While ICWA is necessary to reduce the movement of Indian
children into non-native families, the requirement of enrollment is like having
a pedigree and, ironically, another barrier Native American adoptive parents
have to face.
I believe a person of any race who is
willing to make a personal, life-long racial and cultural commitment to Native lifeways, can be a good parent to an Indian child, and yet I also believe the ICWA laws are
necessary.
The kindness, love and ability of many non-Native adoptive parents to parent an Indian child is clear, and yet the custody and upbringing of children is one of the most urgent issues Native Americans have ever faced. Indian children have long been subject to removal from their homes for placement in residential schools and, more recently in foster and adoptive homes. Placement that started in the mid 19th century continues, though less overtly. The result is a metamorphosis of independent people into a largely dependent group.
Both the U.S. and Canadian government reduced Native nations to
the legal status of dependent children, and has asserted as surrogate parents
over Native children. All Native children in my grandparents generation were
forced to attend boarding schools, often far from their homes and were punished
for speaking their own language. Most non-Natives do not realize that this
practice continued in recent years and that some of those who experienced this
treatment are still under retirement age.
One of the articles of faith among adoptive parents is diversity. But we are still caught in the divide of those adoptive parents who feel
parents should be culturally and racially blind, and those of us who believe we must
keep an essential link to racial and cultural identity. In the U.S. large
numbers of non-white children are placed with white families. In this setting
it is little wonder that race, heritage, culture and ethnicity are perceived not so much as they are in America, but as they have to be, from a
pan-Caucasian point of view.
What is the answer? Like all laws, Social Services also has it
problems, loopholes, as well as a long history as a benign metaphor for
assimilation. Does it not propagate the dominant culture as normative while
silencing the birth culture and the voice of Native America? And while the
Indian Child Welfare Act is also not perfect, it has served as a threshold for
Indian people—a beginning, a place and a moment for us between here and
there.
Dr. Maya Angelou says it best. “We had come so far from where we started, and weren’t nearly approaching where we had to be, but we’re on the road to becoming better.”
Dr. Maya Angelou says it best. “We had come so far from where we started, and weren’t nearly approaching where we had to be, but we’re on the road to becoming better.”
First published in Fostering Families Today
Copyright © 2002 Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.