My personal connection to my topic is that my parents had become foster parents in 2016. I had to welcome in a stranger into my home and learned to live with her. She was only 10 months old when she came into my family. I got to watch her grow up in my house. We noticed that it was hard for her to adapt to us and being in our family. As the years went by and she started to grow with us. By then she went back with her mother, she was in and out of houses and living with random people. When we got her back we noticed that she wasn’t herself. Her mental health and wellbeing wasn’t the best because she was already trying to raise herself at a young age. She is the reason why im doing research to help with the trauma that foster kids have at a young age.
In the article, “sharing one skin,” By Jeanette Armstrong is very educational for other people that aren’t Okanagan. I found out some different traits they use in their culture. Jeanette Armstrong knows alot about her culture and what the history and different traditions that were made how long ago, also that are still alive. I loved that she knows that her culture and tradition is always going to stay with her, no matter the situation she’s in.
Memories and stories are connected to our land as described by B. Toastie in the article, “ How place names impact the way we see landscape” How we see landscape is based on our “culture”. People with no traditions it seems don’t take care of the land as much as people with traditions and cultures.
In this article the Author has shared his experiences with school during his days. He attended day school in the Pueblo of Cochiti. He also had shared the cons about the Day school that is located in the pueblo, he has mentioned that the smell of the classes were bad and also the lighting had caused his eyes to go bad. He had a lot of problems going to school in his days.
There are different difficulties Native American children went through. The different boarding schools such as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Thomas Indian School, Douglas Friends Mission School, Haskell Indian Industrial Training School, and Santa Fe Indian School all had their different ways of punishing their children. Some of the children never even got to go back to their tribes and families because they unfortunately died due to malnutrition and them getting beat to death.
Governor Lujan-Grisham has to prioritize the IFPA to protect the Native American families. The importance of the IFPA is to protect native children that are in the system to stay with families within the Pueblo. The Governors from the different Pueblos have also agreed to protect their children and to keep them within their Pueblos.
Native American people are more likely to be in the foster system. Sadly Natives are more likely to rank at the bottom or near the bottom for every social, health, and economic indicators. the percentage of native American kids in the foster system is 44% and 9% in the child population. the trauma that the foster kids has will more likely to be intergenerational and will hopefully not carry onto their kids.
A Former foster child is trying to help other Native American Children in foster care. He is using his experience being in the foster system and is now working with the Tulalip tribes. he is now helping support ICWA and is helping the social services provide different drives to help support the families. he created a group for foster children called "Beda?chelh" meaning our children.
Neglect has been the big cause of the child removal in the state. The native American population took over the whole child population with a total of 74% of children being in the foster child system. Lawmakers and the legal experts were finally noticing that it was just going too fail since the native children's removals were still high. Before ICWA was passed Native children were forced to leave their homes and attend boarding schools. Hundred of children died at schools before the government or church run schools closed by 1960. By 1920, the researchers estimated that 83% of Native children, children young as 5 years old had been enrolled in one of the more than 500 boarding schools.
It is very sad that children are having to be taken out of their homes and away from family. The social services in Anchorage, Alaska seem to be worst than what they were previously in. It's sad that the childrens mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing aren't being taken in consideration. The Alaskan Natives aren't even being put with natives, they are being put with non-natives. Therefore that is how their cultural identity gets lost because non natives families don't know anything about their culture. Reading about what the caseworkers were doing to these kids that already deal with all this trauma within the biological parents household. The kids have been in many homes they don't have a "stable" foster home. It was stated that these foster homes weren't the best for these children because they went back to dealing with a toxic household. The special needs children would also get put into an inappropriate restrictive environment. Which has caused more trauma with the special needs children.
This article is really triggering to a younger audience. The article really opens your eyes about kids that are less fortunate to grow up in a stable household. Her trauma had affected her afterlife. She then had to go to a hotel that foster kids stay in when they don't have a placement. Later down the road she then got out of the hotel and lived but then ended up in the county jail.
MLA Citation: Armstrong, Jeanette. 1966 “ Sharing One Skin: The Okanagan Community” Pp.460-470 in Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (eds.). The case against the Global Economy. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books.
MLA Citation: B.’Toastie’ Oyster. May,1,2022. From the print edition. “How Place Names Impact the Way We See Landscape.” High Country News- Know the West. 1 May 2022.
MLA Citation: Suina, Joe, and Joseph H. Suina is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of New Mexico. “ And Then I Went to School” Rethinking Schools. 22 June 2021, Winter 1985. Vol.v,No2.
MLA Citation: The Native American Boarding School System. New York Times. 9 March 2019. Accessed on 20 October 2023.
MLA Citation: "NM CYFD | Governor Signs Historic Legislation Protecting Native American Children and Families." CYFD. 3 March 2022. Accessed 20 October 2023.
MLA Citation: Robles, Jacqueline. "Addressing Overrepresentation of Native Kids in Foster Care." The Imprint. 1 August 2023. Accessed 14 December 2023.
MLA Citation: Spears, Nancy Marie. "One Tulalip youth lobbies for change in tribal foster care system." Crosscut. 10 November 2023. Accessed 12 December 2023.
MLA Citation: Huber, Makenzie, and Annie Todd. “South Dakota inspired ICWA but still has high rate of Native children in foster care.” Source: New Mexico, 9 November 2023. Accessed 23 February 2024.
MLA Citation; Gennaro, Michael. "Foster Kids' federal class action against Alaska gets green light." Courthouse News Service. 29 September 2023. Accessed 1 February 2024.
MLA Citation: Flanive, Paul. " Texas Foster care system placement crisis indicative of deeper reform issues." Texas Public Radio. 28 January 2024. Accessed 3 February 2024.