Culture and Foster Care

The moment that I knew I was coming to live on an Indian Reservation for my internship, my eyes have focused in on any news articles that I come across regarding Indian culture and life.  While doing my morning perusal of the New York Times today, I came across this article.  I encourage you to read it, but for the sake of this blog post, I'll give you a condensed version.

Basically, the article discusses the disproportionate number of Indian children in foster care and the struggle between cultural ties and a safe, healthy home.  In Montana, only 9 percent of the entire state's population is children who are Indian, but they represent 37% of the children in foster care.  The Indian Child Welfare Act  of 1978 requires that children be placed with Indian families whenever possible, which also means that the tribes have a say in the custody cases.  The difficulty now is that there aren't that many Indian foster homes.  "In Bernalillo County, for instance, there are 65 Indian children in state custody but only 5 Indian foster homes, prompting Gov. Susana Martinez to publicly appeal for more families last March."

As I live and work in a Lakota community, I am keenly aware of how important culture is to any race or ethnicity of people, but most especially to a race and ethnicity of people who are being slowly exterminated.

I love to talk about culture and heritage.  I'm quite proud of my Irish ancestors or even the Czech ones.  I wear a Claddagh ring that my mom bought me in the town that my great grandparents lived, Westport, County Mayo, Ireland.  I loved being in a place where I saw my family's features all around us in the noses, hair, eyes, etc.  As much as I love to claim that being a quarter Irish is significant to me, I'm not culturally Irish.  I don't know any Gaelic.  I don't know how to step-dance.  I don't really eat any Irish food, other than absurd amounts of mashed potatoes at every holiday gathering.  But the thing is, Irish culture isn't disappearing with each generation.  Yes, there are a few less Gaelic speakers, but the culture as a whole is still intact.

Thinking about what it would mean for an Indian child to live with a non-Indian foster family would be incredibly detrimental to their development as an Indian person.  Yes, the child would miss out on Pow-Wows and wouldn't learn any Lakota, but the child also wouldn't learn about kinship, which is the way that family matters above all else.  I can tell you that my mom, sister and brother matter above all else, but it's different in Indian culture.  No one seems to question skipping work or cancelling any responsibilities--church services, meetings, etc--if someone dies.  Everyone goes to the funeral, because that's where you need to be.

The family structure here is key for survival and for culture.  Traditionally, families would send their oldest child to live with their grandparents.  I haven't quite caught on if there was intentional motive for either side in this, but it was tradition.  You can still tell the adults who were the oldest child in their families, because they speak the most Lakota and seem to embody the strongest Lakota virtues.  

Due to my experience here, I support this act and its desire to place children in homes where their culture is not only preserved, but nourished.  I don't doubt that non-Indian parents can do their best to encourage the child to remain in close-contact with the tribe, but it is different.  I have a friend who was adopted from another country as an infant by Euro-American parents.  She has been raised by them and loves them dearly; she's also realizing how many questions she has about her biological parents and the culture that she came from.  She referenced this feeling of being an outsider everywhere she goes, because she's not "quite" any particular race. This is an example of adoption as an infant, which is different than a 13 year-old being in foster care.  I lift it up as an example of how multiple cultures can pull at you and cause significant struggle in establishing an individual identity within a larger group.

The title of this article is: 

Focus on Preserving Heritage Can Limit Foster Care for Indians

I read the title when I started the article and re-read it when I finished the article.  I don't think the title represents the feeling that I have when I finished reading it.  The title implies that the hope in preserving heritage takes away possibilities for life with a foster family.  We're denying that work could be done to strengthen families through different support systems in the tribes.  We could also encourage more Indian families to consider fostering and adopting children.

I ask that you keep all children in your prayers this day, especially children living in unsafe situations all over the world, regardless of race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, sexual identity and ability.