*New Day* — This Week In American Indian News: Children, Writing, Artifacts, Film, Apps

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Boujou!

It's the first week of American Indian Heritage Month (which you may also see labeled Native American Heritage Month; to the rest of this society, it's known as "November").

My goal for this month is to include at least a few stories in every edition that explore that heritage, whether for individual tribal nations or collectively. You'll still see so-called "hard news" stories, and there will be plenty of coverage of contemporary political issues, activism, demographic data, and urgent causes. But this month, I'd like to stop occasionally and remind everyone why we do this: Because ours is a living heritage, one that has survived more than half a millennium of attempts at extermination, and despite the ongoing presence of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, manages not only to survive but to thrive every single day in ways large and small. I want people to see the brilliance of the colors, feel the richness of the textures, hear the complexity of the music that make up our astonishing array of arts and letters and languages and songs and dances and foods and folkways and lifeways.

There will be time enough for all the other stories, including the growing gap in education benchmarks for American Indian kids; the sequester-driven reduction in suicide prevention programs for Indian youth; the high Native infant mortality rate compared to that of white infants; and the much lower survival rates of Native women with breast cancer compared to women in other ethnic groups. I may write about these for this series yet this month, or for other series, or in stand-alone diaries. Sadly, these stories are not going away any time soon, and we'll have more than ample time to cover them.

Today, though, I want to focus on good news. Today, you'll read about two women who are devoting their professional lives to to ensuring that Indian foster children can be raised in their own cultural and spiritual environments; about a veritable treasure trove of American Indian writing, both ancient and modern (yes, despite the stereotypes, some tribal nations had written languages prior to European contact); a dig in New York that has uncovered another treasure trove, this time of 10,000-year-old artifacts; the upcoming American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco; and a story from my own state, where Native university students have created and launched a public education app to help users learn — accurately — about New Mexico tribes.

STATE OF UTAH HIRES NATIVE WOMAN TO OVERSEE RECRUITMENT OF
AMERICAN INDIAN FOSTER FAMILIES

Utah's state foster care agency has hired Brandi Sweet (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) to oversee a program designed to recruit American Indian foster families for Indian children and youth.

Ms. Sweet knows the foster care system intimately; she was placed in it herself at age fifteen, ripped from her family and her culture.

"My family was telling them 'We are Native American, we are Native American' and nobody was listening to us at all," Sweet said. "They ended up transferring me 10 hours away from my family. ... The goal of this whole system is family reunification and strengthening, and then you’re taking a child whose family can’t afford to travel 10 hours [to see] them."

At the moment, Utah Foster Care reports that 124 Native children are in the state's foster care system (another 41 children are in the Ute Tribe's own system). There are presently only 13 Indian families licensed by the state as foster families. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that prior to the 1978 passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act [ICWA], Indian children were 1,500 times more likely than non-Indian kids to be placed in Utah's foster care system. Even now, they are four times more likely than non-Indian children to be placed in the system, a number that, in light of the ICWA's 35-year existence, is still obscene.

Moreover, many more Native children are adopted by non-Native parents, despite the likely availability of qualified relatives to keep the children within their families and cultures.

Between July 1, 2008, and June 25, 2013, the state placed 598 American-Indian children in foster care — 5 percent of the total number of children in foster care during that five-year period. Of the American-Indian children in foster care, 82 were eventually adopted.
Families that consisted of at least one American-Indian parent adopted 22 children, while 60 were placed with non-American-Indian parents, according to data from the Division of Child and Family Services.

Part of the reason, according to Ms. Sweet, is that licensing requirements are geared specifically toward and for the dominant culture, delegitimizing the ready availability of Native homes on such grounds as too few square feet in a child's bedroom if shared with a relative. However, according to Utah Foster Care director Mike Hamblin, the state's Office of Licensing is working to revise its guidelines to serve American indian children in a more culturally appropriate way.

"We are going back to our community approach and our community responsibility," Sweet said, "that whole idea that it takes a community to raise a child, and asking every Native person that lives here in Utah and along the Wasatch Front to look deep down inside themselves and just see how they can support this effort."
. . .
"I am seeing so much excitement that there is finally somebody doing this work," she said. "Everyone has known there was a huge need for this. There is almost a sense of relief."

Ms. Sweet spent part of her career in Washington, D.C., where she worked on Indian issues with Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education and with the White House. Since moving to Utah with her husband last year, she has launched her own consulting business, partnering with several area tribes, including Goshute and Shoshone bands. Her position with Utah Foster Care is part-time, enabling her to continue her consulting work with the tribes.

YAQUI WOMAN ELDER HONORED FOR LIFETIME DEDICATED TO
INDIAN FOSTER CHILDREN, ICWA ENFORCEMENT

In observance of American Indian Heritage Month, California public broadcasting station KPBS has honored Rose-Margaret Orrantia (Yaqui) as one of its "Local Heroes" for her life-long work on behalf on Indian children and youth.

Originally from Clarkdale, Arizona, Ms. Orrantia and her family moved to the San Diego area when she was two. She attended local schools and graduated from San Diego State University in 1962 with a degree in English. Later that year, she became a member of the inaugural class of Peace Corps volunteers. She was assigned to Peru, where, as part of Food for Peace, she began her vocation by feeding hungry children. Upon returning to the U.S. two years later, she took a job at Santa fe, New Mexico's Institute of American Indian Arts, working with the students as a dormitory staff member. Some of those students, she says, were wards of the court and/or caught in the pre-ICWA child welfare system.

"That’s when I first became aware of this population of young people,” Orrantia remembers. “They weren’t called foster kids back then."

After 20 years working with IAIA students, she returned to southern California and joined the Indian Child Welfare Consortium, which had been founded to help implement and enforce the requirements of the ICWA. The organization worked with area tribes in Riverside and San Diego Counties, to ensure that Native children were placed with Indian foster families.

As part of her work with the Indian Child Welfare Consortium, a program that eventually expanded to include handling adoptions, Orrantia made sure the Indian Child Welfare Act was carefully followed.
"California is the only state where we don’t terminate parent rights," explains Orrantia. "The tribe gets to write the order. This way the kids stay connected to their biological family. For tribal children this is even more important, because so many of them have been taken away from their communities, adopted out and lost their way. They have the highest rates of suicide due to displacement and loss of identity, which was one of the factors that precipitated the Indian Child Welfare Act. It really is a life and death issue for tribal children to stay connected to their community. We always tried to find family first. About 60 percent were placed with family. The other 40 percent were placed in foster families but they were all certified Indian homes, placed within culture."

Ms. Orrantia is also the program manager for Tribal STAR [Successful Transitions for Adult Readiness], described as "a program to develop curricula and training for social workers in five counties (including San Diego and Imperial Counties), who work in rural areas with Indian youth aging out of the foster care system." The program launched in 2003, and this year celebrated its tenth anniversary.

"I don’t know if working with children was ever my plan . . . . But, we (American Indians) always believe we come into the world with a purpose and destiny, and that purpose and destiny will work itself out in some way. So maybe it’s that and not an intellectual plan that you make to do something. You go where your heart leads you and that’s where my heart was always leading me."
. . .
"The thing that’s most important is that as adults, we’re all responsible for making sure that children are protected,” she affirms. “That they’re healthy, that their needs are taken care of, and that they’re going to grow up to be responsible, contributing members of their community, whether it’s their tribal community or the larger, general community."

KPBS is the public broadcasting station of San Diego State University, of which Ms. Orrantia is an alumna.