Native Children and Foster Care Money

[subeeds]

So, Zeke, how would you go about solving this issue?

[kgirl7]

If there aren't enough foster families, then perhaps a different system could be put in place. Perhaps a tribally run group home?

[AmigoKumeyaay]

Did anyone watch Dr. Dean tonight on Headline News? They featured the video-taped home beating of 16 year-old mentally handicapped girl by her parents in TX.

The father is actually a courtroom judge in TX, and was brutally beating the girl with a thick leather belt.

Dr. Dean, who is an accomplished therapist stated that such violent trauma during youth will bring on patterns of addiction and behavior problems.

[Zeke]

So, Zeke, how would you go about solving this issue?

I'm not opposed to forced sterilization.

[subeeds]

Alrighty then.
How would you decide who would fit the criteria for forced sterilization and who would decide what that criteria is?

[Zeke]

Alrighty then.
How would you decide who would fit the criteria for forced sterilization and who would decide what that criteria is?

If you're crappy enough as a parent to have your kids removed, you shouldn't have any more.

[pigheaded]

Don't you mean real, accountable, adult, honest, etc?

The question was asked "how to stop the problem."

Step One, is to realize who is at fault.

If you have accountable parents, none of this happens.

Don't try to excuse "poor" as a "lifestyle," unless you're willing to go over in the college thread and say "our kids don't need no stinking college."

You can't have it both ways.

Grow up or give up.

Ah yes, here we set off again immediately with the blame game. The system is perfect, and there are not people sitting in prison for crimes they never committed children are not taken from good families and children are not given to bad families, none of the children die in the custody of the states nor are they mistreated in a good portion of foster care homes. Yes Zeke, all one needs is the Western White dominate education that you so cling to as you make the same statements as the aforementioned white dominant society, "Well, if those Indians would take care of their children, we wouldn't have to."

My original statement stand,
"That's pretty white of ya!"

[ANNA NICOLE]

I see all of your points througout this thread - but what about those native kids who are much better off in foster care? I am a foster parent - and i am a adoptive parent. and i've met other foster families within my agency that i work with - and i live in a urban area - and some of these children are by far better off in foster care then being in the same situation they were in with their parents. What do you do about the children who have been so abused by their bio family so much that they have day time hallucinations at age 8 - or hoard food because they are worried they wont have food next time? or the child who witnessed his parents murdering someone and then just leaving him at a gas station? Everyone wants to say - send the child back to the family - but sometimes that is NOT the best thing. Sometimes staying in a foster situation is better than living with murdering parents or with extremly abusive parents. ICWA is involved and often times the tribe is also extremely invovled. It all depends on if the tribe understand the law to its fullest extent and understands what they are able to do on their own. In my adoption i have 5 different workers - why - because i have native kids that require a tribal work - a social worker - and a foster worker - and all the back up workers. so Sometimes foster care in the right context is a good alternative to living in deplorable situations. Now i'm not referring to being poor - or ill educated or housing over crowded - but some times there are real social ills that the PARENTS will need to handle and they only way to handle is to remove the child. Would you leave a child in a home with no food? would you leave a child in a home where they were being abused? would you leave child in a home where they saw the parents killing someone?

The whole - great white hope - whil still relevent for some things i suppose - it is the PARENTS that have to retain their parent rights and do the BASIC care for their children. Basics are - a safe home - clothing- food- and acccess to education. Is this too hard for parentes? I say for some yes -- they care more about their partying or their getting high - but what happens to the child? what then? So all this its the white man getting in the way is - so old. Parents no matter what race or what year will need to take care of their own childrend and if they cant or unable to - then apparently social services needs to step in.

[pigheaded]

I see all of your points througout this thread - but what about those native kids who are much better off in foster care? I am a foster parent - and i am a adoptive parent. and i've met other foster families within my agency that i work with - and i live in a urban area - and some of these children are by far better off in foster care then being in the same situation they were in with their parents. What do you do about the children who have been so abused by their bio family so much that they have day time hallucinations at age 8 - or hoard food because they are worried they wont have food next time? or the child who witnessed his parents murdering someone and then just leaving him at a gas station? Everyone wants to say - send the child back to the family - but sometimes that is NOT the best thing. Sometimes staying in a foster situation is better than living with murdering parents or with extremly abusive parents. ICWA is involved and often times the tribe is also extremely invovled. It all depends on if the tribe understand the law to its fullest extent and understands what they are able to do on their own. In my adoption i have 5 different workers - why - because i have native kids that require a tribal work - a social worker - and a foster worker - and all the back up workers. so Sometimes foster care in the right context is a good alternative to living in deplorable situations. Now i'm not referring to being poor - or ill educated or housing over crowded - but some times there are real social ills that the PARENTS will need to handle and they only way to handle is to remove the child. Would you leave a child in a home with no food? would you leave a child in a home where they were being abused? would you leave child in a home where they saw the parents killing someone?

The whole - great white hope - whil still relevent for some things i suppose - it is the PARENTS that have to retain their parent rights and do the BASIC care for their children. Basics are - a safe home - clothing- food- and acccess to education. Is this too hard for parentes? I say for some yes -- they care more about their partying or their getting high - but what happens to the child? what then? So all this its the white man getting in the way is - so old. Parents no matter what race or what year will need to take care of their own childrend and if they cant or unable to - then apparently social services needs to step in.

So grandma's not good enough, or uncle, or aunties, cousins, friends. I'm not saying that there are not good foster families out there, and yes, all those points you brought up are exactly some issues that native children deal with everyday, and thanks to Him who created us that there are those families who truly love our children, BUT... what do you do so as to not indoctrinate our children (not at all meaning to be rude) with white custom and ways, how do you nurture his/her culture, heritage and social responsibilities. Who in your system makes sure he/she is given ceremony for cleansing and healing from these "deplorable" life settings?

The great white hope saying is not hold, when it is a continual practice of social services to remove children from homes that ARE NOT "UNFIT", "ABUSIVE" OR "NEGLIGENT" yet we see on almost a daily basis, someones child/children being removed, most of the time it is because white society does not understand cultural differences, what you all think is unacceptable is more than acceptable in native life. Not that we settle for less, or expect less, that is the attitude we feel every time we are paraded before the masses as those poor Indians. So the system comes in, swoops them up and wisks them off to a foster family. Mostly who are white, why not a black family who probably have closer values to us than whites, (not being prejudice here, just the truth). is it because to the system blacks arn't much better than we are?

If you have Native children adopted or fostered, and you are taking care of them Thanks! But you also need to understand that if you do not cultivate his/her native culture and heritage appropriately and respectfully, you have done nothing more than the old saying of "Kill the Indian save the man."

[Zeke]

So grandma's not good enough, or uncle, or aunties, cousins, friends.

Considering that the social network you're lauding didn't manage to raise the parents to be worth a d*mn, I find your reasoning -- what little there is - to be somewhat short of convincing.

It's not 1890 anymore and there's not a gun to your head.

GROW UP.

[comadre]

I see all of your points througout this thread - but what about those native kids who are much better off in foster care? I am a foster parent - and i am a adoptive parent. and i've met other foster families within my agency that i work with - and i live in a urban area - and some of these children are by far better off in foster care then being in the same situation they were in with their parents. What do you do about the children who have been so abused by their bio family so much that they have day time hallucinations at age 8 - or hoard food because they are worried they wont have food next time? or the child who witnessed his parents murdering someone and then just leaving him at a gas station? Everyone wants to say - send the child back to the family - but sometimes that is NOT the best thing. Sometimes staying in a foster situation is better than living with murdering parents or with extremly abusive parents. ICWA is involved and often times the tribe is also extremely invovled. It all depends on if the tribe understand the law to its fullest extent and understands what they are able to do on their own. In my adoption i have 5 different workers - why - because i have native kids that require a tribal work - a social worker - and a foster worker - and all the back up workers. so Sometimes foster care in the right context is a good alternative to living in deplorable situations. Now i'm not referring to being poor - or ill educated or housing over crowded - but some times there are real social ills that the PARENTS will need to handle and they only way to handle is to remove the child. Would you leave a child in a home with no food? would you leave a child in a home where they were being abused? would you leave child in a home where they saw the parents killing someone?

The whole - great white hope - whil still relevent for some things i suppose - it is the PARENTS that have to retain their parent rights and do the BASIC care for their children. Basics are - a safe home - clothing- food- and acccess to education. Is this too hard for parentes? I say for some yes -- they care more about their partying or their getting high - but what happens to the child? what then? So all this its the white man getting in the way is - so old. Parents no matter what race or what year will need to take care of their own childrend and if they cant or unable to - then apparently social services needs to step in.

Anna Nichol, you are part of the solution for those children who need to be removed.period. thank you for what you do.

[AmigoKumeyaay]

Considering that the social network you're lauding didn't manage to raise the parents to be worth a d*mn, I find your reasoning -- what little there is - to be somewhat short of convincing.

It's not 1890 anymore and there's not a gun to your head.

GROW UP.

Abusive parents, while responsible for their own actions today...

...did not GROW UP PROPERLY


They are continuing the dysfunctional patterns they GREW UP with.

Abused children become abusive adults.

[Zeke]

Abusive parents, while responsible for their own actions today...

...did not GROW UP PROPERLY


They are continuing the dysfunctional patterns they GREW UP with.

Abused children become abusive adults.

So, of course, they should be REMOVED from that environment.

That's the point.

[comadre]

Wow~ lots of passion in this thread.
But I do want to point out that the article that we are discussing here is not about the native kids being removed for abuse or the need to find permanent placement for abused kids.
Rather- the article and subject is about the removal of native children from (not their abusive parents) but the native COMMUNITY as a whole.Therefore losing their ties to their natural EXTENDED family and COMMUNITY.This the article points out is done so easily because of the failure of the state to follow Indian Child Welfare Act that was put in place to protect native children from assimilation and washing out their blood ties and culture.
Anna is a good example of an "Indian foster care home" as her profile defines her as tribal affiliated.Thank God for you Anna.I think(sadly) the native community needs more of you. However, the article does also point out that the Grandma asked her children be placed into an "Indian family" and yet they were not.She did not request an abusive native family.She simply asked for her children's extended family and heritage be considered.

[AmigoKumeyaay]

The youth powwow group I support has accepted numerous foster kids placed into their urban Native households.

All the families pull together, and the kids get compliments on regalia and their dancing all the time.

I've seen this in action, it works!