It isn't about you.

Photo copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.

After the last few days, I'm starting feel as burned and broken — as dead — as those limbs.

This happened when the Sandusky story broke, and apparently, it's something we need to work through again and again and again. And then again.

Someday maybe I'll feel more up to writing about my own experiences.

For now, I've spent the last several days haunted and taunted by the images of my own past. Not even the basic sexism and discrimination, oh, no. This is a whole other depth. Reliving — refeeling — the touches and pinches and gropes and bites and things shoved into places where they're not welcome and not wanted. Memories as tactile physical sensations. 

And the blame, always the blame. It must be your fault. You had no business being out at night. Why are you wearing that skirt? Well, you must have done something to lead him on. You're a tease. You're a bitch. You're a slut. You're a whore. You asked for it.

Day in, day out. Every day, world without end, forever and ever, amen.

So you'll understand if I'm really not interested in tolerating hijacks and derailments. For me, for any of my sisters.

Because it's not about you.

This time, for fucking ONCE, it's about US.

#YesALLWomen.

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  Despite being more than a year old, the piece tragically is not outdated in the least.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.