IRELAND: Adopted "Should Retain" Citizen Rights, February 19, 2008

IRELAND.COM
February 19, 2008

Adopted 'should retain' citizen rights

It was recommended today that foreign children adopted by Irish parents be entitled to become a citizen even if the family lives outside the State.

The Law Reform Commission's Report on Aspects of Intercountry Adoption Law stated non-national youngsters should have the same rights as any other child of Irish parents.

The report, to be unveiled by Attorney General Paul Gallagher SC was requested in November 2005 after the case of Tristan Dowse.

The little boy was returned to an orphanage in Indonesia when his adoptive parents decided the adoption was not working out. Last February the High Court ruled that the five-year-old's adoptive parents - Joe Dowse, from Co Wicklow, and his Azerbaijani wife, Lala, - had breached their constitutional duties when they returned the youngster.

The judge ruled that the couple must support Tristan, who was back living with his birth mother, until he was 18. The court also directed that Tristan should be removed from the Register of Foreign Adoptions that is maintained by the Adoption Board.

However, Tristan retained his Irish citizenship and rights of succession to the estates of his adoptive parents.

Under the Law Reform Commission Act 1975, former attorney general Rory Brady SC requested that a study be carried out on the status and rights, including citizenship rights, of a child resident outside the State who has been the subject of a foreign or intercountry adoption order made in favour of an Irish citizen or citizens living abroad.

Around 4,500 foreign or intercountry adoptions have been registered by the Adoption Board since 1991, with 10 per cent of those children living outside the State.

Link to article

GERMANY: Online Sex Auctioneer Ordered to Reveal Cutomers' Identities, February 13, 2008

DER SPIEGEL
February 13, 2008

Online Sex Auctioneer Ordered to Reveal Customers' Identities

A German woman became pregnant after having anonymous sex with six different men who bid on the erotic encounter in an online auction. Now a Stuttgart court has ruled that she has a right to know the men's identities, despite the Web site's assurances that their personal data would be kept private.

Online privacy does not trump the interests of an unborn child, according to a Stuttgart court.
A Stuttgart court has ruled that a German woman who became pregnant after conducting an anonymous online sex auction has a right to know the father's identity.

The woman had sex with six men, each of whom bid on the chance to sleep with her in an online auction. After learning that she was pregnant, the woman sought to identify the father, but she knew each man only by the screen name they had used on the auction Web site.

The district court in Stuttgart ruled on Tuesday that the owner of the Web site that hosted the sex auction must release personal information on each of the six men who slept with the woman.

In her court testimony, the woman said that she had slept with the six men in April and May of 2007. She later discovered that her encounter with one of the men had made her pregnant.

When the men bid on the auction Web site, they were guaranteed that their personal information would be kept private. But in its civil decision, the court explained that the interest of the unborn child was more pressing than the Web site owner's commitment to protect the security of the men's personal information and the privacy of their identities.

Link to article

UNITED STATES: As Adopees Seek Roots, States Unsealing Records

Go to link for sidebar on history of open records, current stats, and pictures

Tom Atwood steps in the cow pie.

USA TODAY
February 13, 2008

As Adoptees Seek Roots, States Unsealing Records

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

When Maine state Sen. Paula Benoit got a bill passed last year, she got more than a new law: She found pieces of her past.

For years, Benoit, 52, had wondered about the parents who had put her up for adoption. That helped lead her to support a plan to give adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates. After the bill passed, Benoit learned the names of her birth parents and their hometown. She e-mailed a colleague, Sen. Bruce Bryant, who represents that area and supported her bill, and asked whether he knew them.

His reply: The deceased couple were his grandparents.

"Oh, for the love of God, I need to call him and say, 'I'm your aunt,' " Benoit recalls thinking. "Can the world be any smaller?"

There was more: Bryant's brother, Mark, serves in Maine's House of Representatives — and had opposed Benoit's bill. "It's too open," he says, adding that birth mothers expected privacy when they placed children for adoption years ago. He says he's happy Benoit is in his family but worries the new law may force some birth parents into contact they do not want.

Three lawmakers, two points of view, one family.

As unusual as Benoit's story is, the debate within her family over whether adult adoptees should be able to learn more about their backgrounds is echoing across the nation.

Last year, Maine was one of three states to pass laws to give such adoptees full or partial access to their original birth certificates — more than in any year since 2000, according to a USA TODAY analysis of state records. Massachusetts approved access for those born before July 1974, when records were sealed, or after January 2008. North Carolina approved indirect access through a state-appointed intermediary. When its law takes effect next January, Maine will become the eighth state to give adult adoptees full access to their birth records, which list birth parents' names.

The controversial push to open adoption records is driven in part by the increased interest among many Americans in finding their ancestral roots. Many adult adoptees may be able to find their birth parents without an original birth certificate by searching databases and the Internet, but the official record makes it easier. Some adoptees want to establish a relationship with birth parents; others are more interested in family medical histories. Some don't want to contact their birth parents, they simply want to know their past.

"For 52 years, I know I've been loved," Benoit says of her adoptive parents, who are alive and support her desire to know birth relatives. Even so, she says, she wondered whom she looked like. She wondered why, despite diet after diet, she couldn't lose weight. "Does obesity run in my family?" she'd ask herself.

"This is really about identity and the truth of a human being's existence," Darryl McDaniels, known as the rapper DMC, told lawmakers last month in New Jersey, where bills to open birth records have languished for decades. McDaniels, 43, learned at 35 that he was adopted and has since backed a bill to unseal birth certificates.

"We never start a book from Chapter 2," he said. "As adoptees, we live our lives from Chapter 2."

As the situation in New Jersey suggests, unsealing birth certificates often has been difficult. Bills to do so were proposed in at least seven other states last year but did not pass. Some proposals, such as those in New Jersey, have been stymied by opposition from the National Council for Adoption and some Catholic bishops, abortion opponents and civil libertarians.

Thomas Atwood, president of the council, which represents adoption agencies, says birth mothers were promised privacy and if that promise is broken, fewer women will choose adoption over abortion.

Despite the opposition, "the general trend is clear: Adoptees are being given access, state by state," says Fred Greenman, legal adviser to the American Adoption Congress, which supports open birth records.

Greenman reconnected with his daughter in 1991, more than 30 years after agreeing to her adoption. The daughter's husband made the first call and set up a meeting. "We spent the whole day at the dining room table talking," he recalls. He says most birth parents welcome contact, as he did, and adoptees deserve to know their past.

Last year's increase in access laws also reflects a larger trend toward openness in adoption, as more birth parents seek to stay in contact with kids they relinquish. "There's far more acceptance of it being open," says Herbert Brail, head of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys.

That was not the case decades ago when many women, under the stigma of unmarried pregnancy, felt forced to relinquish their babies, says Ann Fessler, author of The Girls Who Went Away, a 2006 book about women who gave up children in the 1950s and 1960s.

Fessler, an adoptee, says many of the women she interviewed have "tremendous guilt." She says they want contact with their children, and about half have it. The rest, she says, feel they have no right to it but wonder about their children.

Fessler, 58, says women in their mid-70s and 80s, are — like her own birth mother — often more reticent about a reunion. She wrote her 77-year-old mother a letter, then a postcard, and waited more than a year but got no response. So she called. "I was very, very nervous — kind of shaking," she says. Her mother was friendly on the phone, so they met in person a few months later. "We chatted like crazy," Fessler says.

Now, however, they have "minimal" contact. Her mother has not told her other three children about Fessler. "She's still torn about whether she can come out about this," Fessler says.

Eileen McQuade, president of the American Adoption Congress, says unsealing birth records has not created problems in the states that have done so — Alabama, Delaware, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee. Two other states, Alaska and Kansas, have never sealed birth records. Delaware allows full access except when birth parents object.

Abortion rates have declined in the states that allow full access to records, as they have nationwide. Most birth parents in Alabama, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee have consented to contact with their children or the release of records, according to records reviewed by USA TODAY.

After Oregon began releasing records in 2000, few birth mothers complained, says E. Wayne Carp, author of Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation & Ballot Initiative 58, a book on the state's experience.

As each state opens records, others will follow, says Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which favors unsealing records. "Success breeds success."

A battle of legal rights

The legislative battles often pit an adoptee's right to his or her birth certificate against a birth mother's right to privacy.

"People have a right to their birth records," says Marley Greiner, founder of Bastard Nation, a group pushing to unseal records.

There is no such legal right, Atwood counters, adding that birth mothers believe they were promised privacy when states sealed records. He says many won't speak out because they have other kids or spouses who don't know about the adoption.

Birth records were sealed not to give birth mothers anonymity but to protect adoptive parents from interference from birth parents, says Elizabeth Samuels, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She says some were sealed to protect adoptees from the stigma of illegitimacy.

If birth mothers or adopted children really want to find each other, Atwood says, they can list their names in registries set up by states.

Not all states have registries. Many that do make few matches, says Marri Rillera of the International Soundex Reunion Registry, which gives adoptees and birth parents free help in finding each other. In Texas, about 8,500 adoptees, siblings and birth parents have registered. One or two matches are made each month, says Patricia Molina, who oversees the registry.

"A registry is not the answer," Rillera says. "Open records are."

She says some companies charge thousands of dollars to search records and some adoption agencies charge $400 to $500 for non-identifying information about birth parents, such as age, medical history, ethnicity and religion. An adoptee's search will be quicker and cheaper if birth records are open, she says. "Frankly, I'd like to be out of business."

'We've had mixed emotions'

At least 19,000 adoptees have asked for their birth certificates in Alabama, Delaware, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee.

"I've seen a lot of people whose hands shake" when they get the record, says Melanie Orman, adoption coordinator for New Hampshire. She says many had met their birth mother or knew her name but wanted the piece of paper as a record of their past.

Birth mothers can be distressed. Orman got a call from an angry woman who said she was awakened at 11 p.m. by a call from someone who said, "You're my mother." She says the woman felt her privacy had been invaded.

"We've had mixed emotions: happy, sad, upset," says Carolyn Jones, coordinator of post-adoption services at the Tennessee Department of Children's Services.

Adoptees seeking birth certificates is "routine now," says Carol Sanders at Oregon's Center for Health Statistics. From June 2000 through November 2007, 9,571 adoptees sought records in Oregon. Of 564 birth parents who filed forms on whether they wanted contact, 85 said no.

"I've seen very few who say no," says Dorothy Harshbarger, Alabama's registrar of vital records. She estimates 95% of birth parents allow contact. She says a few complained after records were unsealed in 2000, but not many since then.

A dozen states provide partial access to original birth certificates, depending on the date of the adoption and the permission of birth parents. Another dozen allow indirect access through a state-appointed intermediary if birth parents agree. In other states, adoptees need court approval.

In Illinois, which allows access via an intermediary, 25% of the parents decline contact, says Nancy Golden, co-director of the Midwest Adoption Center, a group that does adoption counseling. She says the women may have kept the birth a secret or may fear anger from the adoptee. She says reunions usually are positive if people don't expect too much. Still, she says the experience can be "overwhelming."

Illinois state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, who plans to sponsor a bill this year to fully open records, says she was in her 20s when she found her birth mother. The woman's first response: "What took you so long?"

McQuade was 19, a college freshman, when she relinquished a baby girl in 1966. "I felt so powerless and shameful," she recalls. She later married the father and had two more daughters, but they didn't discuss their first child. "We hoped the pain would go away," she says, "but it never did."

Then came the phone call on Nov. 28, 1997, about 9:30 p.m. "I'm calling from New York," a woman said. "I knew what it was immediately," McQuade recalls. The caller, a friend of her first child, asked if the parents wanted contact. They did. The friend handed the phone to the daughter.

Mother and daughter spoke for the first time, neither sure what to say. McQuade started by telling her family medical information.

"It was kind of indescribable — terrified, excited, surreal," says her daughter Kathleen Laing. "We e-mailed every day for a year. It was incredibly intense."

They met in person the following July 4th weekend. "It was a complete roller coaster," McQuade says, from joy and hope to sadness at missing so many years. She says their reunion is "a fairy tale come true" that prompted her activism.

Benoit says that after she began pushing to unseal Maine's birth records, she asked a judge for her own. He said no. Later, to her surprise, she received a letter from the court that included her birth mother's name. She still does not have her original birth certificate.

She says the Bryants invited her to a Christmas party and other get-togethers. "Our family is happy to know her," Mark Bryant says.

Benoit says her birth mother was poor and about 50 when she was born, and did the right thing in relinquishing her baby. If her birth mother were alive, Benoit says, "Boy, would I love to put my arms around her and thank her."

Link to article

NEW JERSEY: Calling All Birth Mothers..., February 1, 2008

RESPECT LIFE TODAY
February 1, 2008

Calling all birth mothers…
2/1/2008 by Lois Rogers


LAWRENCEVILLE - Now that the ongoing effort to open up adoptee birth records has heated up again in the legislature, it's only natural to turn to the New Jersey Catholic Conference for insight and information.

Marlene Lao-Collins is the director of social concerns for the New Jersey Catholic Conference and Patrick R. Brannigan is executive director. They have a real gift for putting complex societal issues into a context everyone can understand.

Talk to them on this particular subject, and it's immediately clear why they are the go-to-guys. It's a highly charged, emotional issue but Lao-Collins and Brannigan see both sides, spell them out and ask people to get involved.

"There are two sides of this story," Lao-Collins said Jan. 28, four days after a Senate panel voted overwhelmingly to release a measure that would allow people access to their original birth certificates.

As it stands now, the measure in question - S611 - would miss the mark, said Brannigan and Lao-Collins. They are pressing for amendments that include an enhanced mutual consent registry system which would link birth parents and adult adopted persons when (both) parties have requested and consented to reunions.

The New Jersey Catholic Conference doesn't oppose adoptees having full access to their birth parents' medical histories or revealing the identities of natural parents who consent to the release of the information; but doing so without consent is "simply wrong and unfair." That's what Brannigan told the Senate panel when he testified on the subject Jan. 24.

"The assurance of secrecy regarding the identity of the natural parents enables them to place the child for adoption with a reputable agency, with the knowledge that their actions and motivations will not become public knowledge," Brannigan testified. "Assured of this privacy by the State, the natural parents are free to move on and attempt to rebuild their lives after what must be a traumatic and emotionally tormenting episode in their lives."

The adoptive parents, he noted, also have an interest in having the birth records under seal. "They have taken into their home a child whom they will regard as their own and whom they will love and raise as an integral part of their family unit."

As a close friend of couples who have adopted children in good faith and embraced them as their own, I understand those concerns. As the friend of several adult adoptees, I understand their desire to know their origins.

It's a situation that begs for a Solomon.

Now Solomon, as we all know, relied on the testimony of the mother to render a verdict. And that's precisely who Lao-Collins would like to hear from.

"I would love it if birth moms, birth parents would call me about this. We would keep their information confidential but we know that the stories they tell are compelling and would have an impact.

"We fully understand that adopted persons have compelling, passionate reasons for wanting the records open but we can work this out and we can do it in a way that respects the dignity of both.

"We need to give birth parents the choice of whether they wish to be contacted. We need to do all we can to truly lift up the dignity of both sides."

Reach her at 609-989-1120, ext. 15.

Lois Rogers is features editor at The Monitor. She is available at lroger@dioceseoftrenton.org

Link to article

ENGLAND: Scientists Create Three-Parent Embryos, February 5, 2008

REUTERS
February 5, 2008

Scientists create three-parent embryos
By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have created human embryos with three parents in a development they hope could lead to effective treatments for a range of serious hereditary diseases within five years.

Researchers from Newcastle University, in northern England, presented their findings at a medical conference at the weekend, a university spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The IVF, or test-tube, embryos were created using DNA from one man and two women.

The idea is to prevent women with faults in their mitochondrial DNA passing diseases on to their children. Around one in 5,000 children suffer from mitochondrial diseases, which can include fatal liver, heart and brain disorders, deafness, muscular problems and forms of epilepsy.

If all goes well, researchers believe they may be able to start offering the technique as a treatment in three to five years.

Mitochondria are tiny power packs inside cells that provide their energy. Faulty genetics can mean mitochondria do not completely burn food and oxygen, leading to the build-up of poisons responsible for more than 40 different diseases.

The Newcastle team believe these diseases could be avoided if embryos at risk were given an effective mitochondrial transplant. The process involves in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the subsequent removal of the egg's nucleus. The nucleus is then placed into a donor egg whose DNA has been removed.

The resulting fetus inherits nuclear DNA, or genes, from both parents but mitochondrial DNA from a third party.

"The idea is simply to swap the bad diseased mitochondria -- give a transplant, if you like -- for good healthy ones from a donor," Patrick Chinnery, a member of the Newcastle team, said in a telephone interview.

"We're trying to prevent kids being born with fatal diseases." Mitochondrial DNA is passed down only through the female line.

The technique has so far been tried only in the laboratory, using abnormal embryos left over from IVF therapy, and the handful of three-parent embryos created were destroyed after six days.

Stiff opposition to the technique is likely from critics of embryo research who fear the creation of designer babies.

The research was presented to the Medical Research Council Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases conference in London on February 1-2.

(Editing by Robert Woodward)

Link to article

WASHINGTON STATE: Tribes Confront Painful Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

Go to link for extensive timeline and pictures.

SEATTLE TIMES
February 3, 2008

Tribes confront painful legacy of Indian boarding schools
By Marsha King

Genevieve Williams lies in failing health in her daughter's small house on the Tulalip Reservation, haunted by powerful memories.

She sees herself as a little girl. Marching everywhere in a line. Scrubbing floors on her hands and knees. Being forced to stand silent for hours in a dark hall. Watching children get strapped for speaking their native language.

"I got to know that strap," she said. "Everybody knew what that strap was for, hanging inside the door."

It was especially bad for girls who wet the bed. Dresses pulled up and underwear pulled down, they were beaten. "We all had to line up and watch."

At age 85, Williams bears witness to a dark and unfinished chapter in American history: the Indian boarding school era.

Increasingly, the damage from that early abuse, loneliness and lack of love is being seen as a major factor in ills that plague tribes today, passed from one generation to the next and manifesting in high rates of poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, depression and suicide.

And as awareness of the enduring harm grows, tribes and others in Washington and nationwide are reaching out in new and varied ways to elders, their children and their children's children in hopes of repairing the damage.

"This is a huge experiment — healing of this magnitude and consciousness," said Harvard doctoral graduate Sousan Abadian, an expert on Indian boarding schools and trauma to entire cultural groups.

The boarding school era began in the late 1800s and continued at its most oppressive through the 1920s, when the federal government forcibly placed tribal children in the harsh, militarylike institutions in an effort to assimilate them into the dominant culture.

All things Indian — dress, language and beliefs — were forbidden. Affection was rare, punishment often severe. Some students were raped, many tried to run away and unknown numbers died.

The schools, which slowly started to reform in the 1930s, were not just an American phenomenon. Australia and Canada operated similar institutions, also intended to indoctrinate and "civilize" their native peoples.

In Canada, the federal government recently reached a record $5 billion settlement under which some 80,000 former students are eligible for an average of $28,000 — more if they were sexually or physically abused.

"Essentially, this is what happens any time one people assert they know what is good for another," said Kevin Gover, director of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution. "It is tragic and inevitable."

In 2000, when he was the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Gover apologized to Native Americans for historic abuses by the BIA, including brutalizing their children "emotionally, psychologically, physically and spiritually" in boarding schools.

In the U.S., the focus has been less on legal actions against the federal government and more on healing.

Efforts range from the national Boarding School Healing Project to a $3 million health study by the University of Washington and the Tulalip Tribes to widespread efforts to revive tribal culture.

Lost parenting skills are believed to be a key factor in why the damage endures, so at least one group — the Tulalip Tribes — is weaving lessons about the boarding school era into child-rearing programs for parents and into decision-making classes for teens.

"It's a miracle that native peoples have survived at all," said Abadian, the cultural-trauma expert. "It reflects their unbelievable resilience."

Strong emotions

In the U.S., the boarding-school era evokes dramatically different views among Native Americans.

Some caution against asking elders to recall their boarding school years as it may trigger flashbacks, depression or even suicidal thoughts.

Others believe the era must be talked about for native people to grow strong.

And some former students insist the best years of their lives were spent in boarding schools, where they got three meals a day and met lifelong friends.

According to Abadian, those who did better often started at a later age, got to take part in some traditional activities and weren't entirely separated from their family and community.

And others — rejecting the victim label — turn the experience into a positive, saying "it was good discipline," or "I've been able to learn from it."

The father of state Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, was fluent in the tribe's language but refused to teach it, saying "they beat it out of me" at boarding school. In 2005, McCoy helped win passage of a bill that encourages school districts to teach native history and culture and to consult tribes in developing that curriculum.

For some, their silence may be due to shame.

"There's a lot of incest and child abuse going on in our Native American communities" — behavior that originated in large part at boarding schools, said Phil Lane Jr., CEO of United Indians of All Tribes in Seattle.

Lane, who was born in a boarding school in the Midwest, helped to mobilize Canada's former students. "It's a very difficult issue ... just to get people to talk about it," he said. "It's painful."

Some families are working privately to stop the cycle of harmful behavior.

In Spokane, Martina Whelshula, a psychotherapist and member of the Colville Nation, is leading three generations of her family in healing sessions.

Two of her grandparents and her mother grew up in boarding schools. Her mother was cold and demanding and hit her, and Whelshula was doing the same with her own older daughters.

But it wasn't until she was studying about Indian boarding schools for a doctoral degree that she had an epiphany.

"All the pieces fell together," said Whelshula, who is president of Spokane Tribal College. "I saw all the devastation around me, all the woundedness. I realized it was me."

By then, her own daughters were repeating the mistakes with their children. Whelshula called a meeting so every generation could hear grandma Alice Stewart's story about growing up in boarding schools. That way the family could understand its parenting style in the context of history. They've kept talking ever since.

It's been a learning experience as well for the 70-year-old Stewart.

"I thought I was a good parent," Stewart said. "I didn't know I was one of the worst ones."

Boarding-school trend

The Indian boarding-school movement in the U.S. began in earnest in the late 1800s.

Before that, Native-American children were educated primarily in church-run mission schools and some tribal schools. But after tribes were moved to reservations, their treaties typically called for government-provided education.

The first government-run, off-reservation boarding school was the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, founded in 1879 by Capt. Richard H. Pratt.

He and other reformers believed at the time that if Indians were given a proper education and religious training they could be civilized out of their "savagery" and assimilated into society.

Pratt's oft-quoted philosophy: "Kill the Indian and save the man."

By the early 1930s, an estimated two-thirds of Native Americans had attended boarding school at some point in their life.

Some schools were off-reservation, others on. Other students attended day schools. The federal government ran them or subsidized the mission schools.

Among the best-known in the Puget Sound area were Cushman Indian School in Tacoma — which later became an Indian tuberculosis hospital — Fort Spokane Indian School and the Tulalip Indian School on the reservation.

Boarding schools slowly started to improve in the mid-1930s, becoming less coercive over the next decades and more encouraging of tribal culture, though corporal punishment continued until it also was stopped in mainstream education.

In the 1960s, new federal laws gave Native Americans more rights, as well as control of their children's education. Many schools closed, and the remaining ones increasingly embraced what had been forbidden.

But it was not that way for the earlier generations.

Then, a typical day consisted of lessons in the morning and manual labor in the afternoons. Punishment ranged from a lost privilege to being locked in a closet or beaten.

Parents who openly resisted giving up their children lost food rations or were jailed. Others hid their children or denied being Indian, though some willingly sent their children to the schools to get an education or escape poverty.

Contact with families often was limited to summertime. And even then, some students were sent off to local people's homes to learn how to be civilized — that is, to be maids or farmhands.

Extreme loneliness was common.

"I used to stand at the window and cry," said Fran James, 83, a Lummi tribal member. "The night watchman would come along and say 'Little girl, you'd better go to bed.' "

Along with two sisters, James was sent to the Tulalip school in 1930 when she was about 6, then to Cushman Indian Hospital, then to the Lummi day school in 1935 and finally to Chemawa Indian School in Salem.

She studied and worked in the garden and laundry, learning to iron a shirt in two minutes. As an adult, she managed to reconnect with her culture, becoming a renowned basket maker and wool weaver.

Not long ago, her son Bill wrote to the Federal Archives for her birth certificate and a package with several documents arrived. Inside was an unopened letter from her father written in 1939.

"They will let you know when you can come home," the letter read in part. Why did it never reach her at Chemawa? The question brings tears, but no answers.

"My mom lost the spirit of the people," said her son. "Even though today she's very strong in her culture ... she lost her language."

Between two worlds

With little communication from home and heavy indoctrination at boarding school, many children felt alienated, abandoned and not sure whether to identify with the white or Indian world.

While many families welcomed their children home, others did not.

Former chairman of the Tulalip Tribes, Stan Jones, now 81, was sent to Cushman Indian Hospital in 1937 at age 11, along with three older siblings. He was there for three years.

"Actually, I forgot about my home," Jones said. "I wasn't sure where I belonged."

When Jones finally did return to the reservation, the driver tried to drop him off, but Jones thought his immediate family didn't want him back. "It's just kind of what the government taught you there," he said.

He finally settled at an aunt's house, coming to realize years later that he had been mistaken about his family's motives. "I should've just went to my dad's."

Later generations recall that same lost feeling.

"It kind of shapes your life," said his younger brother, Dale Jones, 65.

In the 1950s, social workers took him and four other brothers from their family and sent them by bus to Chemawa. To this day, he recalls paddlings and the humiliation of standing in line after showers to have his genitals visually inspected by a matron.

"You've carried it so long, I guess it becomes like a hidden deal inside of you, " said Jones, a recovering alcoholic.

He attributes some of his difficulties with alcohol to the boarding-school experience. "We try to bury the feelings we carry."

To Gover, of the Smithsonian, the schools' painful legacy should come as no surprise.

"Imagine being a 10-year-old at boarding school. You're told everything about you is wrong," he said. "I don't think we can even perceive the degree of shame involved."

Trying to heal

Healing efforts are wide-ranging.

The national Boarding School Healing Project was started in South Dakota in 2002 by Indians from various states.

Among other efforts, it is documenting abuses so communities can seek redress from the government and churches, in the form of laws and money to improve Indian education.

The University of Washington is conducting a five-year, federally funded study with the Tulalip Tribes to determine the factors — from cultural habits to past trauma such as from the boarding schools — that are related to heart disease in Native Americans. The aim is to develop prevention programs based on healthier choices.

In downtown Seattle, the Seattle Indian Health Board has started a program for urban elders.

At twice-weekly gatherings, they learn lost skills such as bead work. Some went to boarding schools, and occasionally they talk about having been beaten for "talking Indian."

It's a time "to honor good feelings or put to rest the bad so you can move on," said Chris Chastain, elder specialist.

Just west of Marysville, parenting classes are being taught on the Tulalip Reservation.

As part of a six-week course, a small group of adults met for a recent class, which began with an account of how the boarding schools of old might be contributing to their struggles today.

Instructor June LaMarr, a tribal mental-health counselor, told them that natives originally believed children "are specially beloved" and should not be hit or disrespected lest they return to the spirit world. But that gentle approach was disrupted by the boarding schools.

At one class, she projected onto a screen the words of a sweat-lodge doctor who'd gone to boarding school: "... When you get older, the habit is there, being mean and ornery ... The parent doesn't stop to think about what he's doing to his kid. He is taking his boarding-school attitude out on him."

"I never really thought about it 'til today," said Angel Chance, a class participant whose mother and grandmother rarely brought up their time at boarding schools.

A proud survivor

Genevieve Williams always has been candid about her years at the Tulalip school, Cushman Indian Hospital and St. Georges Mission School near Tacoma.

By the time she left the schools for good at age 14, she didn't recognize her own mother.

The two never did bond.

Later, she didn't know how to nurture her own children. Her husband had been physically abused in a Canadian residential school and instilled in their children his deep suspicion of white people.

"That's how we grew up," said their daughter, Leslie Lopez.

After many prayers, Lopez decided to judge people by their actions instead of their race and to teach her children to do the same.

"It's taken a long time. I try hard," she said. "It's getting easier."

Williams now lives on the reservation with Lopez, with whom she's grown close. She encourages the grandkids to learn the Lushootseed language, and she sometimes watches language classes on the tribe's closed-circuit TV network. But the only word she knows, she says, sounds like "paw-sted" — meaning white person.

To this day, questions haunt her — such as why she was sent to a TB hospital when no doctor ever found evidence that she had the disease. Sometimes she looks back and cries. "I know I missed out on a lot ... "

But like others of her generation, she doesn't want to be cast as a victim. At 85, she's proud to be an elder. "I am Native American," she says. "I survived."

Marsha King: or mking@seattletimes.com

Link to article

NEW JERSEY: Adoptees Could Access Birth Info

NORTH BRUNSWICK/SOUTH BRUNSWICK SENTINEL
January 31, 2008


Adoptees could access birth info
BY CHRIS MURINO Staff Writer

SOUTH BRUNSWICK- The state Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee unanimously supported a bill last week that would grant adult adoptees the right to their birth certificates.

Under the bill (S611), an adoptee over 18 years of age or the adoptive parent of a child can request their birth certificate from the state registrar's office. The bill allows a one year leeway for parents who gave up their children before the bill was passed to request not to disclose their information.

Sen. Bill Baroni (R-Mercer) found it to be a difficult, emotional decision as both he and his sister were adopted. However, only his sister had a desire to find her birth parents.

"I am adopted and I see it from many perspectives," he said. "I do believe they have the right to have that information and I believe that passionately."

Sen. Diane Allen, who sponsored the bill, agrees.

"It's important that adults who were adopted have access to vitally important familymedical information," she said. "This kind of information could dramatically affect the quality of an adoptee's life if left undiscovered."

However, Marie Tasy, the executive director of New Jersey Right to Life, believes the bill is unfair because some mothers do not want to be known.

"Advocates [of the bill] don't believe the birth mother should have the right to have this decision," she said. "We are willing to strike up a compromise but the advocates are not."

Pam Hasegawa, an adoptee and member of the New Jersey Coalition forAdoption Reform & Education, believes, "We're compromising by allowing past birth parents to write a request to be honored for their name and address removal."

Mutual Consent Voluntary Registries are also a hot topic. Some states, including New Jersey, give adoptees and parents the ability to find each other if they both want to. They can register at places like the International Soundex Reunion Registry. Information is computerized for each resident, and people are notified of a matching relationship.

Tasy believes that since this is in effect in many states, it should be tried on a national level.

"It's a good idea, but it's a backup idea," Hasegawa disagreed. "It works for a few people. I think it's a 2 percent success rate.

"Dead people don't register," she added. "Amother could be dead before the adoptee is old enough to apply for it."

She also mentioned that New Jersey allows the adoptive parents to change the date of birth on the certificate to their hometown, making the registry even less useful.

Some opponents have even said that more parents will resort to abortion if their children will have the rights to their full birth certificate. However, Hasegawa says evidence is pointing in the other direction.

In Alabama, a lawwas passed in 2000 allowing access to birth certificates.According to a Guttmacher Institute poll, the abortion rates decreased by 16 percent from 2000 to 2005. Oregon passed a similar law in 2000, and their abortion rates decreased by 25 percent in the same time period. The national average during this time period was a 9 percent drop. Also, Alaska and Kansas have never sealed birth certificates and have abortion rates below the national average.

Baroni said he believes the bill will pass.


Link to article