Native American
[deleted]
Posted Apr 7, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC
8314
I agree 100%. People have NO idea what the stealing of Native kids does. And it is stealing. They will take babies from mothers still in the hospital for not having consistent access to clean water and electricity. Never mind that the abuses of Native communities is WHY.
I'm white but my father is half Ojibwe. His grandma had two sisters. One had her kids taken away and according to my aunt on that side, no one knows what happened to those kids. They're gone. Another married a white man not out of love but because it was the only way she could her kids. My dad's grandma left with her two sons and never contacted her family again because she thought it was the only way to save them.
It's heartbreaking. It's not fiction, it's trauma, and the fact people use it as entertainment....
19
Absolutely a great point. I worked on two different reservations, and I know that ICWA is huge, and it’s not something done very often to adopt a native child. While not native myself, working for two tribes has opened my eyes to how sensitive this issue is, and how insensitive someone posting it, especially for made up internet points, really is.
18
She had supposedly adopted a Pakistani girl too. That OP just had a knack for finding poor racial minorities to take in, I guess. >.>
14
Was that the one that turned out gay, and her family tracked her down using 2003 facebook from a part of pakistan that still doesn't have internet?
Remember, that one was mod verified!
10
Yeah, that's the one. Granted, I did not follow IHOC very closely because I could not follow the amount of "MILs" she had going on. Like, at all. It was like LOTR fanfic.
3
Okay, I already said I think IHOC was fake for many reasons. Also, the adoption law in Finland is very strict and adopting "independently" (so not through an organization) is rare and basically only allowed if you adopt from within your family or you've known the adoptee for a long time. But even if she somehow managed to go through several adootions and the story itself wasn't fake, it wouldn't erase the racism and insensitivity built in it.
I can't believe it was verified and defended by mods and this kind of (racist and problematic) "white saviour" crap was allowed.
7
I never read her posts but of course she did. She seemed to hit every 'white saviour' trope possible and people just ate it up.
10
Thank you for speaking up and taking the time to educate us who are ignorant of Native American and First Nations experiences with adoption. Cultural awareness is something the sub was and is still painfully lacking (and who knows if they'll ever have that), and hopefully JustNoTalk will continue to be the safe space we all need.
8
I'm very, utterly sorry for you.
Someone to take this real, hurtful issue and fabricate it into her own fake saviour story is repulsive and just so wrong on so many levels that I don't even have words for it.
These exactly are the issues mods and the whole community should know about (I know basically nothing about this being a European) and this really highlights the importance of open discussion.
6
This is a great point
4
Thank you for this post. I am mixed Native and Black, and this also really bothers me.
3
I am a First Nations person ('indigenous Australian') and I remember this saga very vividly. We also had a stolen generation (well, generations) very recently and my mother was a stolen child. I'm so sorry you went through that too. I have a lot of problems with my relationship with my mother and grandmother, and I want to protect both myself and my family members from racism, so, well, it makes it difficult to seek support. Also, I don't know about America (although I do know there are very huge problems going on right now with ICE and adoptions), but children are still disproportionately being removed from their communities here.
I've had very difficult conversations with white Australians about my family and my background. It's hard because my mother's trauma influenced how she enabled my father's abuse, because she was rather justifiably afraid she would not be helped but instead have her children removed and separated from each other, for example. My aunts and uncles are all traumatised too and some of them I only met much later in life. It's difficult to capture all this in a simple 'just no' dynamic and freeing myself from black and white thinking has been crucial for my mental health. Also, I'm estranged from my father and I don't have many connections to my community and culture. I think this is a difficult to understand cultural problem for others.
Sorry for using the word 'difficult' so much. It's, well, difficult to be eloquent about this right now.
So, yeah, like you, I found that story immensely insulting and its reception a bit triggering. The IHOC saga was huge when I found JNMIL, and not enough changed to affect my wariness about posting. Thank you for raising it.
I am Native and in one of my Native Studies classes in college we watched The Rabbit Proof Fence, a film about the stolen indigenous Australian children. We watched it while we were learning about the residential schools and our own stolen children. Amazing and heartbreaking how parallel the history runs and the lasting effects on our communities afterward.
There’s many parallels between both communities even though we’re in different continents. There’s some issues which vary depending which area you’re from but it’s still very difficult. There’s tons of trauma that went on in the past and there’s current issues still going on. The emotional weight of it is huge as well. I feel so sorry for your communities which have been suffering and which continue to battle racism to this day as well.
I don’t know my father myself. I’m not sure about the why’s on never knowing since I’m left unanswered but there’s always fear. I was hidden away when medical emergencies happened in our household and if any police came to visit there’s always that fear coming up. Will I be taken away by child services? Those were legit concerns for any adults which I grew up with. I ask but I’m always gaslighted. It’s hard to talk about the justno situations in my life and my wariness about justnomil is the same as yours. It’s hard to post culturally sensitive topics as well to people who have zero experience. I do find some advice useful when I lurked but I never felt welcomed myself.
I’m also afraid of talking about this since I don’t want a creative writer getting ideas or getting some research for the next saga.