Evelyn Red Lodge at age 4.
With the recent efforts to repeal and rescind the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse in South Dakota – and National Public Radio’s broadcast about Native families torn apart by the foster care/adoption system, I felt compelled to write about my own story. In talking with Robert Brancato about his efforts on the repeal, we agreed that childhood sexual abuse should be talked about more. But, he related when telling his own story, people would just change the subject at a certain point. That point that people reach Brancato calls the “yuk factor.” Writing about my story seemed the perfect venue as many people will likely reach the yuk factor well before I have finished telling my story. That is when they are free to put down my story and not revisit it again. I was adopted out in the time of the American Indian Adoption Project which ran, according to varying reports, from 1958-69. This project was notorious for adopting out Native American children to White Christian families. It is estimated that 25 percent of all Native children in this nation were adopted out, mostly far away from their native lands, families, language, and traditions. It was a form of genocide. It killed my spirit. I was four years old when the people came from Chicago to my aunt’s home in South Dakota. My father had made his journey to the spirit world when I was two or three-years-old. My mother told me in 2001 when I found her that after my father passed, she had a heart attack. She said, “When I came home all of my kids were gone and nobody would tell us where you were.” The people came on a warm sunny day. I remember exploring their big blue station wagon with my brother. The next thing I remember is sleeping in the back of the car with a quilt that was just my size. My older brother was there, too. However, what seemed to be a fun trip would soon turn into a nightmare. It began with my adoptive mother scaring us so bad we hid under the bed and would not come out. Eventually, we would be beaten so severely that my little adoptive cousin said she thought our adoptive mother was going to kill us. The beatings were the norm in the household. My adoptive mother would just fly off and attack us. Most times we did not even know why. That wasn’t the only abuse I suffered from her. I remember her fondling me when I was in first grade. The emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual abuse she handed out frequently would later serve only to make me a target for many other sexual predators. As I figured out as a young child, my adoptive mother was mentally unstable. She would just throw her hands in the air and start laughing for no reason. Then, suddenly change into the monster I feared most. As she was unstable, she decided that my adoptive alcoholic uncle would serve as our babysitter overnight while his wife and my adoptive parents worked. I was between seven-and- nine- years- old. What he did to me on several occasions is too traumatic for me to remember. Be sure. I know what he did, except, I can only remember just before and after the rapes. I cannot remember the actual acts. Later, his daughter told me she heard me from the next room and knew he was “severely hurting” me. My adoptive father offered us no protection in those ten years of her horrific reign. I did finally protect myself when on a school day, my adoptive mother was going to hit me, and I grabbed her hands and told her, “No more.” I was about 13-years-old at the time. It took those many years for me to grow big enough to fend off the large woman. Those horrific memories are always in the back of my mind. The feelings of shame and anger to name two have never left me. I reached a pivotal and tearful point today that made everything I have been through these rough 50 years I have endured, lucid. I was on a social networking site commenting on a very candid video posted by a friend featuring boarding school survivors. I wrote, “I was adopted out when I was four. I kept expecting my mother to come and get me. Or, maybe some powerful Indian would come and get me. I don't remember right now, when I gave that up.” A few minutes later, my friend replied, “That powerful woman did come and get you and her name is Evelyn.”
(Contact Evelyn Red Lodge at welakota@yahoo.com)
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