Because KELO won't, Larry Kurtz does us the favor of pointing out that South Dakota Indian tribes have sent a big report to Congress accusing South Dakota of violating the Indian Child Welfare Act. Their report contends that the bombshell October 2011 NPR investigation of abuses of law and Native Americans in South Dakota's foster care system is, sadly, accurate:
We, the members of the Coalition for Sioux Tribes and Families, find that the dominant claims made in NPR’s report “Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families” are accurate. South Dakota, for well over a decade, has systematically violated the spirit and the letter of the Indian Child Welfare Act. The state appears to have done this willfully, and a flawed sytem of constraints on Nativefamilies and perverse fiancial incentives has likely led the state to do so in order to bring federal tax dollars into South Dakota ["Reviewing the Facts: An Assessment of the Accuracy of NPR’s Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families," Lakota People's Law Project, 2013.01.22, p. 21].
Interestingly, NPR's coverage of this new report includes comment from Rep. Lujan of New Mexico and Rep. Markey of Massachusetts, but no one from South Dakota's delegation in Washington. A cursory review of Rep. Noem's, Senator Thune's, and Senator Johnson's websites finds no mention of Indian foster care in this week's press blurbs.
you should know that kurtz as an amoral, 7ft., transsexual Fourth World Lesbian with bad teeth....
And see this related story ... "in the politics of South Dakota’s royally screwed-up Native foster care system, where separating Lakota children from their families for “neglect” (read: poverty) is a lucrative proposition for the state, bringing in thousands of dollars per child in federal aid, getting in the way can get you thrown under the bus. That’s almost what happened to Schwab and Taliaferro, who were accused of bribing or even coercing the Lakota children into testifying against their foster parents." http://sdpeacejustice.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/justice-served-for-shirley-schwab-and-brandon-taliaferr/
The background? " The older girls complained that they were being sexually abused by the foster father, and the foster mother threatened to punish them if they told authorities. (Deputy State's Attorney) Taliaferro investigated and ... charged the foster father with 23 felony counts of aggravated rape of a child and aggravated incest. The foster mother was charged with 11 felony counts of aiding and abetting the foster father’s crimes. Taliaferro was supported by Shirley Schwab, the director of the Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program in the county... The attorney general and the state Department of Criminal Investigation... charged Taliaferro and Schwab with “unauthorized disclosure of child abuse information” and “witness tampering...” LPLP (Lakota Peoples Law Project) notes that the charges were brought “immediately after the embarrassing [NPR] expose” of South Dakota DSS."
http://www.nccprblog.org/2012/06/foster-care-in-south-dakota-state-goes.html
One of the tribal chairmen previously noted that the real problem was that there were so few Native Americans either interested or qualified to take care of children or more children. A school social worker has noted that when kids get placed with a responsible family, they start doing better in school and stop missing school. Then the actual parents figure out they are loosing the child support money and want the kids back. They get them and within days or weeks the kids are missing school again and not doing homework.
This is indeed a sad story, but NPR mostly may have gotten it upside down.
Tribes want to be sovereign nations when it suits them, but also can be some of the most dependent and irresponsible government elements when that suits them.
Kurtz: suggestions how to start to make this right, or at least stop the hell?
Serious suggestions.
Tribes like the SDGOP, Douglas?
Barbara, the corruption is scary deep when we can see the state trumping up charges like those against the very people it hires to protect those kids. How do we implement the solutions Taunia wants when the system is that stacked against moral solutions?
Reservations should be counties in a 51st State and Mexico should be the 52nd, T.
How does that stop systematic abuse of Indian children?
It's likely that South Dakota believes it has immunity against federal prosecution for crimes committed by its executives: Bill Janklow is clearly evidence of that.
American Indians are not the only children being systematically abused as the result of the colonialism that altered the course of herstory on this continent.
Immersion in ones own heritage and culture is as liberating as adding indigenous persons to the federal bench: it's a glaring insult to tribal members that that has not yet happened in the age of the filibuster.
Taunia, you and I both follow many Native women on twitter: we know they are angry and feel abandoned by their country.
Until the ignorant white culture stops these matriots from creating solutions for their own children America will continue to be one big ghetto.
President Obama knows all this stuff: expect some big changes in how public lands are managed. Returning stewardship to those who love the Earth is coming.
You're right. Children are not immune to abuse by the system or anyone else based on their ethnicity or race. But this article is about Indian children and I've only seen reference to it here.
And like you point out, there are not enough prosecutions for that abuse. It seems those children are what's bringing home the bacon and who wants to upset the apple card.
Which leads to an interesting point. If there was not money attached to these children, would we even be hearing about it now?
What happens if the CWA funding is cut? Do we just lose track of abused Indian children now that they're not even identified by the dollar sign on their foreheads?
What program(s) is POTUS rolling out?
I'm out for the rest of the day.
People are so quick to judge and point fingers back to us Indigenous people. This has been going on since my people were put on reservations. Our children were taken at age 5 by the govt and put in residential schools until the age of 18. Many times handcuffed. they were turtured, raped, beaten for speaking their own language. So many people tell us to get over it, yet it is still happening to this day. Genocide -"a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
This is still happening to this day to my people. South Dakota is reaping the benefits from it and the media won't cover it.
To all those who waant to point fingers and blame what is happening, question yourself this, what if they took your child away from you? And no one in the system tried to help you. In fact the only case worker and states attorney that listened and tried to help two Lakota foster children whoe were raped were charged in court. South Dakota DCI and DSS tried to cover up the rape charges. Thank god the charges against the two who listened to the children were dropped.
I pray some day someone will listen, instead of judge. I found my brother who was taken at age 8. 21 years later he is back in my life. When he turned 18 the foster/adopted family had nothing to do with him anymore, they were done getting money for him and abusing him. now he is home and back in our lives.
Dana you say "Our children were taken at age 5 by the govt and put in residential schools until the age of 18. Many times handcuffed. they were turtured, raped, beaten for speaking their own language. So many people tell us to get over it, yet it is still happening to this day."
Really still today? Just the facts mam. Yes kids are being moved, yes there are some problems in the SS system that need to be addressed. But you are talking as though this is happening to every child every day when in fact most of those things stopped happening sixty years ago.
And then you give us this. "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
The Indian reorganization act was supposed to change all that. It gave the native Americans the same rights that the rest of the people had and have. It was the native population that chose to keep living like they had for almost a hundred years. After all they no longer had to stay on the reservations, they could go where ever they wanted to, and some did. The right to vote, the right to drink, the right to have meetings without the government interference that would have happened earlier.
In most cases its not the government that is keeping the natives from improving their lives, it is the natives themselves through bad choices. They continue to elect people to top tribal positions that really don't have the interest of their own people at heart. Then when something happens these same leaders are never made to face the responsibility of their actions. In fact more then likely they are re elected again for their service. You cant change things that way.
While I'm here I need to ask a question. At what point does an Indian cease to be an Indian? At quarter blood? One eighth? One sixteenth? In order to have a discussion on this subject don't we need some parameters to frame the debate?
Not to many years ago on the Pine Ridge there were only fifty full blooded natives that were still alive living here. Of those fifty there were four under the age of fifty. It looks to me like the natives are self complicit in their own "genocide" and yet nobody wants to talk about the elephant on the reservation.
If you have read the things I have written you know that like yourself I think the state is using its native populations for purposes that only benefit the state of South Dakota. I live here to and there is nothing I would like more then seeing the reservation change for the good. There is no economic good that can come from a system that continues down the same road.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. That is the only fix that will help everyone, nothing else will do. If you wait for the government to fix it it wont ever get fixed. It needs to be done from within for any real lasting success. If that requires changing tribal government with a shakeup of some kind, so be it.
Right now there are more people, with diminishing amounts of native blood, demanding not only the services that their grandparents got but even more, in the name of being Indian. That's not a formula for success, only failure.
The Blindman
Bill D: please know that i invited Ms. Lone Hill to leave a comment here at Madville.
South Dakota isn't ethically qualified to handle additional Medicaid clients but the tribes are. Navajo preparing to manage their own Medicaid disbursements:
http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s2926771.shtml
"Immersion in ones own heritage and culture is as liberating as adding indigenous persons to the federal bench: it's a glaring insult to tribal members that that has not yet happened in the age of the filibuster."
I would like to hear or read what elements of that culture liberate anybody or prepare them to live in a challenging modern world. It is easy to talk generally of culture, but what is specifically different and better about any kind of cultural diverstity?
Magáksicaagli Wí - Moon When Ducks Come Back
Melville called this the metaphysics of Indian hating.