Fighting a Tribal Placement

I hate to see a child removed from a family after five years, but the law does give Native American tribes the right to exert authority in adoption cases involving members of registered tribes. And to some extent, the law is well-intended; those of us who adopt children from other countries, or children of other races and ethnicities in this culture, SHOULD try to help our kids learn to respect and appreciate their birth heritage. In this case, however, the rights of the tribe are a bit flimsy, as the child has very little Native American heritage, and the child is faring well in her foster home, having been there for five years. There is no indication that the foster parents are opposed to raising her with knowledge of her Native American heritage.What's even worse is the fact that, today, many Native American children living with their biological families know nothing about their ancestral religion. My daughter, who is Chinese by birth and Jewish-American by adoption, spent some time on a Blackfoot reservation in Montana as part of a project in her Conservative Jewish day school, designed to educate Jewish kids about other minorities in our society and to teach them that virtually all religions have certain things in common, such as birth and death rituals, coming of age rituals, special ways of addressing their Creator, seasonal festivals, and so on. She was one of four children to make the trip, with one faculty member, when she was in seventh grade. Because the school observed the Kosher dietary laws, the kids and their chaperone had to bring some of their food from home, and buy certain acceptable products at a local general store that was sort of like a 7-Eleven, without much selection. In addition to what they learned about Native Americans, they were also supposed to develop an understanding of how Orthodox members of the Jewish faith -- we are not Orthodox -- have to work at keeping their identity in a secular American society.Unfortunately, what she learned was that very few of the Blackfoot children had any involvement in their birth culture or religion. Some went to local Protestant and Catholic churches, but most were unchurched. They did not communicate with grandparents or other elders about traditional Native American worship or participate in any Native American religious celebrations. In school, though it was on the reservation, they did not seem to learn much about the painful aspects of American treatment of Native Americans of any tribe; for example, they knew nothing about the Trail of Tears, a shameful part of U.S. history. They also knew nothing about the treatment of other minorities worldwide, from the Holocaust to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia/Herzegovina to the insurgency and counter-insurgency in Darfur and to the genocidal war between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda. In fact, the children seemed to be way behind academically, compared to the private and public school kids that my daughter knew, and knew very little about history or the world outside their small community.What my daughter did learn about Native Americans was that, today, they are often poor, limited in education and earning power, and marginalized. Many of the students lived in dilapidated trailers. Many were born to single Moms who got pregnant as teens. None spoke a Native American language, but a few spoke some Spanish because they were born to one Native American and one Hispanic parent. Many of the students came from welfare-dependent families, and the community as a whole had a high unemployment rate. Employed parents generally worked at low-wage jobs. Almost none of the students thought about going to college; Becca actually met one child who dreamed of it, but who felt he wouldn't be able to do so.. Few of the students had been to a big city, and the biggest dream of some of the children was to go to a mall somewhere, for the first time. Their community lacked even a supermarket, let alone a shopping center. Just outside the reservation were many bars, which seemed to be busy day and night, judging from the parking lots; alcohol abuse was rampant, and the kids seemed to think domestic violence was a fact of life. No one seemed to observe driving safety laws; the school's van had no seat belts, and a 14 year old boy was driving it some of the time.Becca was a bit shocked to see that most of the 13 and 14 year olds were carrying a mini-pack of condoms on their key chains; while few seemed to be sexually active at that point and had the condoms as more of a "fashion statement", most expected to be sexually active soon, and saw getting pregnant and quitting school early as normal. My guess is that some well-meaning organization distributed the condoms, but that, all too often, they'd stay on the key chains, even after sexual activity began.I do hope that the Native Americans who adopt this child, if she is, indeed, taken from her foster family, will find a way to teach her about the positive aspects of Native American religions and cultures, and help her, perhaps, to become part of an endeavor to help bring economic betterment to Native communities around the U.S. We all hear about tribal casinos and payday loan agencies, but most of us don't realize that these endeavors generate funds for very few Native American families. The profits go largely to outsiders and a few savvy insiders; they aren't contributing, overall, to better schools, more jobs, the preservation of Native American languages and cultural/religious traditions, and so on. Unfortunately, my guess is that the girl will NOT become any more immersed in positive Native American traditions than if she remained with her foster parents.SharonP.S. In case you're wondering, some kids from the Blackfoot reservation visited Becca's school and toured the DC area, supposedly to learn and discuss the same sorts of things that my daughter was supposed to learn in Montana. However, the kids were totally out of their element; they could as well have been dropped on the moon. Their one request -- to go to a shopping mall -- was honored, but I imagine that the prices, even in a dollar store, came as a shock.

Sharon, you make valid points. However, I read that either family members or tribal members have been trying to get the foster child but the foster parents went to court. Not sure what the whole truth is. That act, while well-intended, cannot undue the damage European-Americans have done. It is wrong to move a child after 5 years but if a family or tribal member was doing what was needed, the case worker dropped the ball by not removing the child earlier. It rings of Baby Veronica all over again.

Should I mention that it would seem in this particular case the child is not being returned to their biological parents, or taken to a biological relative at all, not even to someone who has native American ancestry? The child is going to someone related to a biological relative, but only by marriage. Someone dropped the ball, but who?

I read (not sure how true it is) that the child had been having weekly visits with this person. Supposedly, the foster parents went to court. Did they go with an attorney to be considered an adoption placement? In reading more, it was reported that the new placement had been trying for 3 years to get the child placed with them but the foster parents fought it. The foster parents are totally at fault. This is why the Indian Act was put into place, so that kids with Native Ancestry can't just be kept taken by entitled parents.

The foster parents are completely at fault in Lexi's situation. See article here:The "by-marriage" relatives are already caring for Lexi's sister, and another sibling lives nearby, so there's a biological connection that should be maintained and nurtured.That family became aware of Lexi's situation in 2011 and expressed interest *at that time*, but the foster parents decided to fight for continued custody.

This article is well worth reading for a better understanding of the truth of this situation:

Thank you all for the links. A little bit of information can go a long way. I had a feeling there would be more to the situation.

I'm not finding any articles that mention the new family as having custody of any brothers or sisters. In my mind, that would make the biggest difference. So far, what I see is glaring evidence, once again, of just how muddled every single DCFS agency is in every single state in the country. The NBC article, I thought, presented both sides pretty well, and revealed just how caught-in-the-middle Lexi is. The romper.com article was awful. I'm sorry. It did a fantastic job of trying to make us all feel bad for the bio-dad, but just as I know I didn't have all the facts in the beginning, I know from my years of foster experience that there is more to that story as well.

And I know from my years of adoptive experience that what DFCS says about bio parents isn't always true.The Washington Post reports Lexi will be living with "distant relatives and her biological sisters."

Thank you, Angry Adoptee.

Cases like this are exactly why we need icwa. Native families are more vulnerable, due to lack of access to services, higher likelihood of lack of education, and cultural/ racial bias. However, icwa is also a recognition that Native kids essentially hold dual citizenship for both the united States and their tribe. I've heard about kids in care in the USA being adopted by extended family and fictive kin in Canada and no one batting an eye. In that situation, if the child already had dual citizenship, Canada would also have a stake in the child's future, whether or not she/ he identified with Canadian heritage. Our job as foster families is to help children return to parents or other family. I had a child I loved leave to live with fictive kin. I can't imagine trying to block that. If this family had done their job as foster parents and not fought the removal, she wouldn't have been there so long. Shame on these foster parents for making the transition harder and for violating this little girl's confidentiality.