Native Sun News Today: Community leaders step forward for Native youth

Friday, August 16, 2019

Children lost to the system at Cheyenne River

Looking for a solution at Cheyenne River

By Richie Richards

Native Sun News Today Correspondent

PIERRE – For generations, many children from the Cheyenne River Reservation have been lost to the system and never to be heard from again.

Two community leaders from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe have stepped up to identify social factors which lead to children being displaced from their homes and into foster care or other state facilities. Through this identification, they are able to come up with possible solutions to this inter-generational problem of children being taken from their culture.

Toni Handboy, 42, Founder of Piya Wicoicaga Luta, has been in recovery for most of her adult life. Through this experience she has become educated and is working as an advocate for families, incarcerated men and women, and has made it her life’s mission to improve conditions for her community.

Handboy feels some of the social conditions which lead to children being taken from their homes have been a decline in resources. There are a large number of tribal citizens whom are addicted to methamphetamine, alcohol, cold medicines, opiates, and most recently, she has seen an increased use of Kratom and dust cleaners.

Toni Handboy is a Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe member and founder of Piya Wicoicaga Luta. She has become an advocate for children and families in her tribe and has become a voice for men and women in incarceration. Photo courtesy Karla Abbott

“Lately, a trend I noticed is our tribal members passing away at a younger age in years. We have a high rate of homelessness on our reservation. I witnessed families living at the local powwow grounds living in tents,” said Handboy. “With the rate of drug use on the rise and alcohol our families are being removed from their HUD homes. When families are displaced it becomes overwhelming to host another family in a home that already is oversized in occupancy.”

According to Handboy, when the Department of Social Services receives any reports on allegations of neglect, this can create an investigation on the family. “Elders are doing more and more to protect their grandchildren from being placed in the foster care system. Unfortunately, their homes may not meet the criteria for the children to continue to live in the house. These are a few of the reasons children are misplaced,” she said.

Not only are children being removed from homes on the Cheyenne River Reservation, elders are being removed from their homes and being placed in senior living facilities. Also, newborns that test positive for illegal substances are being removed from their mothers and families.

“I have witnessed from working in the field of addictions that most children are placed off the reservation. Most families are located determined by the children’s needs,” Handboy said.

Handboy has noticed recently that children that have been adopted or aged out have been returning to the reservation. “They are unsure if they are enrolled and how to go about getting enrolled. If children are born off the reservation, they have been removed from their parents. This may have caused them to not be enrolled by the tribe before considering adoption,” she said. “It has become a concern due to the number of children being removed from their families due to addiction or incarceration. Children come home as adults and do not have an identity of who their families are or family tree.”

The Cheyenne River advocate said she had requested statistics on children who have been displaced from their homes on the reservation.

Children who return home from being away will often find themselves alone, unloved and confused about what is happening in their families. This puts stress on the children to find solutions and ways to fix their family. This can create the child to take on the adult role and be expected to grow up emotionally at a faster rate, according to Handboy. “It can also cause child trauma, where they can lose their identity of who they are and where they belong in society. The connection to their traditional and cultural ties becomes severed. This can exacerbate the current circumstances to a point where they become suicidal or depressed,” she said.

She feels the child may not have any history of mental health or addiction, yet they end up living with the circumstances of their family dysfunction. “The systems when removed may not see what impact these decisions of removal until the child becomes an adult. Society does not understand what is needed for a child when they become the forgotten and we forget, until they return home.”