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FROM: INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY NEWSPAPER

_http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096411392_
(http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096411392)

Brave: Custer's last stand shadows urban Natives

(javascript:PrintWindow();) Posted: August 11, 2005 by: _Lorraine Brave_
(http://www.indiancountry.com/author.cfm?id=571) / Guest columnist
We all know the story of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, his arrogance and
his policy of extinction. And although he lost the battle at Wounded Knee,
urban Natives today are faced with challenges of those same policies. Instead
of guns and arrows, however, the battle is with paper and pen; and instead of
the fight being out in the open, it is often found behind closed doors in
court rooms and in the offices of children's services.

This is not to say that there is not some really good work being done to
help our families in need and to reunite families with care and dedication.
However, it is difficult not to be a bit cynical when we consider our history has
included federal policies that were intended to break down the American
Indian family. Who can forget the forced boarding schools designed and
implemented by Capt. Richard Pratt, who stated this was meant to ''kill the Indian,
save the man''? Also, these policies sent Indian children from various
reservations across the country to distant institutions with the main goal of
assimilation.

By creating geographical separation, children were removed from their
extended families and support systems. Today some of our Native families living in
cities, who have unfortunate encounters with the state child welfare system,
will disproportionately experience less assistance for their families, and
are more likely to have their children removed and less likely to have them
returned. We are losing our children to foster care and adoption, and continue
to be over-represented in the system.

The King County Coalition on Racial Disproportionality, together with the
King County Superior Court, Children's Administration and Casey Family
Programs, has worked with a research team from the Northwest Institute for Children
and Families and the University of Washington School of Social Work. They have
published their findings that American Indians are over-represented at every
point in the system and are faring worse by all measures than their
Caucasian counterparts.

Compared to Caucasian children, American Indian children: " Are
disproportionately represented in child welfare referral accepted for investigation

* Are more likely to be removed from their homes and placed in foster care;

* Make up a disproportionate percentage of children in care longer than two
years and longer than four years; and

* Wait longer to be adopted.

The racial disparity grows at each benchmark step within the child welfare
system. Important to note is that the national literature indicates that this
is true for American Indian/Alaska Native children in California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington
and Wisconsin.

One might wonder where is the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 in all of
this? A very powerful policy, especially when you consider it was the first po
licy to help keep families together. Federal policy mandates that tribes be
notified, that there be a placement preference with extended family and tribal
members, and that there be ''active efforts'' in working with American Indian
families. A lot of really good changes have come about since the act,
especially since more and more tribes are having their own tribal courts and
providing their own counseling and parenting programs that have created a tremendous
positive impact.

Certainly, generalizations should not be made, and tribes vary in success,
but there has been tremendous improvement over the last 20 years. Remember the
devastating statistics in 1978, when 33 percent to 35 percent of all
American Indian children were in foster care and of those, 80 percent were placed in
non-Native homes. We have generations of lost children in the system. Many
of those lost generations are found among today's children who are living in
urban areas.

The definition of who is an Indian often has also left Native children to
flounder in a non-Indian system, especially in urban areas. Often those
mandated protections are not there if you are not an enrolled member of a tribe or
if you come from a non-federally recognized tribe. More and more we are
coming across families who are almost full-blooded Indian, but do not possess
enough blood quantum in one tribe to be enrolled. We also have our Native
families marrying our Mexican cousins, and here in the Northwest we also have
several generations of Filipinos known as Indopenos.

Urban Natives are more at risk of losing their children when involved with
the system than those living on or near their reservations. We desperately
need the help of tribes to assist the urban situation. It would be beneficial
for our urban American Indians to have local tribes near their area take
jurisdiction over tribal families. If we are going to save families from the state
system, we also need tribes to consider lowering the blood quantum
requirements in order to be sure that our children will be covered by the Indian Child
Welfare Act.

We also need to have a strong voice within our cities that there be adequate
funding to provide culturally sensitive programming to meet the unique
needs of American Indians. Although we face these challenges, there are
resolutions if we can come together and protect all of our precious children, as they
are our greatest resource. Without them, Custer will have won, after all.

Lorraine Brave, a Mohawk living in the Seattle area, has been an advocate
for American Indian children and their families for over 25 years. She also is
a trainer for Children's Academy for the state of Washington, and teaches at
the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Washington and at
Antioch University. She is presently working with the United Indians of All
Tribes Foundation.

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