June was a fun month for the Supreme Court. ‘The fellowship’ voted on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, an both were slammed down to oblivion. Yipee! While I am ecstatic and overwhelmed with pride that the Supreme Court made two awesome rulings to support Americans and equality, I have a sour taste in my mouth from the Supreme Court’s ruling of the Baby Veronica case known officially as Adopted Couple v. Baby Girl. (For a full overview please read: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V.) Baby Veronica has raised a lot of issues… like, a butt-load. Indian sovereignty, colonialism, the adoption community, and the systematic problems the Native community is facing, & I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…
Therefore, I will use my skills of levity and humor to express my thoughts ramblings. ** I am not a speaker for Natives, only myself. Mmmmkay?**
5. Custody is the PC term for property
As you know, Baby Veronica’s biological parents were not married and her adoptive parents are. That was a point reiterated by the media, no less by the SC, as a factor to where the child should be, Put the child with an affluent, married couple or Put the child with the father who didn’t even know she was born. Natives and non-Natives alike need to be worried about the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision especially for any parent who has children with someone who they didn’t marry, and are no longer together. If Dusten Brown, the father of Baby Veronica, was married to the biological mother then by law, his biological daughter would be his property & in his custody. If the parents wanted a divorce and in this case, the biological mother did not want her, then the Family Courts would have given Dusten Brown his property daughter to look after. Marriage, crazy institution that it is, has a lot of important legal perks. So that’s why everyone should have the right to enter into it.
4. Don’t be a man, just, don’t be one.
Let me tell you 2 stories about some men I know.
Chris, good guy, funny as hell, knocked up his girlfriend, and tried his hardest to be part of his child’s life after he broke up with the mother. The Ex decided to use the kid as a pawn to manipulate him for money. Chris was smart and went through the courts to set up child support payments, but the Ex blackmailed him and made him pay by the hour to see his kid. After a tumultuous few years inside and outside the courts, Chris decided that it was better if he signed his rights away. His greatest hope is that he will get a visit from his kid on their 18th birthday and they can repair the damage.
Isaak, great guy, really cool, knocked up his girlfriend, and tried his hardest to be part of his child’s life. When he heard that his Ex was arrested for possession of heroine and spent more than a month in jail, he quit school, got a full-time job, hired a lawyer and sued for custody of his son. The courts were on the verge of ruling in Isaak’s favor and then the Ex did the unthinkable and accused Isaak of rape, molesting the kid, neglect and abuse. The accusations were baseless but still needed to be investigated which meant more time Isaak was away from his son. This cycle repeated and repeated. A ruling was close, the Ex made accusations, the accusations were investigated and dismissed, and Isaak was becoming less financially stable as the years of fighting went on and on, and on and on, and he still was not given custody of his son. It’s been a few years and Isaak is still fighting for his child, who will be celebrating his 10th birthday this year.
These stories illustrate the bias that men are experiencing within the Family Courts. Bias from patriarchy and antiquated social norms. Our courts can be a huge disadvantage for fathers. In the Baby Veronica case that is ever so evident. The father’s rights were completely unaccounted and would only be addressed as part of a federal law. Just imagine if the roles were reversed and the biological mother was fighting for the child. I know that’s kind of hard to imagine in this case since the child was placed for adoption before the dad met her, but you get the idea. Gender equality is leveling all aspects of society for development, especially in situations when one gender has traditionally domineered over another.
3. If you’re Cherokee, Make sure everyone knows your Grandma was an Indian Princess.
The Indian Child Welfare Act is an anti-colonial weapon that emphasizes a tribal nationhood and promotes nation-to-nation government. Sovereignty is a pretty interesting thing and it is so heartbreaking clear that people still don’t get what it is. The Cherokee Nation traced Dusten Brown’s heritage revealing that he is a tribal member and therefore receives all the perks of being a Cherokee citizen. Funny, for the media and the Supreme Court, that wasn’t enough. People still wanted to know how much of an ‘Indian’ he was and speculated accordingly. Is he full-blood? Is he half? NPR said he was 2%, other media outlets reported one-fourth. So, here is a quick lesson in Sovereignty 101 and lets get some perspective here: If I was born in Germany, was a citizen of Germany, and identified myself as German, I would, in fact be German. Would my nationality be questioned if I didn’t wear lederhosen, eat sauerkraut, or whether my ringtone was set to Ride of the Valkyrie? Of course not! So why is Dusten Brown, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, who identifies himself as Cherokee, and has social and cultural ties to the community being questioned? The Supreme Court’s decision equated ‘Indianness’ to antiquated appropriations of culture.
2. Nomadic is the way to go
The Supremes Court said that the ICWA wasn’t applicable because Baby Veronica was not physically taken from her Indian home and placed in a non-Indian home because she had never physically lived with her Indian father. Do you follow the logic? You see, Native people’s introductory lesson with the white man was that they were an undignified, subhuman race that should be controlled and manipulated to become civilized. So the U.S. Government executed a mass intergenerational assimilation project spanning across the United States and targeted every tribe. The goal was to ‘kill the Indian and save the man.” Indian children were ripped from their homes placed in boarding schools to experience what it meant to be white. Children experienced PTSD, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, self-doubt and anger. Stories are slowly surfacing to document the effects of the Federal government’s sanctioned cultural genocide. Some accounts tell of infants, hours after birth, that were taken from their mothers. Those children never physically lived in an Indian home, but they still had one. We’re not talking about this happening 100 years ago, The Indian Adoption Project, and government and church controlled residential/boarding schools were used as the colonizer’s weapon of choice and continued to be until 1978. Let that sink in…1978. Can you guess what also happened that year? The Indian Child Welfare came to fruition. It’s no wonder why the Native community is up in arms about Baby Veronica, it happened, like, yesterday.
1. Get the peace-pipe out and wield it like a Game of Thrones character would against the media.
At the end of the day and no matter what side you are on, one thing is crystal clear: The system is broken. I am still reeling with the media’s coverage of the case. Pinning the biological father and adoptive parents against each other was the lowest blow and was not journalism. I wish this case could have been used to shine the racket that is the adoption system and the ludicrous amount of money that prospective parents have to cough up to make a family. There are so many reasons why we need to continue raging against the machine. We need to raise the discourse within our circles and discuss issues of race, legislation and civil rights. So…let’s go!
Rambling Navajo Girl 