Strollerderby : indian

Indian Child Welfare Act: Bad for Parents?

JeanneSager — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:45:00 GMT

The debate over whether Baby Talon belongs with his birth mother's Native American tribe or the family who thought they'd followed all laws in attempting to adopt him - only to lose him - has loomed large here on Babble.

Both sides have honed in on some startling truths (and that includes fellow 'Derby writer Shannon LC Cate, who took a walk in the shoes of the birth mother), but one argument has really bothered me:

The idea that the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) gives a Native American tribe the power to make the "best" choice for a child, a choice that supersedes one made by that child's parents. I'm even more confused by the fact that parents who have posted on here seem to think that this is a good idea.

As one commenter put it: "This is just the way it is under the law, which was needed in order to prevent further generations of disruption and cultural genocide."

As I've said many times on posts related to issues of Native Americans, I recognize the atrocities visited upon them. I think we need to educate our children, and I think we need to make more concerted efforts as a country to help the poorest on some of these reservations. I definitely wouldn't call myself a supporter of "cultural genocide."

BUT, I find the idea that any nation, even a sovereign nation, should have this sort of power over a parent's choices. This seems to cross a line of the type that we as Americans wouldn't support outside of our borders. So why does federal law protect it here?

As a mother, it's up to me to decide what is best for my daughter. Short of a decision to mistreat her (one I wouldn't make), it's a power that I'm granted by my status as an American. If, God forbid, something were to happen to me or my husband, my decision of who I want my child to live with should be legally binding. I am, after all, her mother. The same goes for my husband - his decision should hold weight too. But you're not Native American, you can say. True, I am white. I am Catholic. I am a dozen other things that I hold dear, including being an American. That is my culture, and it's one I can decide to have my daughter follow. I should - and do - have that right. So why doesn't a fellow American citizen, a mother or a father who just so happens to have a baby with enough Native American blood to qualify as part of a tribe?

I am unschooled, I admit, on the exact parameters of the ICWA. But the debate on the site has made me look into my own family, including a relative who is (happily) married to a full-blooded Native American man. He and her children are both enrolled in a reservation. I would hope nothing would ever befall either of these children's parents, they are, after all, family. But what if it did? Were my relative to lose her husband (God forbid), would the ICWA give her Native American in-laws the power to make choices for her babies? Would it deny her, their mother, rights afforded her by the US Constitution?

I am extremely uncomfortable with readers who have said they simply "trust the tribe" to make the right decision for babies (setting aside the case of Baby Talon). Perhaps they are in the right in this case, and I sincerely hope so. But we have the right and the obligation as Americans to question our government. The inability to do so, to have to hand over those decisions nearest and dearest to our hearts? That is oppression.

Image: KUTV

Parents Must Give Adopted Son Back to Native American Mother

Parents Must Give Adopted Son Back: Another Side of the Story

Mom Gets Hate Mail for Ending Kids Thanksgiving Party

Parents Must Give Adopted Son Back to Native American Mother

JeanneSager — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:26:00 GMT

He was born addicted to drugs to a woman who has already lost custody of her four other children for being unfit, but Heather and Clint Larson have to return their six-month-old boy to his birth mother.

They can't fight it - because they're not Native American.

The boy's birth mother is a member of the Leech Lake Band of the Ojibwe. The tribal court voted the birth mother deserves her baby; and they're citing the federal Indian Child Welfare Act to make it happen.

Normally I'd support a birth mother's decision to change her mind about signing adoption papers in the days after her child was born. It's why birth mothers are generally given a short period of time to make that decision - because an unborn child and a child you have carried into this world can have two very different affects on a parent. But this mother isn't your average confused teen mom. This is child number five, and she didn't keep her nose clean during her pregnancy - she gave birth to a baby boy addicted to drugs. More importantly, her tribe isn't fighting for her rights. They're fighting for the right to keep this child "Indian."

"The child is not the Larsons', and the Larsons are not Indian as far as I know and this is an Indian child," an attorney for the tribe told KUTV, a Salt Lake City, Utah news station last week.

What does that matter? Yes, the Native Americans were dealt a raw deal, and the people living on many of our reservations are suffering greatly. Yes, theirs is a culture that needs to be preserved, and the stories of the atrocities need to be shared with our children. But this is akin to arguing that white parents can't adopt a black child or vice versa. It is racism, plain and simple. A child needs good care from parents who love him, parents who can provide that care. The Larsons have proven to an adoption agency they can. The boy's mother has not.

This doesn't sound like it's truly in the best interests of the child - and I'm disturbed to hear that a judge in an American court says she has no power to overturn the tribal decision because, well, it's tribal.

Has the tribe considered talking to the Larsons about an open adoption, about ensuring that the boy is raised with an understanding of his heritage? Has the tribe offered to step in to provide the child with an education about his culture, provided the Larsons with the means to raise the little boy not only as an American but as a member of Ojibwe nation? The Larsons have kept the boy's name as "Talon," a name that sounds to me like it is cultural - a sign that they seem willing to provide the little boy with a sense of his place in the world.

There are immense problems on a number of reservations with teen pregnancy and poverty. How can tribes expect potential adoptive parents to step in to help with that, to rescue some of these babies born out of wedlock to mothers who can't care for them, if they always have to worry that they will have to give up their child because they "aren't Indian?" Is this a precedent the tribes want to set? Or do they simply not care?

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

Image: KUTV

Parents Must Give Adopted Son Back: Another Side of the Story

Mom Gets Hate Mail for Ending Kids Thanksgiving Party

Man Forced to Pay Child Support for Another Man's Child

Sperm Donor's Teen Daughter Finds Him on Myspace

Husband's Genitals Lit on Fire For Cheating

Parents Upset: Transgender Kids Use Different School Bathrooms

Mom Gets Hate Mail for Ending Kids Thanksgiving Party

JeanneSager — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:08:00 GMT

The mom who put an end to the kindergarten Thanksgiving traditions at two California elementary schools this year has been getting some pretty nasty holiday greetings. Racial epithets, wishes that her daughter (a member of one of the kindergarten classes) would be beat up.

I shared Michelle Raheja's fight and her comments here on the 'Derby right before Thanksgiving, opening up the question to the readers of whether the old standby "Pilgrims and Indians" recreations in kindergartens are really racist or not. A host of opinions came down on either side of the fence, but I'm happy to say not one reader took Raheja's defenseless five-year-old to task.

You can read the original post for the whole story, but basically the professor who spends a portion of her teaching focusing on Native American literature told the school district that the four-decades old event was racist. She likened kids from one school dressing as "Indians" and walking to the other school where kids were dressed as "Pilgrims" to enjoy a meal was like replicating a meeting of the Jews and the Nazis and trying to put a happy face on it.

It's an emotional issue, to be sure, and one that gave me conflicting feelings (thus my original headline, Are Elementary School Thanksgivings Racist Or Just Outdated?). There are members of my own family who are Native American, who live on reservations, who are feeling today's affects of yesterday's injustices visited upon their culture as a whole. We can't brush the more sordid bits of American history under the rug. On the other hand, these are five year olds learning about multi-culturalism. You do have to simplify things a bit. And dressing up to break bread doesn't have to be entirely devoid of teachable moments regarding Native American history.

Either way, I thought I wanted to hear other opinions as I tried to make my own. But even in thinking there might be some merit to these sorts of traditions - even if they are updated to be more racially appropriate - I'm with the readers. I didn't think Michelle Raheja deserved to be have her daugher threatened, to be maligned for her own Native American heritage.

Have we really gone so far that we vent our frustrations on other parents by bashing their kids? I'm not defending the racial comments, but at least they were attacks on an adult. To focus your most hateful thoughts on a child is disturbing, but to do so because you hate their parents' decisions simply makes no sense.

My daughter is only three at this point, so I am only beginning to navigate the world of "other parents." I've tried my best to separate kids in my daughter's nursery school from what I might think of their parents. But is this kind of attitude what I have to look forward to?

Image: Los Angeles Times

Male Blogger: Laboring Mom Not a 'True Emergency'

Would You Give Gifts Bought At Wal-Mart Where Man Died?

What Makes a Yuppie Parent?

Gym Teacher Likes Girls A Little Too Much

JeanneSager — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:29:00 GMT

Another teacher, another sex scandal. Same unfortunate news, different day. But to make it interesting, Indiana gym teacher Brooke Biggs is accused of seducing a 16-year-old female student.

That I won't have to listen to some nasty radio DJ talking about the hot teacher and the lucky teenage boy is about the only silver lining to this story. Because I don't believe in the double standard for female teachers. Sorry, not even for a hot lesbian teacher.

That Brooke Biggs shares her name with a porn star doesn't make me laugh either (well, not much). The 27-year-old was in a South Bend, Ind. court late last week to answer two felony charges of child seduction. Biggs teaches seventh and eighth grade physical education and coaches at the local high school where the 16-year-old girl is a student. The investigation that led to Biggs' arrest was prompted by the girl's parents who first forbade the teen from having any contact with the teacher then found she was sneaking out anyway. Court documents allege Biggs' bought the girl a cell phone to replace one her parents had taken away, and the two allegedly exchanged hundreds of sexually explicit text messages.

Seems teenage girls do a little more than talk on the phone these days.

Image: WSBT

School Board Member Uses Gay Slur, Says Student Said it First

Teenager Arrested For Kiddie Porn - The Pictures Were of Herself

Don't Pay Child Support? Bid the Gun Rack Bye Bye

Dirty Diaper Thief on the Loose in Upstate New York

Should Computer Technicians be Mandated Reporters for Child Porn?

Mob Mol Who Smuggled Sperm Says Prison System Hates Her Child for Being Born

Five-Year-Old Catches STD From Dad's Towel?