This is a letter/article by an imprisoned Native American woman that explains how her family is being damaged by new versions of racist practices that go back hundreds of years. It's a long piece, but definitely worth reading. I received it from a mailing of a prisoner activist newsgroup earlier this week. The 2nd part of this article is submitted as a 2nd post following this one!
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I am a Lakota woman I am far from home, abducted by the Federal Prison System, a not uncommon occurrence.

I have recently been informed of a great injustice that my daughter, Priscilla, and my one-year-old granddaughter, Alejandria, have had to endure. It appears that they have been subjected to South Dakota’s mockery of “justice”!

While leaving her home, baby in hand, Priscilla was stopped by a detective who had a warrant for her arrest for a couple of misdemeanors. The detective, who sat outside her home for several hours, not only wanted to arrest her for the misdemeanors, but he also wanted to search her home, without a search warrant! Using unethical and inhumane tactics, he reverted to the manipulation of abducting Priscilla’s baby from her!

When my daughter refused to allow him to search her home without a search warrant in hand, the detective was outraged that my daughter had the “audacity” to stand up for her rights and did not submit to his “authority” after he tried to intimidate and manipulate her. The detective gave her an ultimatum: allow him to search her home and he would allow her to take her daughter to family or, if not, he would take her daughter and place her in the custody of Child Protective Services.

My granddaughter was not being abused, nor was she neglected, but the hulking detective acted like the cavalry and abducted my granddaughter and sent her off to a strange environment. My granddaughter was placed in the custody of the Department of Social Services. The detective used pervasive patterns of abusive child removal procedures. He also took my daughter’s keys to her home and searched it anyway!

While in jail, Priscilla was unexpectedly ushered to a court hearing pertaining to her daughter. She was told the abuse was because she was being arrested for the misdemeanors knowing she had a responsibility to her daughter. No prior notice of the hearing was given to Priscilla; she was unable to contact any family members to notify them to attend.

My family has tried to get custody of Alejandria since she was taken, using major legislation which was enacted in 1978 by Congress, known as the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The Indian child Welfare Act’s sole purpose was because, “Even before this country was a nation, the precedent has been cast to destroy Indian culture and tribal integrity by removing Indian children from their families and tribal settings.”

Historically, the kidnapping of our children by placing them in Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools dates back to the 1800s, under the guise of “civilizing and educating” the Indians. This assimilation into the dominant society is cultural and spiritual genocide and has been going on for hundreds of years.

The oppression and prejudice my people have been subjected to for hundreds was apparent in my daughter when she called her grandmother.
In despair and dumbfounded at what had taken place, she called her grandma from the jail and said, “Grandma, I think they illegally took my daughter,” again! First the detective then the court.

My mother contacted the Indian child Welfare Act office on the Cheyenne River Reservation, where my daughter and I are enrolled members of the tribe. To our dismay, we were initially told nothing could be done unless Priscilla’s parental rights were being relinquished. Was this really true? Was this the purpose of the Indian Child Welfare Act?

The ICWA office failed in the first 2 weeks to inform us that Priscilla could file a petition to transfer jurisdiction to the tribal courts or that the tribe, through the ICWA, could file the petition also to transfer jurisdiction. Among other things, the tribe would recognize more so the poverty, cultural and social standards which prevail in Indian country.

The state social workers are untrained in Indian cultural values and social norms. They place Indian children in non-Indian foster care against ICWA regulations. My family is being judged by white, middle-class standards and have been submitted to physical exams, finger printing, financial and criminal investigations.
My people are the poorest of the poor, living well below poverty level, contrary to popular beliefs. Native Americans have never had the materialistic values of the dominant culture. This has resulted in disparities in the displacement of Indian children. It is also repeatedly discovered that “neglect” and “abandonment” never existed because we were expected to live up to these white middle-class standards. This is the case with my granddaughter. This is precisely why Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act.!
Where have positive efforts been made by the Department of Social Services to prevent the break-up of Indian families as required under the Indian child Welfare Act?

Most states require public or private agencies involved n child placement to resort to remedial measures prior to initiating placement. This is a Federal requirement when Indian children and families are involved. Evidentiary standards in foster care hearings require ‘clear and convincing’ evidence by expert witnesses of the likelihood of serious emotional or physical damage to the childe before placement can be ordered. My granddaughter, while with her mother, never suffered such damage. Being severed from her mother and family is causing serious emotional damage and a negative psychological impact. Priscilla is also suffering mental anguish, duress, and psychological trauma.
She suffers a greater punishment than a criminal penalty one could inflict, especially for a misdemeanor and standing up for her rights!
She suffers as generations of Native American mothers have suffered at their children being kidnapped.

Federal law has been thrown aside! According to the Indian Child Welfare Act, in any foster care placement, preference should have been given to a placement with:
1. A member of the Indian child’s extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and first or second cousins)
2. A foster home that is licensed, approved or specified by the child’s tribe.
3. An Indian foster home licensed or approved by an authorized non-Indian licensing authority or
4. An institution for children approved by the Indian tribe or operated by an Indian organization with programs suitable to meet the Indian child’s needs.

This was not done in my granddaughter’s situation. Why is my granddaughter still under the jurisdiction of the state? Where are the justice and rights for my daughter and granddaughter? This racist detective unleashed one more abduction, that were a white child so treated, would be regarded as cruel, irrational, vindictive and inhumane treatment. When will Alejandria come home?

Part II....
THE DEPRIVATION

The deprivation of our rights as U.S. citizens is nothing new!

For centuries, Indians were presumed incapable of owning property or initiating any action in the court system. Native Americans were not considered U.S. citizens until 1924. Prior to that, they were not allowed to vote, nor cold they leave the reservations. My people were America’s captive people without rights!

In the mid-1800s, reservations were successfully established. Prominent forces behind Assimilationist policy had been desired for Indian land and resources. Indians who were unwilling to go to these reservations were forced or exterminated. Once on the reservation, Christian agents and teachers would “help” them assimilate into the dominant white man’s culture. The policy objective was, “so desirable to every Christian philanthropist,” to colonize the Indian tribes “beyond the reach of the white population.”

The BIA set up manual labor schools for the “education” of the youths. The active missionary societies of different Christian denominations of the country came to teach the children to be “efficient, exemplary devoted men and women” as well as import physical, intellectual, moral, and religious education, according to a November 30, 1848 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Ten years later, on November 6, 1858, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, frustrated by the “limited success” of their constant efforts to domesticate and civilize the Indian people, state in his report, “We have no longer distant and extensive sections of country which we can assign them, abounding in game, from which they could derive a ready and comfortable support; a resource which has, in great measure, failed them where they are, and in consequence of which the must, at times, be subjected to the pangs of hunger, if not actual starvation, or obtain a subsistence by depredations upon our frontier settlements. If it were practicable to prevent such depredations, the alternative to providing for the Indians in the manner indicated, would be to leave them to starve; but as it is impossible, in consequence of the very great extent of our frontier, and our limited military force, to adequately guard against such occurrences, the only alternative, in fact, to making such provision for them, is to exterminate them.” The very men who were overseers of my people subjected us to a cultural, physical and spiritual genocide. The benevolent measures attempted by the government, sent to protect them, demoralized, raped and murdered them. We have been subjected to duress, confinement, frustration, and despair. Laws have been passed requiring us to “conform” to the dominant white “superior race.” We have suffered many injustices and atrocities throughout history that should shock the conscious mind! Paternalism and oppression reign the reservations.

The kidnapping/abduction of our children is not new! Historically, the BIA and missionary mercenaries tried to assimilate my people into the dominant culture. Kidnapping is nothing new in our communities, only the form in which it is done! Since the 1800s, our children were kidnapped from their families. Parents were induced by compulsory means to consent to their children’s removal from the reservations. In 1842, there were 37 Indian boarding schools run by the U.S. government, where our children lived in prison-like atmospheres. In 1968, 32,7 percent of Indian children were n government boarding schools. The BIA operated 77 boarding schools in which there were 35,309 school age Indian children, 9.000 of which were under the age of 9, who were kidnapped and forced into these boarding schools, sometimes thousands of miles from home.

Captives in these missionary boarding schools, our children were beaten for speaking their own language, nor allowed to practice tribal beliefs and practices; the children were subjected to physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse. Some children died in these boarding schools. Those who live through these efforts of force assimilation either committed suicide, became drug addicts, alcoholics and/or continued these learned behaviors of violence and abuse.
Catholic and Christian religion was instilled in our youth; what these priests and nuns did to our children has been injurious to the well-being and life of our people. The suffering we have been subjected to is incalculable. The effect it has had on our human spirit is profound and tragic for all humanity.

In 1969, the U.S. Senate appointed a special committee on Indian Education, who submitted a report after thorough examination on the subject. They discovered that past lawmakers and administrators failed the Native Americans. They acknowledged the historic abuse and shocked at what they discovered, stating, “These cold figures mark a stain on our national conscience, a stain which spread slowly for hundreds of years.” They discovered the atrocities, the annihilation of the Indian people and what this physical/spiritual/cultural genocide did to our children, the future generations.

In the 1970s, an investigation by Congress reveal one-fourth of all reservation Indian children had been removed from their families by state welfare agencies and state courts had placed them in foster or adoptive homes. Congress, through the Indian Child Welfare Act, expressed its clear preference for keeping Indian children with their families and placing Indian children within their own families or tribes. We are under a legal system of racial discrimination based on cultural differences and victims of unrelenting attempts to change us.

The Utah Supreme Court of Appleas stated:
“Engrafting a new requirement into the Indian Child Welfare Act that allows the dominant society to judge whether parents’ cultural backgrounds meet its view of what ‘Indian culture’ should be puts the state courts right back into the position from which Congress has removed them. That would be especially ironic, in that one of the reasons that the parents may not be involved in their Indian culture could be the very policies of removal of Indian
children that the ICWA was intended to counteract. If state courts impose their own value system on these decisions the tribe will never be able to regain members who have been lost on early government policies."

There is no difference between the “Boarding School Era” and the placement of our children into foster care! The kidnapping and abduction of our children continues now through foster care and adoptions!

In Spirit,
LaVonne Roach