Indian Child Adoption Paper

The removal of Indian children from their families were at a significantly higher rate than whites and other non-white groups. A study conducted by the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) (1977) found that 25 to 35% of all Indian children were being placed in out-of-home care (as cited in Byler, 1977; Fischler, 1980). The study further found that 40% of all adoptions in

In Legend, there is a specific caste system, which is addressed to the general public. When you turn ten years old, you must take a trial for the government. The answers to this test will determine where you can go in the future. The Republic then has full custody to do what they please with you after this test is complete. “Your parents have to nod and agree. A few even celebrate, because the Republic gives them one thousand notes as a condolence gift. Money and one less mouth to feed? What a thoughtful government. Except this is all a lie” (Lu 7). The government determines your life and has full custody to control you based on test results. And the parents are forced to agree with whatever the decisions are made by the government due to the fear the state has caused, allowing parents to freely let their children leave if they fail their trial without a fight. “I nod, because that what she wants me to do.

Adoptive couple v. Baby Girl was a case that involved the biological parents of the baby girl in question. The biological mother Christy was Hispanic-Caucasian and, the father Mr. Brown, a member of a Cherokee Indian tribe. Congress had to step in due to the “ICWA” or the Indian Child Welfare Act that was passed in 1978 to prevent the illegal and harsh removal of Indian children from the tribes. This case was a huge battle in the Supreme Court between the biological father Dusten Brown and the adoptive parents of baby Veronica in September of 2011. This case caused uproar with people on both sides of the fence.

In the past year and a half with events like DPAL, Native American rights along with the rights of other minority groups in the United States haven’t been shown the same rights as Caucasians when it comes to civil liberty issues. In 1978 Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Under the ICWA tribes have significant input on whether the removal of children from them is necessary, “efforts must be made to support and rehabilitate a family before its child is placed into foster care or adopted.” (Ryznar, 2013). The ICWA also was enacted to examine how it “establishes standards for state-court child custody proceedings involving Indian children… “the consequences…of abusive child welfare practices that [separated] Indian children from their families and tribes through adoption or foster care placement, usually in non-Indian homes.” (Cornell University Law School). In 2009, a couple from South Carolina, Melanie and Matthew Capobianco, wanted to adopt a baby whose father (Dusten Brown) was an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and mother Christina Maldonado of Hispanic background. Due to Brown being a registered member of the Cherokee Nation, and under the ICWA, a child that

Parents wishing to adopt have challenged the adoption laws regarding American-Indian children. For many decades, people wanting to adopt African-American children from disturbing situations have been put through several issues. A law was passed called the “Indian child welfare act” to end what was then a common practice. The state claims they thought that American-Indian children were better off in homes with non-Indian parents. A handful of recent lawsuits say the federal law and similar legislation at state levels make it harder to find stable homes for children. they’ve had many cases fall apart, because parents adopting don’t want the children. Most adopting parents believe it's unfair to them if they can’t adopt American-Indian children.

There were cases in Swain County where Native American children were mistreated by DSS system, and this mistreatment did result in the wrongful death of a Cherokee child. Family safety was created to make sure that the needs of Cherokee children were met. Obviously, Cherokee officials were very angry about the chain of events that transpired in Swain County DSS. The problem here is that since Family Safety is such a new program many enrolled members on the reservation don’t know about it, and they don’t know that the organization was specifically founded to meet the needs of their children. This is one of the core problems that the organization ran into while I interned there. People believed that this was the same as DSS and thus they prejudged the organization. They did not want help from Family Safety because they thought that white people were once again meddling in their affairs. The vast majority of employees at Family Safety were enrolled members of the Cherokee tribe, or at least descendants. Every single program within Family Safety was created to better serve the needs of the Cherokee community. Poverty was one of the major problems that I encountered during my

Unfamiliar with extended family child-rearing practices and communal values, government social service workers attempted to ‘rescue’ children from their Aboriginal families and communities, devastating children’s lives and furthering the destitution of many families. Culture and ethnicity were not taken into consideration as it was assumed that the child, being pliable, would take on the heritage and culture of the foster/adoptive parents (Armitage, 1995). The forced removal of children and youth from their Native communities has been linked with social problems such as “high suicide rate, sexual exploitation, substance use and abuse, poverty, low educational achievement and chronic unemployment” (Lavell-Harvard and Lavell, 2006, p.144). Newly designated funds from the federal to the provincial governments were “the primary catalysts for state involvement in the well-being of Aboriginal children…as Ottawa guaranteed payment for each child apprehended” (Lavell-Harvard and Lavell, 2006, p.145). Exporting Aboriginal children to the United States was common practice. Private American adoption agencies paid Canadian child welfare services $5,000 to $10,000 per child (LavellHarvard and Lavell, 2006). These agencies rarely went beyond confirming the applicant’s ability to pay, resulting in minimal screening and monitoring of foster or adoptive parents (Fournier and

The Indian Child Welfare Act effected tribal members from over 565 federally recognized tribes and reaffirmed these nation’s sovereignty (Leake, 2012). The ICWA also impacted the way that federal, tribal and private child welfare programs as well as the way adoption agencies worked on a daily basis. According to Bussey (2013), the Act also forced CPS departments at both the state and county level to develop, “…formalized protocols to identify Native children by asking about American Indian/Alaska Native status beginning with the first telephone or in-person contact with a family.” In addition, courts and judges have been impacted by the ICWA because they now have a responsibility to, “inquire about Native heritage at each court appearance until heritage is ascertained” (Bussey, 2013). Early detection of Native heritage is especially important for placements since it could potentially interrupt the adoption process (Turner, 2016). Furthermore, “Among the benefits of early identification of Native children are improved tribal notification and involvement, increased focus on locating relative placements, and timely referrals to culturally-responsive services” (Bussey,

By the year 1967, all U.S. states had child abuse reporting laws. “Child abuse reporting laws and enhanced awareness of child abuse produced an increase in intervention” (Myers, 2013). As reporting laws came into affect, more and more cases of child abuse and neglect were shown. By the mid 1970s, over 60,000 child abuse cases were reported and the extremely high rate of children in foster care alarmed government officials. In 1980, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (AACWA) was passed. This act required every state to make reasonable efforts in keeping children with their families, and when removing the child was not avoidable, the child was required to have a plan to be placed back in the home or have their parents’ rights revoked. For the children whom returning home was not an option, Congress offered financial incentives for adoption. This effort to preserve the families was a main objective of AACWA. An influential investigation pertaining to this was done by Henry S. Mass and Richard E. Engler, as explained by Sribnick (2011). They concluded that many children were living a majority of their childhood years in foster care and institutions. Their findings showed that if a child stayed in foster care for more than a year and a half, it was not likely that he or she would ever be reunited with his or her family or be adopted. In response to this, the Child Welfare League of America lobbied for child welfare workers to consider

It is a piece of federal legislation passed by Congress to protect our American Indian children. Our American Indian children need protection from the continuing removal from their families and culture; and placed in an environment where their adoptive parents do not hold the same values and beliefs that they will hold true as a reflection of Native American culture. Jones illustrated that an important glance at the history of the American Indian people revealed the reason why this act was enacted, it is seen that as many as 25-35% of American Indian children were being removed from their homes and families and retained in non-Indian households. Judges and social workers were not knowledgeable about American Indian culture; thus failing to recognize the customary child-rearing practices that American Indians exercised (Jones, 1995, pp. 18-23). With the number of American Indian children in the social welfare system, the social worker holds an important role. Each individual that partakes in an adoption will be paired with a social worker. Social workers complete the home study, facilitate match meetings, provide counseling, and a number of other things important throughout the adoption process. It is the social worker’s role to be an advocate for the child, to be a voice for the child, to recognize what is in the best interest of the child and to act accordingly. The passage of this act creates a path for social worker’s to take for American Indian children. It creates a framework to understand American Indian child’s needs and background. Prior to the passage of this act that went ignored. Prior to the passage it was not recognized that American Indian children need to be raised in an environment that reflects that of their culture. The relinquishment of those needs is a crime of cultural genocide, a crime that this act was aimed to change and eliminate. Morrison, Fox,

The NICWA, which mission and major focus is the dedication to well-being of American Indian children and families within the United States, have learned that they have to manimize the effectiveness when they have formed strategic alliances, collaborations and partnerships (www.nicwa.org). NICWA’s has partnerships with other child advocacy, child welfare TA, and training organizations. They also include American Indian organizations like Indian Health services, Native American Children 's Alliance, Native American Rights Fund, and National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).

Sindelar suggests that there is a phenomenon known as the Split-Feather Syndrome, in which “social, psychological, and emotional disabilities — among expatriated Indian people, i.e., those who were placed and raised in non-Indian homes” (2004). The Split-Feather Syndrome may be due to the extremities in culture difference between Indian and other cultures. For instance, the ideologies of child-rearing, family bonding,

By saying that older children are given the choice of custody the court does not neglect the welfare of the child aspect. Even though the courts believe that male children of age sixteen years and above and female children of age fourteen years and above should not be compelled to live in a custody they dislike it is also important that this factor alone cannot determine the custody of the children. This is because in Venkataramma v. Tulsi the court found that the wishes of the children are found to be induced by persuasion and even torture in some cases.

My sister Katie feels like she “doesn’t belong” with my family. As kids, we used to play dress up with one another and Katie would always ask my mom to make her have blonde hair just as I did. My mom would then put a yellow towel on her head so that she could pretend she did. As a child I could not understand why Katie would want to do such a silly thing to try and look as I did. In my eyes we were both the same and nothing else mattered. As we got older, it became more apparent to me how different we really were. I am Caucasian and she is Native American. I have blonde hair and blue eyes while she has black hair and brown eyes. Not only did we look very different but our personalities differed as well. Katie was always much more fussy

To conclude, Western societies have a societal structure in which the individual who is at the top of the organisation receive greater respect from those who are below him. Similarly, in a westernised society, the parents would be the one at the top of the structure and the children would be below them. Hence, this notion creates a conflict between the children’s individual autonomy and the social structure as the children’s freedom of speech and action are being ‘violated’ and not paid respect to when the parent is constantly the decision maker. In contrast, Lee illustrates that in order to resolve this conflict, many Aboriginal, Sikh and Burma societies approach child-rearing in a different manner. In those societies, individual autonomy is shaped by the cultural framework, the individual integrity of the child as well as the parent is respected by one another and the idea of self-governance provides freedom to everyone. Finally, in an attempt to reconcile this conflict, child-rearing in the societies explored by Lee,