Crow Creek grandmother gains nationwide support
Woman’s child advocacy efforts praised
By Evelyn Red Lodge
Native Sun News Correspondent FORT THOMPSON — A Crow Creek Sioux Tribe grandmother was recently surprised and overwhelmed by a wave of support. Janice Howe was featured in a late 2011 NPR three-part series that focused on the public radio network’s year-long investigation into South Dakota’s foster care system under the Department of Social Services. Following the original broadcast of the series, Howe received over 1,200 letters of support for her foster care and Indian Child Welfare Act advocacy. In addition, NPR’s investigative series created a firestorm, shocking many listeners across the nation into action. Howe was interviewed by Native Sun News in 2010, when she was seeking to get her grandchildren out of foster care. As a member of a federally recognized tribe, her grandchildren are protected under the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted by Congress in 1978 in an effort to preserve Native American tribes. ICWA compliance, such as notifying the respective tribes and family members of the placement of a child in DSS care, must be followed by the courts and DSS. Howe had told NSN in early 2010 that her four grandchildren were taken into foster care. She said they were taken into foster care because of an anonymous tip stating her daughter, and mother of the children, was to be arrested for abusing prescription drugs. To date, the mother has not been arrested. However, the children languished in a foster care home for more than one and a half years. A YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gji9F23ssUY) of the presentation of letters has been posted on the Internet. This video shows Howe receiving the 1,200 letters of support from around the country. Danny Sheehan, chief counsel for Lakota People’s Law Project, personally delivered the letters collected by the Romero Institute of Santa Cruz, Calif. As Sheehan presents the letters, he says, “Every single one of these letters has been personalized expressing thanks to you. These people are now involved and will be available to help you protect the grandmothers out here and get the children back.” At this point, Howe is almost speechless and tears up as she speaks, expressing her gratitude by saying, “I am amazed so many people are paying attention to what’s happening here.” Last week, in an NSN interview explaining her surprise, Howe said, “Sara Nelson from the Romero Institute called me and said, ‘You need to come down here (to Fort Thompson). I want to see you before we leave.’ So we met at the Lode Star Motel.” She continued, “I had not met her before. When I saw her I felt so comfortable with her. We hugged, and she told me she always wanted to meet me.” “Next, Sara said, ‘You are going to be real surprised Janice.’ Then, Danny (Sheehan) started telling me about the letters.” “I just started crying. It was just an overwhelming feeling that people really care about what’s going on here. I just could not believe it.” “Sara asked me, ‘What can we do to help you here?’ I said, ‘The women I talk to every day just need gas to get from here to there. They need little things. They might just need baby wipes or little things that others don’t think of because they can afford to buy these.’ She told me she could help.” As for the letters she received, Howe said, “I don’t think I’ve gotten through 120 letters yet.” One letter that sticks out to her so far, she couldn’t remember the name offhand but said, “When this woman heard the story on NPR, she was thinking about my granddaughters wanting to run away (from the foster home). I told them just look in the sky. We’re looking at the same stars. The woman said every time she looks up at the stars now, she thinks of me and my granddaughters.” Howe continued, “Of the letters I got through so far, there is not one person that has been through it themselves. They were amazed this is happening. They couldn’t imagine it happening. They thought it was something out of a horror book. There’s comments like that in other letters. They had not thought that Social Services is like that. They thought they were supposed to keep the families together, and here they are tearing them apart.” Howe continues to work on advocacy for families and children as well as federal prisoners with ICWA issues in foster care/adoption. She said she operates on basically no money. “It all just comes together somehow,” she added. She said she and others are able to pull together to feed the homeless on the Crow Creek Reservation once a week. Howe said the majority of the homeless that come are those who have aged out of foster care and have come back to the reservation. Howe was also responsible for organizing an ICWA forum for the Lakota People’s Law Project earlier this year. She paired people from all over the state with LPLP attorneys for the organization’s impending South Dakota lawsuit for each violation of ICWA as it now stands. Furthermore, she said Lawless America was interviewing people on the Yankton Reservation for a movie in South Dakota. “With all the people going down to tell their stories, I’ve been busy rounding up the people and money for them to go down there. I worked on it for three days,” she explained. Howe added, “Now, Karen Bass (a U.S. Representative from California) wants me to write another letter to Congress for (foster care reform) coming up in January – that 1997 act that they passed back then to reform foster care – they are going to reform it again.” Biographical information on Bass posted online Aug. 17 on The Huffington Post says that she “continues to be an advocate for foster kids, and she had carried several bills to support programs and funding to ensure foster youth have better chances for success, including legislation that uses federal funds to extend support to California’s foster youth to the age of 21.” “Karen Bass made history when the California Assembly elected her to be its 67th Speaker, catapulting her to become the first African American woman in the country to serve in this powerful state legislative role,” the site goes on to say. Nelson explained her role in getting the letters to Howe and the connection between the Romero Institute and the Lakota People’s Law Project. “Dan (Sheehan) is an attorney with LPLP. The nonprofit organization is the Romero Institute. The institute has different projects. The most important now is the (LPLP). That project has been in existence since 2006.” “I am the executive director for the institute, and Dan Sheehan is the vice president and attorney. He is also attorney for (LPLP). He is a constitutional rights attorney, and has a long history of cases in the U.S.” “Danny pointed out that a lot of money was coming into the state in 2005. In the spring of 2006, we started the LPLP. At LPLP, I am the executive director.” Nelson continued, “Our hope is that this case we are filing along with what Janice Howe is doing and with what Laura Sullivan (of NPR) is doing, that all of this together will create such a focus on South Dakota and that the federal government will decide to put some of those grants LPLP (advised the tribes to apply for) into the tribes to set up their own programs as an alternative to the DSS.” “In 2006, there was no spotlight on the state. She said the state had no oversight. We have been trying to be a voice out to the rest of the country – to tell the country what is going on in South Dakota.” “DSS has a program where they get income from every step that they do with these kids. With DSS guidelines, you have to have a big house and a certain amount of income. All these things, generally, the Native people don’t have.” Most of the nine Indian reservations in South Dakota lie within the poorest counties in the nation. “That doesn’t mean (Native Americans) can’t provide a good home for these children. There is some work being done right now by another lawyer that we are in touch with, and he’s working on the question of tribal placement guidelines to be established so that when we go into court with these cases, the courts would have another set of guidelines established by the tribes.” Many people NSN talked to believe DSS uses ethnocentric mindsets when it comes to Lakota traditions and values. Also within traditional Lakota, parental rights are not severed. The kinship system – where a child may have hundreds of relatives – is part of tradition. Nelson says that LPLP strives to see that Native children in South Dakota enter tribal care based upon the kinship system rather than the foster care system. Although Howe is Dakota, many traditions remain the same for the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations. The difference in tribal names is based on the language dialect. NSN also interviewed Oglala Lakota grandmother and environmental activist Debora White Plume about the role in general that grandmothers currently play in the Lakota tradition. White Plume explained, “I know that the role of unci (grandmother) is to be loving and a teacher of our ways and being a role model of our culture and ancient teachings. Nowadays, unci is often in the position of being the last link in the chain of keeping the family intact. I know many grandmothers who are raising their (children’s) children as the parent. This robs them of being able to be the unci. Getting custody prevents the child from being taken away, but it also robs the child and the grandma of their true relationship of being able to fulfill those roles Creator made for us.” Since the three-part NPR story hit the Internet, much action has been taken for Native children in South Dakota. Known to NSN through sources, two United States House Democrats have asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs to conduct an investigation into the disproportionately high rates of Native children taken from their Native families by the DSS. An ICWA summit sponsored by the BIA is expected to be conducted this week for investigative purposes. The National Congress of American Indians has passed a resolution that partially quotes the information contained in the NPR series and presented the resolution to the U.S. Congress. At least two organizations are expecting to file lawsuits against South Dakota’s DSS and possibly others who were complicit in actions leading to the taking of Native children without ICWA compliance and without proper evidence. (Contact Evelyn Red Lodge at welakota@yahoo.com) (c) Native Sun News
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