I need your HELP: Medical Bills Fundraiser

MariJo's books

Boozhoo, Aquay to everyone who reads my blog:

I need your prayers and help for my dear friend poet-author Mari-Jo Moore who was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease. There is a silent auction/fundraiser planned for Saturday August 25 to raise money for her medical bills. (She has no insurance.) 

You can mail any donations of art, books, beadwork, something you've handmade, certificates, gift cards, etc. I am sending signed copies of my memoir and my new poetry chapbook.  You can also help with cash donations, prayers and ceremony, too.

Mail directly to:

MariJo Moore

19 Hidden Laurel Dr

Candler, NC 28715

This is her blogspot for today:

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Forty-two years ago today, my first son, Dustan Paul Moore, was born. I was seventeen, single and scared beyond belief. Just a few months before, I had graduated from high school, seven months pregnant, without anyone, even my mother, knowing this. Of course I had told the young man who had impregnated me, but he had suggested I have an abortion. This scared me more than giving birth so I stopped talking to him and kept to myself as much as possible.

As a woman who will be sixty next month, I now look back at that scared, lonely seventeen year old and I marvel at her strength, tenacity and fragileness. I also cry because I can see still her, lying in bed at night, praying for help but not knowing who to go to. Praying that she was not pregnant, all the time knowing she was.

Before I gave birth, I had decided to give the baby up for adoption, which seemed the logical thing to do. My mother was against this, but allowed me to make this decision. On the day he was born, when I held him for the first time, I knew I could not let anyone else have him. I felt a love that I had never known existed. I wanted to take him home to my mother’s house and mother him. At the age of eight months, he passed back to Spirit. He had cerebral hemorrhage and didn’t make it through the operation.

I have always felt deep inside that somehow I was responsible for his death.
After all, I kept the pregnancy a secret, I didn’t take prenatal vitamins, and on and on. I didn’t even see a doctor until I was almost eight months pregnant.

I have two good friends who are prenatal nurses and they told me that sometimes the younger mothers, who don’t take good care of themselves, give birth to healthier babies than the older women who are exquisite in taking care during their pregnancies. This helped me but deep inside I know I still carried guilt.

This morning, July 4, I awoke to the realization that it was not my fault.
The doctor, young and inexperienced had taken my baby by force, tearing my vagina in the process and injuring the baby’s head. I know I must have known this all along, but had pushed it so far deep down inside my soul that my guilt covered it totally.

No, I am not blaming anyone for the death of my baby. I am saying that finally I realized that I truly did LOVE him. That I didn’t want him to die and that his death marred my heart and soul in a way that I did not understand until now.

Now I am healing from a rare autoimmune disease that affects my eyes.
They burn and itch from blisters growing on my cornea. My sight is not as it once was. A holistic doctor is treating me and I am changing my diet, etc., doing everything I can to heal my body.

And now that others are praying for me, doing sweats and ceremonies for me, asking for my healing, I am realizing that disease really does mean – dis ease. I have been carrying so much hurt, guilt, pain, disappointment, etc. in my soul that my body had to get my attention to make me deal with these. I am healing all on levels. I am feeling love from so many and I am grateful to be loved.

So, gradually, as I work to heal, and others work to help me heal, my soul is also healing. This is a process, but I know, deeply I know, that all of this is part of my path as a seer, as a medium, as a writer, as a mother, as a grandmother.

Life is full of mystery and we are the mystery.

Her blog is http://marijomoore.com/

RI opens records #ADOPTION

New R.I. law allows access to birth certificate

Effective JULY 2, 2012! (With conditions, of course!)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island is for the first time allowing people who were adopted to see their birth records. The state Office of Vital Records on Monday will allow adoptees age 25 and over to get copies of their original birth certificates. For some of them, it will be the first time they learn the names of their biological parents.
Gov. Lincoln Chafee (CHAY'-fee) was on hand to personally hand over records to four people. More than 200 certificates are being mailed and 55 have been preordered for pickup.
The new policy is the result of legislation passed last year designed to give adult adoptees more information about their birth parents and health history.
Birth parents are allowed to submit forms stating they do not wish to be contacted.

From the Norwich Bulletin:

"...Formal implementation of the law, signed in 2011, was held off for a time to enable the state to inform birth parents about the legislative change. Paul Schibbelhute, executive director of the American Adoption Congress, said Monday’s ceremony was a big step in the evolution of adoptees’ rights.
“It is a basic human right to have access to a birth certificate,” he said. “All of us have the right to know who our families are.”
Schibbelhute, who reunited with his birth son in 1998, said his group has lobbied for years to loosen access to adoptive records. Rhode Island is the third state, after New Hampshire and Maine, to allow an adoptee to view their birth certificates. He said his group “continues to struggle” to get the same law passed in Connecticut..."

Read more: Putnam man adopted as child finds clue to his roots - Norwich, CT - The Bulletin http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/x2102591206/Putnam-man-adopted-as-child-finds-clue-to-his-roots#ixzz1zZHbJieR 

For those birthparents reading this: do not deny us our name, history and ancestry, even if you do not meet us - do the right thing!   Trace

What to do if your child is taken: contact NARF

I have been asked what can an Indian parent do to protect their child if the state has taken them into custody. Obviously on reservations, poverty is often cited as a reason. Well, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 is a federal law supposed to prevent the state from removing children to non-Indian homes.

If you are a parent, contact the Native American Rights Fund and their lawyers - first!

The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is the oldest and largest nonprofit law firm dedicated to asserting and defending the rights of Indian tribes, organizations and individuals nationwide.  NARF's practice is concentrated in five key areas: the preservation of tribal existence; the protection of tribal natural resources; the promotion of Native American human rights; the accountability of governments to Native Americans; and the development of Indian law and educating the public about Indian rights, laws, and issues. 

The online edition of "A Practical Guide to the Indian Child Welfare Act" is intended to answer questions and provide a comprehensive resource of information on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). 

Those unfamiliar with ICWA are encouraged to first read the introduction to the Guide
While the topical sections are identical to the print version, the electronic copy has links to thousands of state and federal resources (cases, laws, etc.), updated through September 2011, not found in the print copy.

Introduction

Application Jurisdiction Who has rights under the Act Notice Intervention Emergency removal Transfer Role of tribal courts Recognition of tribal law Tribal-state agreements Foster care placement and removal Active efforts requirement Termination of parental rights

Expert witnesses Access to records for tribal enrollment purposes Placement Voluntary proceedings Adoption Application of other federal laws Enforcement of ICWA requirements Application of standards higher than ICWA requirements Resources

To obtain a print copy of the Guide you may either download a PDF copy for research or educational use or purchase one for a nominal fee.

Appendices
Federal resources State resources Case index A to Z	Tribal Resources Contacts Flow charts	Forms Bibliography NICWA Training

Additional Content:
DHS Title IV-E Policy Sample Title IV-E Agreement
Brochure Copyright

NARF Publications

 

Also read: Fort, Kathryn, Waves of Education: Tribal-State Court Cooperation and the Indian Child Welfare Act (April 6, 2012). Tulsa Law Review, Forthcoming; MSU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-06. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2035451

http://www.narf.org/icwa/print.htm

Propaganda, more money chanelled to adoption via OXYGEN

Warning: EXTREME ANGER and SWEAR WORDS

First watch their video and read this:
http://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/964841/oxygen-media-set-to-premiere-im-having-their-baby

"Oxygen's new series "I'm Having Their Baby" provides viewers with a look at the adoption experience by chronicling birth mothers as they face the decision whether or not to place their children with another family."

WTF?


NOW: I have a better show idea - go interview the doctors who diagnose the adoptees (and some mothers) with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - or adoptees stuck in mental hospitals - or tell the stories of abusive adoptive homes or children languishing in foster care  - or the struggle to keep families intact in poverty-stricken areas - but NOT THIS.
It would be like torture to watch a woman give up her baby - what kind of idiot would think up something so perverse? What planet are we living on here, folks? What century is this?
Why are their unplanned pregnancies in this modern age? How about having a member of your family raise your child if you can't???
Didn't the media get the message yet? Adoption hurts people and even kills people! Adoptees and some birth moms commit suicide! Hasn't OXYGEN done any research?


Instead OXYGEN chooses to glamourize it - and f'cking plug these celebrity adopters again and again:

"Celebrity adoptions"

"In recent years, a number of prominent celebrities have have adopted children through private domestic adoption and international adoption. Though Angelina Jolie may be the first one to come to mind, she's certainly not alone. Sandra Bullock, Kristin Davis, Edie Falco, Joely Fisher, Katherine Heigl, Hugh Jackman, Diane Keaton, Nicole Kidman (and Tom Cruise), Madonna, Ewan McGregor, Denise Richards, Meg Ryan, Charlize Theron and many more celebrities are adoptive parents.

If celebrities adopt, then it must be OK, right?
THIS is how they promote selling a baby to the highest bidder?

They choose the word "BIRTHMOTHER" when most of us in the blog world call them mothers and first mothers. Again, OXYGEN is not paying attention!

"Adoption from the birth mother's view"

We often see stories of adoption from the point of view of the adoptive parents or the adoptees, but there's a third party to every adoption -- the birth mother.

Oxygen Media recently announced the premiere of its newest docu-series I'm Having Their Baby on Monday, July 23, at 11PM ET/PT. The series aims to provide viewers with a sneak peek into the adoption process by capturing the often untold stories of birth mothers as each one is faced with the difficult decision to place her baby for adoption.
Each hour-long episode chronicles the heart-wrenching, powerful stories of two birth mothers struggling with unplanned pregnancies as they decide whether to place their babies in the hands of another family.

The commodification of infants means more babies for sale and more money, money, money.....


I expect some of you will totally disagree with me. I will email you my memoir if you want it. If you want to understand how an adoptee feels and the toll adoption takes on us, read my book, please.
EMAIL ME: tracedemeyer@yahoo.com

BELOVED STRANGERS: Help this film - give what you can

‘Beloved Strangers’ will be a feature documentary film about adoption, searching and reunion, with an eye-opening segment on the disrespected and discriminated status of adoptees in most U.S. states. Daniella and her group have now set up a website and can now take donations directly. Go to : www.belovedstrangers.com - watch this trailer and give what $$$ you can... Trace

Enrollment issues affecting ICWA children

Archival Photo

Convincing me courts are doing their best to protect Indian Children today - it's just not happening.
The amount of urban Indians who are enrolled or not is part of the problem and a real issue here.
Here is a case from Michigan where the mother said her children were Delaware and entitled to protections under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.
Allowing time for tribes to respond is a big issue since many tribes have few or overworked enrollment officers who can't always get historical information to enroll their members and/or their children who live off rez. If tribes did manage enrollment at birth, it would certainly help.

http://turtletalk.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/20120628_c304669_68_304669-opn.pdf

Making more Native children adoptees is not a solution. Helping American Indian families stay together is federal law!

REVIEW: One Small Sacrifice

Review: One Small Sacrifice

By Cris Carl

Trace A. DeMeyer’s most recent book, “One Small Sacrifice,” expresses the experience of adoption in a well-researched and brutally painful light.  Focusing primarily on the travesties of U.S. adoption policies relating to American Indian families and children, DeMeyer carefully illustrates the damage done to a “tribe” of lost children.  These children often referred to by some tribal peoples as “Lost Birds,” suffer more than potential neglect and abuse.  Even in the most loving and well-intentioned adoptive families the sense of lost identity and abandonment can and has created generations of damaged Indian children, according to DeMeyer.

DeMeyer states that the U.S is one of the world’s biggest adopters, with 20,000 children adopted from around the world in 2002 alone.  Adoption rarely makes headlines, but on February 4, 2010, 10 Baptist congregants from Idaho attempted to steal 33 Haitian children. According to the New York Times the children were held in intolerable conditions, they had no relevant paperwork, and some continued to cry that they had parents until Haitian authorities captured the kidnappers.  The practice of removing non-white children, placing them with white American families has a long and well-established history.

Stealing American Indian children has been an accepted and legal practice in the U.S. since the early 1800’s.  DeMeyer notes in her book that congress passed the “Civilization Fund Act” in 1819, the first in a series of laws and acts intended to assimilate American Indian people’s and undermine tribal customs.  The act “authorized grants to private agencies, primarily churches, to establish programs to ‘civilize the Indian,’” states DeMeyer.

DeMeyer goes on to note the advent of the “large, militarist boarding schools or institutions where Indian children were placed involuntarily  and forced to abandoned their beliefs, customs, and traditions.”  The schools, which were established by the U.S. government and private agencies, lasted well into the 1980’s before they were shut down.  “Severe punishment, in the form of beatings, being chained and shackled, bound hand and foot and locked in closets was not uncommon,” said DeMeyer.  Remember, we’re talking about children here.

DeMeyer speaks often of the government policy known as the Indian Adoption Project, which in the 1950’s used pubic and private agencies to remove and place hundreds of Indian children into non-Indian homes.  The practice lasted until 1978 with the creation of the Indian Child Welfare Act.  “By 1900, after decades of forced removal of Indian children from their families and communities, and the stripping of their culture from them, the natural child protection system that once flourished in every tribal community began to break down,” as DeMeyer quotes Terry Cross.

While DeMeyer carefully spells out elements of genocidal government policies that have been destructive to American Indian culture for hundreds of years, far more powerfully, she tells her own story.  At times, reading One Small Sacrifice, I felt I was watching a disaster in the making. 

Painfully, I sensed what was coming with the foreboding that there was nothing I could do but be a witness. 

However, I also found a far-reaching underlying psychology that can be applied to a wide-range of identity and trauma issues – particularly relating to abandonment. 

One Small Sacrifice is a must-read for anyone dealing with not only the aforementioned issues, but for clinicians who wish to look deeper into adoption’s effects.

Cris Carl, (c)2010, All Rights Reserved

Lawyers, lawyers, lawyers...

Note from Trace:
This article is from a lawfirm wesbite - in fact there are special lawyers if you want to return your defective adoptee, special lawyers when you adopt a baby overseas, and now lawyers who will specialize in keeping adoptees "home" in the USA.   Branching out, are we?  So let me get this straight -- Americans pay to adopt you, then forget to pay for a special lawyer to get you citizenship? I wonder if there are lawyers to sue the adopters for forgetting? What about the countries who let their babies leave - do they have lawyers for the babysellers?  In this adoption racket, lawyers just follow the money...

http://www.marcschifanelli.com/blog/2012/06/can-adoptees-in-us-face-deportation.shtml

Can adoptees in U.S. face deportation?

On behalf of Schifanelli & Associates, LLC posted in Deportation on Friday, June 8, 2012

In late May, a Utah woman faced deportation proceedings even though she was adopted as a baby into the United States. The reason? Her mother died before she could finish the adoption paperwork.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) discovered the woman's undocumented status when she was charged with, and pled guilty to, forgery for falsifying checks.
Unfortunately, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the trial court's decision that the woman could be deported.

Older Adoptees Falling Through the Cracks
There is a law in place to prevent this exact situation from happening. The 2000 law grants automatic citizenship to children adopted from other countries as long as they were younger than 18 years of age on February 27, 2001. Yet, older adoptees remain legal residents. This means that, like other permanent residents, they can be deported for committing a crime of moral turpitude or an aggravated felony.
While this is a rare situation, the fact that it happens at all is alarming. Many of these adoptees do not know they are not citizens until they face deportation to countries some of them have never even visited since their adoptions.
A recent article in Multi-American, a Southern California Public Radio website, highlights similar cases:

• A 29-year-old El Salvador-born adoptee, adopted by U.S. parents at six months of age, was sent back to El Salvador. He did not speak Spanish.
• A 50-year-old Japanese-born adoptee, adopted by a Filipino American and Mexican American when one year old, was sent back to Japan. "I grew up thinking I was half Filipino and half Mexican. They could send me to Mexico and I would get by. I can speak a little Spanish. But Japan?" he asked.
• A 26-year-old Brazilian-born adoptee was deported to Brazil where he was murdered.

These are only a few of the tragic cases of adopted U.S. children who face deportation back to countries where they know very few, if any, people. If you find yourself in this situation or face deportation for any other reason, speak with an experienced immigration lawyer to learn what options you have for staying home, in the United States.

Source: Multi-American, "How does an adoptee get deported? More easily than one might think," Leslie Berestein Rojas, May 29, 2012.

60s Scoop update



Marcia Brown, a key plaintiff in the class-action suit, says she won’t give up. “The law process is slow but we will use this time to get the truth of the Sixties Scoop out to people,” she said from Kirkland Lake.

MATHEW HODGINS/for the Toronto Star file photo

Ontario native class-action suit stays alive

Link: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1210395--ontario-native-class-action-suit-stays-alive

Lawyers acting on behalf of aboriginal children who lost their families and culture during what’s known as the “Sixties Scoop” in Ontario have won the right to keep fighting for their class-action suit.

Keeping this story in the news is IMPORTANT! Trace

Loss of mother, father, family, history, ancestors...

This post "Adoption Learning and Survival" and this quote below will resonate with adoptees - please read Von's excellent blog. I do!

http://eagoodlife.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/adoption-learning-and-survival/

"Adoptees suffer many ambiguities in adoption - the loss of mother, father, family, history, ancestors, identity, medical history,birth place, time and date, rights as a citizen, legitimacy and often country, culture, language, food, religion and those subtle things which help us identify with our motherland (the sights, sounds, smells, animals, birds and geology, the lie of the land)...."

With the Indian Adoption Projects, they had a goal - assimilation. Removing us from our families would ultimately remove our culture and language. But adoption never erases our blood... Trace

My post on Lost Daughters

Read my blog post: "Nothing was going to stop me!"  Lost Daughters and their contributors are great!

http://daughterslost.blogspot.com/2012/06/nothing-was-going-to-stop-me.html

I am headed to Wisconsin next week and will resume blogging around July 1. Thanks everyone for your comments and love and support of this blog... Keep good thoughts... Trace


One more thing: read this blog  Real Daughter  - it's brilliant: http://realdaughter.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/parades-pomp-and-circumstuffs/#comment-2550

Kansas adoptees are in luck!

Paula Alwin embraces her son, David Hattaway of Shawnee, who recently tracked her down -- 45 years after she gave him up for adoption. Alwin, who lives in Gatesville, Texas, has visited Hattaway and his family twice during the past few weeks, and he paid her a surprise Mother’s Day visit in Texas. See link: happy reunion

Kansas agencies aid in searches

For Kansas-born adult adoptees wishing to learn a birth parent’s identity and, perhaps, establish contact, the journey begins at the state’s Office of Vital Statistics.
To obtain a pre-adoption birth certificate, adoptees 18 and older can go to www.kdheks.gov/vital, click on the “adoption” link, then click “Obtaining a Before Adoption Birth Certificate.”
The next step is the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, which can be contacted online at www.srs.ks.gov. To obtain a form titled Adult Adoptee Searching for Birth Parents, click on the “Services” tab, click “Adoption Services,” then click the “Children and Family Services” link. That will open a page allowing the user to select “Adoption Records and Search,” which leads to online forms for adult adoptees seeking birth parents or siblings. A form for birth parents requesting contact with adult adoptees is also available.
Patricia Long, an SRS program administrator, said her office processes the forms, searches for adoption records and provides them to the adult adoptees requesting them. The agency also will conduct free searches for birth parents and for adult birth siblings the adoptee had an established relationship with prior to the adoption.
With approval of the birth parents and siblings, the agency also will provide current contact information to the adoptee. It also facilitates reunions when requested.

Read this happy reunion story: http://www.shawneedispatch.com/news/2012/jun/05/search-birth-mother-has-happy-ending/