For Love of a Child

Photo copyright Patricia Hughes, 2014; all rights reserved.

Let me introduce you to Katie. 

She's the stepdaughter of my friend, Patricia Hughes, and the biological daughter of Patti's husband.

She needs your help.

It's a situation involving shared custody with another parent allegedly battling addiction. There is now a third party in the picture, along with allegations of domestic violence. And Katie says she was physically injured.

These situations are legally difficult, financially ruinous, and psychologically devastating. The first problem can be alleviated a bit if Patti and Rob can hire an expert lawyer. But that gets to the second problem. And that's where we all come in.

So that we can prevent the third problem from occurring.

The retainer's going to take $7,500. That's just a first step; these are long-haul battles, and the costs rise accordingly. The immediate goal is double that: $15,000. Believe me, it's modest.

We're already in for $25. It's not much, but if everyone who reads this matches it, we're talking a few hundred already. And if everyone in your networks matches it, pretty soon, the retainer's covered.

Here's the GoFundMe page. If you can, please give. If you can't, please share. With everyone.

For love of a child.

Indian Child Removal: New Developments in South Dakota

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Yesterday, I cross-posted my piece from a year ago on South Dakota's practice of stealing Indian children and placing them in white foster "care" situations" in the service of racism and financial profit.  Despite being more than a year old, the piece tragically is not outdated in the least.  That said, there are new developments, so I reposted it primarily to provide the backstory for anyone not yet familiar with it.

On Monday, February 3, four separate American Indian groups formally asked the Justice Department to investigate the public scandal that is the so-called "child welfare" (i.e., removal, foster care placement, and adoption) in Indian Country.  The four groups are the National Congress of American Indians [NCAI], the Native American Rights Fund [NARF], the National Indian Child Welfare Association [NICWA], and the Association on American Indian AffairS [AAIA]. 

The request, delivered via letter, was typically polite but also pointed:

[T]he groups wrote that a lack of federal oversight had led to Indian children being improperly placed with non-Indian families by child welfare workers and that tribal representatives were too often left out of custody proceedings. They also accused adoption agencies of sometimes ignoring the tribal membership of children in their care. 

“Although these civil rights violations are well-known and commonplace, they continue to go unchecked and unexamined[.]”

Indian Child Removal: Racism, "Perverse Financial Incentives," and Willful Violation of the ICWA

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Author's Note:  This post first appeared at Daily Kos on February 2, 2013.  It is cross-posted here with very minor edits.

On January 31, 2013, the Lakota People's Law Project submitted a report to Congress documenting allegations first reported via an NPR investigation in 2011: that South Dakota's state child welfare officials were stealing Indian children from their homes and families and placing them in white foster care - in part for "perverse financial incentives," and all in direct and repeated violation of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act [ICWA].

At the time the NPR story was released (October, 2011), Meteor Blades wrote a brutal, soul-searing report here at Daily Kos, documenting both the current outrages and this country's long and terrible history of stealing Indian children. In it, he made the point that what people regard as "history" isn't even past, telling the story of Kossack Carter Camp. In the diary and comments are other stories from other Indian families: those of Meteor Blades, of navajo, of myself, of Wings. Carter and Wings are both survivors of such programs themselves.

But in 2011, we could hope that the worst abuses were at least now only in our pasts.

In 2011, we had no idea how bad it still is.