Jessie Taken Alive addressed the crowd about the desperate need to resolve the ICWA crisis. PHOTO BY/Christina Rose
State absent at ICWA
By Christina Rose
Native Sun News Associate Editor RAPID CITY — Tearful testimony marked the first day of the Indian Child Welfare Act Summit on Wednesday, May 15. Mothers and grandmothers, some unable to tell their emotional tales, said that they had done everything they had been told to do by South Dakota’s Department of Social Services, yet they continued to be denied custody of their grandchildren. Families waited months upon endless months, doing what one grandmother described as jumping through so many hoops for the state, she is now a championship hoop dancer. Grandmothers who raised their own children were told to take parenting classes, have home studies done, and get certified to become foster parents before they ever, if ever, saw their grandchildren again. In the cases told, nothing they did resulted in the return of their children. Testimony of children drugged within the foster care system was confirmed by Elrae Potts, MSW, who stood up from the audience to share her personal experiences with the system. Having worked in group homes for three years, as a treatment coordinator for foster care/adoption program for three years, and on the CASA board of Directors for three years, Potts had also been on the board of directors for tribal social services for another two years. Potts said that she had left the field after seeing the abusive application of drugs on Indian children for what they called “attachment disorder.” “I know what’s happening in the system,” she said. “They held the children on the ground for an hour at a time, they give them baby bottles at 12 years old, trying to do this rebirthing experience to break them down. The hardest thing was watching them drug our kids with anti-anxiety, anti-depression, they give them meds upon meds. Then they need workers with the kids in school to keep them awake.” Potts said she was on the treatment teams for year and a half until she left. “I had enough. They keep us away from those tables for a reason. It’s a money making machine.” The “Great Plains Summit: Bringing Our Children Home” was held by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a result of the Lakota Peoples Law Project's allegations against the state of South Dakota. Those allegations were re-inforced by a combined effort between the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who retained Attorney Dana Hanna to investigate the court system's handling of the removal of Indian children from their homes. Hanna was joined by ACLU Attorney Stephen Pevar, and together a class action lawsuit was filed against the court system in South Dakota. According to Tim Purdon, US Attorney, District of North Dakota and Department of Justice’s Native American Issues Subcommittee, the DOJ had filed a brief on behalf of ICWA for the Supreme Court Hearings in the Baby Veronica case. “ICWA has ceased to protect the rights of Indian child and the Indian community and tribe in retaining those children in their society.” Later that afternoon, Kevin Washburn, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said, “The stories I heard today are heartbreaking. I will leave here today with a heavy heart. The children are vital and important to us.” Washburn said he had met with the South Dakota Directors of ICWA, and was leaving for Washington with “a bunch of ideas.” Washburn’s next question was directed at the State. “How do we move forward without the state at the table? That’s what ICWA does, it brings states into the discussion. If they are not in the room, we are not getting through to the people we need to get through to. I remain baffled.” According to Washburn, who has only held the BIA position for six months, some of the problem rested with family law. “There are not enough rights for grandparents,” he said. “It is a big issue in family law context.” He also admitted, “We (the BIA) don’t have that much capacity in issues like this. There is not a battery of 150 people in D.C. who are experts on this. Congress hasn’t given us the tools to address it; those tools have been given to other agencies. It certainly is something we care about.” “ICWA is a law that regulates state courts, and we give money to tribes to run their program, so we don’t have a lot of day to day interaction with ICWA,” Washburn explained. Many of the tribal leaders who spoke out during the summit asked for additional funding to strengthen their ability to enforce ICWA. The following day, a presentation by Judges B.J. Jones and William A. Thorne shed light on the origins of ICWA, which began with the boarding schools and led into the removal of Indian children by social services. According to Thorne’s presentation, the 1958 Indian Adoption Project was a joint effort of the BIA and the Child Welfare League of America, and foreshadowed the modern problems to come. Through the 1958 project, states were paid by the BIA to remove children from homes alleging neglect, which could include poverty. Transracial placements were encouraged and children were often placed far from their communities. At that time, 25-35% of all Indian children in the country were removed from their homes. The American Indian Policy Review Commission was created to investigate the Indian Adoption Project, which ultimately resulted in the development of the ICWA. “The stories you all heard yesterday, if you go back and read those transcripts from the American Indian Policy Review Commission, the stories are almost eerily the same,” Thorne said. Thorne’s extensive presentation covered the evolution of the situation. “The whole theory of intervention is that if we take kids out of a bad place and put them in a new place they will be just fine. But research has shown that doesn’t work. Safety itself is not well being. Well-being is, are they growing? Are they adjusting? Are they learning, thriving? Those are important.” Thorne’s presentation also explored the effect of removing a child from their home on the child’s natural brain development. “Research shows the brain grows like laying down one layer after another, and when genetics say it’s time, another layer is laid down. Increasingly complex abilities come from those different layers.” Thorne said that when a child goes through extreme stress, those layers stop development. “If you interfere with the child’s time to lay down the next layer, they never go back and make up that growth. You can train around that but it is like training a stroke victim, it is never as easy. Foster care is like amputation but we do nothing to help that family or that child heal.” Statistics for children in foster care exemplify the failure of the system. Thorne’s presentation showed only 1.8 percent of children raised in foster care complete their bachelor’s degree. Within 12 months of the study 54.4 percent were diagnosed with disorders, with 25.2 percent having PTSD, which is twice the rate of Viet Nam veterans. 16.8 percent are on public assistance, 33.2 percent live at or below poverty level, and 33 percent have no health insurance. For those 30,000 children who age out of the system 60 percent will end up homeless, in jail, or dead, according to Thorne’s presentation. At the end of the second day, a panel discussion introduced ways to turn the system around. In Washington State, the tribes worked with the state to change the system, but Presenter Trudy Marcellay, Chehallis Tribe, said it wasn’t easy. “In 1986 we signed a state agreement, but you must be politically active. In Washington State, the tribes and state have not gotten along, but today we have a close working relationship,” she said. “You must have that law, and you must know it backwards and forwards,” Marcellay said, and talked about a class she attended with National ICWA Director Terry Cross who said they had to know the law inside out. “We read it and studied it and presented it and had homework and we had to know it backwards and forwards. I can recite it to you chapter and verse.” Marcellay remembered the ominous words that Cross had said, ‘This is the law they use to take the children from you.’” Daryl Toulou, Chehallis Tribe, Program Director for the Colville tribe, said that when the tribes originally complained to the State about the lack of ICWA compliance in the courts, the state insisted they were compliant. Toulou said that the tribes decided it was up to them to decide whether or not the state was compliant. Ultimately, the tribes entered into a partnership with the state and between 2005 and 2009, they developed a tool that looked at whether outcomes were achieved or not achieved. Also on that panel, Paul Mineheart, who announced himself as white on account of his parents, from QUICWA at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, made bold statements that were well received. He said, “The State’s child welfare system is not working because it is run by white people. We have a system that can’t support getting the best result for Indian children because the system does not have what it takes to get the best result.” Mineheart described the process by which the Minnesota tribes put a plan into action that reduced non-compliance by the courts from approximately 33 percent out of compliance to 5 percent out of compliance over the last 20 years. Mineheart said there is now a checklist to collect the data from the court system. This ICWA Compliance Collaboration is working with 22 centers across the country, he said. “What you see here is the power of pure peer pressure because that is all it is. Their system does not like a report going out to their peers saying their case is out of compliance with ICWA. That report was circulated to the bench, States Attorneys, tribes, the state of Minnesota, and was posted on the website,” and more. “The power of peer pressure was greater than the perceived power of exercising dominion over Indian people. Education is great but it is slow. We did not have to wait until their attitude changed; this was a way to get people on board.” Throughout the summit, tribal leaders, advocates, attorneys, parents and grandparents spoke their hearts, minds and experiences to an audience that listened intently to all of the information presented. The wealth of information gathered and the impacts that were made will continue to be featured in the Native Sun News. Look for more follow up information about the summit and the Indian Child Welfare Act. (Contact Christina Rose at christinarose.sd@gmail.com) Copyright permission by Native Sun News
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