by Trace A. DeMeyer

Akiing

Native musicians Buffy Sainte-Marie, Brule, Star Nayea; filmmaker Chris Eyre; and newspaper publisher Paul DeMain – what do they have in common? They are all adoptees, raised by white families, each well known for their gifts and talent, and all are unquestionably Indigenous or Native Americans.

“Unci, our Grandmothers, prayed to the Great Spirit for us to return,” Sandy White Hawk said when we met in 2001. We are both orphans, adoptees with Native American ancestry. Sandy is Sicangu Dakota, from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Her mother enrolled her before she was taken at age three and raised by missionaries.

We met at Wicoicage Ake Un-Ku-Pi, a ceremony Sandy organized for the First Nations Orphans Association, held on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin in 2001. It was the first ceremony to wipe the tears of the lost ones and the found ones.

There were thousands of Native American children taken from their families and tribes in the years of 1941-1978 across North America. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Indian Adoption Project placed hundreds of Native American children with white parents, the first national effort to place an entire child population transracially and transculturally. (Read: www.darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption)

This was the white man’s way of assimilating the Indian, to break their spirit, by building Indian boarding schools away from the reservation, and removing babies and children to be raised by non-Native families.

Missionaries and Christians abhorred the savagery of these child pagans so much that they scrubbed their tongues with lye soap for speaking a word of their language, forced them to speak English, wiped out their customs by erasing any trace of their identity, cut off their hair and burned their clothing. Children were not allowed contact with their families.

Tribes bent on saving themselves could do little to stop the theft of these future generations. Their grieving never stopped – it was yet another brutal disappointment, another form of genocide.

For adoptees like me, we look in a mirror and know something is wrong, yet we’re helpless to change it. No one can discuss identity issues with you. You’re troubled by that. The feeling of being lost and abandoned never leaves you alone or gives you peace.

Some of my friends who are also Native American adoptees are opening up and talking about their childhoods – the suffering from being abused mentally or physically. Not all were abused, but we all felt a loss of identity. We agree that our identity is not mirrored back to us. You hate your own skin because you’re different, because you don’t look like mom and dad. You don’t look like anybody.

Sandy White Hawk told me that in one study, they found that taking a First Nations child from their family is more traumatic than being a prisoner of war. There is more psychological trauma and damage to that child than to a soldier imprisoned by enemies during wartime.

Non-Indian parents weren’t made aware or told about this beforehand. It could have soured the federal government’s deal. Indian children weren’t studied for how they were damaged by removal but how well they adapted and assimilated. How well did adoption agencies discuss or prepare parents to deal with the culture or traditions of your tribe? Displacing these children came with a heavy price, which eventually led to the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The system failed in a big way. It’s a mess that few are willing to talk or write about; it’s still too painful.

I can’t speak for the others, but there are ancestors who keep you company while you are away from your tradition and culture. The ancestors never abandon you. You see them in dreams; they wake you with ideas. There are signs as you wake up to the natural world around you and feel the connection to your brothers, the four-leggeds and winged ones. Your Indian friends, if you are lucky enough to have them growing up, talk in terms your heart can feel.

Every child has a gift. Tribes respect their children; they never laugh at them. They teach children to be honorable, respectful, courageous, generous. Our white parents don’t know this.

What is remarkable about Buffy and so many others is their spirit was strong enough to overcome. They followed their heart, vision, and the call to be an artist, musician or writer. Being creative is an effective outlet for a grief this enormous. We reconnect to our tribal identity when we are ready.

In June 2001, Child Welfare League Executive Director Shay Bilchik legitimated Native concerns, formally apologizing for the Indian Adoption Project at a meeting of the National Indian Child Welfare Association. He put the Child Welfare League of America on record in support of the Indian Child Welfare Act. “No matter how well intentioned and how squarely in the mainstream this was at the time,” he said, “it was wrong; it was hurtful; and it reflected a kind of bias that surfaces feelings of shame.”

What disturbs me, it took until 2001. Some 68 percent of Indian children were taken from their parents by the federal government. Bilchik became Executive Director of the Child Welfare League of America in February 2000, and assumed leadership of the nation’s oldest and largest association of agencies that directly help abused, neglected, abandoned and otherwise vulnerable children and their families. CWLA has more than 1,100 public and private, voluntary member agencies nationwide. The Washington, D.C.-based organization has offices in Boston, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles. Bilchik came to CWLA from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) in the U.S. Department of Justice. Bilchik gave his public apology again in October 2001 at that first healing ceremony for First Nation adoptees.

“Orphans be strong, listen to our traditions, they will give you strength, hear the Drum’s voice, it will tell you things,” … this is sung at each Wiping the Tears ceremony. It is the Wablencia Honor Song for First Nation orphans, translated from Lakota to English.

Dakota spiritual elder Chris Leith co-founded the First Nations Orphan Association with White Hawk after the two met at a World Prayer Day ceremony in Costa Rica in 1999. He knew a ceremony was needed. Leith brought in Jerry Dearly, who wrote the “honor song.”

“It’s a healing,” Leith said, of the song and ceremony, “to bring back that sense of belonging, of dignity, of identity, and that love and tender care that everyone is searching for.”

Historically, American Indians struggled to maintain their cultural and traditional ways since contact with Europeans. Physical discipline and sexual abuse experienced by the children at the boarding schools filtered into the culture when they later returned to their tribal families as adults.

In the 1950s, many American Indians were moved from reservations into cities through the Relocation Program initiated by the Federal Government. However, they were given no assistance in adjusting to the stresses of urban life. Some felt loss with the move to urban areas. The combination of the Boarding School experience as well as urban life adjustment difficulties contributed to the breakup of many Indian families, on and off the reservation. It’s a cycle that perpetuates itself, even today.

To make matters worse, tribes are not exactly prepared for adult adoptees who return. There is no tribal reunion office. For some adoptees, the return home is just more pain. Parents may have already passed on or don’t want contact; on some reservations there is stifling oppression; or tribal rolls are closed. Some tribes are more concerned with economic opportunity than they are with reclaiming lost ones, who need to connect with their relatives, attend ceremonies and be allowed time, maybe even years, to heal.

I have a friend, Daniel Grey Cloud. He’s Lakota. He knows this because he opened his adoption and located an uncle who told him his name. The uncle contacted Dan’s birthmother but she wanted no contact with Dan. The door to answers about his life slammed closed again. Dan was abandoned again. He has no information as to where to find his relatives or cousins, or even what band of Lakota or what reservation. You won’t find an instruction manual for this. Dan is lucky he learned his name. A friend told him about the first ceremony in Wisconsin where he met Sandy White Hawk and other adoptees. I pray that he finds his answers.

White Hawk told me about one study done on Indian adoptees in the 1980s. It barely scratched the surface of what adoptees felt or endured; the questions weren’t exactly culturally appropriate since they were posed by non-Indian social workers. Those adoptees admitted they were depressed, suicidal, jobless or drug-dependent.

I cried at the first ceremony as if my heart was a broken dam. Rows and rows of adoptees filled the gymnasium and cried. The Menominee people graciously greeted each of us, welcomed us home and let us cry. I attended another ceremony, held at Indian Summer in Milwaukee, Wisc., and White Hawk says many more are planned. She said any tribe can call out to its lost ones and create a welcome ceremony for them. First Nations Orphans Association, based in Minnesota, now advises social workers and government agencies and hold workshops. They will travel and conduct the ceremony, when it can be arranged. White Hawk recently testified at a child custody case in South Dakota. With a clear victory, the courts are in favor of keeping Native children within the tribal family.

In 1978, I began searching for my family. It took 17 years to find my birth father, Earl Hiram Bland, from Illinois. Earl’s mother Lona Dell Harlow and her mother Mary Frances Morris get their Cherokee blood from James and Charles L. Morris from Baptist, Oklahoma, listed as Cherokee on the Chapman Rolls in 1852 and on the Dawes Rolls. Earl’s other grandmother Sarah Matthews was also Native American, but I have yet to prove her tribal affiliation of Shawnee or Cherokee.

The family who adopted me through Catholic Charities was not Indian. My favorite neighbors, three doors down, were Anishinabe and Finnish. My brother and I rode bikes, built snow forts and played baseball with their kids. We were at their house more than our own.

My childhood was dysfunctional in ways I will not get into, other than it was dominated by my father’s alcoholism and cruelty. I could have become many things – bitter, depressed, suicidal or addicted. I think my ancestors took hold of my mind and kept me sane. I loved both of my adoptive parents, despite what I experienced and am still grateful for their love.

As you understand your heart better, it’s like a blank book is in front of you that you feel compelled to fill. You learn patience. The heart opens. I started writing.

I remember my parents took us to a Lumberjack festival and a pow wow in northern Wisconsin. The sound of the drum and the men singing filled my heart. Buffy Sainte-Marie was there and sang. I could not tell anyone what I was feeling but it made me feel proud and different from the people I called mom and dad.

I never stopped hoping to find my real parents, to know why they gave me away. And after all these years, I have answers I never expected.

Sandy White Hawk was first accepted by the Menominee people who gave her a sense of culture and identity – in a way they fostered her. After that, she had the strength to find and meet her relatives in Rosebud.

Since 1992, I travel to Pine Ridge, SD, to see my Oglala Lakota sister Ellowyn who gave me my name, Winyan Ohmanisa Waste La ke. Our friendship grew strong over a long period of time. She is my relative because she knows what is in my heart. She taught me we are all related, Mitakuye oyasin.

I will someday visit my Oklahoma reservation and be ready for whatever happens.

To learn more about First Nations Orphans Association, workshops and planned ceremonies, email Sandy White Hawk at sadoptee@yahoo.com.

Trace A. DeMeyer is the former editor of Ojibwe Akiing and the Pequot Times. She writes for a number of Native publications and is a member of the Native American Journalists Association. She now lives in Greenfield, Mass. Her email is tdemeyer3@verizon.net. An indepth story of her adoption can be found on her website: www.quantumdragonfly.com.

A Few Famous Adoptees

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Born on a Cree reservation in Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Buffy Sainte-Marie was adopted by a non-Native family and raised in Maine and Boston, Massachusetts. By age 24, Buffy Sainte-Marie had appeared all over Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia, receiving honors, medals and awards which continue to this day. Her song “Until It’s Time for You to Go” was recorded by Elvis and Cher, and her “Universal Soldier” became the anthem of the peace movement. For her very first album she was voted Billboard’s Best New Artist. She disappeared suddenly from the mainstream American airwaves during the Lyndon Johnson years. In Indian Country and abroad, however, her fame only grew. She continued to appear at countless grassroots concerts, AIM events and other activist benefits. She made 17 albums of her music, three of her own television specials, spent five years on Sesame Street, scored movies, helped to found Canada’s “Music of Aboriginal Canada” JUNO category, raised a son, earned a Ph.D. in Fine Arts, taught Digital Music as adjunct professor at several colleges, and won an Academy Award Oscar for the song “Up Where We Belong.” Buffy invented the role of Native American international activist pop star. Her concern for protecting Indigenous intellectual property, and her distaste for the exploitation of Native American artists and performers has kept her in the forefront of activism in the arts for 40 years. Presently she operates the Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education whose Cradleboard Teaching Project serves children and teachers in 18 states. She lives in Hawaii.

Star Nayea, raised in Detroit, Michigan, has often been described as the “little lady with a big voice,” who launched her career in Austin, Texas, then moved to New York City. In New York, several years ago, Star fully developed her unique contemporary edge of bluesy rock with hints of folk and traditional Native American vocals.

Star, Chippewa/Potowatomi, adopted by a white family as an infant, has begun seeking her own birth family. Star currently lives with her husband and child in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Brulé, aka Paul LaRoche, has a unique story to tell. Along with the amazing music, theatrics, and traditional dance troupe, Paul tells the story of how he came to realize his Native American heritage after nearly 38 years of separation from his biological family, which resides on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation in central South Dakota. Paul, adopted at birth off the reservation, discovered his Lakota heritage in 1993 after the death of both adoptive parents. He was reunited on Thanksgiving Day 1993 with a brother, sister, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. The discovery of his true heritage has greatly affected Paul’s life and those around him.

Chris Eyre was born in 1969 on the Warm Spring Reservation in Oregon. He grew up in Klamath Falls, Oregon, adopted by a non-Native family. “I’m Cheyenne and Arapahoe. I went to school in Portland, Oregon. I pursued an associate’s degree in television, in directing; I earned my bachelor’s degree in media arts at the University of Arizona, and my master’s at New York University in filmmaking.”

Eyre attempts to display portraits of contemporary Native Americans as individuals who are plagued by problems common to all people, but who react within the confines of their own particular circumstances. He founded Riverhead Entertainment, a production company that for several years produced commercials, films, and documentaries.

Paul DeMain is a member of the Oneida (Wisconsin) and Ojibwe tribes, and was raised by a non-Native family in Wausau, Wisconsin. “I grew up with some compassionate liberals who never tried to hide my identity and encouraged me to inquire about it,” DeMain says.

In the early 1970s, he made contact with the Oneida Tribe. In 1986 he launched News From Indian Country, an independent newspaper that covers tribal politics, legal issues in Native and U.S. courts, reservation crime, education and Indian art, with readers worldwide.