classroom discussions. But at least journalism students, instructors and state educators in Nebraska are doing something to help end America’s ignorance of Native women and the contributions they make to their communities, their tribes and to the nation as a whole.
Last year, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications published the magazine, Native Daughters. With a grant from the Carnegie Foundation and under the guidance of five university professors, students spent 18 months reporting and writing about American Indian women who are artists, activists, lawyers, cops, warriors, healers, storytellers and leaders.
Now the Nebraska Department of Education has also released a companion curriculum for the magazine. You can download it for free here.
Can’t wait even one minute more to learn about Native women? Here’s a teaser of what you can learn more about in Native Daughters—and what you can share with your students via the new curriculum.
1. “A lot of people think that us women are not leaders, but we are the heart of the nation, we are the center of our home, and it is us who decide how it will be.”–Philomine Lakota, Lakota language teacher, Red Cloud High School, Pine Ridge, S.D.
2. The art forms Native women practice stand as reminders of cultural endurance. “Their crafts survived the Greasy Grass (Battle of Little Big Horn), Wounded Knee One (1890) and Two (1973),” writes Christina DeVries in Native Daughters. “Their spirits survived the Trail of Tears, the Relocation and Termination program and continued struggles against cultural annihilation.”
3. In 1997, Ms. magazine named Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabeg) Woman of the Year. That same year, the activist also debuted her first novel, Last Standing Woman.
4. Of nearly 2 million women enlisted in the U.S. armed forces, 18,000 are American Indian women. Their representation in the military is disproportionately high—and Native women are more likely to be sexually harassed, which increases their chances of developing post-traumatic stress disorder.
5. The number of Native women applying to medical school has increased since 2003, peaking in 2007 when 77 Native women applied nationwide.
6. In 2007, when Cassandra Manuelito-Kerkvliet (Diné) was named president of Antioch University, she became the first American Indian woman president of a mainstream university. Not only that, but about half of the nation’s tribal colleges are led by Native women presidents.
7. Cecelia Fire Thunder (Lakota) became the Oglala Lakota Tribe’s first woman president. She has fought against domestic abuse, saying it’s not a part of traditional culture, and been a leader for women’s reproductive rights. In 2006, when the South Dakota state legislature prohibited abortion, Fire Thunder announced plans to build a women’s clinic on the reservation, and therefore beyond state jurisdiction. She was impeached by the tribal council, who said she was acting outside her duties as president.
8. Women lead nearly one-quarter of the nation’s 562 federally recognized tribes.
9. “Through the late 1700s, Cherokee women were civically engaged. They owned land and had a say during wartime,” writes Astrid Munn in Native Daughters. “But this changed after the tribe ceded large tracts of land to the U.S. government in 1795.” Since the mid-1980s, though, a generation of Native women activists, lawmakers and attorneys have been changing that history and working to empower women again.
10. Indian Country could never survive without Native women.

Photo of magazine cover. To order copies of the magazine, contact Joe Starita. You can also visit nativedaughters.org to watch video clips and extended raw footage of the interviews.


Link to Native Daughters: http://cojmc.unl.edu/nativedaughters/

Tribes want to regain authority in adoptions of off-reservation American Indian kids

by Jon Collins, Minnesota Public Radio                                       

March 3, 2012

St. Paul, Minn. — Minnesota American Indian tribes and their allies in the state Legislature are seeking to plug a gap in child custody laws opened by a state Supreme Court decision last year.
The court's decision derailed the common practice of giving tribal courts a role during pre-adoption and adoption for off-reservation American Indian kids.
Until the late 1970s, American Indian children across the country were adopted outside their communities at very high rates. The practice had a devastating effect on tribes, as generations of youth were cut loose from their cultural identities.
"People thought they understood that children would fare better if they were raised in white middle class homes," said Andrew Small, a lawyer and former tribal judge in the state. "When you remove a child from their home, that begins a process that sometimes is impossible to stop... a child is going to be lost to the tribe."
In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was designed to allow tribes a say in child custody and adoption proceedings. Since then, Minnesota state courts dealing with custody of an American Indian child off the reservation have been able to transfer jurisdiction to tribal court, even in the later part of the proceedings, which are called adoptive or pre-adoptive stages.
But a Minnesota Supreme Court decision late last year found a gap in the Indian Child Welfare Act. The court decided that neither federal nor Minnesota statute explicitly allowed state courts, when dealing with an American Indian child living away from a reservation, to transfer jurisdiction during the later portion of custody proceedings.
Although Small warns that the issue isn't "black and white," he said a failure to pass legislation explicitly giving state courts the right to transfer jurisdiction to tribal courts might lead to a slight uptick in the sort of outside adoptions that first inspired Congress to pass the Indian Child Welfare Act in the first place.
"You're excluding the possibility that adoptive and pre-adoptive placement will be undertaken in a distinct and unique way of the tribe," Small said. "Children in that situation are typically going to be adopted out of their tribes."
Rep. Susan Allen, the first American Indian to serve in the Minnesota State Legislature, introduced a bill to fill the gap last week.
"The statute is adding [to] a procedure that's already in place," Allen said. "It's just extending that procedure to adoption proceedings."
Dawn Blanchard, Minnesota ombudsman for American Indian families, saw the state Supreme Court decision was a "fluke."
"For us it's sensitive, just because American Indians don't want their kids adopted outside the tribe," Blanchard said. "This [bill] kind of helps keep it the way it should be and the way it should be going."
The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and the three Dakota tribes have passed resolutions in support of the bill. The bill's next stop will be a hearing in the House Civil Law Committee.