***

So I’m behind but trying to catch up.

Tuesday another teen showed up at a hospital turning herself in under Nebraska’s “safe haven” law. Making this the second “self haven” case. See Teen Cites Safe Haven.

Tuesday night the teenage mom walked into the hospital after she says her mom hit her and kicked her out. The North High sophmore also claims her mom steals her welfare checks, meant for the baby. The teen’s mother insists she’s never abused her daughter or taken her money. “I shouldn’t have to explain my financial situation to anyone, even my child, as long as she got a roof over her head. She’s not neglected, she eats whenever she wants to, she take a bath whenever she wants to. Her job is to go to school and come home and take care of her child, now that she has a child,” says Portia Crawford.

Crawford claims this whole thing started over a fight with her daughter who wanted to go out for the night and leave her baby.

This is the second teen who has turned themselves in, the first was back on September 22rd, an 18 year old boy who walked into Grand Island hospital. He was turned away as too old for foster care and given a referral to services, whatever that entailed.

The news story continues:

A petition was filed to charge Crawford with neglect, her daughter is not protected under safe haven.

Welcome to the grand irony of Nebraska’s “safe haven” law, anyone with physical custody of a kid when dumping is protected under the law, but kids themselves trying to access help are not.

Neither of the two teens are being counted in Nebraska DHHS’s official dump statistics (link opens a PDF.) This is important, as clearly these self “havens” are falling through the cracks. As they simply fall out of the history, no one can get a handle on what’s been happening. They’re absolutely happening, but hidden.

The local news, for example knew nothing of the earlier instance. (Should we sooner or later expect yet a third “bizarre new twist” story when another kid does the same?)

No age is reported on the girl beyond “sophomore” and “teen,” but we can safely assume she would likely fall within the age range covered by the law.

The bottom line is these two have become invisible self “havens”. Ghosts in the machine.

Nebraska thinks these kids don’t count.

Perhaps most importantly, despite asking for help under the law, there is no “haven” on the other end for them.

Then Wednesday, another kid was abandoned at Immanuel Hospital in Omaha, a 17-year old boy.

See, Another Safe Haven Drop in Omaha

and

KETV’s New ‘Safe Haven’ Teen Has Criminal Record

Investigators said it appears to be a case involving a mother who decided she could no longer handle her teenage son.

and

According to juvenile court records, the mother told a social worker that her son “needed to be a state ward now.” She said she was exercising her right under the Safe Haven law.

Perhaps one of the more interesting details in the piece is the boy’s lack of educational history:

Omaha Public Schools said her son has never been enrolled in a district school, even though he lives in the district.

Whether this means the boy was home schooled or in a private school or simply never educated at all remains to be seen.

Once again, we have those actually dealing with the practical application of the dump laws unhappy with the lack of preventative structures long before a kid reaches a dump site:

“There needs to be a better way to address these issues,” said assistant Douglas County attorney Nicole Goaley. “I think there needs to be a preventive way to assist families in getting their children the resources they need without making them wards of the state.”

Naturally, per the title of the piece, the focus is also on the boy’s previous “run-ins with the law:”

Court records show the teenager in this latest case has had several run-ins with the law. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to marijuana possession and being a minor in possession of alcohol. Last year, he was charged with misdemeanor theft and failure to appear in court.

The boy is in temporary, emergency custody with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Service. His case will be heard in Douglas County Juvenile Court next week.

So let’s talk numbers again.

While the Nebraska DHHS count stands at 19 kids, as I’ve said before, this is a Bastard Blog so here, I focus on the experiences of the kids themselves in relation to the dump law. My count is well above 19.

Nebraska may not count for example, the kid left at the Police station as it’s not an authorized dump site under the law, but that kid himself is no less abandoned. To the best of my knowledge he’s still in foster care. He is every bit as dumped as the rest of the kids on the official tally, but not counted.

So let’s go through my non-state approved count of dumped kids:

• 9/1- 14-year old boy dumped at an Omaha police station (not an approved dump site)- NOT COUNTED
  
• 9/13- 11-year old boy
• 9/13- 15-year old boy
• 9/20- either a 13 or 14-year old girl (conflicting accounts)
• 9/22- Self haven- 18-year old boy- NOT COUNTED
• 9/24- 9 siblings: 1-year old girl, 6-year old boy, 7-year old boy, 9-year old girl, 11-year old boy, 13-year old girl, 14-year old girl, 15-year old boy, 17-year old boy
• 9/24- 11-year old boy
• 9/24- 15-year old boy
• 10/5- 15-year old boy
• 10-5- 12-year old boy
• 10/5- 15-year old girl brought to the hospital by her mother to be dumped, police talk her into committing her to the psych ward instead (see my blog piece) – NOT COUNTED
• 10/6- 14-year old girl (Iowa) NE DHHS has her listed as 10/7
• 10/13- 13-year old boy (Michigan)
• 10/21- Self haven- “sophomore/teen” girl – NOT COUNTED
• 10/2- 17-year old boy

(Again, see my Nebraska tag for my previous writings about many of these.)

Which is to say actually 23 kids have either been dumped , are attempted dumps, or self “haven”ed, (only to find no haven there for them.)

On this blog at least I do my damnedest to ensure “nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

As I said back on October 6th,

If there’s any one thing my blog tries to do consistently, it’s remember those so often forgotten or hidden in (or out of) the ‘official’ tabulations.

…

In Nebraska with its child-dump law the casualties to date have been kids. In states with baby-dump laws, the casualties are babies. Whether newborn or child, abandonment deprives these people of building blocks necessary to them, particularly later in life. The state should never set out to set up systems that intentionally deprives a subset of citizens of basic things other citizens not only have, but consider the bedrock their lives are based on.

No matter what pretty language child-dump advocates attempt to wrap their toxic legislation in, the bottom line is child abandonment is never good for kids.

As I’ve said so many times before, there’s only one thing to do a legalized abandonment law, repeal it.

***

So to attempt to do damage control in the wake of the child welfare mess in Nebraska, a new meme is being spun, that it was opponents of the bill who created this mess.

We’re seeing this from multiple directions now, including former Nebraska State Senator Chip Maxwell (R) who has moved on into his next career of sorts at the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research lobbying against embryonic stem cell research. (Also see “You can be Pro Holiness and LOVE Stem Cell Research” here.) Yesterday he blogged about the Nebraska legalized child abandonment disaster, Safe Haven: We meant to do that.

He offers up legislators “meant to do that,” claiming they:

wanted the spectacle of teenagers being dropped off at hospitals under the safe haven law to highlight the difficulties families have in getting help for troubled teens

Let’s be clear here, genuine longtime opponents of the dump laws didn’t want anything to pass. We did not want any version of it going forward. We have opposed dump laws across the board. We tried to talk some sense into Nebraska legislators before they passed the “Aged up” version, as the law went into effect, and later after the dumps began. This aged up version was their creation not ours.

Nebraska’s unique dump law was not created due to any encouragement from us. This is a mess of their own making.

We oppose all dump bills, and have consistently called for their full repeal after their passage. See my comment the day after the went into effect and my first post on the Nebraska situation, in which I started off with:

It’s long past time for Nebraska to repeal the worst baby dump law in the country.

Some of us ourselves are adoptees. We know what abandonment can do to kids, younger, or older. We know what not having information about one’s origins means, in ways people with that information cannot fathom. We know what feelings of loss and be left or perhaps even unwanted do to kids over the course of a lifetime, we see such in the adoptee community all the time. It is precisely due to that understanding, and that empathy that we oppose all dump laws.

Never in a million years would I advise real kids actually have to go through the act of legalized abandonment just to make a point. It’s not ethical to play with kids lives that way.

I have a deep empathy with the kids and what they will endure. (Now some are already enduring.)

These 21 kids (see how I reached that number in my posts concerning gaming the numbers and the numbers spin,) and there may well be more by the time Nebraska legislators finally get around to putting an end to older dumps, are going to be dealing with the consequences of Nebraska’s failed experiment in child welfare law for the rest of their lives.

Under the aged down version, just like the rest of the country, a whole new class of kids abandoned at the state’s encouragement are going to be dealing with that for the rest of their lives. Estimates already run between 1,000 and 2,000 kids have been dumped nationwide under these hideous laws.

Do not for one instant attempt to hang these dumps around the necks of the very people who have fought these bills from the beginning.

Now as for Nebraska state legislators and their motivations regarding what they passed?

I honestly don’t know what the hell they were thinking.

But this was a legalized abandonment bill.

They wanted a dump bill, they passed a dump bill, and legalized abandonment advocates, far from instantly understanding the damage that the NE law was about to cause, instead crowed about getting their 50th state, claiming Nebraska as a victory.

If anyone is to blame for this mess, and the mess in the other 50 states, it’s dump law advocates, who in their short sighted race to pass these abominations, have created a lasting legacy of a legal mess and personal scars these kids are now stuck with.

As I said before:

Someone get these kids a lawyer, they’ve got one hell of a case.

***

I want to point readers at an older (approximately October 16th?) Nebraska news segment I feel is important and have been meaning to blog about.

It’s a piece about genuine child abandonment. Not the “safe haven” laws. But as some insist upon utilizing it as an opportunity to talk about thier law, let’s talk about the failures of such in relation to genuine abandonments in Nebraska.

The segment shows how kids are yes, still being left, abandoned and on on their own in Nebraska, “safe-haven” law or no.

This (poorly titled, insinuating a direct connection, when the connection is abandonment, not the use of the law) piece, Home Alone Over Safe Haven, discusses two Nebraska kids (11 and 12 years old) left in an apartment to “fend for themselves” while their mother left for Kentucky supposedly in search of a new apartment.

Go read the full piece and watch the video for full details.

At the beginning of the video piece local reporter Dave Roberts opines,

“It’s an illegal choice in a state that offers safe haven.”

This is again, part of that (reproductive) “choice” false meme I have commented upon before being falsely applied to (post birth) children. Abandoning one’s kids like this is not in any way akin to any form of “reproductive choice,” nor are so called “safe havens.”

Both deal with actual (born) children, with their own constitutional rights.

Legalized abandonment advocates have desperately attempted to conflate the issue, particularly in relation to their school curriculum based presentations in other states. Wherein baby-dump advocates offer up legalized abandonment to young womyn as some form of third choice added to “abortion or adoption.” (And yes, even “abortion or adoption” is an intentional conflation, as womyn have only two options before birth, abort or bear to term. Relinquishing for adoption or parenting the child themselves are post birth parenting decisions, not reproductive decisions.)

Naturally, right on cue, legalized child abandonment advocate and Nebraska bill creator and sponsor Arnie Stuthman jumped the opportunity. Rather than admitting the outright failures of his law in this particular case, he instead attempted to capitalize upon it, essentially claiming that to his mind, it shows how allegedly necessary his law was. This is the strangest twist on sore winner-ism yet. The dump law advocates get what they want, they get their laws passed and then with every instance of children still being abandoned or still turning up dead, they insist their law is more necessary than ever.

For those of us who have tracked the dump laws play out state after state, we’ve watched variations on this scenario play out again and again. The more it fails, the more dump advocates dig their fingernails in.

Five days later, police still can’t find mom and the senator who wrote Nebraska’s safe haven law wonders why this woman, didn’t take advantage of it.

Senator Arnie Stuthman says, “We’re so concerned about the welfare of these children and that’s why we put this safe haven law there; although it was mainly meant for the babies and the people that could be harmed, but these too could drastically be harmed because they have nowhere to go. No where to get food.”

What both State Senator Stuthman and the local reporter fail to understand is that the mother in question was probably not the type to use the law in the first place, as using it would have meant the likely loss of her parental rights permanently.

We may very well be looking at what is really more of a child care issue, not a “safe haven” issue.

The “cost” of accessing child care must not be one’s parental rights.

Let’s look at two possibilities here.

In possibility one, (giving her the benefit of the doubt,) to her mind, she may have viewed the entire situation as temporary, sort of an “I’ll go on ahead, then come back for them.” If she did not intend to lose her kids, what she was looking for was sort of a temporary way to hit pause.

Dump laws only provide one option, loss of custody, likely permanent loss of parenthood and decision making power relating to her kids. Apparently (again, giving her the benefit of the doubt) she wanted to retain control. The dump laws do not give parents that power.

Many parents are merely looking for a time out, a place for the kids while they do what they need to do. But with the dumps laws, it’s all or nothing.

She may have viewed leaving them behind temporarily as preferable to “abandoning” them. She may not cognize herself as an “abandoner.”

(After all, what kind of mother intentionally abandons her own kids?)

On the other hand, let’s look at the second possibility here, let’s say she really was leaving for good, leaving the kids once and for all. Again, despite the local media blitz the Nebraska law has created, she did not use the law. Even if she intended to simply walk out, she did not take the kids to a dump site.

The kind of people the dump laws are often most intended for are often those least likely to utilize it.

Kids coming in through the dump sites are often well cared for, some come with personal items or even a suitcase. Often the parents or guardians show deep sorrow and remorse. That is a very different profile than those who simply walk away. Those who take the time to take the kids to dump sites tend to be those not in some process of “walking out.”

To date, we have no evidence that any of the kids abandoned were in any genuine immediate danger.

Yet the kids most in genuine danger are those who are left nowhere near dump sites, (again despite the media blitz.)

The dumps are catching kids whose parents care deeply and are looking for alternatives. For those not looking for alternatives, for those who just walk away, no dump law in the country is going to help.

As for the kids themselves,

Police put both children in protective custody. If detectives find mom, she could face criminal charges.

Which leads into another of the many unanswered questions about dump laws, are parents who abandon after the dump laws being sentenced more harshly than before the dump laws were passed because the state now views them as having rejected the state created “alternative?” Do judges who over time become frustrated with the laws not working sentence more harshly?

There’s a dissertation in there somewhere for anyone who wants to do the legwork.

Being legally prohibited from attaining my State sealed records, I have no idea what heritage cultural or genetic my biological family might contain, other than a quick glance in a mirror appears to indicate pretty clearly a hefty chunk of what would generally be termed “white” by sociological definition. The family history of those who adopted me has interwoven at times with First Nations peoples on both the American and Canadian sides of the border.

While my interest in this subject, yes at times does relate to aspects of ‘familial’ history, my primary interest in such is historical and political, speaking from both a Bastard perspective, as one who opposes forms and tactics of colonialism (religious, political, etc), and as one who supports indigenous peoples’ autonomy and demands for redress.

***

I’m going to use this Aug 2nd, ‘08 CTV piece, At least 22,000 Canadian children need parents, as a jumping off point to provide some background readings links towards understanding some of the history reguarding the Canadian pool of children currently available for adoption. The CTV piece is pretty much par for the course adoption marketing, but it does provide a few useful statistics:

“There are 76,000 children in child welfare care and over 22,000 we know are actively waiting for adoption right now,” Sandra Scarth, president of the Adoption Council of Canada, told CTV News.

In 2006, Canadians adopted 1,535 children from other countries, according to the most recent Citizenship and Immigration Canada report on international adoption statistics.

China was the top choice for Canadian families, followed by Haiti.

Of the kids labeled available many are First Nations:

In Canada, many on the adoption waiting lists are First Nations children, some of whom are victims of poverty and their parents’ substance abuse.

“We actually have three times the number of First Nations children in child welfare care today than we did at the height of the residential schools,” said Cindy Blackstone of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.

So what percentage of kids in Canadian child welfare are Aboriginal? An April 2004 study, entitled Keeping the Promise: the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Lived Experiences of First Nations Children and Youth (link to a PDF) produced by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada estimated the number at 30-40%. This is gross over representation of Aboriginal children in ‘care’ considering Native children represent only 5% of the Canadian child population.

What about the “residential schools” referred to in the above, and why would that be used as a frame of reference?

Many Americans are unaware of the systematic cultural genocide the “Indian Residential Schools” inflicted upon First Nations people in Canada, despite America’s very similar own history with the “Indian Boarding Schools”.

The religious schools in Canada, (which were later government funded) were a core program used in the attempted systematic dismantling of First Nations identity, familial bonds, culture, and heritage. While such were labeled “schools” they utilized systems of punishments and brute force against those who refused to assimilate, (see Schooling as genocide. Residential schools for First Nations in Canada 1900-1980) a summary of a paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Hamburg, 17-20 Sept. 2003:)

Preliminary results suggest that there were substantial differences between the national policies of the three countries towards the aboriginal population. Also schooling and pedagogy took different shapes. In Canada, violence, abuse and oppression formed the educational practice under the guidance of the religious bodies. Children were collected by force from their parents and suffered in the residential schools. The Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia is a prominent example of the intruder’s policy for subordination of the population. Overall, the research indicates that schooling can play a major role in suppression and even genocide. Still today, former students must get medical help to recover from the damages caused by colonial school policy.

and

Different measures were used to discipline the pupils. The strap, humiliation, spanking with hands, head shaving and a diet of bread and water, filling the mouth with soap or motor oil, and not at least, not letting the children be in contact with their families (Haig-Brown, 1998, pp 82). All the sexual assaults that have been reported damaged many of the children for the rest of their lives.

By way of most basic background, look to pages such as this, Residential Schools: The Background:

One of the most acrimonious issues to result from the Treaty process is the dark legacy of the residential school system. The purpose of the residential schools in Canada was to educate and civilize or westernize the First Nation peoples in order that they adopt a more western – that is European – lifestyle. Separating the children from their parents and forcing religion on them, it was believed, was the only means by which to achieve this “civilizing” of the First Nations peoples.

Or even the wikipedia page if only to get an overview of important milestones and dates, Canadian residential school system. The CBC has also prepared a timeline, A timeline of residential schools. The CBC also has a video archive, A Lost Heritage: Canada’s Residential Schools with footage from the ’schools’.

As but one of many firsthand accounts, see quotations from We were not the savages: A Mi’kmaq Perspective on the Collision Between European and Native American Civilizations, First Nation History.

All of which has led to Canada’s attempts at ‘restitution’ (as if such could ever be ‘made right’.) Articles such as Canada makes first residential school payment , (from Oct 5th, ‘07, also see the links at the bottom of the article ) about the residential school settlement make a jumping off point.

This past June, Stephen Harper (The Canadian Prime Minister) delivered a formal apology in the House of Commons. (See PM cites ’sad chapter’ in apology for residential schools):

Wednesday marked the first time a Canadian prime minister has formally apologized for the physical and sexual abuse that occurred in the now-defunct network of federally financed, church-run residential schools.

Fist Nations peoples reactions have been mixed. As but one example, I will again point readers at Daniel N. Paul’s, (author of “We were not the Savages”) reaction at the bottom of this page-

OBSERVATION

Let’s say I’m somewhat encouraged, not overwhelmed, by Mr. Harper’s apology- it touches the tip of the iceberg. I will congratulate him on this, he has gone further than any Prime Minister has gone to-date in acknowledging Canada’s inglorious past mistreatment of First Nation Peoples, but, he didn’t go overboard.

Today, I would encourage National Chief Phil Fontaine, and others, to keep in mind that our First Nations are owed an apology for a long list of horrors perpetuated against our Peoples by Canadian and British colonial governments. A few examples, the extermination of the Beothuk, the use of scalp proclamations to try to exterminate the Mi’kmaq, medical experimentation, Indian Act sections that barred us from pool rooms, from hiring lawyers to fight our claims, centralization in the Maritimes, economic exclusion, etc., etc., the list is extensive.

When the day comes that a Canadian Prime Minister gets up in the House of Commons and make a full unequivocal apology for all the wrongs we and our ancestors suffered, it will be the day that we can fully celebrate.

Daniel N. Paul, June 12, 2008

So, in light of such history how does this relate to the pool of children made available to adoption in modern Canada? The residential schools may be closed, but as the CTV adoption puff piece laid out, legally severing Native rights to their own children has been a far more effective and perhaps socially acceptable means of destabilizing First Nations communities:

“We actually have three times the number of First Nations children in child welfare care today than we did at the height of the residential schools,” said Cindy Blackstone of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.

Here Daniel N. Paul deconstructs an article by Michael Downey entitled “Canada’s genocide”. The ‘child grab’ was intertwined with the ’schools’ as part of an overarching strategy to dismantle Native cultures:

Downey relates in his piece the heart-wrenching tale of how thousands of First Nations children were “legally” seized from their parents by provincial governments during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and placed with white adoptive parents in homes around the world. Placement agencies in the United States often received fees from the adoptive parents in the range of 15 to 20 thousand dollars per child.

The stage for the playing out of this tragedy was set in the 1950s when the federal government shirked part of its constitutional mandate for insuring the protection and welfare of Registered Indians and delegated to the provinces, via federal-provincial agreements, its responsibility for the care and control of minor Native children. Downey relates how quickly the process mushroomed into another fast-track process to rob First Nations of their most precious possessions, their children: “In 1959, only one per cent of Canadian children in custody were Native; a decade later, the number had risen to 40 per cent…”

Tie this child grab in with the mid-1800s establishment of Indian day schools and with the late-1800s establishment of Indian residential schools- institutions where the white teachers perceived their most important duty to be to teach Native children to be ashamed of who they were- and it adds up to a wholesale attempt by government to kill First Nations cultures by destroying pride their children had in their heritage. The results for the children were horrific- the mental, physical, and sexual abuse dished out in these homes and institutions badly damaged, and in many cases extinguished, self -esteem.

The adoption of First Nations children even domestically in Canada has had high profile visibility. Former Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien and his wife adopted Native a child, for example. Many of the children, however were sent to the U.S..

Also see Stolen Nation: For more than 20 years, Canada took native children from their homes and placed them with white families. Now a lost generation want its history back. Which details how sealed and amended adoption records are part of the lasting legacy of the “scoop” era used to lock First Nations adoptees away from their biological kin.

Further, due to the record keeping practices of the time, we may never know the full scope of how many children were taken through adoption:

Even now, researchers trying to determine exactly how many aboriginal children were removed from their families during the Scoop say the task is all but impossible because adoption records from the ’60s and ’70s rarely indicated aboriginal status (as they are now required to).

Those records which are complete, however, suggest the adoption of native children by non-native families was pervasive, at least in Northern Ontario and Manitoba. In her March, 1999 report, “Our Way Home: A Report to the Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy on the Repatriation of Aboriginal People Removed by the Child Welfare System,” author Janet Budgell notes that in the Kenora region in 1981, “a staggering 85 per cent of the children in care were First Nations children, although First Nations people made up only 25 per cent of the population. The number of First Nations children adopted by non-First Nations parents increased fivefold from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. Non-First Nations families accounted for 78 per cent of the adoptions of First Nations children.”

Similarly, “One Manitoba community of 800 people lost 150 children to adoption between 1966-1980,” reports Budgell, who prepared the report in conjunction with Native Child and Family Services of Toronto.

Another article from 2001, Manitoba Repatriation Program Connects First Nations Adoptees with Their Heritage explains the use of the repatriation program by Aboriginal ‘adoptees’:

Thousands of First Nations children were placed into adoptive homes in the U.S., often through private agencies in Alaska, California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Adopting a native child was relatively easy for U.S. parents. After paying a registration fee, parents could take a native child home without going through any criminal checks or preparation classes.

U.S. agencies have been complicit in these crimes against First Nations peoples.

While there have been certain ‘reforms’ in the Canadian child welfare systems, allowing for increased Native people’s input, the bottom line remains, First Nations children remain disproportionately represented in the pool of adoptable children.

In the U.S. in 1978, ICWA, the Indian Child Welfare Act passed, protecting First Nations children from being removed from their tribal context. (Though baby dump laws/legalized abandonment laws/Baby Moses laws circumvent ICWA.) Canada unfortunately has no similar law protecting aboriginal children.

Quoting briefly from this description of the film Red Road,

In 1982, the Manitoba government finally agreed to impose a moratorium on the export of children outside of the province, the last province to do so. There was an investigation into the practice. Justice Edwin C. Kimelman wrote a report in 1985 entitled ‘No Quiet Place’, based primarily on looking at the 93 children that were “exported” in 1981. He did not mince his words in his conclusions, saying: “Cultural genocide has been taking place in a systematic routine manner. One gets an image of children stacked in foster homes as used cars are stacked on corner lots, just waiting for the right ‘buyer’ to stroll by”. (as reported in Fournier and Crey 1997:88)…

WHY TAKE THE CHILDREN AWAY?
Why did they take these children from their homes and from their people? There are a number of reasons. Part of it is cultural. Non-Native social workers and agencies have in their minds a set of ideas as to what a “family” and a “good home” are like. For “family”, they think of two parents and their children, the nuclear family. However, there are strong traditions in Native cultures in Canada that think of the family as something larger than this… Then there is the “good home” in terms of physical resources. For non-Native Canadians, this would include a separate bedroom for each child, sewage or a septic tank, and running water. Most Native houses, often structures designed by Indian Affairs, could not meet those “standards”…Sometimes the children were taken away “for health reasons”. This could mean that newborn infants needing to be in or near an urban hospital for treatment would be fostered to a non-Native family who lived nearby and would never be given back to their Native parents. This despite the fact that those parents had done nothing to abuse or even harm the children.

So let’s revisit those ‘justifications’ so often given to permanently legally sever the ties between Native children and their kin; poverty and substance abuse.

Poverty globally, is used as a barometer for ‘unfit parents’, and thusly used as an excuse to strip children from their biological kin. Such is often done under the false meme of “a better life.” (I have written about such before.) Yet the ‘better life” false meme can also be used as a cover to redistribute children of those governments oppose, politically culturally, etc. (Such tactics are frequently used in politically unstable conflict zones where use of violence against a population is encouraged, such as the Argentinian adoptions of the children of the ‘disappeared’, or in wartime for example.)

Poverty can also be used as an excuse towards ‘resource extraction’ of children. Sometimes all flowery language simply falls away and the outright accusations come out, “those womyn are poor, they can’t provide. We’re wealthy two parent families, we can do what they can’t.” All of which can be reduced to their core argument, ‘the poor don’t deserve their children, only the wealthy should have children.’

First Nations activists are acutely aware of the poverty their people (and yes their children) face societally, they are the first speak out about such as part of almost any discussion of the circumstances under which they live. The situation is not personal, it is not any one single family’s ‘problem’, it is a result of systematic exclusion of a people. Exclusion that has been enforced against aboriginal peoples, as classes of people. Their communities have been denied access to economic resources, they have been forcibly removed from lands deemed to have value, (including resources,) essentially anything of value to their colonizers has been taken from them.

Over and over again, it is easy to see First Nations peoples explicitly lay out the economic disparities they face as classes of people in their grievances. See the “First Nations Drum”, June ‘08 Vol, 18, Issue 6 piece entitled National Day of Action draws thousands in support of First Nations or the Assembly of First Nations piece, AFN National Chief Joins Premiers In Call For Action Plan On Closing The Socio-Economic Gap For First Nations as but two very recent articulations of such. The income gap between non-native Canadians and First Nations people is a key point of contention.

Utilization of “poverty” as a crowbar to remove Tribal children is a global adoption tactic, visible around the world, be it in Canada or Guatemala. By laying charges of ‘poverty’ against individual parents, the broader systems of oppression against Tribal peoples as classes of people are ignored.

A second key factor in why First Nations’ legal rights to their own children are so often severed, “substance abuse” is likewise, far from an ‘individual problem’ that can be viewed isolation as if completely disconnected from the context of these people’s lives.

Take this Journal article, Counselling with First Nations Women: Considerations of Oppression and Renewal and summary that deals with counseling Native womyn and the importance of placing the behaviors into the broader context of colonialism they live their lives in:

This article maps the historical background of First Nations women focusing on the residential school system, subsequent intergenerational trauma, and the effects of the Indian Act. Colonization has impacted the health and current roles and responsibilities of First Nations women. First Nations women’s health needs to be viewed in a holistic framework that considers multiple levels of oppression, poverty, colonization, and life as a minority in a dominant culture. Social constructionism provides a new lens from which to question and re-conceptualize ways of working with First Nations women.

In short, one cannot deal with the issues Native parents face without first understanding the context they live their lives in, a context wherein they have been buffeted by wave upon wave of colonialist tactics perpetrated by a variety of institutions such as government and church. For the same State to utilize the very end results of what previous waves of colonialism have done to a people as an excuse to remove their legal right to their own children, continuing similar cycles, goes beyond the height of cynicism. Such can only be viewed as capitalizing upon said cycles. None of this is takes place in a vacuum. Native ’substance abuse issues’, far from being some personal failing, are often direct results of individuals attempting to cope with previous waves of colonizing behaviours perpetrated by those external to their Tribe.

As I said, this post is merely a starting point to begin to come to an understanding of how adoption is but one tool in a toolbox for penalizing and politically destabilizing recalcitrant populations. Any ‘final word’ on such must be left to those who directly experienced such themselves.

My point in bringing such up was for other Bastards to begin to understand webs of connection and contextualization in regard to ways in which adoption has been used against populations.

I’ll end by once again quoting from Stolen Nation, (referenced above) this time at length, as this spells out precisely what I have been aiming to express through this post:

WAS IT GENOCIDE?

According to the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights, Justice Kimelman’s description of the Sixties Scoop as cultural genocide is accurate. It reads: “Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct people with guarantees against genocide or any other act of violence, including the removal of indigenous children from their families and communities under any pretext.”

So why was the wholesale removal of aboriginal children not considered a crime, or even a wrong, that the Minister of Indian Affairs felt obliged to redress along with the residential school system?

The answer isn’t that complicated, says Kenn Richard, director of Native Child and Family Services of Toronto and the man who commissioned the “Our Way Home” report. “British colonialism has a certain process and formula, and it’s been applied around the world with different populations, often indigenous populations, in different countries that they choose to colonize,” says Richard. “And that is to make people into good little Englishmen. Because the best ally you have is someone just like you. One of the ones you hear most about is obviously the residential schools, and residential schools have gotten considerable media attention over the past decade or so. And so it should, because it had a dramatic impact that we’re still feeling today. But child welfare to a large extent picked up where residential schools left off.

“The lesser-known story is the child welfare story and its assimilationist program. And you have to remember that none of this was written down as policy: ‘We’ll assimilate aboriginal kids openly through the residential schools. And after we close the residential schools we’ll quietly pick it up with child welfare.’ It was never written down. But it was an organic process, part of the colonial process in general.”

AFTERWARDS, read down through the rest of this.

On some of the comment threads on dKos and elsewhere about the Senator’s passing, expressions of gratitude from adoptive parents have appeared a few places. So tonight I took some time to write about the former Senator and his adoption specific legacy.

Let me state from the outset, that I am an adult, adopted in Ohio. Further I support the restoration of adoptee original birth certificates which the state has for many of us sealed away from us; I support open records.

So, since others have brought it up, I feel it’s important to say a few words.

Yes, the former Senator was involved in many aspects of adoption related legislation, as an example, Metzenbaum sponsored the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act of 1994 which barred racial discrimination in adoptive placements.

That has led to ongoing discussion about whether or not cross-ethnic placements have been a positive thing or a damaging thing.

(Me? I’m not touching that one with a ten foot pole. Being legally barred from knowing my ancestry, but being darn clear on the paleness of my own skin, I just don’t feel I have terribly much to say on the subject, other than how some of the orphan train placements were little more than a form of forced labor for some children and how ‘indian boarding schools’ were well, in my opinion, nothing short of an intentional form of cultural genocide.)

Instead I want to narrow in on what I feel to be the unfortunate aspects of the Senator’s adoption legacy, yes written from where I sit, as an adult denied my own birth certificate by State law and ongoing State interference. That said, no doubt your mileage may vary.

Being an adult adopted in Ohio, some of his work on adoption is one of the very few places I had some disagreements with him.

Particularly his work in the late 80’s on the Abandoned Infants Assistance Act of 1988, a forerunner to today’s “Baby Moses Laws”/”Baby dump laws”/”Legalized infant Abandonment laws”/”Baby Safe Haven Laws” (spearheaded by the National Council for Adoption, an adoption industry lobby created specifically to ensure adopted people’s original birth certificates remain forever sealed to them, after already having been confiscated by the State upon our adoptions, thus lobbying to permanently erase our genetic and historic identities.)

While the bill was being done in the name of helping children with AIDS ‘abandoned’ in hospitals, it was a NCFA lobbied bill that created precedents, both in terms of children labeled “abandoned” and in terms of State grants to adopters, which today, at NCFA’s urging has expanded greatly into tax breaks for adoption etc. (Unfortunately, the primary beneficiaries of such tax breaks it turns out are not those most in need of such to finance an otherwise impossible adoption, but instead the tax breaks are going to the the already wealthy.)

Again, while all this is being done ‘for the sake of the children,’ NCFA with it’s extensive connections to the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council, Anti-abortion Catholic groups, WAL*MART and Mormons has been no friend to adopted people or first parents.

And unfortunately, Howard Metzenbaum, like many well intentioned people was a friend to NCFA, perhaps not understanding that NCFA represented the industry, not adopted people or our families (plural).

Sadly, it was perhaps the most glaring example of where Howard sided with industry rather than the directly affected, and I can’t tell you how deeply that saddened me (read my diary from earlier tonight on Senator Metzenbaum’s passing if for one instant you think he wasn’t a personal hero to me.)

His ties to NCFA were heartbreaking to me, yet it’s likely that no one ever explained to him precisely what it was he was supporting. The first adopted babies of the baby-scoop-era didn’t reach adulthood until roughly 1960, and many didn’t find their political voice on adoption issues and sealed records, nor really found organizations etc until the 70’s and 80’s.

NCFA awarded “Friend of Adoption” awards that eventually grew into their “Adoption hall of fame”. Howard Metzenbaum was one of the first recipients back in 1982.

Am I blaming him? No, at the time NCFA was working very hard to appear ‘non-partisan’ and ‘evenhanded’ in its political ties. Unfortunately, that was not, and to this day ever more clearly is not what NCFA is. Now that the former head of NCFA, Bill Pierce has died, and wingnut infrastucture has become yet more institutionalized, NCFA’s ties to that ever developing wingnut infrastructure have grown and become far more visible.

NCFA was founded after the Draft Model State Adoption Act (DMSAA) was produced in 1979 by a Carter administration advisory committee. The adoption industry (agencies, Catholic Charities, politically connected powerful agencies such as Gladney in TX- which today has many Bush family ties) studied the DMSAA, saw the “open records” provisions, and by means of re-entrenching their permanent secrecy stance (which conveniently covers any misdeeds they might have been involved in) reacted by creating NCFA to lobby and ‘educate’ in Washington.

I consider it tragic that Senator Metzenbaum, who so often sided with the whistleblowers, the disadvantaged, and in his abortion access advocacy, the side of womyn who were pregnant, was convinced to champion to very legislation that silenced womyn’s voices, and disempowered adopted children, now adults by siding with those who held real control in so many situations- the industry.

All of which is to say, that when people use words like ‘adoption’ rather than jumping to conclusions that they must be ‘doing good work’, it becomes that much more important to do due diligence.

On the other hand, was Sen. Metzenbaum aware of who he had sided with? Was he pro-sealed records?

I hope not, for if he personally was, it creates a very uncomfortable ‘exception’ to the rest of his life’s work.

At this point we’ll never know. That doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate the man for so MANY of the other things he did, yet question this one area.

He will always be, to a degree a hero of mine, but when it came to adoption, best intentions aside, his actions and the ‘legitimacy’ his presence provided are to me at least, heartbreaking.