Taken From Families, Indigenous Children Face Extreme Rates of State
Violence in US
Sunday, 12 July 2015 00:00 By Britney Schultz, Truthout | Report
In a photo taken around 1936, Aboriginal Canadians attend a school at Fort
Resolution in the Northwest Territories. Canada's Truth and Reconciliation
Commission has concluded that the country's former policy of removing
Aboriginal children from families for schooling could be best described as
"cultural genocide." In the US, Native children were subjected to similar
policies for more than a century. (Photo: Library and Archives Canada)
The plight of Indigenous children recently made headlines, as Canada's Truth
and Reconciliation Commission released a damning report calling the
country's long-held policy of removing Native children from their families
by force and placing them in state-funded residential schools "cultural
genocide." According to the report, even before Canada was founded in 1867,
churches were operating boarding schools for Indigenous children, and the
last federally supported residential school didn't close until the late
1990s.
In the US, Native children were subjected to similar policies for more than
a century. Article VII of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 stated, "In order
to insure the civilization of the Indians entering into this treaty . they,
therefore, pledge themselves to compel their children, male and female,
between the ages of six and sixteen years, to attend school."
In response to the history of removing Native children from their families
and cultures and forcing them into (often abusive) boarding schools, the
Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed in 1978. The law established
requirements for public and private child welfare agencies and state courts
to adhere to when working with tribal children and families. However, the
current manifestation of Native child removal is the child welfare system,
and the ICWA is theoretically supposed to prevent that system from becoming
a vehicle of systematic removal of children.
According to Assistant Attorney General for the Cherokee Nation Chrissi
Nimmo, at its most basic level, "ICWA requires state courts and private
agencies to always seek family reunification or family placement, involve
tribes in decision-making of their children and protect parental rights -
one of the most basic and fundamental rights in this country."
However, due to continued violations and noncompliance with the ICWA, in
February of 2015, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) published new
guidelines to strengthen the law, which will be codified at the end of the
year.
Daniel Sheehan, chief counsel of the Lakota People's Law Office in Rapid
City, South Dakota, believes there is currently no enforcement mechanism
inherent in the ICWA, which makes it easier to violate. "No federal agency
feels its place is to enforce the Indian Child Welfare Act, and the issue is
under the radar because [the group it represents] is not a politically
powerful constituency."
Nimmo said that the proposed changes are to federal regulations that
interpret ICWA, not changes to ICWA itself. "As the mother of Indian
children and a tribal attorney, I personally and professionally fully
support the proposed changes," she said. The most important aspects of the
new regulations, according to Nimmo, are clarifications on notifying tribes
of potential ICWA cases, a definition of "active efforts" to prevent the
breakup of families and a definition of "good cause," which is a critical
term in the ICWA.
In spite of efforts to prevent it, the current generation of Indigenous
children in the US is facing a double threat: being removed from their homes
and tribes to be placed with (usually) white foster families and being
forced into privately and publicly funded programs for "at-risk youth" -
institutions that are often havens of neglect and abuse, and sometimes even
have political conflicts of interest.
These ongoing threats are the continuation of a long series of broad-scale
attempts at forced assimilation. Indigenous activist, writer and prison
abolitionist Kelly Hayes, who is also Truthout's Community Engagement
Fellow, speaks to this firsthand. "As the child of a displaced Indigenous
man [of the Menominee Nation], I see the removal of our people . as part of
the larger effort to diminish the number of Native people in the United
States," Hayes said. "While anti-Blackness, as perpetrated by the American
government, has often taken the form of persecuting anyone with any known
Black heritage, regardless of appearance, anti-Native policies have involved
a process of destruction that has, in the last hundred years, included
concerted efforts at assimilation."
Foster Care, "Children's Homes" and Profiting Off Native Loss
In South Dakota, Indigenous children make up 15 percent of the child
population, but comprise more than half the children in foster care. Nearly
90 percent of the kids in family foster care are placed in non-Native homes
or group care.
Daniel Sheehan works with tribal leaders in the state to end the epidemic of
illegal seizures of Native children by the state of South Dakota. Sheehan
said the biggest concern of the nine tribes he works with is their children
being taken away and the parents being prosecuted for "neglect." This
practice represents a pervasive bias against Native families - especially
those living on reservations - the Lakota People's Law Office asserts in a
2013 report to Congress. The South Dakota Department of Social Services
equates economic poverty with neglect and fails to understand the tribes'
kinship system of extended family - something the ICWA was actually designed
to protect. "Under this bias," the report goes on to say, "South Dakota's
rate of identifying 'neglect' is 18% higher than the national average."
Chrissi Nimmo said the issues that disproportionately affect tribes and lead
to the removal of children should be considered "correctable conditions,"
instead of accepted as the status quo. Currently, one typical state response
to poverty seems to be to immediately and permanently remove children from
their families. "There is, without a doubt, lasting trauma to children who
are permanently removed from their birth families," she said.
"[Native] women most often are the ones thrown under the bus," Sheehan said.
"Hence the disproportionate rate of incarceration." Native Americans also
report widespread discrimination by the police. According to a 2009 report
by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Native women are
criminally prosecuted at six times the rate of white women.
The women often get charged with assault for resisting arrest, Sheehan said.
"Lakota women don't accept being manhandled by white police, and these cops
are being trained like military occupying forces, with military equipment
like BearCat armored vehicles patrolling the reservations."
When Native parents are arrested and their children are taken away, the
parents have no means of contact with their children, and no information is
communicated to them, Sheehan said. This makes it harder for families to
reclaim their children, and easier for the state to perpetuate the cycle of
forced removal of Indigenous children.
Taking children away from their Native families is also profitable:
According to a February 2015 report from IBISWorld, adoption and child
welfare services in the United States rake in $14 billion a year. And there
are other indications of moneyed influence in child removal.
Money Motives
With its high dependence on federal financial support, Sheehan said, South
Dakota receives $79,000 per Native child per year under the adoption track
of the state's foster care system.
He said the kids are often dosed with pharmaceuticals because they are
labeled as having "special needs," and goes on:
"We found out that when the state of South Dakota seizes a Lakota child,
they were forced to take a mental health screening test. The screening test
was drafted up by the Eli Lily Corporation, which is a major manufacturer of
psychotropic drugs. When they flunked the test, they were determined to be
in need of one or more of these drugs."
A report by South Dakota Indian Child Welfare Act directors found that,
"South Dakota appears to have prescribed antipsychotic drugs to foster
children prior to 2006, even though the FDA had not approved the use of
these drugs by children at that time. And after 2006, South Dakota seems to
have overprescribed these agents to children."
The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 includes a provision
called the Adoption Incentive Bonus, through which states earn federal
bonuses when they increase adoptions of children who are in need of new
permanent families.
A designation of "special needs" is significant to note, because Congress
authorized a bonus payment of $4,000 for each foster child, with an
additional $2,000 for each "special needs" adoption above the baseline
payment of the Adoption Incentives program. According to the North American
Council on Adoptable Children, families who finalize the adoption of a child
with special needs in 2015 can claim a tax credit of $13,400.
Furthermore, for the decade since data has been collected on the status of
"special needs" children in the foster care and adoption system, each year
(from 2003/2004 to fiscal year 2013), South Dakota has claimed 100 percent
of the children in its system as "special needs."
Some of these facilities, such as the Children's Home Society of South
Dakota, have ties to politicians. Before he pivoted into politics full time
and became the state's 32nd governor, then-Lieutenant Gov. Dennis Daugaard
left his banking job in 1990 to become the development director of the
Children's Home Foundation, the fundraising arm of the Children's Home
Society of South Dakota. He held the position for 12 years before becoming
the executive director of the organization.
According to an NPR investigation, under Daugaard's leadership, the
organization's finances grew sevenfold, adding two additional facilities and
doubling the amount of money it received from the state. Children's Home
then began to outsource its examination of potential foster homes and its
training of foster care parents. Additionally, the investigation noted, this
conflict of interest was evidence of Daugaard using his power to grant
contracts to the Children's Home, often not even considering other social
service organizations.
A 2013 report endorsed by seven tribal governments concluded there is "a
strong financial incentive for state officials to take high numbers of
Native American foster children into custody. Anecdotal evidence and
testimony confirm that this incentive motivates the state's actions."
The Juvenile (In)Justice System and Native Youth
According to US Census Bureau data, in 2013, there were about 5.2 million
Native Americans in the United States, representing approximately 2 percent
of the total population. About 32 percent of Indigenous people in the US are
under the age of 18.
Though they are only a small percentage of the country's demographic, Native
youth "disproportionately suffer adverse effects at the stages of arrest,
diversion, detention, petition, adjudication, probation and secure placement
in the juvenile justice system," concludes a February 2015 report from the
Lakota People's Law Project.
Significant resources are funneled toward "services" that displace and
confine Indigenous youth.
From 2012-2013, the South Dakota Department of Social Services contracted
with Youth Services International to provide services for juveniles placed
through Corrections, Child Protection, and Tribal Court at the Chamberlain
Academy, a youth detention and treatment facility in Chamberlain, South
Dakota, at a rate of $142.94 per child per day .
Youth Services International describes its work as "serving at-risk youth .
rehabilitating juveniles through integrated programs, staff mentoring and
environments to promote learning and change." However, the Florida-based
company has a history of abuse allegations.
Until recently, one purveyor of these "services" was the Chamberlain
Academy, which closed in January 2014. In 2000, former residents of the
academy brought an action against it in Brown v. Youth Services Intern. of
South Dakota. The plaintiffs said they had been sexually assaulted by a
counselor.
Following the 1999 death of a 14-year-old girl at a boot camp program at
South Dakota's Juvenile Training School in Plankinton, South Dakota, an
investigation uncovered a widespread pattern of systemic abuse by facility
guards, including youth being held in isolation or chained to their beds and
the use of pepper spray against young prisoners. After being closed for five
years, the facility reopened under a new name, Aurora Plains Academy, and
new management. According to Niche rankings and statistics, Native American
children constitute 53 percent of the students at Aurora Plains Academy.
Daniel Sheehan told Truthout that such abuses are not anomalies. "The
children at these institutions are subjected to extreme discipline and
punishment," he said. "They only get about two real hours of schooling per
day in joint-age classrooms, and if they act up, they get points against
them, with multiple violations of rules leading to the student being
transferred to a juvenile facility."
Lasting Impact
Sheehan believes that state violence toward and oppression of Indigenous
children is under-reported. "There aren't powerful groups lobbying on behalf
of Natives to give them a voice, so nobody knows about the issues affecting
them."
Truthout's Kelly Hayes said Native children removed from their families and
tribes are attempting to learn and thrive in a society that has not only
inflicted historical traumas, but also one that imposes values that exist in
opposition to the affirmation of their own self-worth. "Removal and
assimilation - the dilution of identity through the unlikelihood that
removed children would produce offspring with their own kind, while living
in white society, and the destruction of culture by way of separation and
cultural isolation, as well as the forced sterilization of women living on
reservations, is not simply the transition from genocide to 'cultural
genocide' - It is genocide, and requires no qualifiers," she said. "It is a
continued effort to annihilate us, and wipe the Indigenous off the face of
the continent."
There are 566 federally recognized tribes in the US, and as Truthout
reported before, suicide rates for Native youth are at least triple the
national average.
There is undoubtedly lasting trauma to children who are permanently removed
from their birth families, said Chrissi Nimmo.
"Each child literally holds the future of a tribe," she said. "If children
are removed, tribes are at risk of becoming extinct - both because there
literally may not be children to continue the tribe and because the cultural
identity of the tribe cannot be passed to the next generation."
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
BRITNEY SCHULTZ
Britney Schultz is a Truthout Associate Editor. Follow her on Twitter.
RELATED STORIES
Indigenous Peoples Seek Presence in Post-2015 Development Agenda
By Gloria Schiavi, Inter Press Service | Report
Native-American Youth Are in Crisis and Need Protection
By Jessica Ramos, Care2 | News Analysis
Native Americans Confront History of Dispossession
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
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Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Taken From Families, Indigenous Children Face Extreme Rates of State
Violence in US
Sunday, 12 July 2015 00:00 By Britney Schultz, Truthout | Report
. font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.
. In a photo taken around 1936, Aboriginal Canadians attend a school
at Fort Resolution in the Northwest Territories. Canada's Truth and
Reconciliation Commission has concluded that the country's former policy of
removing Aboriginal children from families for schooling could be best
described as "cultural genocide." In the US, Native children were subjected
to similar policies for more than a century. (Photo: Library and Archives
Canada)
. The plight of Indigenous children recently made headlines, as
Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a damning report
calling the country's long-held policy of removing Native children from
their families by force and placing them in state-funded residential schools
"cultural genocide." According to the report, even before Canada was founded
in 1867, churches were operating boarding schools for Indigenous children,
and the last federally supported residential school didn't close until the
late 1990s.
In the US, Native children were subjected to similar policies for more than
a century. Article VII of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 stated, "In order
to insure the civilization of the Indians entering into this treaty . they,
therefore, pledge themselves to compel their children, male and female,
between the ages of six and sixteen years, to attend school."
In response to the history of removing Native children from their families
and cultures and forcing them into (often abusive) boarding schools, the
Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed in 1978. The law established
requirements for public and private child welfare agencies and state courts
to adhere to when working with tribal children and families. However, the
current manifestation of Native child removal is the child welfare system,
and the ICWA is theoretically supposed to prevent that system from becoming
a vehicle of systematic removal of children.
According to Assistant Attorney General for the Cherokee Nation Chrissi
Nimmo, at its most basic level, "ICWA requires state courts and private
agencies to always seek family reunification or family placement, involve
tribes in decision-making of their children and protect parental rights -
one of the most basic and fundamental rights in this country."
However, due to continued violations and noncompliance with the ICWA, in
February of 2015, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) published new
guidelines to strengthen the law, which will be codified at the end of the
year.
Daniel Sheehan, chief counsel of the Lakota People's Law Office in Rapid
City, South Dakota, believes there is currently no enforcement mechanism
inherent in the ICWA, which makes it easier to violate. "No federal agency
feels its place is to enforce the Indian Child Welfare Act, and the issue is
under the radar because [the group it represents] is not a politically
powerful constituency."
Nimmo said that the proposed changes are to federal regulations that
interpret ICWA, not changes to ICWA itself. "As the mother of Indian
children and a tribal attorney, I personally and professionally fully
support the proposed changes," she said. The most important aspects of the
new regulations, according to Nimmo, are clarifications on notifying tribes
of potential ICWA cases, a definition of "active efforts" to prevent the
breakup of families and a definition of "good cause," which is a critical
term in the ICWA.
In spite of efforts to prevent it, the current generation of Indigenous
children in the US is facing a double threat: being removed from their homes
and tribes to be placed with (usually) white foster families and being
forced into privately and publicly funded programs for "at-risk youth" -
institutions that are often havens of neglect and abuse, and sometimes even
have political conflicts of interest.
These ongoing threats are the continuation of a long series of broad-scale
attempts at forced assimilation. Indigenous activist, writer and prison
abolitionist Kelly Hayes, who is also Truthout's Community Engagement
Fellow, speaks to this firsthand. "As the child of a displaced Indigenous
man [of the Menominee Nation], I see the removal of our people . as part of
the larger effort to diminish the number of Native people in the United
States," Hayes said. "While anti-Blackness, as perpetrated by the American
government, has often taken the form of persecuting anyone with any known
Black heritage, regardless of appearance, anti-Native policies have involved
a process of destruction that has, in the last hundred years, included
concerted efforts at assimilation."
Foster Care, "Children's Homes" and Profiting Off Native Loss
In South Dakota, Indigenous children make up 15 percent of the child
population, but comprise more than half the children in foster care. Nearly
90 percent of the kids in family foster care are placed in non-Native homes
or group care.
Daniel Sheehan works with tribal leaders in the state to end the epidemic of
illegal seizures of Native children by the state of South Dakota. Sheehan
said the biggest concern of the nine tribes he works with is their children
being taken away and the parents being prosecuted for "neglect." This
practice represents a pervasive bias against Native families - especially
those living on reservations - the Lakota People's Law Office asserts in a
2013 report to Congress. The South Dakota Department of Social Services
equates economic poverty with neglect and fails to understand the tribes'
kinship system of extended family - something the ICWA was actually designed
to protect. "Under this bias," the report goes on to say, "South Dakota's
rate of identifying 'neglect' is 18% higher than the national average."
Chrissi Nimmo said the issues that disproportionately affect tribes and lead
to the removal of children should be considered "correctable conditions,"
instead of accepted as the status quo. Currently, one typical state response
to poverty seems to be to immediately and permanently remove children from
their families. "There is, without a doubt, lasting trauma to children who
are permanently removed from their birth families," she said.
"[Native] women most often are the ones thrown under the bus," Sheehan said.
"Hence the disproportionate rate of incarceration." Native Americans also
report widespread discrimination by the police. According to a 2009 report
by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Native women are
criminally prosecuted at six times the rate of white women.
The women often get charged with assault for resisting arrest, Sheehan said.
"Lakota women don't accept being manhandled by white police, and these cops
are being trained like military occupying forces, with military equipment
like BearCat armored vehicles patrolling the reservations."
When Native parents are arrested and their children are taken away, the
parents have no means of contact with their children, and no information is
communicated to them, Sheehan said. This makes it harder for families to
reclaim their children, and easier for the state to perpetuate the cycle of
forced removal of Indigenous children.
Taking children away from their Native families is also profitable:
According to a February 2015 report from IBISWorld, adoption and child
welfare services in the United States rake in $14 billion a year. And there
are other indications of moneyed influence in child removal.
Money Motives
With its high dependence on federal financial support, Sheehan said, South
Dakota receives $79,000 per Native child per year under the adoption track
of the state's foster care system.
He said the kids are often dosed with pharmaceuticals because they are
labeled as having "special needs," and goes on:
"We found out that when the state of South Dakota seizes a Lakota child,
they were forced to take a mental health screening test. The screening test
was drafted up by the Eli Lily Corporation, which is a major manufacturer of
psychotropic drugs. When they flunked the test, they were determined to be
in need of one or more of these drugs."
A report by South Dakota Indian Child Welfare Act directors found that,
"South Dakota appears to have prescribed antipsychotic drugs to foster
children prior to 2006, even though the FDA had not approved the use of
these drugs by children at that time. And after 2006, South Dakota seems to
have overprescribed these agents to children."
The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 includes a provision
called the Adoption Incentive Bonus, through which states earn federal
bonuses when they increase adoptions of children who are in need of new
permanent families.
A designation of "special needs" is significant to note, because Congress
authorized a bonus payment of $4,000 for each foster child, with an
additional $2,000 for each "special needs" adoption above the baseline
payment of the Adoption Incentives program. According to the North American
Council on Adoptable Children, families who finalize the adoption of a child
with special needs in 2015 can claim a tax credit of $13,400.
Furthermore, for the decade since data has been collected on the status of
"special needs" children in the foster care and adoption system, each year
(from 2003/2004 to fiscal year 2013), South Dakota has claimed 100 percent
of the children in its system as "special needs."
Some of these facilities, such as the Children's Home Society of South
Dakota, have ties to politicians. Before he pivoted into politics full time
and became the state's 32nd governor, then-Lieutenant Gov. Dennis Daugaard
left his banking job in 1990 to become the development director of the
Children's Home Foundation, the fundraising arm of the Children's Home
Society of South Dakota. He held the position for 12 years before becoming
the executive director of the organization.
According to an NPR investigation, under Daugaard's leadership, the
organization's finances grew sevenfold, adding two additional facilities and
doubling the amount of money it received from the state. Children's Home
then began to outsource its examination of potential foster homes and its
training of foster care parents. Additionally, the investigation noted, this
conflict of interest was evidence of Daugaard using his power to grant
contracts to the Children's Home, often not even considering other social
service organizations.
A 2013 report endorsed by seven tribal governments concluded there is "a
strong financial incentive for state officials to take high numbers of
Native American foster children into custody. Anecdotal evidence and
testimony confirm that this incentive motivates the state's actions."
The Juvenile (In)Justice System and Native Youth
According to US Census Bureau data, in 2013, there were about 5.2 million
Native Americans in the United States, representing approximately 2 percent
of the total population. About 32 percent of Indigenous people in the US are
under the age of 18.
Though they are only a small percentage of the country's demographic, Native
youth "disproportionately suffer adverse effects at the stages of arrest,
diversion, detention, petition, adjudication, probation and secure placement
in the juvenile justice system," concludes a February 2015 report from the
Lakota People's Law Project.
Significant resources are funneled toward "services" that displace and
confine Indigenous youth.
From 2012-2013, the South Dakota Department of Social Services contracted
with Youth Services International to provide services for juveniles placed
through Corrections, Child Protection, and Tribal Court at the Chamberlain
Academy, a youth detention and treatment facility in Chamberlain, South
Dakota, at a rate of $142.94 per child per day .
Youth Services International describes its work as "serving at-risk youth .
rehabilitating juveniles through integrated programs, staff mentoring and
environments to promote learning and change." However, the Florida-based
company has a history of abuse allegations.
Until recently, one purveyor of these "services" was the Chamberlain
Academy, which closed in January 2014. In 2000, former residents of the
academy brought an action against it in Brown v. Youth Services Intern. of
South Dakota. The plaintiffs said they had been sexually assaulted by a
counselor.
Following the 1999 death of a 14-year-old girl at a boot camp program at
South Dakota's Juvenile Training School in Plankinton, South Dakota, an
investigation uncovered a widespread pattern of systemic abuse by facility
guards, including youth being held in isolation or chained to their beds and
the use of pepper spray against young prisoners. After being closed for five
years, the facility reopened under a new name, Aurora Plains Academy, and
new management. According to Niche rankings and statistics, Native American
children constitute 53 percent of the students at Aurora Plains Academy.
Daniel Sheehan told Truthout that such abuses are not anomalies. "The
children at these institutions are subjected to extreme discipline and
punishment," he said. "They only get about two real hours of schooling per
day in joint-age classrooms, and if they act up, they get points against
them, with multiple violations of rules leading to the student being
transferred to a juvenile facility."
Lasting Impact
Sheehan believes that state violence toward and oppression of Indigenous
children is under-reported. "There aren't powerful groups lobbying on behalf
of Natives to give them a voice, so nobody knows about the issues affecting
them."
Truthout's Kelly Hayes said Native children removed from their families and
tribes are attempting to learn and thrive in a society that has not only
inflicted historical traumas, but also one that imposes values that exist in
opposition to the affirmation of their own self-worth. "Removal and
assimilation - the dilution of identity through the unlikelihood that
removed children would produce offspring with their own kind, while living
in white society, and the destruction of culture by way of separation and
cultural isolation, as well as the forced sterilization of women living on
reservations, is not simply the transition from genocide to 'cultural
genocide' - It is genocide, and requires no qualifiers," she said. "It is a
continued effort to annihilate us, and wipe the Indigenous off the face of
the continent."
There are 566 federally recognized tribes in the US, and as Truthout
reported before, suicide rates for Native youth are at least triple the
national average.
There is undoubtedly lasting trauma to children who are permanently removed
from their birth families, said Chrissi Nimmo.
"Each child literally holds the future of a tribe," she said. "If children
are removed, tribes are at risk of becoming extinct - both because there
literally may not be children to continue the tribe and because the cultural
identity of the tribe cannot be passed to the next generation."
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Britney Schultz
Britney Schultz is a Truthout Associate Editor. Follow her on Twitter.
Related Stories
Indigenous Peoples Seek Presence in Post-2015 Development Agenda
By Gloria Schiavi, Inter Press Service | ReportNative-American Youth Are in
Crisis and Need Protection
By Jessica Ramos, Care2 | News AnalysisNative Americans Confront History of
Dispossession
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Show Comments
