If anyone would step back for a minute and ask what is best for the child the answer is obviously staying with the adoptive family. They love the kids and can support them and provide everything that children need to thrive. With their resources they can expose the children to their culture and provide stability and opportunity. Fact- children raised in poverty are much more likely to stay there for their entire life.
13
Absolutely not. Both native American children need to be with their tribe. I read this story and feel the foster parents have essentially stolen the children from their natural tribal life, which they deserve. The foster parents have demonstrated nothing in the way of keeping these children connected to their cultural heritage, which is exactly why they shouldn't be allowed to adopt either of these children. The affluent couple have no respect for the culture of these children...thus, both children should be removed from their home and placed with tribal members.
33
@Djamila Salem -- And for some, culture, family, values, traditions, heritage, language, ceremonies and ancestors are far more valuable than anything that can be "bought". Money isn't everything.
34
Agree very strongly with your comment. I wish the judge could have seen past his bias and allowed the child to be raised by her family that seemed to want her very much.
10
I am puzzled by so many vociferous comments that feel that this child needs to remain with his people and culture. Why is this not segregation? A child needs a tremendous amount of resources to grow up healthy, happy and secure. Having the means to provide it, is hardly a reason to vilify parents who wish to adopt. Instead of focusing on whether they are kind, caring, thoughtful parents who will stand by this kid, suddenly the fact that he is Native American is more important. His own parents seem irresponsible and careless having child after child they could care less about. Why does the Native American community not feel happy that their future will be safe guarded in the world outside? Instead of closing their world, why not open it outward and invite such families into their circle? What a petty selfish oulook adults have. Perhaps both communities should read Rabindranath Tagore's poem......Where the mind is without Fear. He says, 'Where the world is broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.'
If we want to evolve forward, we cannot keep walking backward, one community with anger and the other with guilt. We must look ahead, together as one country, one culture with different facets. All our children are our future assets. Culture is not genetic. Anyone can adopt anything they want and love the practise of it. Free your minds.
21
Clearly the Brackeens were massively unfit to be foster parents, as foster parents are supposed to understand that they are not eligible to adopt the children placed with them. Zachary's birth family should sue the department that certified this couple for foster parenthood.
39
I would like to learn what steps these adoptive parents are taking to ensure Zachary is educated in the culture of his Native American forbears. They and their lawyer sound shockingly heartless from the statements I have read here that they have made. It seems very strange that they are rewarded for breaking one the rules of fostering, that you do not become attached. How is their overt Christianity going to be made compatible with Native American beliefs? They seem like an incredibly self centered couple. Why are all the members of Jackie's family to be made to suffer for her poor life choices? Why are conservative entities trying to once again separate Native American children from their heritage? There is so much wrong with this situation. I pray for a positive outcome for these children, a future that involves their participation in their Native American heritage.
248
@Karen
You can argue they are separating her from her Native American Family, but that means a birth mother who abused methamphetamine while pregnant with her. It's a tragedy all around, but the Brackeen's seem like the best choice.
18
@Karen
You are a well meaning liberal but you really
do not know what you are talking about.
Why must any child be brought up in a particular culture ?
What if the Child were European and a Native American
couple wanted to raise her - would you protest and demand
that the child be taught Scottish, Scottish dances, to
drink like the Scots, be raised in Calvinism...somehow
I doubt you would, but let me know. How can anyone not
become attached to a child they are raising - if that is what
is supposed to happen during Foster Care - no wonder
so many fostered children turn out to have rough lives.
So what if they are overt in their Christianity why must
Native American Beliefs be attached to any Native America
Child - adopted or not ?
Jackie's Poor Life Choices ?
7 children by different men
at age 33...if anything you would think you would
want her children adopted by families who can
afford to pay for the counseling to combat their
mother's troublesome set of genes.
Let us know, Karen, what your heritage is and
how you express its pre-Bronze age culture.
20
@John Brown 'their mother's troublesome set of genes"? Thank you for proving the point about clueless racism. All of your points speak for themselves. Why should anybody be raised to any culture at all, according to your logic. And if people are raised to a culture, why should it not be their own rich heritage? I do not see how you can look at the way Native Americans have been treated and not see the genocide. As for myself, I often wore my dirndl to school in New York City after I was brought there in 1968 from West Germany to a town in Queens where many of the shop keepers and neighbors still spoke German and with whom I was able to converse in my native language. As I grew up my grandmother kept me supplied with dirndls to wear. I still speak German to this day because the German culture of College Point was still strong at that point, as was the Italian culture of our neighbors down the coast a little in Astoria and Corona. I also have a Renaissance Fair costume I wear as often as possible, if that satisfies your need to go back in time, and I also see from recent photos that many Germans dress in skins for festivals that celebrate their very early forbears. As for the Native American Nations, their ways of life and beliefs are present and current. As a treat for yourself, look for a Native American gathering in your area to attend and absorb the rich culture you will find there.
51
No doubt the Brackeens believe they are loving parents. But, if they truly had the children's interest at heart, they would return them to their tribe. If the Brackeens had any appreciation for cultural history of the indigenous people, who they are and what we have done to them, they would not do this. Loving a child does not make it right -- not any more now than it did throughout the centuries of cultural decimation.
White Americans still don't get it. We still don't understand the completely different and far superior position children hold in the community over our stopped down selfish structure of nuclear family. And maybe because we don't get it, that it is all the more reason to respect theirs and their desire to raise their own children.
We are still far too infected with the concept of ownership and the sense of entitlement whites have to take what they want and keep it as their own, regardless of the consequences to other from whom they/we take.
This isn't about the children. The Brackeens will never acknowledge it, but to them. these children are nothing but property which they feel entitled to own by virtue of their belief in white Christian superiority.
67
Both those children have family who want them, even if the parents aren’t capable of caring for them right now. Family who can support their connection to their roots and culture and parents.
White Fundamentalists with a roller-rink sized kitchen are not a step up from one’s own family, however much their white savior syndrome leads them to believe they are.
1033
@Lauren Noll
The article says the parents stopped visiting. It says their rights were terminated by the court; can one assume there were some legitimate grounds for that?
127
@John, maybe they financial and logistical barriers were why they stopped visiting. Maybe they were worn down by the thought of having to fight a rich white family for custody.
If not for the history of white Americans trying to wipe out Native American culture, this would not be such a controversial case. But it appears the Brackeens are not supportive of the children knowing their culture and in that context, they have compromised their case. Lots of kids spend the summer with grandparents or other family. They could choose to follow the judge’s order and maintain that connection, but instead are fighting it. In an era where people are spending a lot of time and money to reconnect with their ancestral roots and get DNA testing they are missing an opportunity to expand the child’s family and knowledge of her ancestry.
169
@John Their parents’ rights being terminated does not mean they don’t have other relatives ready, willing, and able to care for them.
152
"Zachary was the seventh child to be removed by authorities from Jackie, his birth mother, now 33, who, according to court testimony, grew up on the Navajo reservation and later moved to Texas. She has long struggled with drugs."
The real issue is why no one can find a way to stop people like this having children.
63
Yes. My 14 yr old was born to a woman who abused drugs and alcohol. Her challenges are lifelong. She has benefitted immensely from the therapies, schools, and supports. The Bracken case has no winners. It's about the best interest of the child.
23
@Hastings I don't know if you've been otherwise following the news from this country, but quite a few state governments are in fact making every effort to ensure people CONTINUE having children.
12
@Concerned Citizen Or maybe she's a deeply traumatized person whose behavior reflects experiences of sexual or other violence. Women don't just run around being pregnant for nine months eight or nine times for the kicks. Given the staggering incidence of violence against Native American women, I bet her life story would curl your hair. Her children may have been rightly placed with more functional families, but what this woman needs help, not judgment.
16
Hopefully, these caring, adoptive parents are open-minded and forward thinking enough to want to teach the child about his Native American culture and heritage. It's not that difficult, and I'd think maintaining a relationship with the boy's ancestral Navajo Tribe is a start. For those who object, keep in mind his 33 year old drug-addicted mother had seven children removed from her care. As sad as it is to separate these siblings, this young boy has a much better chance of survival off of the reservation.
12
I firmly believe that Native American children should be placed with their relatives or with another tribal family. I don't believe that just because a family is financially poor that means that the outcome for a child will be bad. Poor families are as capable of being loving and supporting as richer ones. One example is Elián González, who in 2000 was a Cuban child involved in a custodial dispute between the mother's family and his father. The courts ruled that he should go back to Cuba to be with his father. Elián has stated that he had a perfectly fine upbringing in Cuba and was happy to have been placed with his father.
27
This isn't about loving these children. This is about the Brackeens own selfish, irresponsible inability to face up the emotional difficulty they would feel by giving up these children. It is about them ignoring the harm they are inflicting on the broader community of human beings with whom we share this land and putting their selfish desires about a cultured they are completely disrespecting, while hiding behind the piety of family love and their Christian religion. This is about their sense of entitlement and preferences taking priority over others and the culture from whom they appropriate these children, who will likely grow up just fine, and with more people loving them, without their material wealth. This is about owning something, not loving something.
47
The family may have the best intentions, but this is just plain wrong.
29
It is extremely important that the children be adopted within The Navajo Nation. I am from a First Nations village in Canada and I have witnessed this scenario play out, and not well, into adulthood. I have friends who went through this, they are angry and confused. I believe they would have much happier lives had they been raised by members of their tribe. Overriding the law sets a dangerous precident.
42
I have worked in child welfare for years. It is heartbreaking to have to make decisions that cause adults pain, but often doing so is the only way to prevent doing further damage to children, especially babies and toddlers who are biologically designed to form attachments to caregivers who are present and reliable. I struggle with laws like ICWA, where the needs of children are secondary to the desires of adults. The little girl, like so many kids in foster care, had to wait around for the adults to resolve their disagreements about her placement. The grandeous judge thought he could divide the child among those who wanted her. There is no good reason, at least as I can learn from this article, that the baby shouldn't have been placed with her tribe, her aunt and her sisters. But, for what ever reason, the court was sympathetic to her brother's family. So, although I may disagree, the baby will have two parents, three brothers, one who is related to her, and all the advantages of the upper middle class. Right or wrong, a family has been created, and this needs to be the end of the story. Hopefully this "shared custody," deal won't leave her caught in the middle, and emotionally damaged, like kids of warring divorced parents. The hardest thing to accept about child welfare is that is not about fairness, but about making difficult decisions, as quickly as possible, to prevent further detriment to children.
11
As an adoptive mom that researched every option of adoption in the US and internationally, I came full circle to adopt a US child. Process was less than eight months to a beautiful baby girl. I made myself acutely aware of the limitations as a non-native American. As others have expressed here, the current laws are in place for good reasons as And guess what? There are MANY adoptable children (and infants born everyday) that are adoptable in the US. I’m grateful this family have adopted and disturbed they are challenging the law.
13
"Legal scholars say that if the rationale for striking down the law survives, it could also threaten laws that guard tribal casinos and water and land rights."
At a moment where we are warehousing children at the border, it's hard not to see that this case moves forward the plans of not only the Evangelical adoption crusade but also the industrialists after tribal land and water.
33
"As Anishinaabe artist and activist Isaac Murdoch explains, the Canadian government’s “Indian problem” was “free-roaming Indigenous people.” The point of the Indian Act, the reserve system, and residential schools was to phase out Indigenous citizenship over time, to free Indigenous land for resource extraction, and to make sure Indigenous children and their families would never repopulate the land. According to Isaac, making Indigenous people rely on government and charitable services instead of their own hunting, gathering, and familial and community practices wasn’t a kindness designed to ameliorate the harmful effects of colonization. It was a part of the plan. The colonial state’s goal – to “kill the Indian in the child” – wasn’t a metaphor. It was genocide." - “Indigenizing” child apprehension - https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/indigenizing-child-apprehension
26
Indigenous Peoples are not ethnicities. They are the First Nations. They have their own laws, cultures, and languages.
It is well established that removing the children wholesale was an attempt to destroy these First Nations, and it was part of a systematic process that includes more than child removal. First Nations are Still here, but have taken numerous blows to their health and well-being while surviving hundreds of years of systematic oppression, exclusion, outright mass murder, land stealing, and denial of their economic resources. The social issues that First Nations face today are a result of these deliberate actions - actions that have not stopped. Just because the general population is unaware unless something like Standing Rock happens doesn’t mean colonization and systemic oppression has ceased.
Taking the children is not and never will be okay. You do not get to break someone’s leg, steal their crutch, and blame them for struggling as they walk.
The news media needs to be more informed about the wider issues this case and others like it are tied to. And if you think there’s no longer a thirst for Indigenous lands and resources and a willingness to wholesale trample over Indigenous Peoples, then for starters I suggest you read up on Standing Rock and go from there.
And to the news media, lets see a comprehensive, investigate series that explores how this issue is tied to many others and the current, ongoing acts to continue eroding First Nations’ rights.
56
I've read a few dozen comments here, but I haven't seen anyone bring up what to me is a key point: the Brackeens have no real relationship with this little girl. Zachary lived with them as a foster family. Zachary - not just the parents - became (presumably) bonded as a family, at least to some degree. But of Zachary's half-sister, Mr. Brackeen said, “The tribe doesn’t owe us anything, But our son? That’s his sister. That’s not right.” This girl has not bonded with this family. She doesn't know her half-brother or would-be step brothers. There is absolutely nothing tying this girl to the Brackeens except Mr. Brackeen deciding she needs to be his child because Zachary deserves that to be the case. He's subjugating this child's well-being - steamrolling over the life that she has lived thus far - to his own idea of what is best for his adoptive son. I can understand the argument to keep Zachary a Brackeen. But forcing the girl to be one is deeply, deeply narcissistic. I have a hard time believing the Jesus of the Gospels would support a position defended in court with a declaration of concern that there might not be enough money to provide privacy.
72
The law once allowed people to take Native American land, discredit and punish them for their religious beliefs, and take their children. The Brackeens winning this case would open the door to taking children and thus the survival of Naive American tribes and beliefs.
I am sure that the Brackeens could find other children to foster-adopt that do not have families and dying cultures desperate to receive them. The very paragraph in the article that puts an emphasis on the Brackeen family’s Christian values and house full of scripture is a slap in the face to anyone who wishes for this little boy and his sister to develop Navajo culture while they are in the care of this family.
39
This decision is wrong, wrong, wrong. The tribes are a separate nation. They should be able to raise their children with their language and customs. This white daily are right wing reactionaries. I so hope they lose the final battle.
21
it makes cry overwhelming yes worthy while i m adopted myself ! i care about childs belongs to Gods childs so be it live for Jesus Christ full of joy
Depends how you define “poverty”. Very well to do millennials suffer from depression, anxiety and suicide at record rates. And they often live in material splendor.
Perhaps these people are well meaning but they don’t seem very self aware, other than to pay a “rectify their blessings” for their material success. That itself is odd.
So race gets weaponized to take down what fundamentalists can’t abide. In hobby lobby they used religion to deny health care, now its race to tear down laws to protect the Indian tribes. Very simplistic thinking all around. Appalling.
22
There are no easy answers here. I have a Native American brother, adopted by my (white) parents before this law was passed. The history of Native American children being removed from their homes on nebulous grounds is shameful. But that’s not what happened here, or to my brother. The birth mothers both left the reservation and would not have raised the children in their traditional cultures anyway. In any event, babies are indifferent to culture. They just want to be loved and cared for. Their best interests should always take precedence. They can connect with their Native culture later on. That is what my brother did, and he is doing fine.
16
@Anna - In our Anishinaabe culture babies are all about the culture. We have naming ceremonies for them. We have origin stories to tell them about our culture and teachings. Don't make such broad assumptions for a people still experiencing genocide to this day. Look up the missing and murdered Indigenous women epidemic across the US and Canada.
Of course, our people leave the reservation due to forced colonial capitalism. But many want to return to decolonize and heal. The reservation doesn't define who we are as our homelands are expansive like Anishinaabe Aki.
21
@Nigig-enz Baapi
I’m not purporting to make broad assumptions, just speaking from experience. I’m sure the ceremonies are very meaningful for the tribe. But who rocks the child to sleep matters more once an attachment has been formed. They don’t cancel each other out though — both have value in the long term.
7
Any adoption, by non-relatives or relatives, has stumbling blocks. The child will ask why his/her birth parent didn't want and/or keep them. My feeling is that all adoptees need some kind therapy. It depends upon the situation and the child as to what kind and intensity. Children should never be lied to but explaining situations like drugs needs a deft hand.
We adopted a child born drug addicted out of foster care at 18 months. He went through a grieving process because, really, he had just become an orphan. Again. To pretend that these first months are not important is ludicrus.
A child can't wait while adults get off their fannies and agree to do the mom/dad job.
He is bi-racial. I am not but my husband is. He asked why he didn't look like me and why he wasn't kept by his birth parents and other adoption questions and we got guidance and answered as best we could.
For him, and I think many adoptees, the main things he had to be assured of was is he loved, deeply, and will he ever be taken away again.
Things like culture and his place in the world are things we have always worked on and at 24 he is exploring them independantly.
I don't think one rule about who can or will adopt and cherish a child fits every situation.
8
Sorry, I'm just stuck on the NYT stylebook still using Indian in this context
23
That was my thought, exactly
11
Instead of trotting out their wealth as the reason they deserve full custody, the Brackeens could have offered to continue seeing the children at their Navajo family’s homes, coming as friends and mentors. If they believed the children needed an emergency fund, (the kids would already qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, and free college tuition) they could have tucked that away. Thank heavens the children will at least get to see their origin, which looks beautiful. When they get older they can decide how much connection they want to their Navajo family and heritage—which may be one reason the Brackeens want sole custody.
30
We who are not of the people of the first man continue in our delusion that the lives of American Indians are better lived by becoming ersatz white. This confict is well documented in the popular and academic literature. I say these children and their future are best served raised by their people.
22
Love trumps culture.
3
This was all about overturning the law. Maybe the judge's ruling, imperfect as it was for everyone, was ment to protect the law as much as the child?
1
This is devastating. Foster parents must be able to love a child like their own, and then let them go. It is an enormous ask, but it is what is required to do your job as a temporary parent. Do you accept the role if you cannot fulfill it. One day these children will grow up and be horrified by what was taken from them.
34
I had a family law attorney in North Dakota tell me: "They don't call it ick-wa for nothing."
1
Obviously, there are politics at play here as conservative forces wants to declare the Indian Child Welfare Act unconstitutional. In the case of Zachary, I felt for the Brackeens who had already bonded with Zachary and vice versa. They should have won custody in that case in the best interest of Zachary's stability and future. However, I feel that the Brackeens quest to sue to adopt Zachary's younger sister reeks of rich, white paternalism.
29
I agree completely. In the case of Zachary his biological parents wanted this couple to adopt him. It was in the best interest of the child to stay with them. Everything was settled and when they heard of a newborn half sister this couple thought oh this is perfect now he has someone that 'looks' like him and will 'understand and have a common experience'. If this couple truly wanted their adoptive son to understand where he came from they would have never brought a case to court to take a baby whom they had never met. This little girl has the opportunity to be with her family and her people. If they wanted their son to understand his heritage why would their first thought not be to form a relationship with his family as to be able to teach him of his heritage and offer him a relationship with his kin including his half sister. My heart breaks for for these children that have been born into a situation that was not ideal but then intentionally thrust into a situation that will most likely permanently alter their lives and how they view themselves.
12
What immediately strikes me about this debate and the bizarre comments herein is the fact that this whole thing is about two children, not the history of the US or the abuse of native Americans or any of that. The first and foremost concern should be what is best for these children.
To me they are being used as pawns in a game that has nothing to do with what is best for them. They are not a precedent or symbols of past abuses. It doesn't matter if the adoptive parents are white or wealthy. How is that germane to needs of two children. They should not bound by any cultural imperative that does not serve their best interests.
And the emphasis on geneology reminds me of the period in American history where terms like mulatto, octaroon and mestizo were accepted terminology of the social vocabulary. This is racism run riot without any self reflection as to what is being said. Can you hear yourselves? Shame on you.
18
@J.I.M. -- Yes, but the history of the U.S. and the treatment of native peoples is exactly why these laws were put into place to begin with.
The U.S. government already intentionally tried to wipe out these people and erase their culture(s) completely, so perhaps that's why people are concerned that it's continuing to happen, despite the laws put into place to prevent it.
16
I suspect there is also a healthy dose of Evengelical zeal at play here as well. The well-worn trope of the Christian saviours of the heathen babies.
65
There are so many non Native American children who need homes. I don't understand why white families try to adopt Native American children when they know that the tribes will look among the child's Native American extended kin network to find permanent placement. The Brackeens seem to think that they are so special as to warrant using the courts to prove their superiority.
46
Consider the following sequence:
"When Zachary arrived in their home, the Brackeens were told they could not adopt him."
"Navajo social workers said they had found an unrelated tribal couple in New Mexico to adopt the boy. A Texas judge ruled for the tribe, citing the child welfare law."
"We’d done nothing but sign up to do good. We were devastated."
"They obtained an emergency stay of the judge’s order. The tribe ultimately backed out, and in January, the Brackeens finalized the adoption."
“We realized that what happened to us wasn’t random,” Dr. Brackeen said. “We wanted to make a change for the future.”
“How can it not be in his best interest,” Mr. Brackeen said, “to grow up with a sibling who looks more like him than we do, who knows what he’s gone through and who shares his story more than anyone else?”
----
From the start, they had ZERO respect for tribes, ZERO care for even attempting to understand why people had FOUGHT for the law. THEY feel 'wronged', 'though they were given that clear "NO!" at the outset.
But, they have $$$money$$$ to go along with their majority-group cluelessness and privilege, and racist Kochs with deep pockets to back them, besides!
And THEN they have the gall--the GALL!!--to use the "children thrive with people related to them!" argument --- IN ORDER TO TAKE THE SISTER AS WELL.
76
For the family court judge to equate his own family's immigrant experience to that of Native Americans is hopelessly ignorant and insensitive.
51
@Fred
Actually, it sounded like he was trying to do the opposite. I have a hard time finding fault with his decision without a lot more evidence. The fact that it may be implausibly difficult for both families to accept it probably means that it is fair to the children's interests, not just one or the othr of theirs. Shared custody is problematic, no matter what. If the families cooperated, however, it would be less devastating to the kids.
9
The Brackeens are unfit to adopt these children. They took on the task of foster parenting and then were unwilling to take the step required of them as foster parents--to help their foster child go to his relatives. They knew the conditions when they took in a foster child and then stole him.
People who ignore their obligations, steal, and cheat, are not fit parents, even if they are white and prosperous.
45
Best summation of what's transpired with / to these children. I don't see the foster parents as caring. I n my opinion, they are incredibly selfish. And if they were in any other state than Texas (or southern "christian" states), the court would have ruled against them. The children need to live within their First Nations culture, i.e. with tribal family members.
19
Native Americans belong to sovereign nations. The US government should recognize this and get out of the way. This selfish white family has essentially kidnapped a foreign national.
36
Not enough we stole their land, tried to beat the Indian out of their children, now they are outright stealing a full blooded Native American and denying their heritage and culture. American Indians are not Americans, they belong to their own legitimate Nations. US law should not over ride their laws, this child is a Native American.
27
I don’t ignore race or pretend its personal, social, and historical effects don't exist. I’m sensitive to people of color and don’t pretend to be colorblind when meeting and talking to people of color.
What I do see is love...this family loves this boy and they have every right in the constitution to make him safe, secure, and wanted!
39
@Charlie Ironic that you bring up the AMERICAN constitution when Native tribes have their own governments
50
@Charlie
The boy is theirs. They have sucsessufully adopted him but the 11-month girl is not theirs and they have no right to her. By what right should they even have a claim on her? But hey, they are Christans, saving her from heathenists.
42
And the tribal family of these two children love them, too. Their love is shown through passing down of heritage, customs, attachment to extended kinship, etc. Perhaps you only quantify "love" in terms of material possessions, lots of scheduled sports, music lessons, etc. The affluent way isn't necessarily the better way to raise children.
65
This statement made my jaw drop:
“Legal scholars say that if the rationale for striking down the law survives, it could also threaten laws that guard tribal casinos and water and land rights.”
So children are property? Territory? Natural resources?
8
@Larissa
Regardless of her age and financial position, Mrs. James appears to be a loving parent and aunt. The siblings seem to care for each other as a family. Look at the pictures of her home, richly filled with family photos and momentoes, they are all together preparing the meal. The boy, Zackery, is not in question but the 11- month old girl that the Brackeen's feel they have a 'right to adopt' because they have Zackery and are financially comfortable. This stinks of white privilege. Money is not always what is best for a child. Being loved, having understanding sensitive parents and knowing who you are and where you came from is important.
It is sad that the Brackeens' object to so much as visits with the tribal family and that is very telling in and of itself.
33
The child, not the tribe, is the main concern. Where there is a relationship with caregivers who want to adopt, and no parents to adopt, the child should go to the people they see as their parents.
The history of children stolen, in order to 'whitewash' them - yes, that is a horror. But a child being adopted by loving foster parents, when their own parents are incapable, is NOT the same thing. There should not be a race based difference here. And to have a brother and sister together seems a good thing.
I've seen, up close and personal, what happens to a child given to druggie parents, allowed to remain, falling through the cracks. It's horrible. The poor kid might have had a chance if they were adopted. Left with the drug abusing, neglectful parents, only the most exceptional children will manage to self motivate, self control decades before they should have to, and rise out of that.
3
@SusanStoHelit -- But Susan, the point of this article is that there ARE loving, capable, stable family members who DO want to take care of these children. Did you read the whole article? The lovely great aunt, grandma, half-siblings and cousins all want their family member at home with them.
15
You are obviously clueless about how First Nations people view family relationships. Absolutely everyone is related to another in the tribe. The tribe IS family. First Nations people don't separate family units down to biological parents and children, like Euro-american parents do. For First Nations people, the "family" is the entire tribe / clan. That's what this Judge isn't recognizing. The tribe is the family, not just the immediate biological parents.
15
So tired of hearing people spew adoption industry slogans and have no idea of where the ideas even originate. The adoption industry tells vulnerable women that giving up their child is "brave" and go on to list the ways in which the vulnerable mother is lacking. It is not brave to give up your child. It is an absolute tragedy. We should never wish this upon someone else. For everyone saying how brave it is, please, give up your child, so you can be praised for your bravery. Oh, but I have the means to raise my kids, you might say in protest. There will always be someone with better material situation than you, always.
Money and social status are not everything and people over emphasize the 'nurture' aspect of human development to the detriment of the 'nature' side. Losing one's history, family is losing connection to so many things that most take for granted. No wonder so many think "it's no big deal". And another fallacy is that "love" is enough. If only that were true, any adoptee will tell you that is patently false.
Quit elevating people who relinquish their children and quit elevating an industry that coerces people to do so, gaslights anyone who questions their ethics, and continues to laugh all the way to the bank. $16billion dollars is a lot of children, a lot of commodification. Oh, children aren't sold like products in adoption? Oh no? Then why are they returned like products when the adoptive parents rethink?
Quit praising an immoral industry.
15
With all their wealth and Christian sensibilities, the Brackeens could start a foundation to open a drug treatment center on the Navajo reservation, or a health clinic (Mrs. Brackeen is a physician, yes?) community center, school, grocery store, water pump, whatever is needed to help the community where Zachary and his sister come from thrive. They could financially "adopt" Zachary and his sister the way many Americans "adopt" needy children who remain in Africa. They could certainly adopt any number of American children who truly have no family left in the world. That's the Christian ways, is it not?
Insisting that Zachary and his sister will be better off in a wealthy white household when there are actual living Navajo relatives who love and want to raise those kids is just wrong in so many ways.
19
Let us take race out of the picture. If the system had a choice where would they place a baby girl up for adoption. Choice 1: A 55 old single lady with no other children in the house with limited financial means or Choice 2: A young couple, financially stable with three other children of which one of them is the girl's sibling. If we make a rationale decision based on the above information why should the decision be reversed because the baby's origin is native American living outside the reservation? Do we make the same judgment if the baby was of Asian, African or Caucasian origin?
3
@A Dutta. Keep in mind there are plenty of kids in the US who are being raised by their grandparents and are thriving. Why should the courts allow that for white and African American families but not for indigenous families?
13
I knew a mother of three whose husband was Native American. They got a divorce, and the man took off for a reservation, and when there got a decision from some type of tribal official that the mother could never have contact with her children.
She was powerless to stop this. In America. Sinful.
Nobody needs to have a separate "nation" within our country's borders in order to maintain their own culture. If that is necessary, then it suggests their culture isn't that strong or appealing.
It is time to let the whole business of Native Americans having a different set of laws and rules go. It is a decades-old solution that has no place in our country.
39
@Travelers
au contraire - it is a remedy to rectify centuries of abuse and cultural and physical genocide. This country was built on dispossession of Native peoples.
60
@Travelers
Except that is was their nation long before we stole it and nearly exterminated them. They have only the tiniest bits of land tht we didn’t see any use for at the time. Your anecdote may not tell the whole story subjectively.
What’s “sinfu"l is deliberately giveing blankets infected with smallpox to an already decimated population to try to kill them off so that we could have this “nation” all to ourselves.
59
@Travelers So what you're saying is that we should just give them all their land back, since we're no longer willing to abide by the compromise that we worked out with them after massacring 90% of their people and forcing them off their ancestral homelands?
34
What will be the outcome when this reaches the Supreme Court (which it most assuredly will)? And what of the ripple effect? I suspect it is the ripple effect that is creating interest among an unusually high number of parties. Let’s hope that these parties do not just care about their own agendas, that they keep in mind, a living breathing child’s future is at stake, a child unable at this young age to defend/protect herself and as such is at their mercy.
8
The state judge, a son of immigrants, and the Navajo have fundamentally different experiences of America. It was a mistake for the judge to impose his views on the latter group.
20
I am the aunt of an adopted child who is 1/6th Native American. She was adopted at birth. Her birth mother had no ongoing connection to any tribe. Her birth father had no long-term connection to the mother of the child who carries his DNA. An indigenous heritage was not part of either the father’s or the mother’s lives. Yet the child’s adoptive parents had to wait the required number of months before their adoption was finalized, so that the tribe could place a claim on this child if they wanted to. This was a constant stress and worry hanging over the heads of the adoptive parents. I thought it was ridiculous, given the tenuous connection the child has to the indigenous portion of her heritage. The idea that she could be plucked away for the arms of loving parents who had cared for her since birth, and handed over to strangers who had claiming rights, is appalling to me. She has been brought up bathed in love. She is happy and fulfilled and psychologically healthy. She has been taught from the time she was old enough to understand — about her heritage, and about how and why she was adopted. There is no shame in any of it. Nothing has been taken away from her. Everything has been given.
5
Wanted to add to above: The wish of the biological mother was that the daughter she gave birth to would become the beloved daughter of parents who have no Native American heritage. So the fact that a tribe could have staked a legal claim on that child, taking her away from her adoptive parents, is especially galling. Tribal rights supersede the right of a mother to decide the fate of her baby? Segue to the national fight over a woman’s right to abort a fetus. Who owns a woman’s body, and the children she bears?
2
Congress adopted the Indian Child Welfare Act to protect children who are members, or eligible to enroll as members, of federally recognized tribes, against the ill informed actions of state governments. Protection is not based on race or skin color.
Tribes are unextinguished conquered sovereigns that have retained control over their members (citizens) and children eligible to become members. Congress has plenary power over tribes. Texas does not have plenary power over tribes. Congress appropriately adopted the Act to reduce the shockingly high percentage of Native children that were wrongfully removed from their families by state governments. Congress has an obligation to protect the tribes against the states. Tribes were here before states. Most signed treaties with the federal government.
The Act was designed to stop state judges from applying a culturally based belief about the “best interest of the child” because using that state adopted standard in state courts resulted in removing a disproportionate number of Native children from their families. The appropriate tribal council should should create the standard and tribal courts should apply the standard. Congress was correct. States have a tragic history of failing to understand the sovereign nature of tribes and the tribes’ need to protect the children.
19
The native American population is tiny. The loss of their cultures is real. The laws restricting adoptions is an attempt to save what remains.
During the late 19th century into the mid-twentieth century there was a deliberate effort to separate their children from their families and communities to isolate them from their people's cultures and to make them identify with the culture of the United States. The children were punished for using their languages or displaying anything about their cultures.
Given the history the way this case was handled is understandable.
However, people are people, and these children would be happier with their siblings. It might be better to consider what is best for the children even if the effort to save the culture of their parents is impeded.
6
Regardless of reasoning behind each family, all I have to say is that the Brackeens need to be keenly aware that Zach and his sister will always be viewed as the "other." They need to help them find and keep their roots, learn their history, and be proud of their heritage.
I cannot emphasize more the psychological harm that can arise in children in trans-racial/cultural adoptions, if the adoptive parents believe they could fully "integrate" their adopted children.
12
As someone who was fortunate to have spent almost a decade on the Navajo Nation, my heart goes out to these children and the relatives who are fighting for them. This should have been an easy case with established law and I cannot help wondering if the current administration isn't to blame for a resurgence of attitudes of white privilege and a desire to undermine what little respect we have grudgingly given to native beliefs and culture. These children deserve to grow up as proud Native Americans.
20
@LF Broadley
First, and foremost, these kids (like all kids) deserve to grow up in a safe, supportive environment that will allow them to thrive as adults.
What they don't need is fetishizing their ethnicity and cultural traditions as superior to a good upbringing.
As the NYT showed in their analysis of race in NYC's elite public schools, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/reader-center/bronx-science-nyc-public-schools-black-hispanic-yearbook.html, home culture plays a big part of their desire to succeed.
Their analysis is makes it clear that the changes in black culture had a huge impact on why so few black kids are now in elite public schools when that wasn't the case in the 70s and 80s. Perhaps it's time to admit that Native American culture suffers from the same problems.
There's a huge element to this story that's not openly discussed - the racism embedded in the idea that the Brackeens' wealth (and whiteness) is more important to the kids' quality of life than an upbringing that reinforces their cultural identity. Is that wealth worth more in a person of color's life than the comfort/confidence that comes with growing up where you look like and relate to those around you? It appears that for the Brackeens, who themselves are white and aren't depicted as understanding the weight and depth of culture to some indigenous people, would say that the answer is yes. This supports an idea of white savior-ism, and I'm not sure that if a wealthy family color tried to sue to adopt a white baby from an impoverished home if there would be much discussion.
Though this article incredibly sympathetic to the Brackeens, they come off as disingenuous about the key points that are at play here. They are painted as "self-conscious about their material success" but also "a little bit concerned with the limited financial resources possibly to care for this child, should an emergency come up;” they claim to, "feel strongly that [Zachary and his baby sister] should grow up together and support and love each other," but don't comment about the other siblings that are fighting for the baby; and they claim that "culture is important but attachment is, too," but make light of the attachment that the relatives who want her might have on the baby. It's all kind of gross.
33
@Allan C - Yup the NY Times is just that... a colonial rag. Of course, the write from a white perspective. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/appeals-court-hears-texas-case-challenging-indian-child-welfare-act-judge-says-they-are-not-your-children-they-are-the-children-of-the-tribes-hWmbRAMrMk6Lp-uBpmVvrw/
@Allan C . Why don't the Brackeens set up a trust for Zachary's sister so that if she needs assistance while living with her kin, she will get it.
5
This is not, as the Brackeens claim, about race. It is about culture and heritage, a culture and heritage that have been systematically destroyed over centuries by the dominant culture to which this family belongs. Their sense of entitlement in stealing other people's children because they have more money is breathtaking and appalling.
22
This is a very tough call, but the bottom line, if it can be clearly decided, is what is "best" for the children.
Perhaps each such case can be decided on an individual basis, by consent of Tribes and civil courts, without invalidating Tribal contracts or civil law. Haven't we done enough to native Americans already? Now we are taking their children like Trump is kidnapping brown children from below our southern border. Neither is ethically or morally correct. For Trump and his corrupt Administration to claim the high ground here is sheer insanity.
Underlying the tragedy is why was the drug-addicted mother was allowed to have SEVEN children, all of whom were removed because of her incompetence and danger to the children. She shows little-to-zero interest in them and total incompetence to care for them. Are there not laws mandating sterilization in such situations?
5
Excuse me, addicted? Lots of folks are reading and misreading.
Unfortunately, if we are to have a democratic republic, we cannot forcibly sterilize someone for using drugs.
And, if so?
Remember how the nation was going to have to spend billions caring for “crack babies” - in the case of the non- physically addictive, psychologically alluring form of cocaine, it had no effect on kids except for low birth weight- usually within “normal” parameters.
We, or at least the medical community and reporters who found their stories spiked, knew that coke, in any form, like the amphetamines, are not lipid (fat) soluble - which means “unable to cross the placental barrier”.
And we cannot enforce eugenics by birth control or (my horrors!) abortion. Or even counsel women how they can enjoy sex without pregnancy, because abortion and sex for pleasure are sins, especially for women (incidentally, that is not a Jewish belief - it is Christian - The Song of Songs was written as brilliant erotica and canonized for that reason - I know some Muslims believe in clitoridectomy, to keep women “faithful” by preventing them from enjoying sex, I do not have a sufficient background in the faith to know how sex for please is considered overall).
What I do know is if a mother’s family will care for children, or if not, the father’s family; family should be given priority in a mother-unable-to-care situation, especially over strangers who state a desire to strip the children of their culture and faith.
3
Okay, how about this? Let’s make it illegal to adopt a baby not of your own race and culture. So Indian kids can only be adopted by Indians, Black children by Blacks, Asians by Asians and of course, White babies by Whites. It’s very important to keeps the races and cultures separated!
Everybody happy now? Don’t bother to thank me.
9
Children belong with their biological family plain and simple. The biological family would have taken in the baby boy if they had known about him. Taking the baby girl away from her family because someone else adopted the baby boy just compounds the tragedy.
This ruling stinks to high heaven.
16
Why don't the Brackeens use their wealth to help Indian families stay together and prosper? I don't know which nonprofits work on this issue, but there must be some. That would truly be "doing good."
21
@Navah I think your question really gets to the core of what is going on. Is the intent really to help Indian children? If it was, they would do exactly what you are suggesting. I wish people who keep saying things like "I am Irish born of immigrants, and I am just fine not knowing my culture" actually visited a tribal nation, sat down with a few people, and truly listened, might learn something that would allow them to SEE things differently. This is not some crazy, leftist movement creating these laws. In fact many of these laws were created under Republican administrations. These laws are born out of our nation's history and existing treaties with tribal nations.
12
The stories of the adoptees — particularly the Native American adoptees — are so incredibly compelling. I hope the NYT does a follow up piece exploring their experiences in detail.
9
These comments are shocking.
So we have gone back full circle, prioritizing DNA and ethnic belonging rather than the actual emotional connection a child develops with the parents that actually care for them?
Once adoption was looked at with suspicion precisely because of a belief in the primordial importance of DNA, but eventually a belief in the power of nurture over nature.
Now with identity politics we are back to privileging genetics and some intrinsic "need" to connect with one's "roots".
Like many white North Americans, I am the child of an immigrant and someone whose roots go back centuries here. But I know little about my ancestors from either side, and have no obsession with finding out more. I don't identify with my family overseas and am not in touch. What happened there has nothing to do with me.
The idea I should be obsessed with my "roots" and should have some identity crisis about it, I find just bizarre.
What made me who I am is what happened to me here, in the family I grew up with, not what happened decades or centuries before me.
12
@AG Zachary and his sister and not the products of some diluted and forgotten ancestry that goes back across the Atlantic many centuries, as is the case with many white Americans (myself included). They have distinctly Native American family members right HERE on Navajo land -- relatives who love and want to raise them. Their heritage is not a distant memory but a living present day reality, and it is important to their relatives that the children stay connected to that living culture. What will potentially "make" them who they are is within reach, not decades or centuries in the past.
17
@Meg
Plenty of we American mutts, whose ancestry encompasses one or more distant continents, have a strong interest in knowing more about our heritage and families. Evidence the DNA tracking and genealogy obsessions.
Both my first generation immigrant parents had little opportunity to travel or learn more about their ancestry. Their relationship to those distant cultures was limited to folklore, myth, recipes and holidays. By virtue of my education and work, I was very fortunate in being able to experience those countries and get a taste of their modern cultures firsthand. This held meaning for me.
Zachary and his sisters, by virtue of knowing their families, have an advantage in knowing a lot more of their origins and its culture than my parents or I. Whether they choose to embrace or ignore or value this information is up to them. Over a lifetime, that can change. Certainly, their ancestry will be unavoidable as they look in the mirror. I hope they will be able to know and view their history with pride and resolve, regardless of their location or surroundings. So many do not have even that opportunity to feel a vestige of ancient tribal membership. It is a rich birthright.
6
How about keeping it simple. Mother’s family, to, in this case, the extended family, will raise the children in hopes mom can be declared “fit to parent”.
On the other side, strangers who say they wish to remove the child from its family and family culture, which they consider “evil”.
It isn’t really that complex at all, unless you hold with the adopters’ theology and not with the basic concept that a good extended family is good for kids.
We’re not speaking of genetics or “race” we’re speaking of culture, that of the mother’s one the would-be stranger adopters consider “evil” - a culture they and those who agree with them have tried to find a Final Solution for.
4
For hundreds of years after the arrival of Europeans, Indian children were trafficked as slaves and domestic workers. After the Emancipation Proclamation in many states the children could be sold/adopted out by anybody claiming to be the children's guardians, so well into the 20th Century people used Indian children as farm hands and servants. Check out the book, "The Other Slavery" by Resendiz, who made the point that slavery was the most corrupting thing that ever happened to America. What a muddle.
5
@Hector
You ARE aware that slavery was considered a basic, taken for granted institution in many parts of the world, and still is, right?
It was the Anglo-American world that decided in the 19th century that it was immoral, and took extreme steps to make it illegal.
We are shocked by things which are taken for granted in many parts of the world.
3
@Hector
Actually many children who were in orphanages were “adopted” but used as unpaid labor in farms, factories and homes. These were children of immigrants who either lost their parents or who were abandoned.
1
Since government and our legal system is incapable of solving human problems, let alone resolving historic injustices, it's up to individuals. Miracles would help.
The only possible good that could come out of this situation is for Zachary and his infant sister to be able to know one another and their Native American relatives while growing up in stable, loving families. For that to now happen, a near miracle is required. However, evangelicals probably believe in such, so maybe the Brackeens could not only pray for it but take steps toward mediation with the James family without the intervention of the courts. They alone have the resources and incentive to make that miracle happen.
Here's my really rosy scenario - the Brackeens, being in possession of both children, hire a Navaho social worker - maybe Ms. Smith - to arrange visits with the children, allowing them all to establish relationships. An interpreter is present during the visits. Assuming it goes well, they repeat this frequently. If the James family wants to visit the Brackeens, they are invited to do so, also. Maybe the Brackeens help with travel expenses. The children get the benefit of an extended family circle and the Brakeens/James families are exposed to one another's very different circumstances and cultures. When the kids reach the age of majority, they get to decide their own residence. Until then, they get the benefit of aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins.
2
After all these years there is still a battle over taking Native People's children away from them. Social workers have a long history of doing the wrong thing. In the name of doing their jobs, they destroy families. If the judge rules in favor of the foster parents he is ignoring the damage done to native tribes since Europeans arrived. Like past generations, they are invoking their Christianity as their reason for stealing a child from his tribe. Yes, his mother is not competent, but there have to be others who could be his parents who have his ancestry. Pretending race doesn't matter is erasing this child's history.
10
All whites are not bad. All natives are not good. Past wrongs can’t be undone. The only hope is for the future. If there is a family member who wants to adopt her relative’s baby - and passes whatever tests the tribe and the state require - that appears to be the legal and moral best solution for any child, regardless of race or tribal affiliation. Affluence is irrelevant. Government assistance is as well. However, a family should not be summarily excluded from eligibility because they are racially or ethnically different. There are so many children waiting to be fostered and adopted...
8
The Brackeens can put both childrens' entire welfare (physical, economic, future and cultural) before their own needs by continuing to offer support to them. That might be trust funds or school assistance as needed. Maybe the Navajo adoptive family would be willing to let the Brackeens be the summer visitors. The opposite of the arrangement ordered by Judge Kim. Assistance to the children could take many forms and evolve as the children age. Loving children more than yourself means helping them live their best lives wherever they are.
9
Why are native children being placed in foster care to non-native families if there is little chance of them being allowed to be adopted by that same family?
12
"Zachary was the seventh child to be removed by authorities from Jackie, his birth mother, now 33, who, according to court testimony, grew up on the Navajo reservation and later moved to Texas. She has long struggled with drugs"
Not fond of the evangelical twist to this, but read your sentence above" Culture, smulture: give these children a chance at a good life. When they are older they can happily (after a good education) explore their "identity" I have reverence for the best parts of native American culture, shame that those who came from Europe destroyed the tribes, but to say that cross-cultural adoption is always wrong is foolish.
12
I am an adult adoptee and tend to side with those here who understand that both Zachary and his little sister would be better suited to the Native tribes.
If the Brackeen's intention is to serve and give back, why don't they adopt the birth mother and help her to overcome her addictions and the demons surrounding her as part of the forgotten peoples of this country?
14
Wow, the long road of white supremacy is still winding and successfully for these overprivileged people.
10
The little boy clearly loves his adoptive parents. Zachary called his father “Da-Da”, but their critics claim that they are not his “real” family. I think other parents who have adopted children would be insulted by this.
16
What a truly horrible situation. So some white religious people had more money and felt their god told them to steal not one, but two children away from a family willing and able. Shame on you Brackeens, and I hope those children go back to the family that they belong to.
You want to help? Adopt children who truly have nobody.
8
The children, if they unfortunately are forced to stay in the hands of these Christian kidnappers, will grow up surrounded by whites who will inevitably ask them, "Where are you from? No, I mean where are you really from? No, I mean who are your real parents?" They will always be viewed as the inferior other and it will scar them for life. As for those who bleat about "race neutral" in this racist society. I would like to see a Black family adopt some white kid, or some wealthy Sheik in Saudi Arabia come to 'adopt' a 'Christian' child. We all know the stink storm of hatred this would generate. As for a 'better home', I happen to be a billionaire so that would give me the pick of your litters. Hand your kids over to my "better home." No?
10
So being Christian is in itself a shameful thing, clear proof of criminal intentions (kiddnaping !). Is being Animist a better religion ? Or it’s just that a “white” religion is inherently bad ? Does Christianity get at least some points, because it started in the Middle East, so at least it used to be “brownish”, which is so important for those obsessed by identity politics ?
2
This reminded me of the story of Gandhi and the Hindu man who came to him during his fast and confessed that he believed he was going to hell because killed a Muslim boy. Gandhi looked at him and replied calmly, "I can tell you how to find your way out of hell. Go out and find a homeless Muslim boy, take him into your home and raise him as a Muslim."
If they are going to be Zachary’s parents, and they really do about what is best for him, the Brackeen‘s would heed this advice.
6
I feel incredibly and terribly conflicted by this article, and can only respond in a very subjective and personal way. I was given up to an orphanage in Malaysia, the 11th child born to a desperately poor family; my birth mother had fallen and broken her hip and was not able to care for me. I was blessed, yes, I use the word blessed, to be adopted by the most amazing American family who have given me not only all the educational advantages in the world, but lavished love and security on me as well. I FEEL like they are my true family. When I was 11, we visited my orphanage, and there was a girl there who was given up to the orphanage but never adopted (she was missing part of her arm, perhaps she was seen as a "challenge" by potential parents), but I saw that she was loved and appreciated by not only the nuns who ran the orphanage, but by other orphans/children. I have missed the opportunity to daily celebrate my Malaysian heritage, but the strength and love given to me by my adoptive parents I can only cherish and treasure for the rest of my life.
26
@Surviving
thank you for a beautiful and moving story.
1
This article hit very close to home. I'm part Navajo/Hopi/Hualapai born to a 15-year old birth mother and raised by white, Evangelical, Midwestern parents. There's not a lick of me that has a clue about Native culture or history. Ironically, I think my adopted parents wanted to give me a sense of culture but I was the one as a child who felt completely estranged from "that stuff". It was a no-win situation, either my parents would have had to force me to learn or they could drop the subject and simply preach a "there is no color" viewpoint. They did the best they could and I grew up with the culture of white suburbia.
My mother told me that she was told I wouldn't fit into Native culture because my tribal mix "didn't get along". I have no idea if that is just another reinforcement to keep me separated. I know my life isn't like theirs nor is it like my white friends' lives. Having no culture is an isolation that is hard to understand. I hope these children don't get legally separated via the court system. The IWCA is a valuable check and balance that should be left intact. As a nation we can't go back and undo the innumerable wrongs that have dismantled sovereign tribal nations but we can support (and grow) the support systems in place.
If the adoptive parents are as forthright and righteous as they claim to be, surely they can abide by rules and laws in place and find another way to minister to children in need.
21
As an adoptee raised in a completely different culture than the one of my birth, I wish this child could be raised within their own culture. The lawyer who says "this child has never lived in an Indian (sic) family" is missing the point. The child's ancestors live in and through that child and to dismiss that connection is really a continuation of society's myopic view of adoption and complete failure to see the sociological root causes of adoption.
Yeah, maybe this girl would grow up to be a teenager and have 'privacy' and a bigger room and brand name gear, but a huge part of their identity would be missing. Please read identity as "context". That's what we all as humans require to craft meaning out of our lives.
Also, I'm disappointed in Judge Kim's justifications for his decision. Comparing his own Korean family's immigration to this case is further complicating it.
When Mr. Brackeen says "We’d done nothing but sign up to do good.", maybe that's part of the problem. There's a lot they could have done, like research the effects of adoption, reach out to transracial adoptees to try and learn from them while they were discerning, oh but, that does tend to get in the way of the "warm fuzzies" and saviorism.
Kudos to the NYT for covering this. And I know it's not easy to please everyone in reporting, but I think we could all learn something more about the complexities involved.
And lastly, peace and strength to this little one.
24
I'm part Irish and wonder if, based on this rationale, Irish parents should have first dibs on Irish adoptees, or French or German, etc. From what I've seen, the lack of integration on tribal reservations has has a terrible impact on the various tribes. The rate of alcoholism, drug abuse, obesity, diabetes and poor education is rampant. There is an overwhelming feeling of isolation from mainstream American. Perpetuating the sovereign immunity of tribes isn't productive. I think giving these children the opportunity to integrate will make a better life for them. I don't think that because they are native americans they will be rejected. Our schools are a diverse blend of race and color. We can still appreciate our historical cultures while embracing our current one ... being and American. Integration increases acceptance while separation creates fear and isolation.
8
@cdp2727: Precisely. I want to know why, if Italian immigrant parents don't teach their children Italian, or if they allow them to learn to cook curry dishes from India or sauerbraten, the commenters here don't think that those parents are somehow robbing their children of "their" culture.
3
As an adult who was adopted as an infant into a home that was basically good and loving, and as a former adoptions social worker! I have experienced firsthand and witnessed the loss to the adoptee of their family, culture and history. Nothing makes up for at. Ever. Kids want and need to know where they come from. This adoptive family doesn’t have a clue.
24
This case, as I understand it, really isn't about custody of Zachary, at this point--it's about placement of his sister, who was born
There are many questions that remain unanswered in this article -- why Mrs. James wasn't considered at the baby's birth (the baby was placed in foster care with another TX family); whether the families would commit to continued interaction (regardless of the outcome); whether the Brackeens have plans for the children to learn Navajo or to otherwise involve them in the Navajo culture (surely they were asked this at the hearing); why the unrelated Navajo couple that initially offered to adopt Zachary backed out; Jackie's views (she wanted Zachary to be adopted by the Brackeens, but it isn't clear what her views are of her baby daughter, and while the article says that the state has made active efforts to reunify Jackie and her daughter, it says nothing about Jackie's perspective or the progress of those efforts); what the views are of the biological paternal Cherokee grandparents; whether this baby girl has court-appointed advocates (in addition to tribal social workers) and what their recommendation is; how to increase the # of Navajo families able and willing to adopt.
I don't expect a brief article to provide answers to those questions--but it seems impossible to me to form a view on the case without knowing more. The law wouldn't have to be unconst'l (at all) to make a case for either side.
14
@KB
I'm Jan Hoffman, the reporter. In this brief space, I'll attempt to answer as many as your thoughtful, penetrating questions as I can (and not necessarily in order, sorry!)
1)Foster care systems, whether a tribe's or a state's, are overwhelmed and almost by definition, inefficient. They are both sorely lacking in a ready pool of foster families.2) From what the Navajo told me, Jackie did not cooperate readily with the tribe for either case--she was difficult to locate and not forthcoming about available relatives. Finding the correct "James" was hard enough for the tribe, once, of course ,they knew she existed: it's a common name. Delays upon delays upon delays. 3)The paternal Cherokee grandparents had early foster care custody of Zachary; the state removed him from them (and he wound up with the Brackeens).4)And yes this baby girl had a court-appointed special advocate (a CASA) and also a lawyer. They both said that the baby would thrive in either situation. 5)Through an affidavit, Jackie indicated that she wanted the baby to be with the Brackeens. Legally, however, once a birth parent's rights are terminated, the weight of her say-so is diminished.
19
@Jan Hoffman Thanks. Unlike many of the commmentators, I can see both sides (and I tend to think that the case for the Zachary's adoption by the Brackeens is much stronger than their case for adopting his sister--though I can understand their desire to raise / parent / care for the son they love AND his baby sister. That said, I'm troubled that they seem hesitant about even what seems like pretty limited contact with the baby's other half-siblings. My understanding of the research is that even aside from the cultural issues, and issues of sovereignty, this contact is beneficial for adoptive children. Plenty of people have very complicated, multilayered families that offer layers upon layers of love; I pray the children have the opportunity to experience that.
And it seems in the long run, this is very much a story about a shortage of foster care parents, and, as you say, a deeply flawed system.
11
How do we know that the goal of promoting "the best interests of Indian children" and the goal of promoting the "stability of tribes and Indian families" coincide with one another?
How do we know that "cultural identity" is determined by genetics or how a person looks? I think it is racist to assume that it is. How do we know that what will be important to Zachary will be connections that he perceives himself to have to Indian culture and to people who identify as American Indians? Is he not an American citizen? Why should he be pigeonholed in this way?
9
The article is interesting, but some comments are shocking. I did not realize that this country also has “brown” fundamentalists, who just like white fundamentalists have nothing but deep contempt for the life of individuals, and fanatic dedication to “saving the culture” at any human cost.
19
I am a former prosecutor from a conservative district. By chance, I came to work for a tribe thousands of miles from where I grew up. I knew very little about tribes. I thought I was bringing my knowledge and expertise as an outsider, but I was very wrong. I had the chance to learn so much I was ignorant of --a culture that has been here for thousands of years. I met people, young and old, who were once separated as children from their families and some of them shared with me the pain that separation from their people caused them over the years either because the Indian Child Welfare Act did not exist or because it was not complied with. This story brought me to tears as I thought of those I know who have been through what this child is going through now. If I am giving the Brackeens the benefit of the doubt, I don't think they have any comprehension of what may happen when this child one day feels the suffering for the loss of his identity and culture that I have seen so may others suffer from. If I am not giving them the benefit of the doubt, they are putting their interests of appearing to "do good" by "saving" children ahead of the interest of this child and potentially thousands of other children. I hope people will take this chance to really listen and learn why this important historical law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, is such a significant part of our child welfare system.
26
Material prosperity isn’t everything. Whether a child will be happier with material prosperity or growing up within his or her native culture is a great question. It seems cultural traditions of Native American nations should be part of a rich life for this child. This is a weighty issue, and tribal concerns are important.
15
This is so deeply sad. Strange that the Brackeens are described as "self-conscious" about their wealth and yet they biasedly used their wealth to weild the power in this situation. They truly believe they are doing the right thing, as many self-righteous folks do, but they are dead wrong. This is about feeding a martyr ego instead of what's best for these autonomous little humans who deserve to live their truth.
17
Although the "white savior complex" attitude unfortunately exists in the Brackeens, one thing a lot of the criticism misses is that Jackie, the birth mother, supported the Brackeens' adoption of Zachary. I don't think that that justifies the adoption of the second child, but it certainly weighs in favor of allowing them to continue having Zachary. It seems like the some of the commenters want Native American Tribes to have more of a say regarding a child's placement than the child's own birth mother.
14
Can you please explain how have you determined that the ”white saviour” complex exists in the Brackeens ? Or it’s just because any white people, especially if they work hard to have a good life, are by definition narrow-minded bigots ?
6
They adopted children as a manner of "rectifying their blessings," have tremendous material wealth, argued in court that Native American relatives were materially unable to care for their kin in part because of "smaller confined homes," and are quoted as implying that attachment is more important than culture. They think that "the only explanation [for the Tribes' action] is that we don't have the right color of skin . . ." and they were "devastated" that the Tribes challenged their adoption of Zachary because they'd "done nothing but sign up to do good."
Also, rather than coming to some sort of compromise with the Tribe (which the Texas judge eventually forced on them), they chose to litigate against them, potentially dealing a blow to a law that the Tribes consider important in preserving their culture.
I overstated my hand by directly making a conclusion regarding the Brackeens' motives (particularly on the limited information in the article), but at least some of this reads like the tired and wrong "white people/missionaries saving the indigenous people" trope, which is part of the purpose behind the Indian Child Welfare Act. Additionally, I'm not convinced that the Brackeens understand or emphasize with the Tribes' position regarding the preservation of their culture in light of the full historical context presented in the article.
7
I am sympathetic to the Brackeen situation but let me place this situation in a far different context. During WWII many Jewish parents were faced with certain, almost immediate death when they were shipped to the concentration camps all over Europe. Seeking to save the lives of their children at any cost many placed their children with Catholic families in places like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy. Most often no one survived to redeem the children. They just disappeared. They were lost to the Jewish People, whose numbers had been half'd because of their slaughter by the Nazis.
After the war these children, who were often babes when they were given over to their Christian caretakers never knew anything about their religion, their culture, or their people. So, not only were their families destroyed, their past was as well.
To those of you in favor of removing the children from their Native American people, would you feel the same if your own people barely survived complete slaughter. Would you let them go?
Today we are faced with what took place in the United States and in Canada during the last century, when the white Christians tried to obliterate any memory of the Indian Nations. They took the children away. Their language culture were destroyed.
Think on this; when the Jewish People returned to the Promised Land the first thing they did was to restore their own language. I can give you 6 million reasons to keep these children with their tribes.
21
The Jewish parents did not suffer from epidemic alcoholism and drug abuse. It seems that you also think Jewish children were better off dead than risking to be lost to Jewish People. Jewish parents, like any other human beings, would disagree.
5
@Gimme A. Break Placing Jewish children with Catholics and Protestant Christians to escape extermination by the Nazis is not analogous to taking and placing American Indian children in the Carlisle Indian school or with non-Indian families to turn them into Catholics or Christians as was done in just the past century. In Europe, saving Jews from Nazis may have led to cultural annihilation for some Jews. That is sad. For the indigenous people of the USA, cultural obliteration was not intended to save lives.
This custody battle is tragic for these children. They are going to know the historical context behind their own personal truths. These children will likely be feeling cultural battle scars forever, however things turn out.
1
White privilege. They need to understand what their ancestors did to these tribal Native American Nations. Not reverse racisms as Mr. B. claims. That law was protected from white people to prevent another cultural cleansing.
7
@Selena
Reverse racism is a thing, I'm afraid. I have to point out that most US whites extant today did not have ancestors here persecuting Native Americans in past centuries. And even that handful of DAR members who did are not personally responsible for what their ancestors did in the 19th century. Most of us here today are relatively recent immigrant newcomers, who are quite aware of and horrified by the well-known and ongoing injustices and consequently present problems of Native American tribes on reservations. We are all shamed by this ongoing injustice and would like to see them given reparations, and apologies - it's only our government that wouldn't. We like Indian casinos, even when we don't like casinos. Furthermore, we revere much of what we know or believe we know of Native American cultures and think Indians tend to be very good-looking, for the most part, (great hair & cheekbones to die for) but quite cool in their historic lifestyles and beliefs. We love the mocs and turquoise. Some of us have visited the Museum of the American Indian and found it stunning.
If that's racist mythology, so be it. Being Native American in Texas may be a lot different than being Native American anywhere else in the US, given Texan proclivities for well, you know...that r stuff...But there I go, again! Most Americans do not hate Native Americans with anywhere near the prejudice reserved for other minorities. Quite the opposite.
1
The Brackeens knew at the outset of foster care that they could not adopt but still they pursued their course.......They should support the original understanding instead of manipulating the outcome........
13
I think the Brackeens, while well intended, come across as obtuse in terms of the cultural needs and potential obstacles that these children may encounter. There privilege will blurry their understanding of what these children may encounter and they don't seem to be aware of that. If you truly love someone you are willing to let it go.
8
@MH
The Brackeens are a PERFECT choice to raise any child. Children need care amd love. What their great-grandparents were or were not matters not one whit and you know it.
The tribes should love these kids enough to let them go.
7
@The Observer
The children have a loving, extended tribal family waiting for them. Why should they let go?
4
It's easy from the outside to judge those involved, but after a settler population of European ancestry seized and occupied much of a continent, we still see extraordinary lack of awareness of the losses suffered by native peoples.
9
Why was he not placed with a tribal foster home to begin with? And if not immediately as soon as possible. I understand their attachment, but it was apparently all explained to them up front.
8
To view this in another light: what would the Brackeens think of a child born to evangelical Christians who was given for adoption to a Native American family? Would it seem reasonable to them?
What will Zachary think, when he's older and realizes he actually has an extended family who loves and wants him, and a rich and ancient culture, a different language and religion, that he was deprived of?
10
These parents don't even get it. I get that they love him, but the history of tribal kids in federal hands is too much to bear: what's more, they knew when they took him in that they couldn't adopt him. He's 3. He'll be ok, and won't remember in 10 years in all likelihood. Given the genocide against their people, and the fact that there is a tribal couple who can adopt, their position is ludicrous and selfish.
They are risking the future of all native children because of their feelings. It is heartbreaking, but it is what they signed up for. God can't play into this: I'm Christian, but if you can't logically explain something then guess what? It's got to do with your feelings, not God. It isn't about skin color either: there are First Nation tribes and other indigenous people that have lighter skin.
I find it disheartening that other white people cant empathize with that: they are risking the livelihoods of all native people because of their own feelings, knowing they couldn't adopt him and knowing that there is another willing family who can support him as he asks questions about his identity, which will inevitably come up. All because of how they feel. This has nothing to do with the child or his family. It's just sick. If they love him, why can't they see what is best for him? If you love someone, you have to do what's best for them. My grandmother was adopted in similar circumstances and we don't know who her parents are. It eats at us every day. Don't do this to him.
8
@Grace I'm not clear on whether Ms. James is able to adopt Zachary (or whether she was when he was born, or why she wasn't considered, if she was in fact willing to adopt him....). I'm not sure, also, why the baby daughter wasn't immediately placed with the family. The article notes that four of Jackie's other children are living with Ms. James's sister--so, either their grandmother or another great-aunt. It doesn't really explain why that didn't happen to Zachary, or his half-sister at birth. It says that the state "located" Ms. James when the baby girl was six months old, but that doesn't make any sense--surely Ms. James knew that the baby was born, if the tribe was notified, and four of Jackie's other children visit her twice a week. I don't find any of this clear.
I also would like to think that given that both families know of the other, there could be some level of cooperation, regardless of how the baby girl's placement turns out...and for Zachary, too, even though that case is settled. Surely he should be visiting his great-aunt? I have a sense, unfortunately, that this is wishful thinking on my part.
4
A bunch of right wing Christians propped up by the Koch brothers who don't care about tribal sovereignty, history or people. They believe their way is the right way always. The judge's decision is insane for a young child who will wonder why she is being torn from one family and dropped into another without any context or understanding every summer until she is old enough to comprehend, and then what will she think?
The family even had the gall to question the child's welfare because her Navajo family lives in a small home. Classic use of privilege to disempower and punish those in poverty. Having a big home clearly does not automatically mean they are better people or a better family.
13
My mother was a victim of the "Indian Adoption Act" in the 50s. It destroyed her psychologically to be separated from her family & culture to be thrust into a white culture that didn't want or accept her. Separated, legally and spiritually, by the forced adoption she had no roots or connections to rely on. The trauma inflicted on her was irreversible. Tribes have sovereign rights to self-governance that state welfare agencies routinely violate. Indian children belong with Indian families and their forced removal is a violation of tribal sovereignty, a crime against humanity, and a continuing form a genocide.
16
Adoption is supposed to be about opening your home to a child inexplicably unwanted. It is not supposed to be about wrenching a child from his or her loving family.
This white family can spend as much money and build as big of a home as they’d like. It will not change the fact those children are theirs only because they have forced them to be
22
It seems that the kids should go with their extended family. Otherwise things will be very complicated down the line. The Brackeens can participate as god parents or something, if they are interested in doing so.
9
Will never understand identity politics.
8
This is an incredible story, thank you Jan Hoffman. I had trouble processing it, but the comments were very articulate and persuasive, and helped me understand my own position. There are three of many good comments, which pushed me to see the point of view of the Indian family.
The comments which helped side with the Indian family, were by K, Randy Kritkausky, and sabamaki. There is much to think about in this conflict. The Christians think they are right about everything, when the opposite might be true. The Indians are trying to protect their customs, religion, culture, and as far as I can see as a historian and folklorist, the Indian culture is far more sustainable than the Christian one. Many Indian tribes are famous for living with nature, as a part of nature, the while the Christians are out to command and exploit nature, and are happy to destroy it for their short term gratification. Which culture is more valuable to the world environment is obvious. Which culture is better for humans, is debatable, but I chose the Indians for being more enviromentally centric, over the Christians, who are anthrocentric. Our current consumption and pollution rates will boil us all to death if we don't listen to the alarm bells of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
David Lindsay Jr. is the author of “The Tay Son Rebellion, Historical Fiction of Eighteenth Century Vietnam”, blogs at InconvenientNews.net, and sings about climate change and the sixth extinction.
5
@David Lindsay Jr. -- I appreciate your well thought out comment, David, and also would like to point out that if we listened to native/indigenous populations from *anywhere* in the world, we would be forewarned about climate change and well informed about how to respect the earth and its resources.
Indigenous populations have all kinds of useful knowledge, passed down and developed over thousands and thousands of years, but not much public respect to allow them to voice it and be heard.
6
@David Lindsay Jr.
Seriously, you would have all of humanity go back to living the way it did before the Industrial Revolution?
I am an adoptee and journalist who has documented the history and narratives of Native adoptees in three Lost Children anthologies. If the Brackeens had done any research prior, they would know the outcomes for Native adoptees are not good. Adoption gets pretty ugly when it doesn't work. Once kids are out of diapers, they start noticing and feel the isolation without kin. There are medical terms for our damage. The adoption industry will not advertise that most patients in psychiatric care are adoptees. They don’t warn adoptive parents their new child will suffer from “Severe Narcissistic Injury” or “Reactive Attachment Disorder.” This news would not be welcome.
169
This is to effectively say that a child cannot develop properly outside his “kin” - euphemism for race. Pretty shocking.
34
@TL Hentz Bunk. There are millions of adoptees of every ancestry. There a bi and interracial adoptees. Is there is something about Native adopees that makes them different from the rest of their adoptee cohort in the "end game"? Are suggesting that the only successful adoptions are when X's adopt X's? Somehow I think not and that a loving home can transcend the "differentiation" --- and has.
25
@TL Hentz Do you have a source for the claim that most patients in psychiatric care are adoptees? Given the number of people in psychiatric care, and the number of people who have been adopted, I'm skeptical. (Or are you only talking about Native adoptees, and have their been changes over time--and what kind of services are available to Natives who haven't been adopted? I'm wondering if there are cultural differences regarding the likelihood of seeking out such care.)
I don't doubt for a minute that the aggressive attempts to erase cultural bonds and tradition is traumatic--just wondering about the sweeping nature of the claim.
18
In 1969 my family moved from CA to Barrow, AK (now called Utqiagvik) an Inupiat native village on the arctic coast. My parents were hired as teachers by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I was 14, one of the few white kids. After 9th grade, like all the Inupiat kids, I had to attend high school in a bigger AK city or at the Chemawa Indian School in OR, similar to the school mentioned in the story. I chose Fairbanks. Like my fellow Inupiat friends, I had to live with foster families provided by the Boarding Home Program. It was a horrible and heart wrenching experience even though I did not have the same loss of culture and village support that my native schoolmates had. I heard firsthand about what a horrible experience it was for them, too. Many didn’t finish the first year before heading home. I cannot blame them. To this day I have a hard time discussing the experience: it is hard to put into words the loneliness and feeling of loss. I can only imagine how much harder it was for my native schoolmates.
The Brackeen family may think they are doing some good now but their white privilege infused efforts, like chickens, will come home to roost — this experience will scar their adoptive children no matter how special they think their parenting is or how better their kitchen is — some of their emotional needs will never be met. Those kids should be with their family and culture until they are old enough to make such decisions for themselves. Robert George (husband of John Rundin)
13
No, it is past time to stop showing prejudice against one group to supposedly help out another group.
After the passage of the Civil War Amemdments, women's suffrage, and the 1965 Civil Rights Act, the government must stop playing favorite among social groups, just as elite universities must stop preferring one race above others in admissions.
Adding the sister to the adoption already in place would seem to be a very smart idea.
1
"The Brackeens, both 39, are self-conscious about their material success: a large brick home on an acre, with pool, greenhouse, zip line and a kitchen big enough for Zachary and their two biological sons, 10 and 7, to zoom around it on Rollerblades.
Dr. Jennifer Brackeen, an anesthesiologist, works 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. at a day-surgery center. Her husband is a civil engineer turned stay-at-home father and portrait photographer. "
As part-time middle class professionals, how do they afford that house! Sounds like there is more going on here with this family. Perhaps another source of wealth? Not sure how that impacts court decisions about adoption?
Very strange. Would like to know more.
3
Well, to start, they don’t live in San Francisco.
7
There’s nothing mysterious about her family’s financial situation. It costs a lot less to live in Texas than in San Francisco, and a nice house can be purchased by a single wage earner. Moreover, Dr. Brackeen’s schedule is not part-time; a 7-hour shift is normal for anesthesiologists.
7
The judge was incorrect to say the law is based on race. It is based on culture and enabling an endangered culture to continue to exist. Although white adoptive parents may be well meaning, they also need to consider that undermining the preference for Native adoptive parents is one more step toward cultural the cultural eradication that has been the overall policy of the US government for over 150 years.
8
In other words: forget about the child, it’s just an individual who needs to be sacrificed on the altar of protecting an endangered culture. A clear sense of values.
5
To serve as a foster parent (either to children or shelter animals) is to be prepared and often met with the pain of separation at some point. If you only want to foster in order to ultimately adopt, then you are not ready or fit for the challenge of fostering. There are adoption centers for those who want them.
A true foster parent would wish the Navajo child well, and open their home to the next child who needs a safe home to land in.
12
Some thoughts:
It seems cruel to foster a child with a family that is barred from adopting him or her. It isn’t fair to the child.
The mother wanted the child to go to the family he is with now. Why is that?
The extended family wants the child, but what is their capability to raise him? There are factors other than how much money they have. I think providing language and culture is important, but it doesn’t trump everything. That by itself doesn’t make them appropriate caregivers any more than having boatloads of cash and a big house makes an appropriate caregiver.
What support is this woman receiving to prevent her from making babies that she can’t keep?
10
The culture of many of the native Americans in North America apparently was basically the same for a long time before the Europeans arrived. If that hadn’t happened, they probably would be living much the same way still today. That culture is not here anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. The culture that is here now, are the remains of a number of civilizations that were defeated by disease mostly, and a much larger, more organized, ruthless civilization that often called themselves Christians. The tribes haven’t flourished, aside from money from casinos, because they cannot live like their pre-European ancestors and are slowly moving towards extinction. What happened to them was a terrible tragedy and it seems compounded on many of the reservations. Unless modern civilization collapses, it seems obvious these children are better off with this affluent family and the opportunities it will provide.
4
I’m a white adoptive parent of a non-white child, and I am concerned about the stereotypes of adoptive parents that many comments are projecting. I don’t see myself as a “white savior” and I don’t see my son as a charity project—he is my son. I wanted to be a parent and I thought I could offer a loving and supportive home to a child who needed one. He most definitely did. I support birth family preservation efforts up to the point when they become harmful to the child (e.g., abuse, addiction, neglect). I put my money behind that by supporting family preservation in the city where my son was born. I don’t think adoptive parents should be “color-blind”, assuming that race is irrelevant; I embrace aspects of my child’s birth culture. This is the complexity that adoptive parents sign on for (and which, regrettably, this article did not portray). Yet, I strongly disagree with the assumption that kids need to be raised by parents of the same race and/or birth culture. What kids need most is a stable and loving home. In my son’s birth country, I witnessed instances in which the preference to place kids within the culture had detrimental effects. Kids languished in an orphanage waiting for someone of the “right” ethnicity/nationality to decide to adopt them. There is a lot of complexity that those of us in adoptive families have witnessed and thought about much more deeply than this article or the comments seem to credit.
18
To me, the key point is this: the mother Jackie left the tribe, as stated by the judge. I go with the view that the child is now a Texan, and as such should go to the Brackeens. This is a different situation from taking a child from a mother who is in the tribe. Second question: which life will be best for the child? If it were me and I had a choice between a hard and poor life with many relatives and a culture mine by birth but not by my experience up to now, or a middle class American life with a considerable number of siblings including my brother, I would choose the Brackeens. In fact no one can know now which life will be better for the child. However, I don't believe the child's opportunities should be sacrificed for the benefit of a culture that her mother apparently did not value. Not that there is any guarantee that the baby will be happy being a Texan as opposed to a Navajo. That is the biggest reason this case is so hard to decide.
11
Well, I'm a billionaire. I plan to come by soon to take my pick of your litter. I can offer the kids boarding school in Switzerland and buy them an island or two for Christmas.
6
@AR -- Has Ro given birth to a meth-addicted child? Has the state claimed custody of Ro's 8 children? Has Ro been stripped of his or her parental rights?
Let's not forget that all of this started not with the children being taken away from their mother because she is poor, but because she is a long-time drug addict who is in and out of jail. I don't believe that states strip people of parental rights without many efforts to keep families intact.
4
Buy my kid a couple of Eventing horses to campaign and I’m sure she’d go willingly!
3
This isn't 1978, where social workers are relocating kids to missionary schools and 'white' adoptive families. It is outrageous to claim that the mother (meth addict) or even other family tribal members are best equipped and should receive the child. If that were the case, why didn't the tribe or member of the mother's family step forward when he was born?
Our foster care system is broken, and has been for decades. But if, as the readers and author imply, the tribes are in the right and should receive the child, then what about any child of a different culture being adopted by another? Are we to now stop kids with African American blood from being adopted by 'white' families.
Lastly, the hatred spewed by those that disdain the Brackeens because, not only are they white, but rich is stunning. While poor and middle class can be great parents and no one needs to be rich to be happy, how can the reverse be true - rich people cannot be good, loving parents? One day everyone here is envious of the rich, the next day they despise them, and the next day they want everyone to have what they want (i.e. be privileged).
In the end, the courts should base their decision on what is best for the child - a safe, nurturing environment.
9
@Ma it seems simple to me: when family is able and willing to take a child, that should take preference, and if not, preference should go to people of the same cultural background if possible, because that IS best for the child, to have a sense of their own heritage and history, their roots and connections beyond their individual selves.
6
@Average Jane -- but is a great aunt already caring for 2 elderly relatives and 4 teenagers, and in need of financial assistance from both her family and the public really "able" to take a child?
And should the mother's preference -- which, evidenced by her own leaving the tribal nation and through her lack of willingness to help tribal authorities identify relatives who might care for the children, seems to be that they NOT be raised within the tribal system -- be given any consideration? Why should tribal leaders be allowed to have more say in the matter, simply because the children are eligible for membership?
5
There is an ugly history of native children being taken from their tribe to indoctrinate them in the "correct" culture. It is good that the laws now give precedence to the tribes.
Skin color and culture are to very different things, something that the Brackeens, it seems, don't want to understand.
8
it does not matter who wins
as long as the little girl is loved
I thank the couple for their love for children
2
There are interesting cultural questions here, a Navajo view would be that the children of a Navajo woman are ‘born to’ the mother’s extended family - and they should be responsible for raising them.
Though the father’s clan, the people the children were ‘born for’ would have secondary rights under Navajo law, no knowledge of Cherokee, though the nations are somewhat geographically, but not culturally connected - the Navajos are Athabaskan language family speakers - along with the Apache Nation, the only speakers south of Northern Canada of the group more properly “Dene.”
Under Navajo law/custom, if the children were born on the Four Corners “big rez”, the children would have been adopted by fellow extended born-to clan members.
I am sorry to see nobody returned them, if neither parent was able to raise them.
It is also more to the shame of the US government that so many aboriginal citizens are addicted to the worst recreational chemicals, most often alcohol and tobacco (unknown or little known in the Southwest until imported after US genocide failed) the socioeconomic conditions imposed, combined with the blatant government attempts to Anglofy and Christianize surviving children by forced “American” schooling, often by religious groups committed to “saving Indians”.
Look at the number of “crypto-Jews”, who still have “strange” family traditions left by Spanish forced conversion of 1492.
Or remnants of African faith in families of former slaves.
Forced conversion must end.
5
@Eatoin Shrdlu In fact, we're not sure (I think) what the background is of the biological father of the baby girl. She is Zachary's half-sister, I think--Jackie's daughter (although it isn't even clear what Jackie's views are of where her daughter should be placed.....)
"Judge Kim said his Korean-born grandfather and father had understood that by coming to the United States, their offspring would lose parts of their heritage: “But that’s part of the decision we make to immigrate to other cultures and countries.”"
So do Korean families steal babies from American military bases? This is what Judge Kim is proposing legitimizing.
6
Are you saying that the foster parents in this case have “stolen” the child from the reservation, where he was not born and has not lived ? Ideology trumps elementary logic ?
4
The foster care system is certainly problematic, isn't it? We hide our unwanted children (oops, I mean "children whose parents want to care for them but can't right now") from public view because orphanages are so third world, and it would make it too obvious that taxpayers are footing the bill. Of course, forming attachments is the major challenge for these kids, and the foster system is designed so that it is essential they don't form any attachments, since they might be with another family with three days notice. Couldn't be more perverse. Getting these kids into families, ASAP, is more important than making sure there is some kind of genetic tie to a tribe. Those kids ought to stay where they are. If they were African-American, would we be reading about them?
6
I am truly horrified by the evangelical family imposing its selfish will on a family of Native Americans. After the attempted genocide perpetrated by white people on Native peoples on this continent over the course of hundreds of years, the least that can be done is to not return to draconian policies that try to further decimate the rich cultural heritage of these peoples. Indian tribes must not be thrown into the giant melting pot. They have been here for tens of thousands of years and, frankly, understand the land, the country, and have a deeper link to it, than any of the rest of us can ever hope to have. Show some humanity and leave this culture alone. As for the Brackeens: not grateful to have adopted the one child - now having several altogether - they greedily must have another. Just on those grounds alone they have shown an immaturity and lack of empathy that should have disqualified them from adopting either child in the first place.
9
Actually, the Four Corners Dinah (People/Navajo) only date to the European middle ages.
Their predecessors apparently moved there from Western Canada/Alaska regions, where others of their language group remain.
The rest of what you say holds Very True.
2
They're trying to buy their way into heaven through the kids. Typical of Christian zealots whose 'good deeds' are merely coins to bribe St. Paul at the gates. Repugnant.
3
It's hard when the courts are enforcing unalloyed racism for the federal government.
3
It has nothing to do with the garbage-science of “race”, my cousin, separated when great-to-the-nth grandparents made different decisions about staying in Africa or which route to follow out and where to settle.
It has everything to do with a culture, just as valid as any other, that these kids were stolen from.
(Note: I am not denying, in blank “Zachery’s” case, a potential Cherokee claim - I only know enough about a few Aboriginal American nations to write with some limited knowledge about their culture - and the Cherokee - another great nation, is one I didn’t have a chance to study. General family law tends to place the mother ahead of the father - equally wrong if the father’s family shows more of an interest and ability.
1
These people are being selfish and greedy, children deserve to grow up with their extended family within their culture. Wealth and white privilege shouldn't be more important than blood and tradition.
9
The point is that this is not race-based, it's citizenship-based
2
We took their land. We moved them across the country. We assaulted them. We killed them. We stole their kids. We tried to destroy their culture. We backed out of treaties time and time again. The Brackeens fit right into this sorry legacy. They think they know what’s best for these kids, but that’s not for them to say. Decisions about how to raise these kids should belong to their tribe alone.
9
Not “we” - our government - which we, now living, must do our best to correct.
(My family was fleeing others at the time US and proto-US residents of North America did their worst)
And not “tribe” - it’s “nation”.
And in this case, it’s the mother’s family willing to take the children, not a people/culture/nation!
1
To my mind, any rational person would deem this a complicated and highly emotional situation. Apparently not so for the lion's share of NYT posters here. Comments read like a demented collection of rabid, mirror image, Hannity viewer, spewing hateful vitriol and foaming at the mouth. What on earth is wrong with people?
7
Ok, your mother, at birth, showed signs of having an illegal chemical in your system.
Despite the wishes of your family, we, the State, take you and hand you to people who believe your family’s culture and faith worse than wrong, they think it downright evil, and have a “higher calling” to make sure you never connect with your family or its culture again.
Try thinking in those terms, and, if your knees don’t jerk, it can only be because you believe the adoptee parents’ culture and faith is “better”.
I think mine’s “better” than yours, that your belief system, whatever it may be is “inferior” please pack up and send me your kids and all offspring of your family so I can “enlighten” them to the TRUTH and insure they never see you again.
Do you understand things a bit better now?
2
@Eatoin Shrdlu Did the biological family offer to adopt Zachary? That is not what the article says....it does say that a nonrelative Navajo family was willing to adopt him, but backed out after receiving custody (it doesn't say why--which seems like a relevant question).
Zachary's birth mother DID prefer that he be adopted by the Brackeen's. We don't know why, however. We don't know why Ms. .James didn't offer to adopt him, or if she did, why she wasn't considered..
As far as the baby girl's case, that seems more clear to me--the only reason that the Brackeen's have a case is because they are the parents of her half-sibling. But Ms. James's case is still stronger--she sees four of Jackie's older children (the baby's half-siblings) twice a week. But one question remains--why did it take the Navajo six months to locate Ms. James? The tribe was notified when the baby was born--surely they knew where her relatives were, and whether they were willing to adopt her (given the importance of family ties....). Why did it take so long to find a Navajo family that was able and willing to adopt Zachary, and why did they back out? Is the pool of Native families ready and willing to foster and/or adopt relatively small, and what can we do to change that?
1
For the record, Barry Goldwater himself opposed segregation, although the story is complicated.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/04/desegregation-brown-kevin-d-williamson/
2
That poor kid--growing up with 'evangelical" parents. Let's hope his sister, at least, will go to a Native family and thus escape that brainwashing.
13
How is this different than segregation? Are any Native Americans adopting these children? Should these children grow up as foster home refugees?
3
Mom’s family wants to adopt- not nation or tribe or segregated group.
If you were taken from your mother simply because she had amphetamine in her system (and it is Not A Crime to have consumed an illegal substance), would you wish to be adopted by her siblings, parents and grandparents OR unrelated strangers with a “higher calling” to make sure you grow up a stranger to them?
2
I'm sorry but I see nothing in this article to make me think the Brackeens should have this baby. She belongs with her relatives on the reservation. Mr. Brackeen sounds so entitled. What in the world does living in a smaller house have to do with anything?
11
It would be more Christian to support Zachary and his little sister financially in a way that would allow them to grow up with their biological family.
11
No Solomon here: 3 years in one home cannot be erased.
But I am struggling to follow how this happened. and deeply skeptical that the solution to on tragic situation is to demolish ICWA.
Providing specific dates would help in following the time line.
What was the state DOING from the date of placement? Regulations require is to IMMEDIATE notification of tribal authorities because they have jurisdiction over with whom a Native American child is to be placed. In many cases here in the East, oral reports of such connections turn out to be false, but in the West, one would expect this is common enough that the protocol is familiar to Social Services and Courts
The Brackeens say they were informed at first that this was a temporary foster placement: they were ultimately given the approval for adopting.
But this says: "When the baby was about 6 months old, the Navajo located a relative who would like to adopt her." What has happened in 2 1/2 intervening years? Who didn't follow through? It's not uncommon ( inNYS) for a judge to expect submission of an assessment of the suitability of relative interested in caring for a foster child child to be done in a month or two.
I hope the Navajos win in court. For ICWA to be overturned because of a screw-up in planning in ONE case seems a very bad way to make the process work better.
What is best for Zachary alone is a separate issue from what the policy should be.
5
@cheryl ....I could be wrong about this (because I agree, the timeline is confusing), but the daughter was born last June, and is 11 months old now. There isn't a 2.5 intervening year period. The state "placed the baby with another Texas foster family and began 'active efforts' at reunification with Jackie." But there are still questions--why wasn't the baby placed with Ms. James (or, assuming the article is accurate, why did it take six months for the Navajo to "locate" a relative who wanted to adopt her--Ms. James sees four of Jackie's other children twice a week,and those four children -- all biological siblings or half-siblings to Zachary and his baby sister, living with either their grandmother or another great-aunt -- so she couldn't have been that hard to locate.)
1
If there had been a sunset provision related to Native American treaties, Native Americans would have likely integrated into American Society by now and in that regard the disproportionately excessive social crises that Native Americans face would likely have abated by now. However, there are no sunset provisions and the tax preferred status of Native American lands and tribal communities provides them material economic advantages that in the long-term will make the griping about the 1% seem quaint by comparison.
3
This article is framed to be sympathetic to the Brackeen family. It presents and aligns with their point of view. I would guess that the vast majority of NYT readers would be familiar with the description of their home and life, while likely the description of life of the children's Navajo relatives might seem exotic. The poverty or illness of a birth parent should not mean that the state or the wealthy can remove a child from it's extended family.
3
If the agency tried to limit adoptions only to people who are the race of the child, there would be an uproar.
6
@UncleEddie it’s not limiting them, just giving preference to family and tribes when they are there
2
Oh, but "christian" foster agencies can refuse to work with non-christian foster parents?
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
1
If laws based upon race are unconstitutional, then this law is as well. It would be constitutional if it stated that priority for adoption be given to others from their own tribe – like priority for adopting Russian children be given to other Russians. However, I take it from the article that the law states that priority to adopt Native American children be given to other Native Americans – that makes it race based.
3
I find it confusing that the Brackeens feel they have greater rights as parents despite not being blood or culturally related, but they think that Zachary's sister, who they have no bond with, should go to them because of the blood shared between her and Zachary. Kind of hypocritical, no? I have no doubt that the best case scenario is often for these children to be placed with parents who have the cultural context to raise these kids, but that should be one factor balanced among other issues such as stability and the wishes of the child.
10
The best interests of the child are being subjugated to the best interest of the tribe. Orphaned Indian children are used as commodities by tribes. In court everything is about sacred dances, feather spirits and mother earth; not an addicted birth mother and absentee father.
The best interests of an Indian child are same as for white children. Splitting the baby is no answer.
8
Interesting. Adoptions are considered tribal rights. Known some who lost their rights to tribes where the children later wound up on welfare and in prison.
Seems rights should go to those who can preserve the lives of the children rather than those who say they want to preserve heritage for those children.
5
To me, any law that gives genetically based special privileges to a person in the wider American society by definition violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Such laws enshrine de jure segregation. What Native American tribes choose to do in their own nationally controlled lands is up to them; but when their members choose to leave those areas, they (in my opinion, anyway) must be governed by the same laws as any other person.
6
@vineyridge so you don’t think parents and family have any greater rights than total strangers?
2
I found it interesting that the mother expressed that she wanted her son to be adopted by the Brackeens. Is it not possible that she may want the Brackeens to adopt her daughter as well? Puzzled.
7
Hmm, could there be some money involved?
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
2
This situation strikes me as one of overt racism. If a child is of Irish decent, must that child be placed in an Irish household? If the child is Jewish, must the adopted parents be Jewish? Love, comfort, home, and security, these are the things which, as a society, must be paramount in determining the appropriateness of child placement. It is not right for the Indian Child Welfare Act to put preferential placement with other "native" people. All children who may be adopted deserve homes firmly rooted in love, no matter what the color or the language of the adopting family.
This situation is close to my heart as my nephew (Blackfoot/Cree/Sioux) went to live to with a white family at the age of 12 in order to seek better education off the reservation. Now, when he returns to the reservation, he is called an "apple indian" by his own people viz., red on the outside, but white on the inside. The racism runs deep and two ways.
Culture, religion, mores, and lifestyle, are not grounds for determining adoptability. Love is the root. The colors of our skin, the accent of our tongue, the place we live, should not weigh in these decisions.
6
Interestingly enough, the quote from the foster father is exactly why the tribes do everything they can to preserve the relationship between Native children and their own family/tribe: “How can it not be in his best interest,” Mr. Brackeen said, “to grow up with a sibling who looks more like him than we do, who knows what he’s gone through and who shares his story more than anyone else?”
5
@Dee
If the tribes did “everything they could to preserve the relationship ...” - why didn’t they intervene earlier? Jackie, the children's birth mother has ongoing drug abuse issues. Why did they delay until the children entered foster care?
Judge Kim recognized the importance of the child maintaining his ties with the relatives. If the Brackeens really wanted to look out for him, they would allow him to spend as much time with his other sisters and relatives as well as helping them with finances instead of using their poverty as a reason to disqualify them. A child can be loved and nurtured by more than one set of parents or guardians and be better off for it. The Brackeens risk an alienated child when he grows up and realized how they separated him from his kin and his ancestral heritage.
Instead of spending the money on lawyers, they should be supporting the family they claim would not be able to afford to take care of him. That's the Solomon solution.
6
@BJW
Yes, but - we readers do not know the personalities nor the real dynamics of either of these families. Perhaps the James family doesn't want a "fairy godmother", perhaps they do. The scenario you propose would, however, give them all an opportunity to explore the idea. In the real world, it will never happen, however I endorse it.
This situation is unspeakably sad for the children involved including all of Jackie's 7 children. It is too late to reunite Zachary with his extended family without doing him much psychological damage. The baby girl is an entirely different situation. She needs to be with her aunt, sisters, and extended family. Zachary also needs to spend time with his Native American family.
The Brackeens' resistance to even limited shared custody during the summer shows they want what they want, not what is best for their Native American children. They should be ashamed of themselves.
9
Many state child welfare agencies in the Midwest are very much driven by the Christian orientations of the political leadership in the Governor's offices of their State. They see American Indians and they see the need to convert them to fundamentalist Christians. If they can secure custody of the American Indian child they believe they have won a soul for Christ. I respect Christianity. but it can be weaponized and used against American Indian families and Tribes as it has been throughout most of America's history. Their are many other options for adoption of children in the world, some of these children are locked up in detainment centers, they have been permanently separated from their parents through willful acts of the federal government. If the Brackeens want to help foster needy children let them start there.
5
What is more important? Honoring cultural “sensitivities” or the welfare of a child who has been abandoned by her parents to drugs and alcohol? What does “honoring” truly mean in this context? Do the Native Americans who are so adamant that this child be pushed back into a life of poverty really believe she will thank them when she finds out what they took from her? Perhaps these Native American tribes should consider spending their energy resources combating drug and alcohol abuse, and the violence against women that is so common in these communities.
3
I actually don't understand all the knee-jerk reader responses about white colonialism, the same argument used against international or cross racial adoptions. I am a non-religious, middle class, white, liberal and as far from evangelism and the Koch Bros as it is possible to be. But the ONLY consideration is the welfare of the two children -- NOT the belated interest of the Navajo relatives (where have they been for 4 years for Zachary? Or for Jackie?) or even the interest of the Brackeens in having a culturally similar sibling for Zachary.
Children need STABILITY. Being jerked from one home and culture to another for the convenience/agendas of adults causes lifelong irremediable trauma. Zachary is happy in a loving home which could give his sister, born in Texas, the same opportunity for stability and growth, far more than the Smith clan, which seems to have quite enough caretaking responsibility on their plate already.
The children can choose to learn about Native culture when they are able, just as adopted and immigrant children have always done. I am only a second generation American. I know many people who are glad their grandparents didn't insist on cultural integrity before, say, fleeing pogroms in Ukraine or sending their children to live with assimilated relatives.
8
Another example of America’s endless obsession with race. For an immigrant, the value of separating people in races and tribes is impossible to understand. I always deeply disliked when I had to specify on forms what my race is, but now I feel like exploding when I have to do that for my child, who is mixed race.
Will this country ever learn that discrimination never works, even when supposedly in the service of “worthy” causes ?
2
There are an infinite number of ways that this non Native couple can “atone” for what they, lacking humility, have deemed their success.
There is only one way to raise a Native American child.
2
"Four of Jackie’s other children …”
"When Zachary’s 11-month-old half sister was born, both she and her biological mother tested positive for methamphetamine,"
How many children has the birth mother had? Has anyone explained to her the various long-term methods of birth control, and offered to help her get one of them?
17
@ann She has had seven children, and the situation could be worse. Drug users tend to also use alcohol, which means she may have used while pregnant so her children may have brain damage from prenatal exposure to alcohol. I have never met a female client who did not know about birth control, but for some of them the baby is a way to get financial assistance from various welfare programs. Others are convinced that this time they will get straight and be able to parent this child. Other times they don't have money or access to Planned Parenthood for birth control. Other times they have brain damage because their mothers drank during pregnancy, so the functioning required to keep up with birth control is beyond them. Other times they are under the thumbs of men who insist they don't use birth control. Other times it is a cultural thing that all children are welcome, so not having a child is not even a consideration. These moms are not horrible creatures who set out to produce and then hurt their children. They are usually pretty severe drug addicts and/or alcoholics so what seems like it should be a logical response---i.e, use birth control, is not so clear to them. No one plans to end up in the circumstances this mother has...
6
@fireweed
Both my parents were alcoholics. I also am an alcoholic (I no longer drink, but am still an alcoholic). Consigning an innocent child to the chaos and instability of life with alcoholism is simply unacceptable to me. Jackie’s Navajo family and culture and heritage was either unable or unwilling to prevent or help her addiction issues. This is Jackie’s seventh child. I just did some research about life on reservations. It is not comfortable reading. Native Americans should realize that drug and alcohol abuse issues need to be effectively addressed if their ancient culture is to survive and thrive.
6
I can't believe all the drivel being penned about the need to drag this poor child back to some dysfunctional reservation or whatever.
The priority here should be the future of this child, and the emphasis be on giving him the best opportunity in life. It has nothing to do with "white supremacy" or whatever inflammatory catch phrase is currently in vogue.
If little Zach has a better chance to flourish in America - (which, by the way, is becoming less white by the minute), he should not be denied that opportunity, only to satisfy some abstract theory of tribe and race.
He can be educated about his heritage as he grows up, and upon maturity he can decide where, how, and if he wants to embrace that heritage.
44
@Frank-You shouldn't assume that removing poor brown children from their homes and placing them with rich white ones is better for the child. That's part of the racist ideology that this law was fighting against.
30
This is the best comment. Thanks, Frank.
9
You do realize that there are Native families that have left the reservation that are willing to adopt these children? Of course you don’t think about those of us that love next door, you assume that it is straight back to the reserve. We natives are everywhere, not just on reserves.
Have you ever visited a reservation? Not all are created equally, some are bad same are good, just like any neighborhood.
14
Nothing in this article suggests the foster/ adoptive parents have or are planning on making any effort to teach these kids about their native culture, their native language or to allow them contact with their extended family. That to me is heartbreaking and makes me doubt their fitness as parents to a native child
8
From what I read, many of these trial societies are full of substance abuse, poverty, violence and broken homes. Energy should be put into improving those situations, rather than forcing those lucky enough to escape to return.
1
Maybe the practice of placing Native American children in foster families that aren't NA should be stopped?
Because of course people become attached to their foster children. And of course the extended "blood" family members want their young relatives returned to them.
I don't think that anyone here had bad intentions.
But I shudder to think what the current SC bench will do with this . . .
3
"rectify our blessings" -- What an interesting choice of phrase for the evangelical Brackeens to use to explain their motivations for adopting a child after having several of their own biological children. The follow up question to this should have been, "First, can you clarify what you mean by 'rectify' and second how does the practice of adoption rectify a family's blessings?"
Given, there is so much offensive in this situation, but as an adoptee with non-adopted siblings, l also find this language extremely problematic on its face.
11
This particular child's case was not only chosen by the Goldwater Institute but also by the NYT.
The native culture that is being shown in this article is frequently not so intact as is presented. Many children placed by the ICWA are sent back into a modern Native American culture: to families in which most children do not grow up speaking the traditional language, to families that often go to Christian churches, and to families that are plagued with poverty and substance abuse. Schools are notoriously bad with many parents moving off-Reservation for better educational opportunities in Arizona.
The article also does not mention the legal problem of Tribal Sovereignty as it relates to this issue: If the adopted child visits the related family on the Navajo Nation, that Navajo family can keep the child on Tribal land and the Texas family have no rights and no outside entity has jurisdiction.
There are also other ways the IWCA is used: To deny custody rights to non-native biological parents. For example if one parent is a tribal member, the non-native parent may get no custody rights, even if living off Tribal lands. This is true if both parents are members of different Tribes.
In the end, IWCA is about tribalism, race and genetics; not culture so much anymore. More information needs to be presented by the NYT about this issue.
7
Thank you for sharing these important and enlightening facts. I would also appreciate a more in-depth article by NYT regarding the subjects and issues you proposed, some of which are extremely concerning and unfair for many of the parties involved, especially the children. NYT——Please investigate this deeper so that we can have ALL OF THE FACTS regarding these tribal laws.
1
"the dispute is something of a modern Solomonic parable, with two mothers — the tribe and the state — fighting over who has claim to Native American children"
Neither "the tribe" nor the "nor state" are mothers. The two children in this case have a biological mother with a drug problem who seems to have relinquished all claims (though the article is not entirely clear on this very important point) and an adoptive mother (of one of the siblings). The children also have an extended blood family (presumably without drug problems) who want to remain a family, without intervention from privileged non-natives. It is not clear whether the extended family want to reclaim Zachary (and so keep the siblings together) or just want the sister. A Solomonic problem indeed, but not between tribe and state. It's much more human and personal than that.
4
I feel that it's presumptuous for anyone to read this article and determine what the appropriate home environment for little Zachary and his baby half-sister is.
If anything, I hope this highlights the complexities of foster care, and the cultural competence that it requires when it deals with children of color.
The reality is, both of these children are deserving of a loving and safe home that provides them with the context to understand their history and craft the future they see best for themselves. To me, the judge was trying to leverage these two things by providing a stable home environment but a familial tie that could facilitate a better self-awareness for the child. The legality of the entire arrangement may be in question, but the logic behind it makes sense.
I did feel that Mr. Brackeens contradicted himself in defending their claim to raising this baby girl. It also sounded like their intentions for becoming foster parents were not aligned, since their true goal was to adopt a child; a child they were told they could not adopt. It also can shed some light on why people tend to stray away from foster care because of the likelihood of attachment and then separation.
11
Simple: the mother and father should decide. They created the child, and would have had the final say about what culture the child would have been raised in if they hadn't been deemed unfit as parents.
So while they cannot directly provide care, they can still express their intent for the child's identity. They should simply be asked which family they'd like their children to be raised in.
4
I lived on the Navajo Reservation for 10 years where my husband was a physician and I taught at the local high school. Even with a decade of immersion, I would never dream of adopting a Navajo child. Why? Because I am not Navajo; I don't fully understand the culture; I don't speak the language; and least of all, I am blond, blue-eyed, and have curly hair. Yes, my husband and I could give a Navajo child a comfortable life, a good education, abundant travel, a loving family and a sensitivity to Native life BUT we can't give that child an identity and a clan.
The Brackeens are well meaning but shortsighted. Zachary will never fit completely in their world, and he definitely will not be Navajo. Natives who leave the reservation for an extended time and return often have a cleansing ceremony. How will the Brackeens explain that?
Rather than adopting a Native child to satisfy a "higher purpose", why not donate time as a medical professional for a month or two on any one of the Reservations in this country. That makes a difference in people's lives without ripping their culture from them.
56
Always put the children first.
Figure out how to do that.
Don't let the children linger in limbo.
Figure it out fast and provide support their own parents need.
Thirty years ago, black children couldn't be adopted by white parents, even though no black families were available to adopt them. Many children lingered in the foster system and never felt loved by a stable family. Put the children first. Sometimes the ideal is not available, so second best has to do.
Always put the children first, their emotional well-being, which also includes deep knowing of their ethnic culture.
9
@A. Dunn
I would like to add that if Native American children cannot be adopted out of their tribal culture, then they NEVER should be put in foster care with others in the first place.
Emotional attachment has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but with the need of a child for care and the parents response to that care. Bonding takes place regardless of the child's origin, as long as the parents are healthy and the child is healthy and young enough. It is grossly unfair to the child to separate it from the only parents he has ever known. It can set up life-long attachment disorders.
It is the tribe who wants to continue its identity through their offspring, which is entirely understandable. But in that case, these children must always be fostered within the tribe.
As an adoptive mother (not an inter-ethnic adoption), I am acutely aware of how important bonding is to the child and how permanently scarring it is to remove a child from a family it has bonded with.
Americans can understand grief by thinking of 9/1/1, the ripple effect of grieving/memorialising it (and also the national lashing out against supposed/imagined perpetrators).
We can understand PTSD and what it can do to families.
The generational grief carried by Native Americans manifests itself as drug abuse, sometimes violence. They are still grieving spiritually as a result of the denigration and ourtright abolition of their traditional ways --including the forced adoption of Christianity and the past forced removal of children.
What now? What will promote healing? No perfect answer here!
The judge's ruling sounds about right. No one is completely satisfied but this little girl will grow up with a brother and also with a connection to extended family. When she is of age, she will know her Native heritage as well as Christian tradition.
The foster family could save time and trauma by cooperating, build bridges with the Native family, without judgment, without hostility, to come to an arrangement. Both the right to grow with a sibling and to have a cultural connection would be respected.
Does taking their personal fight to the Supreme Court really contribute to the children's flourishing?
12
Why did it take so long to locate family members who would adopt these children? It seems so unfair to put them through foster care and then take them away as they formed bonds with their primary caretakers. The system would have created abandonment issues and insecure attachments for the children if they were removed from those they've loved. I am in favor for whatever is best for the children, emotionally and developmentally. It's important for them to feel secure and loved, no matter skin color.
8
@anon
That is what foster parents sign up for.
3
The issue may be rooted in spatial versus generational issues. Based on the article, Jackie appears to have left the tribe and its lands. This appears to place her and her offspring under the jurisdiction of the US government (local, state, and federal).
However, tribal identity based on spatial concerns is deeply problematic when discussing indigenous communities given 19th/20th century relocation practices. As I am not a lawyer, I cannot comment on the ramifications of this.
Yet the argument concerning sibling-affiliation is weak if Jackie’s other children who were raised by the tribe are well adjusted, happy, and healthy. In such an instance, I would hope that tribal concerns would preempt the adoption and assimilation practices that are ravaging indigenous culture.
5
It seems to me that this article is missing the point, the real problem isn’t the ICWA nor the foster care system but the drug addiction that has torn apart this child’s family of origin. Both the tribe and the foster care system are scrambling to stand in the gap for these children, with legal and financial resources being used for a court fight that is the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The ICWA is an important law to remedy a history of wrongdoing against Native American families, but sadly the bigger threat is the same drug epidemic that is tearing apart non-Native families as well. Regardless of what the courts decide, nobody will emerge from this situation a “winner”.
4
The problem is the Indian Tribes allows the Department of Human services and non-Indian courts to take custody of Indian children. Place them in non-Indian foster homes. They let the case wander through the court system for years and when the non-Indian court system finally makes a determination to take away the parental rights and allow the child to be adopted, the Indian Tribe steps in and takes control of the child.
Why? Because it saves the Indian Tribes a lot of money. They don't have to pay for attorneys to represent parents and children. They don't pay for foster care.They don't pay judges.
I was director of a Court Appoint Social Advocate program that worked with deprived children in the court system and have seen this first hand.
IMO ... the Indians should not be allowed to step in at the end of a judicial process and take children from foster home families that want to adopt children they've cared for in some cases for many years.
8
As the Judge said - It is not as if the parents were on the Reservation and the State took the child away. They left the Reservation and had the child in the State. This, for purposes of care of their dependents, is the equivalent of emigrating out of their nation. He is applying The Best Interest of the Child concept, which is the overriding rule in Family Courts around the country. It supersedes the interests of all others.
Those who think this is some exercise in White Privilege should spend time in their local Family Courts. They will learn this is not the place to be having that fight.
11
Many birth parents, including some Native Americans, are unfit to raise children but keep having them. The incidence of child abuse among Alaska Natives, for example, is heartbreakingly documented. It is not always in the best interests of a child to be restricted to available Native foster parents. The law already requires a diligent search for capable relatives. My main concern about the non-Native adoptive parents in this case is their superstition.
7
If keeping these children within the tribe is so important, why doesn't the tribe have a roster of temporary foster parents within the tribe who can take these children in while relatives are located?
Why didn't his Cherokee grandparents take custody of Zachary when it became clear that his parents couldn't care for him?
I don't particularly care for the "white savior" attitude of Zachary's parents, but it seems to me that if the tribes were really concerned about protecting their rights to these children, they would have a system in place to care for them when necessary. Instead, it seems they are willing to rely on the state foster care system (as they were in the case of the infant girl). Having children linger in temporary foster care isn't good for them either ...
31
Those are good points. The reasons probably are economic.
4
Political implications and race aside, has it come to anybody's mind, has the thought crossed anyone's conscience, what is best for the welfare and care of these two very young children?
7
That’s why the adoptive parents are fighting for them according to the article.
1
"He had already been taken from his first home, and now it would happen again? And the only explanation is that we don’t have the right color of skin? "
This a a quote from the white adoptive mother. It's amazing to me that she seems to think this is an issue of skin color. This is an issue of culture and more. If she really thinks it's about skin color, then this lady has a lot of learning to do if she's gonna raise kids who are from a different race, culture or ethnicity from hers.
13
How many of the commentators are, at least in part:
Native American ?
Grew up in a Native American community ?
Have taught at Native American schools ?
I am, did and have.
I am happy for Zachary he now has a chance at a decent life
and if his sister grows up with him, so does she.
Why are Native Americans expected ( legally ) to
live on the Reservations/attach themselves to cultural traditions
just because it pleases Liberals who think our culture is
fascinating/spiritually deep when they themselves do not
live and dress as their ancestors did before the Bronze Age ?
The interests of the child come before the interests of the Tribe,
some who are so short-sighted that they refuse to accept that
the world has left them far behind.
25
@John Brown I have worked and lived with ICWA. The interests of the tribe are paramount in that law---the idea is to make sure tribes don't disappear; the best interests of the child do not enter into it at all. And I have seen how often Alaska Native children are left in horrible homes (talking here about abuse, not simple neglect) because they are Native. The state keeps saying they need to reduce the disproportionate Native representation in foster care---so they become more and more reluctant to remove Native kids from abusive homes. The brutal fact is that the rate of alcoholism among Alaska Natives is disproportionate, which directly results in more Native kids being taken into custody. As to why aren't there more Native families doing foster care---in Alaska at least, the sober people with no serious criminal histories in the villages are doing foster care. The rest of the families aren't doing foster care because they are struggling with alcohol or have committed serious crimes against the person. And things won't change until the tribes start blaming past traumatic cultural injuries to excuse drinking and reduce the rate of alcoholism in their tribes. Certainly Jews and Chinese have an even longer history of being traumatized, yet they safe themselves through education, not drinking.
9
@ John Brown, the best interests of the child SHOULD be paramount, not only in this case but always. But the treaty puts that decision in the hand of the tribe. You, as a Native American, are one of the few here who actually has some clout. The US government should not break the treaty. The tribes are the ones who can make changes. If you feel strongly, then advocate with your tribe; that is not something I can do. And as you may have noticed, there are other Natives on this feed who disagree with your assessment.
6
Maybe there’s a lingering guilt about the genocide inflicted on most tribes.
3
The white evangelical Christians save the day! (Ah well, at least it wasn't the Catholics this time round.)
The Brackeens think they can give these children everything. And they probably can in the way of material goods. One thing people in this country don't understand is this thing called community. There are more than 500 federally recognized tribe in this country and (duh) they all recognize the importance and need to keep Native children in these communities. Yes, this is about race and this is about favoring the Native community when it comes to placing children. That's the whole point.
7
What's forgotten in all these laws, rights and what constitutes ideal placements is the welfare of the baby, his emotions, attachments and feelings of security and happiness. That should be the primary factor. If only appearances were of concern, how do you explain the successful adoption of Vietnamese, Chinese and Indian children. The laws are bigoted to maintain the status quo and the tribes are guilty of not considering the child's welfare. I'm not condoning the atrocities committed on American Indians. But at least, don't damn the potential of future generations.
10
The article is unclear on one key point. Why didn't Ms. James or any of Jackie's other aunts or uncles (Ms. James's siblings) intervene in Zachary's adoption? Jan Hoffman writes: "Navajo social workers said they had found an unrelated tribal couple in New Mexico to adopt the boy." But "tribe ultimately backed out" after the Brackeens appealed the Texas court decision to place Zachary with the New Mexico family. That action permitted the Brackeens to adopt Zachary. However, if Ms. James or any of Jackie's other relatives had been available to take Zachary at that time, the placement of his baby sister would likely not have been an issue: the baby would have gone to live with Zachary and her other half-siblings in Arizona. So what happened at that earlier point? Zachary's adoption by the Brackeens set the stage for these later events, which seem avoidable. Could Jan Hoffman or lIana Panich-Linsman shed some light on that issue?
20
@Doug Harrigan
A reasonable question, thank you! I asked the same while reporting.
According to the Navajo, the birth mother was elusive and difficult to reach during both these periods. The article refers to her drug history and incarceration. The Navajo told me that she did not willingly identify prospective relatives for Zachary; in the baby's case, she did at some point mention the James name . But the Navajo told me "James" is a common name. They said it took considerable time to locate which of the many James would be eligible for first consideration.
25
@Doug Harrigan
"But "tribe ultimately backed out" after the Brackeens appealed the Texas court decision to place Zachary with the New Mexico family."
Maybe, just maybe they could not afford the court battle?
4
@OnlyinAmerica
Individual Navajo families are not paying these court costs.
Their reason for adopting the sister is that it is in Zachary's best interest? That makes no sense. It should be what is in HER best interest.
7
Why wasn't Zachary originally placed in a Native American foster home? If the child's right to live with his culture is paramount how was that overlooked when he was placed with the Brackeens? At this point it would be harmful to Zachary to be removed from the only home he knows merely to serve a tribal or racial based law that wasn't invoked or used at the very beginning or before he and the Brackeens became attached to each other.
This country needs to do a better job with all foster children but especially when it comes to understanding Native American families, tribes, and customs.
22
@hen3ry
A reasonable question, certainly. One of the many challenges of the foster care system, whether under tribal or state jurisdiction, is locating sufficient numbers of scrutinized families who can take these children in. The number of tribal families available in a state data base is limited, at best. Texas is a particularly overwhelmed state. But the tribes have trouble finding emergency candidates, too.
19
@Jan Hoffman Having worked with tribes in two states, I am here to tell you that there are insufficient Native foster homes because of alcohol and criminal histories. You would be astounded how many people have one or both of those issues, which makes it impossible for them to become foster parents. The sober non-criminals are already over-stressed taking in the children of their alcoholic relatives---often informally, not through the foster care system. They are heroic in trying to help their families, but at some point these folks need to say no.
18
@fireweed I'm sorry to hear that. I can understand not wanting to put a child in with someone who is an alcoholic or a child endangering criminal but if the offense is minor do they overlook it? It saddens me to think that we've contributed so heavily to the stress modern Native Americans go through to the point where they cannot care for their children or themselves.
5
Absolutes don’t seem to work here: Zachary is four years old now and is the Brackeen couple’s child and their sons’ brother. It would be bad for him to be uprooted again and separated from the family he considers his own. Too much time has passed. In addition, Zachary’s birth mother wanted him to be with the Brackeens. In a better world, the Brackeens would WANT Zachary to visit the reservation and his birth relatives when he was old enough to want to make that connection. And in a perfect world he could decide to make that connection or decline to. I have an Indian step-sister who has chosen NOT to make that tribal connection, even though her adoptive parents always encouraged her to do so, and themselves studied her tribes’ religions, cultures, and traditional ways, etc.
But Zachery’s sister is another story entirely. Her birth mother is unable to care for her, but her larger family has been on-the-spot ready and willing to welcome her into their family and the larger tribe. She has lots of siblings to live with or near. She has a stable home at her great aunt’s. I don’t understand how the judge could have ruled against the Navajo relatives in this case, even without the additional and very important aspect of tribal sovereignty.
16
@voltairesmistress
If the Zachary's sister is able to be cared for by extended family, then why wasn't that the case for Zachary? Something is missing from that story, and I suspect that's why the judge made that decision.
10
To say that ICWA was passed to reinforce Native children's tribal identity is a gross understatement. Yes, this article briefly explains and hardly captures the breadth and depth of the forced removal of Native children from their families and tribes. That history impacted more than 400 children during the 1950s and 60s! I know many a Native family torn to shreds before ICWA passed. Children taken because they looked "too white" for a Native family was a frequent excuse. A dear Native friend had all seven of her children stolen from her home on the reservation when she went into town to buy food. She and her husband were not "unfit, abusive, etc." She searched for them for decades and was reunited with half of them as adults, the remainder gone forever! This was common practice before ICWA. As for how awful ICWA is, that's a falsehood. I, a white woman, adopted a Native child under ICWA. I was (and am) active in our Native church. I and my wife have strong ties with the culture and raised our son in the Native way. Because we were (and continue to be) integrally involved with the Native community, we had numerous letters of support sent to the Tribe and judge. ICWA is there to keep people like the Brackeens from stealing Native children out of a misinformed sense of charity. ICWA is clearly still needed!
10
I am a retired lawyer. A lady came to me (name withheld) to adopt her granddaughter. Her son white and her daughter-in- law full Cherokee. Both biological parents were hopeless heroin addicts. I remembered a bit about Indian court jurisdiction so I researched and phoned the Indian Affairs Legal Office in Sioux Falls.
The lawyer I spoke with several times asked me to not call them ‘Native Americans’. We are Indians she said. After much research I declined to take the case and the money the prospective client was willing to pay.
Apparently the lady found lawyers to take her money when I saw that the US Supreme Court had decided the case; In my favor I was glad to know. The Court held that the state court has no jurisdiction over a child who is or is eligible to be a member of a tribe. I found it uncomfortable at first when the Court held that an Indian child is the “property” of the tribe. The future preservation of the tribe is a welcome goal of the tribes and we must respect it.
You cannot get to the issue of what is in the best interest of a child unless and until you have a court of jurisdiction over both the subject matter and person. So the argument that the child in this case is better off with the white family of Christian belief and practice is not determinative. There must be jurisdiction.
The history of white people seizing Indian children and removing them to adoption homes is still resonant today. We must respect Indian autonomy
12
I’m troubled as a 3rd to 6th generation US citizen Jewish white/skinned guy who’s here because a Cuban relative in Batista days smuggled willing members of Dad’s family into Cuba, had them declared “residents” if not “citizens”, from which point they were welcomed into the US (those who thought they could ride out Hitler mostly died - two survived, one losing a leg un a slave labor camp) ... with a background in Anthology.
The first American continent human residents - as much my cousins from those early days in Africa where we evolved into the single “human race” are our continents’ aboriginal populations- not all the “first” - the Navajo and Hopi occupy land once held by another nation, which succumbed to their own localized anthropic environmental disaster.
To use a random example zea maize, “corn” in the US, which is the Middle English generic for “grain” evolved in the US Southwest/Mexican/Central American region, a wonderful chance set of mutations. It is a native American plant. As are Vanilla orchids, cocao (chocolate), coca (source if cocaine) and tobacco.
On the other hand oak and brazil trees evolved before the great continental breakup and are native everywhere.
But they still come from a similar geographical background (though not linguistic), are not “native”, as they didn’t evolve here, and gave nothing to do with the Indian subcontinent.
Outside of specific individuals’ desires, please call them neither Indians nor native.
The Brakeens could "rectify their blessings" and help a lot more people, probably for less money than they will spend raising Zachary, by giving the children back to their Indian family, giving the family a monthly income, and keeping in touch with Zachary by taking on an aunt/uncle role with the whole family--getting to know them, inviting them to visit, learning their language, taking the older sisters to "take your daughter to work day," and so on. Unless "rectify their blessings" really means adding to their evangelical church's congregation? This case is different from, but reminiscent of, those American christian missionaries who tried to steal children from Haiti after the earthquake, to bring back to their evangelical church and add to its numbers.
12
@Sarah
Every person who says some version of 'give their son (YES, they raised him from 10 months old- hes their son) to the tribe and pay them' is an absolute disgrace.
3
We now live in a world where hard work and success is an embarrassment?
8
@Factumpactum
No, but one of the rewards isn’t the right to take other people’s children.
17
Why do you assume the New Mexico family aren’t hard workers?
13
@Anon
It wasn't a reward. It was, however, charity on their part to help a kid whose family couldn't take care of him.
3
As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation I hate that our sovereignty is under attack again. Our tribes were almost decimated, our culture was almost beat out of our elders at boarding schools, and now our young are being taken from the people who can teach them their heritage.
If there were no native adoptive families then the need would go to nonnative families. Just because you want your way does not mean it is in the best interest of the child. Can you teach them our language, our traditions, history, or our historical dances? These things are not just grandeur, they are a large part of our identity.
If the Catholics can use their religion to stop same sex adoptions on the basis of religious freedom, our religious freedom should stop the further loss of native children to people who are not native. Fair is fair, our children belong with people who can teach them their heritage, a heritage that is as important as the air we breathe.
17
No. What Texas is doing is attempting to over ride existing treaties. In this case, Texas has no standing at all.
6
This is horrible. The child belongs with her Navajo family. The arrogance of the brackens is repulsive. Just another pair of evangelicals who think their beliefs are better than those less fortunate.
13
That is a harsh commentary on good hearted people.
3
What surprising comments? Are Native Americans not Americans citizens? I get the sins of the past, but its 2019 and whatever happened to the best interest of the child? Most people have no ideas of the hellholes that some Indian reservations are these days? Poverty, drugs, alcoholism and violence are what the majority experience on a daily basis.
A friend of mine has adopted a Native girl. Took her in before she was one years as a foster child and what she took was a neglected and abused little girl. She has a mother that was an alcoholic and a drug user and had no idea who was the father of the child. For two years she was given the right to come visit her daughter. She did not show up once to see this child she had neglected so badly. After a three year wait and with the blessing of the tribe, she was adopted. She is a happy five year old, delightful, well adjusted and incredibly loved with an actual future.
So yeah, maybe we should not be so quick to box these children in so quickly and keep them where they are because of their genetics.
17
@Decebal
Your story is essentially
“with the blessings of the tribe.”
Clearly not the case here.
11
@decebal
Broken families have directly contributed to the problems that indigenous populations (globally) struggle with. To ignore this by saying "it's 2019 now" unfairly absolves responsibility of and perpetuates this problem.
6
Good. let the Federal law stand. This child can keep his heritage in poverty and squaler. He wouldn't want to be associated while white privilege.
5
Many disturbing comments here implying that Zachary "belongs" to the Navajo nation, that we must accept as a given that he be raised with a Navajo identity. As a second generation American, I will say that a person has the right to choose their identity & culture; ancestry & DNA don't comprise my heritage. Blood is thicker than water, but soil is thicker still.
33
@Amitava D
Your comment makes it clear you understand nothing about American history, so read up on it. Then you will learn how important Native Americans are to the idea of liberty, equality, and happiness that you now enjoy and the reason we don't have to live in a monarchy. And you will also learn about the damage done to Native Americans by white Christians taking native lands and forcing Indians to be like them. And you will see that your comment also seeks to beat these helpless children into christian submission by tearing them from their family and choking out their native identity and culture where women and men are equal.
20
@Amitava D
By the time you get enough life experience and knowledge to "choose" your "identity & culture," you've already been planted in the thick soil and raised a certain way. Later in life, after being indoctrinated into their adoptive family's lifestyle and beliefs, Zachary and his sister will have the opportunity to embrace their Navajo identity, but by then they will have lost the chance to grow up absorbing the cultural heritage and love of their blood family. That loss is like a bleeding out.
20
@Cristine Soliz:
people are individuals before they're an avatar of some nebulous "greater whole". I know a great deal about American history (moreso, I daresay, than most) but that history is neither my fault nor responsibility, anymore than it's yours. Nobody is born with an identity and culture, they're formed over years & are ultimately voluntary.
9
If Native nations want to be the sole custodians of Native children they need to step up their commitment to keeping them safe and healthy.
Life on the reservation for Native children is a battle every day.
Rez kids have the highest rate of suicide, substance abuse, rape, incest, teen pregnancy, incarceration, obesity/diabetes, and premature death. They have the lowest literacy rate ( both English and Indigenous) and high school graduation rate of all ethnicities.
42
@Jube
You know who needs to step up their commitment to keeping Native children safe and healthy? The Federal government. If the US government would attend to their legal obligations set out through decades and decades of valid and binding treaties, Native families on reservations would have access to quality health care and education. Tribes were forced into a position of dependence on the US government. One big example: buffalo were killed off by American soldiers and citizens in order to intentionally deprive tribes of one of their main resources. Tribal leaders were then told that if they didn't sign treaties to give up their land, the US government would stop providing food. The food the government did (and does!) provide was (and is!) heavy in fats, carbs, and sugar. Fry bread comes from the historical period when tribes had to rely on the flour and lard given to them by the government that had taken away their ability to provide for themselves. This is not an issue of tribes being uncommitted to their people. It is an issue of the US government forcing Native Americans into utterly unjust and thoroughly detrimental conditions. That is why life on the reservation for Native children is a battle every day.
Have tribes and individual Native Americans always coped with their difficulties in the best possible ways? No. Would they have had to cope with the difficulties of violent colonization and attempted genocide if the US government hadn't done what they did? No.
14
@Jube: My father volunteered as a physician on a Lakota Indian Reservation in South Dakota in the summer of 1979. Do you know who were his colleagues? They were physicians who had been accused of misconduct at their institutions and as part of their community service had to serve on the Indian Reservation as part of their plea deal to avoid jail time.
Would you like to have been treated by the doctor who was on his third DUI or with a drug addiction problem? I don't think so.
But this is what we send to the reservations. We put them on the crummiest land, renege on treaties, underfund the institutions they need to survive, pollute their land (e.g. Keystone Pipeline project).
So save us the "pull yourselves up by the bootstraps" talk.
6
@aeb
Thank you - meanwhile social scientists examining the impact of owning Casino operations on Native American tribes, worried about the possible negative impacts of being involved in gambling - discovered that relative wealth and reliable employment had mostly positive health effects. Poverty is never healthy for any individual, group, child or family. And what has been forced on Native Americans is generations of poverty, ongoing. This undeniable fact makes this case epicly tragic.
4
Because, as we all know, every self-identified racial, ethnic, and cultural group is a distinct species of human being, and only that species knows how to properly raise its own young.
/s
10
I don't understand why the tribes allow a tribal woman who is addicted to methamphetamines to continue to have child after child, when she is not able or willing to care for the previous babies??? If tribal ways are so important and education of being Native is so important, than why allow this self-degradation?
16
@RCJCHC How do suggest they stop her? If a Euro- or African-American woman did the same, how would you stop her? Sterilization against someone's will is no longer a legal thing.
2
What a racist law
4
Solomonic dilemmas require Solomonic solutions, and I respectfully offer one: Elizabeth Warren should adopt the child/ren.
The birth mother is pregnant again and has tested positive for meth? Gee, what is wrong with that picture? This is unsustainable. Every child that unfit parents have is an act of warfare against a civilized society, and by unfit i mean those unwilling and unable to raise children, including having the financial means to do so. Where is Planned Parenthood when you need them?
9
Why are the baby's best interests not discussed? She is discussed only as a thing whose presence in the Brackeens' household would be beneficial for Zachary.
Why was Zachary placed with the Brackeens in the first place? Why wasn't Zachary placed with Ms. James or her sister? The article says that Zachary was the seventh child to be removed by authorities from Jackie and that four of Jackie’s other children live 40 minutes away (from Ms. James) with Ms. James’s sister and visit Ms. James twice a week. Had the authorities looked for Ms. James and/or her sister? And for the baby, why is it not in her best interest to live in a place with or near most of her birth relatives?
Do potential foster parents understand that the foster child could be placed in another home after an extensive period of time? That in the end they may not in the end be deemed the best family for the child? Yes, removing Zachary from the Brackeens so long after he was placed with and had clearly bonded with them would have been painful and confusing to the child; but it sounds like the Brackeens treated Zachary's baby sister like his matching accessory.
8
Please stop using the term "biological." For obvious reasons.
I want people to understand that this policy is not meant to protect Native American culture. Many tribal members have zero Native American genes. Many are just white people who are members (or black or Hispanic). Children should be placed with the family that can give them a good home. Not based on race.
7
@willt26 Feel free to give us some hard, verifiable data about the "many" tribal who have zero native genes.
1
I'm disappointed in the Times that there is no mention of a similar Supreme Court case - Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl - that the Court heard back in 2013.
2
The little girl has multiple siblings on the reservation.
The Brackeens are as wrong as the churches that years ago took Navajo children away from their homes, forbade them to speak Navajo, and took away their culture.
8
Children need a safe home. Not a cultural or racial home. Children should be placed according to their best interests- not the interests of cultures or races.
9
Then definitely not in the home of a couple evangelicals, especially ones who think they are doing "god's work". Always trying to brainwash their children and force everyone to be like them. Those parents should lose all their children
1
@John Dawson,
Does the couple take care of the child? Do they nurture him?
All parents imprint things onto their children that someone, somewhere, might find objectionable.
You probably aren't perfect either. I am sure you will do the right thing and not have any children.
1
Wait, guys, you're ignoring the most important element of this custody battle: The Bracken's kitchen is large enough to roller blade around. Case closed.
7
The decision should be based on the best interests of the child, not the best interest of the tribes. The Brackeens can provide a loving, stable home for the children, as well as copious material benefits. Cultural heritage is trivial in comparison and emblematic of vacuous identity politics, where "what" you are matters more than what you need or want.
8
I love how so many commenters proclaim the Navajo culture that these children are supposedly losing.
Of course in the article one child plays a ukelele? while singing a pop song by Queen? and they celebrate Mothers Day? while a sister wears a t-shirt with Pickachu?
Let's see... Portugese instrument by way of Hawaii, Persian songwriter by way of Britain, cartoon character thanks to Japan.
All American Hallmark holiday...
Sure, EVERYONE's "culture" is sacred. And nothing is pure.
9
If a person has racial/ethnic designation as "Other", they are immediately disqualified from adopting Non-Other children.
2
Enough with the white guilt. No one is stopping Indians from practicing their customs or religion, but to have their own separate country or sovereignty is silly at this point. Casinos and other special considerations are one thing. But defying the mother's wishes and ignoring the child's best interest over cultural sensitivities is going way overboard.
Here's an idea, only have children you're equipped to take care of, and then you can raise them with any cultural influence you want, with no pesky judges butting in.
8
A bit of a digression, but the law says a Florida Seminole family has priority over an Arizona Latino family to adopt an Arizona Navajo child for whom there is no prospective Navajo parent? Strange.
3
This sounds like more a case of very irresponsible parenting. Jackie I’m sure makes Navajos proud.
5
Well, why wouldn't the Judge rule in the Brackeens favor? This country is doing the same thing with the children they are stealing at the border. I understand some of these children may be eligible for adoption. Nothing has changed.
1
So let's take this to its logical conclusion.... only people of matching color, creed and religion can adopt a child of the same color, creed and religion.... slowest clap for social regression. Also treating this child like a tribal object is disgusting, this is a child not an object for a group to own as some sort of collective, this is an individual who should be placed with parents who can provide a place where they are likely to thrive and find personal success. Looking at this as an issue of race is pure bigotry.
5
the child is going to have an identity crisis eventually. Poor kid. I'd hate to be with the Brackeens family.
I’ve seen many, many arguments here for prioritizing a financially stable environment over a culturally appropriate one. What I haven’t seen nearly enough of is the argument for correcting the financial and cultural wrongs that our country has inflicted upon Native Americans. We have so far to go in terms of undoing our historic crimes, and helping the Native community to re-establish economic and cultural stability- on THEIR OWN terms, not ours.
5
Both children should be with Native families, especially since the James family are blood relations. It's a travesty that the Brackeens have custody of both kids. There are plenty of unwanted kids that the Brackeens could have adopted. Why do they need to take Native kids away from their culture and heritage?
5
Welfare of the child should always without exception trump ethnic, cultural or tribal pride. Period.
The Navajo would do far better ensuring people like the birth Mom stop having kids on meth in the first place so that less kids in the tribe end up in care.
When warden of the state it should be whoever can best provide for the child to look after them. This family has clearly demonstrated that in this case, they represent that.
6
Every situation is different. The judge acted correctly here doing what's best for the child in each case.
What wont work is the child going to the reserve for a couple of weeks increasing each summer. That will be awkward at best and the cultural divide is too much.
We had a situation in arizona similar to this. The couple dropped off the adopted child on the reserve and he was killed by a group of marauding dogs. Hope the outcome is better here.
2
Given the law, I have to ask why Native American children are placed in non native foster homes at all.
If it is so important for this child to remain with a Native American family, then the child should not be placed in a family that is ineligible to adopt them, and the child might get attached to. It's unclear to me why the relatives didn't step up immediately. If they had this entire saga could have been avoided. I feel sorry for the child at this point.
6
I am shocked, but not surprised, to read the results. I too, lost custody of my two children in a Texas divorce. We had all lived in New York City...
The definition of a big house and lots of clothes for the Bracken family, as a good reason for them to get the adoption of Zachary's baby sister is disappointing. It also shows their cultural insensitivity toward the spiritual, traditional and tribal heritage of this James family, Navajo.
This is heartbreaking. There has recently been a lot of research done on the survivors of the Boarding Schools, like Carlisle. This decision continues the wrong decisions of some social workers who view Native families solely through economic lens.
To have the support of this wonderful James family, with all the cousins, and plus the goats too, would be so good for the little baby girl. Sadly,
5
As a postscript, i believe that we ought to view this case as analogous to a German family wishing to adopt the adopt the Jewish children of families lost in the Holocaust. For Native American tribal children not only have a racial, ethnic and cultural claim on tribal membership. Through their tribal history and connections, they also have a religious and spiritual link with their history. And I believe that our treaties protecting tribal sovereignty implicitly recognize the tribal religious and spiritual link of the tribe as inviolable. Tribal families have the right to enforce their religious and spiritual tribal heritage for their children. As such, the religious and spiritual claims of the tribe ought to be protected as well by our First Amendment as well as by treaty.
5
This case is replete with cultural hegemony. The Brackens and Judge Kim both adopting a position that their societal privilege, which stems from their beliefs that their way of life is preferable to American Indian way of life, grants them the prerogative to ignore the rule of law. It is the same hegemony that allowed white settlers to ignore the rule of law and seize tribal lands in violation of Treaties agreed upon by the tribes and the US government. Even the way the article was written demonstrates cultural bias. The author paints an idealistic home setting with large property and dogs, but fails to acknowledge the life on the Rez with family also includes large outdoor surroundings that allow a child to explore, play, and learn about the divinity of Mother Earth.
Removing a child from cultural roots separates him or her from cultural identity. There will be no opportunity to teach language, which must be heard and practiced regularly to learn well. There will be no opportunity to learn religious and cultural ceremonies because the timing will not coincide with summer visits. These customs will be foreign to the teaching of the religious practices of their evangelical adoptive parents.
If the Brackeens want to share their privilege there are a number of non-Indian children to adopt whose lives will not be marred by a lack of cultural identity and history.
4
NPR did an important series on this topic (link below), showing how the law to keep Native children with family or tribal members is regularly ignored in South Dakota. I think the most important issue here is, as other commenters have said, the welfare of the children. But identity and culture are a crucial part of welfare that no one has the right to take away from these kids, if there are alternatives.
https://www.npr.org/series/141763531/native-foster-care-lost-children-shattered-families
4
If our Native tribal treaties are broken by our Supreme Court, the next time the United States complains about China’s treatment of its minorities, or Tibetans, I hope that the Chinese will pointedly object by raising this case as an example of our hypocrisy.
The “Solomonic 2” problem does not exits here. All our treaties with Native Tribes affirm that the tribes have a legal sovereignty: the authority over tribal membership claims. And both Navaho and Cherokee tribes have that authority to decide the fate of the children’s adopted parents. If the Brackeens wish to help “Zachary” and his tribal half-sister, they ought to provide financial assistance to the children’s extended Navaho and Cherokee tribal families to raise them. It seems that the Brackeens unconscionably exploit the tribe’s conquered status that over a century of racist laws we imposed on conquered Native Tribes to rob them of their children as easily as we ignored our treaties, displacing them from their lands and mineral resources.
8
My Dad is from the Middle East (born and raised) and my Mom is a White American. I was raised here in the US in a majority white neighborhood almost never interacting with people from my Dad's country. I couldn't even communicate with my Grandparents. Should I have been sent to the Middle East because I was losing my culture? Have I lost something sacred and necessary to being a whole person? I just grew up in the American culture which is half my ethnicity btw. I think it's weird that white americans insist on defining me by the part of me that is not white/american.
Also, we know nothing about the nationality or ethnicity of the children's fathers. Is one culture assumed to be superior just by being something other than American? What if the father was from Latin America? Should we make sure to send the child to his Latin American relatives too? Why is one culture more important than another?
I am not necessarily saying the Brackeen family is the right home but I also am surprised with a lot of the people's reactions.
7
With all respect, your personal story bears no resemblance to the situation in the article. Unless you were orphaned in another, poorer country, then adopted by well-meaning, wealthy people from another country, effectively losing your past. You will find there are many barriers and international laws that rightly make this very difficult to do, preferring to give children their cultural heritage and some connection to family.
1
The article says the father is Cherokee. You having a parent who is an immigrant has absolutely nothing to do with the unique situation of First Peoples in this country. You seem not to have read this article or are not understanding the situation.
2
So the Brackeens are privileged white conservative Christians seeking to undermine native Americans cultural and tribal integrity. Nothing new here, just the same sense of racial, ethnic and religious superiority and entitlement that has driven our interactions with the ingenuous peoples since Europeans first colonized this hemisphere. For those backing the Brackeens this is about far more than a couple of adoptions. This is about a generations long crusade to disempower the tribes for political and economic reasons as well as a lingering bigotry that predates the United States. First we stole their land, then we stole their children, looks like we’re back to our old tricks again. I don’t know if the Brackeens are clueless or malevolent in their intent but for the tribes this goes to identity. Its a form of Cultural genocide aided and abetted by religion and that is the heart of the matter. All else is secondary including the Brackeens desire for someone else’s children. This should not be happening again.
5
In trying to justify their case for also adopting the younger half-sister, the Brackeens make the case against their entire claim:
“How can it not be in his best interest,” Mr. Brackeen said, “to grow up with a sibling who looks more like him than we do, who knows what he’s gone through and who shares his story more than anyone else?”
While there should be sympathy for the Brackeens and their individual emotional attachments, it would be irresponsible and unjust to ignore the reasons for the laws protecting tribal attachments. Native Americans have been the subject of systemic genocide. Doing justice requires context, and brushing that history aside in favor of a nice Christian family’s myopic intent to ‘do good’ would be nothing less than a modern extension of that policy of genocide.
3
It seems strange that people are so much more focused the principal of maintaining this child's cultural roots as opposed to his future as a functioning individual in the greater society. He has a better shot at living a happy life with this white family. The Native American's experienced a genocide at the hands of the US, and the scars persist to this day - but the focus should be on how to improve native American communities, not on if a child should be condemned to a life of poverty because white people feel sorry he won't be raised in the culture of his ancestors.
7
@John Dorian Culture is important to a lots of people. We are all somehow related to (or actually are) immigrants. Native Americans are different in that they didn't come here for freedom and opportunity; they were obviously here already, and for the most part they were happy where they were. America took that away from them. What solution do you propose? Serious question.
1
@Petra
They came here at some point as we all originate from Africa.
1
The tribal position sounds less like trying to ensure the welfare of the child and more like protecting their culture with children as the vessel of that culture, regardless of their welfare.
9
Native Americans are not a race.
They are a nation or a group of nations.
6
If Judge Kim's ruling stands, someone needs to write a book about the lives of the children involved.
In the 1920's, many Indian children ended up in a huge Catholic orphanage in the Chicago suburbs, along with hundreds of other non-Indian children, some of whose living parents could not afford to feed them. There, the Indian children were subjected to a somewhat benevolent form of discrimination, where they were given a blanket and a farm job, based entirely on their race. Siblings in that institution, whether Indian or not, were housed by age, not family relationship.
100 years later, at least Judge Kim recognizes the over-riding importance of sibling relationships. Good luck to all involved in sorting this out. There is no right answer, only a chance that the families can make peace and find a way to raise these two children together, in either home where they are wanted, loved and fed.
What is foster care for if not to reunite families? I went through foster care/adoption but with the grandmother, the only other person capable of caring for the child, giving her blessing to my raising her grandchild. The Brackeens became foster parents to foster children until such a time that, most preferably, the family can step in. The family stepped in.
2
So the Brackeens started the journey to foster and possibly adopt out of a desire to give back since they are financially blessed. Yet then they turn around and use the fact that the children's aunt has less financial resources as a reason to express concern over the baby girl being placed with her. Strange way to recognize your blessing - questioning the fitness of others simply for not being as blessed.
9
This case is just the latest example of impact litigation pursued by Goldwater Institute and other special interest groups intended to weaken tribal sovereignty and do away with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Goldwater has attempted in multiple other cases to have federal judges declare ICWA unconstitutional. Those efforts have failed, for good, sound legal reasons. Every aspect of this case stinks of conservative white fundamentalism, from the source of funding to the federal district court judge - the same judge who decided that the entire ACA was unconstitutional - strategically selected by those sources to hear the case.
9
My husband and I adopted a white child from the NYC foster care system. My husband is white, and I’m Hispanic. Before adopting him, we had two close calls, where we were computer matched with a new born whose mother had notified the state that she would surrender parental rights at the hospital. We’d been coded as foster parents “with intention to adopt”, so the city tried to match us with children who entering the foster care system ready to be adopted.
In both cases with the new borns, the mother was Hispanic and surrendered her parental rights at the hospital. In both cases, the baby’s father also gave up parental rights and were African American. Both times, my husband and I got ready for taking in our baby, but received a phone call a couple of days later from our social worker saying that the hospital social worker said we could not adopt the baby because neither of us was black. “But I’m Hispanic, and the baby’s mother is Hispanic,” I protested. By the way, black boys, even babies, linger in foster care far longer than black girls.
It wasn’t to be, and we eventually got our beautiful son. But I often think about those two boys. The system should consider the child, a human being who needs a living family, no matter the color.
12
@NYC Independent I'm confused -- one Hispanic means one comes from a Spanish speaking culture. That means there are black, white, Indian, mixed, etc people that are Hispanic. There are blond Hispanics and brown Hispanics. So - you can be Hispanic and white, Hispanic and brown, Hispanic and Asian, etc...
@BNYgal
Good question. Many don’t realize that “Hispanic” is not a race. The birth mothers in the story I told were not black; the birth fathers were African American. I am Hispanic, the brown variety. What’s important to know is that Black boys have trouble getting out of foster care system, much more so than black girls. Once in foster care, they tend to stay in the system and have trouble finding adoptive homes.
2
The judge is wrong and the Brackeen family, despite their intentions, is wrong! My non-Native family adopted a Native American child 48 years ago when he was three years old and it was a mistake. Since he has been an adult he has been searching for his soul and finally found it with his Native American tribe.
The decision should not be about the attachment the Brackeens have made with these children; it should not be because they have a different color of skin (as Dr. Brackeen is quoted); the primary concern is the identity of the child, how they will identify themselves when they are adults. Each tribe has their own language, rituals, and culture that cannot be replicated by non-Natives. This country's history of how it treated Native Americans is no less than abhorrent; we should not be repeating our history; we should learn from it.
15
As the adoptive parent of a Native American child, this is a very emotional article to read. It just scratches the surface of an incredibly complicated issue. ICWA tries to right a terrible wrong, but it can fail kids, too, by placing them in addicted and violent homes over stable, non-Native families. Tradition and culture are important, as well as biological ties. I have nothing but respect for Native American culture. But what is in the best interest of the child? Where was Zachary's biological family when he was up for adoption, but now wants to adopt his sister? Should these siblings now be separated? Why should the Brackeens be able to circumvent established law? I don't have any hard answers here. All we can do is raise our child to know their Native American heritage as much as we can, and respect their choice of culture later on. My heart goes out to both families and I certainly hope that this case does not interfere with the sovereignty of Native Americans in the future.
11
I have adopted two children who are Native, and have dealt with ICWA issues with both of them. I am mortified by the arguments that both this couple and their attorney are making. It is in the best interest of these Native children to be raised in a Native household, if there is one available to them. The State of Texas (or Washington, or anywhere else) has to acknowledge the Tribe with jurisdiction in these cases because that tribe is a sovereign nation; the Constitution itself acknowledges the various Tribes as sovereign. This strikes me as another example of colonialism running amok in the lives of people who have been systematically oppressed since the first white people arrived here centuries ago. This is a tragedy playing out in the courts, which could lead to states returning to destroying Native families and culture in the name of "the best interests of the child," which can so easily be twisted into being placed with affluent white people, who are used to getting whatever they want, whenever they want it.
18
@Robert L.
"It is in the best interest of these Native children to be raised in a Native household, if there is one available to them."
Are you are saying that being a participant in the culture is always the paramount issue to establish best interest, regardless of poverty, addiction, distant minimal health care services, food insecurity, lack of educational or employment opportunities, etc?
I get it that culture is important and something the law should seek to protect, but there is a balance that we must establish between the importance of native children serving as vessels of their culture and other dimensions of their best interest.
8
Why does it seem like entitlement won and poverty lost.
Family is family and if they are willing and will provide a safe loving environment, that should be the deciding factor not what can be provided due to wealth.
16
There is so much going on in this article to ponder.
Perhaps I missed it, but I wish the article had addressed other transracial adoption. White people adopting black or hispanic children. Is that loss of culture not important? Does it not play a role? And what if a native woman gave birth and wanted to place her child privately? Could she choose a non-native family or would the law supercede her choice?
7
@Kelly There is a legal way for the Native biological mother to opt out of ICWA and even to ask that the tribe never be notified of the birth. But she would need an attorney to do that.
The reservation systems was created because Americans once believed Native American were genetically unable of assimilation and acculturation. They were excluded from the census until 1930 because they were not regarded as U.S citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 made them citizens. Now that they are citizens, they should be treated the same as other Americans.
Segregating Native Americans from the general populace has mired the majority of therm in poverty and hopelessness. It is time to end the reservation system and close the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Native American tribes are the nations’ largest landowners. Let the tribal councils decide what to do with the land and distribute resources.
7
@William Case, what about their sacred remains? Once all the land is sold to developers can they still contest that it’s unbuildable due to the bones of their ancestors buried there?
2
@John Doe
The Navajo would be allowed to do what they want with their land or tribal land. If they don't want to sell, they don't give to sell.
Generally, developers cannot disturb gravesites. Even interstate highways and freeways curve aground cemeteries.
2
This is good news for the planet and a reason not to cremate. Soon the world would be unbuildable and able to be allowed to return to its natural state.
1
Ah the hubris of the adoptive saviors I mean parents. It's so pervasive it's not even surprising that they don't understand how completely wrong it is for them to have either of these children.
Both children should be with a native American family, not a white wealthy couple. There is a richness of knowing one's roots, culture, language etc that no amount of money, fancy houses, etc can replace. Wealth is not only found in a bank account!
16
@Jo M
Nowhere in the article are they described as wealthy.
4
That kind of thing happens a lot with evengelicals. All hubris and a complete lack of accountability to others because they falsely believe they are "saved" by turning jesus into a false idol
5
@pig farmer, they are described as a family with many “blessings”, in which the wife is a practicing anesthesiologist (a lucrative career), the father is a civil engineer who is able to stay at home full time because of his wife’s income and own a home that has a kitchen as big as a roller rink.
It is not difficult for readers to assume they are well off.
3
I wonder if they love Zachery or if they love how adopting him makes them look generous.
They got Zachery because their biological son asked God how they could serve a higher purpose. They thought adopting a baby was a way to "rectify their blessing." It sounds as if they took on Zachery as a pet morality project for their family.
I remember a family that raised two of their own (white) biological children and two adopted Asian children. It was always clear that the adopted children played a certain role in the family. They were treated all right and got their material needs satisfied. But it was also clear that the adopted kids were supposed to be grateful and existed for the greater glory of the adoptive parents. I always felt so sorry for them.
20
@JB
On the other hand, does the tribe want the boy so they can claim one more enrolled tribal member and thus, more per cap payments? It the tribal elders had really cared about Z and his family, they could have intervened long ago.
1
The Brackeens were successful in their adoption of Zachary and then wanted to adopt the new baby on the basis she is Z's half sister. But she's also the half sister of the other children mentioned in the article. And she's Ms. James's great niece.
Aside from the tribal and cultural connections, isn't it preferable for a child to be raised with its extended family? This isn't just about tribal connection but also family connection, which I always thought in the absence of other negative factors was paramount in placing a child. While the judge states that finances were not a factor it certainly appears that the low income status of Ms. James has played a part in his decision.
The Brackeens were stunned by the requirement to share custody of the baby. But wouldn't it also benefit Zachary as well as his sister to spend time with his biological family? To learn the rich cultural heritage of which he is a part ? And wouldn't it be in the best interest of both children if the adults found ways to include everyone in the lives of these children? It wouldn't be easy but surely worth trying. They aren't possessions that you own.
25
@kate
Here we go again with "Rich Cultural Tradition"
Aren't ALL cultural traditions rich?
Please....
7
Yes. Native American culture is also rich.
2
The reservation systems was created because Americans once believed Native American were genetically unable of assimilation and acculturation. They were excluded from the census until 1930 because they were not regarded as U.S citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 made them citizens. Now that they are citizens, they should be treated the same as other Americans.
Segregating Native Americans from the general populace has mired the majority of therm in poverty and hopelessness. It is time to end the reservation system and close the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Native American tribes are the nations’ largest landowners. Let the tribal council decide how to manage their won affairs.
3
@William Case "Citizens" in their country. How disgusting.
This is a terrific piece of journalism with a lot of food for thought. The related Navajo family that wanted to adopt is really an older lady with two elderly parents, and some young teenage girls that do not live with them. The white family has a stable, two-parent young family with the focus on raising children. It is pretty much a no-brainer who is best equipped to raise a child.
That said, it took a lot of hubris for the Brackens to go up against a biological relative in court. I am surprised an attorney would even take it on. Ultimately, it seems like a great decision by the judge.
9
Many children in our country are raised by older relatives including aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfather. It does not make you less capable of raising a child, in fact, her caring for her elderly parents is a tradition worth passing on.
And if you’re talking about financial wealth, then you’re basically saying that rich family can take a poor person’s child away from them or their relatives. Money does not make you more capable.
20
@Sherrod Shiveley So what is the no-brainer? Bc I read that and was horrified that these children would not go to the Navajo family to be with their family and learn about their important culture. To me it seemed that the white Christian family was being selfish and deluded in their white saviorism.
7
But they're evengelicals. Many people i know that would consider it child abuse to place a child in a household owned by people with that kind of mental illness
7
The tribes should have child care facilities ready and waiting for any child who needs to be placed in foster care. Even if the child is in another state, the Native American children should never be placed with families of another race.
I see ads on television encouraging Native American families to sign up to be foster families, and stating that the majority of Native children in foster care are not in Native families. Maybe group care facilities are needed.
2
@M Davis
Institutionalizing healthy children is never a good option, under any circumstances whatsoever. State and federal governments could be finding ways to make reservations and the people who live there become self-supporting, starting with incubating small businesses and healthcare providers. Balancing autonomy with aid is something that should not be impossible here or anywhere, if only we had the will to do it.
Then, telling tribes what they "should" do would sound a bit less ridiculous. They'd have the resources to solve their own problems.
If you look at Clinton’s case and efforts to return Gonzalez to his father in Cuba on the explicit demands of his father then parental rights would prevail however the Government of Cuba should not.
If neither legal parent has made such a demand on the judge then the court can not and should not consider a child’s race or color during the adoption process.
1
Gosh, relatives are considered in all
Adoption cases .. all skin colors. Did you not know that?
And this isn’t about skin color .. that’s taking a complicated issue and trying to make it black and white (no pun intended). This is about a culture, a history and family blood.
3
As I reached the end of this article, I had to stop and remind myself: Zachary is a child.
The tribe is treating him like a tribal object. He's not.
Do what is in the best interests of Zachary the child, not Zachary the tribal symbol.
54
Zachary is a tribal member, a family member, not an object or a fetish. Maybe if we Native people were not so discriminated against then it wouldn’t appear so “black and white “ to you.
11
@Joe Lynch -- then why didn't the tribe immediately step in to care for Zachary, instead of allowing him to be placed with foster parents outside the tribal system? Why didn't his paternal grandparents seek temporary custody? Where was Ms. James at the time?
Tribes that want to ensure that their members' children remain within their systems need to put the infrastructure in place to do so. If Zachary had been left with the Brackeens for a few days, and he had then moved to be with family or to tribal foster care -- none of this would have happened.
5
@JM Did you miss the part where the Brackeens admitted that they knew from the beginning that the placement would be temporary?
2
Such a complicated situation. The current law seems to be an overreach in favor or racial/ethnic identity, to rectify a horrific earlier policy of forced removal. In my view the Brackeens have a strong case for keeping their son, but their claim on the little girl seems tenuous at best; meanwhile, the Navajo mother will be in her 70s when the little girl hits her teens, which is less than ideal. Surely the Brackeens can offer a better life economically and with far greater options for the little girl, but that argument plays back into the original forced removal scenario, which is a direction we don't want to go. I think the judge did as well as is possible, satisfying no one, and thus ensuring the case gets resolved at a higher court; maybe good, maybe not.
And what of Jackie, now with 8 kids she can't care for before hitting 35? She's the one creating these heart-wrenching tragedies. What she's doing is unconscionable.
18
@ Jim R
Do you really think Jackie has much control of her life now. Wouldn’t more education on and funding for mental health 10 or 15 years ago been a great return on investment ? How about increasing rather than decreasing funding for planned Parenthood- so that outreach could help at-risk single parents from falling into this cycle. How about affordable drug rehab for the poor ?
5
He is not their son.
1
@M
Yes, M, you're right. Everyone's fault but hers.
Incredibly difficult issues, I have no answers, but can observe that my friends, who are Jewish and both physically large, adopted 2 unrelated Korean babies. The daughter grew up to be under 5 feet tall, so if there's any chance anyone could say, they don't belong together, there you have it. No one I've ever met has had any problem with the fact that this is a family. When the kids got old enough, the family facilitated extended stays in Korea, and may have located one of the birth mothers. I'm very cognizant of what we've done to native Americans, and it is a shame when cultural connections are lost. However, a lot of families totally ignore their roots. My family was very into Jewish history and culture, as well as knowing about the part of Europe we're from. A lot of my Jewish friends couldn't have cared less. Can someone attest that a native American family knows or cares a whole lot more about their culture than a non-NA family that's motivated to learn something? I can't.
6
You need to visit a reservation and talk to people who live there. I would say their culture is stronger and has more generational family ties than most Americans, and yes, I’m a white English-Irish woman and a direct descendant of a Revolutionary War hero. But we’ve got nothing on the American Indian culture, history or traditions.
5
@ Carl. Visit the reservation and learn the cultural. It is fascinating. You will learn
4
Having worked in adoption for 40 years, there isn’t an simple solution to this problem. I always feel a sense of unease and concern when the motivation for adoption is to “rectify our blessings” and as some type of social justice statement. The parents are usually sincere but the best motivation for adoption is to be a parent. Many of these rescue missions ultimately have poor outcomes for the child.
19
@pigfarmer No, as a current foster care and adoption professional, your base motivation needs to be that you love and have a genuine desire to provide care for children. Not that you are saving them for your god, or because you have an emotional void in your life you need to fill, or any other reason. Children are not projects, or a means of meeting your own needs, be they religious, emotional, or otherwise. We cringe when the religious saviors walk through the door because they have a frequent tendency to center their worldview over the needs of the child. Reunification is the goal, and family placement is recognized, both in law and in terms of the lifelong wellbeing of the child, as the next best option.
17
@Dixie Land
No, the best motivation for adoption is to give a child a stable family. The desire to "be a parent" is always secondary to the interests of the child. I don't believe you are experienced in fostering or adoption. The first thing you learn as a potential foster parent is that the goal is to care for the child while the birth family gets stable. Reunification is the goal. Your desire to "be a parent" is secondary. Only when reunification is not possible is adoption possible.
As for the statement "rectify our blessings", how honorable!
Recognize our blessings and share them, be a force for good. These folks could have been like so many others in this country and bought a vacation home or a Land Rover SUV, or a boat or fancy jewelry. Instead, they did a good thing.
And "Rescue mission"? That's what it is when a child is removed from a drug addict mother. There is no other description. I applaud them.
21
If as AAG Martine says, Zachary's tribe "fought" for him, why was he placed with a non-Native foster family in the first place, and allowed to form attachments to this family? Truly looking out for this child, interpreted here as placing him in an adoptive home of Native parents, would mean caring for him the minute his addict mother gave birth to him, not swooping in now to remove him from the only home he has known in these very formative and crucial years of social/emotional development.
21
Just guessing but since the mom was a drug addict and not in Arizona that the family likely did not know what was up. Courts and legal processes move very slow in these cases, and a year can pass before you know it.
1
Speaking as an American Indian (1/2 Lakota Sioux, 1/4 Gros Ventre, 1/4 Euromix) who was adopted at the age of 16 months, I get the long war we Indians are having here, although I get it from my particular perspective. There must be a way to balance the opportunities for Indian children in the wider world against the opportunities for them in their tribal world, and those worlds are quite far apart. The intentions of the 1978 ruling were good ones, but the outcomes behind them merit deep scrutiny and skepticism. If I was raised on the reservation, or within the tribal community, I have a hard time imagining that I would have graduated with degrees from two leading universities and work in STEM as I do now. I give back to my people because so much was given to me through adoption, more than most people would get in several lifetimes. One solution might be to open adoption to non-tribal members with the requirement that there be some sort of effort to nurture the child's Indian identity through the age of twelve. My adoptive parents did their best to do this; I picked up where they left off, and although my Indian identity isn't simple, it's mine.
84
@Jerome Joseph Gentes: Yours is a very reasoned comment.
I have to admit that I cringe when I see lily white families adopting children from other cultures and not making the remotest effort to learn themselves or have the child learn their biological family's language, customs, culture.
3
“...to grow up with a sibling who looks more like him than we do, who knows what he’s gone through ...?”
This is exactly the case for why his extended tribal family matter,
and why he will grow from a merry little toddler to a young man with a lot of questions of identity and affiliation that his adoptive parents will not be able to answer.
I feel for any person who stands up and does what they see as the right thing. But the right thing in this case is far deeper and more historically fraught than the Brackeen's comments appear to grasp. "Zachary" will likely grasp these issues powerfully as he struggles to stitch together a convincing identity.
Drug abuse is awful. Children innocently caught up in such turmoil deserve the best of care. But the best of care cannot ignore the roots out of which we grow, or the complex histories upon which we stand. Tommy Orange's outstanding book, "There There" would be an excellent help as the Brackeens--and other white parents of non-white children-- attempt to make sense of all of this. This adoption mess is the end thread of a tangled, troubled history and cannot be extricated from it.
The first step is to take as deep and nuanced look as possible at how the tribes came to their beliefs in this case, and just how hard they are struggling against a fierce headwind to maintain their collective right to be. A lawsuit removing a critical foothold in that struggle will not serve 'Zachary', his sister, or our continued growth as a nation.
11
I am an old white woman who has lived near and worked with and for the Navajo (Dine’) for decades. It took me 20 minutes to stop crying while reading this article. I can not adequately express the travesty of this ruling. I do not personally know this family but the strong cultural bonds among the generations which the Navajo possess, can not be adequately realized by those of us in the dominant white culture.
Non-religious by nature I will truly pray everyday for the reunification of the children with the family in Arizona.
31
@M; thank you for your empathy, for your crying for 20 minutes. I only cried for two minutes.
And I too, will hold the baby girl and the James family in the Light.
3
What hypocrites these liberal commentators are. Does the progressive mantra of “race is just a social construct” only apply when it suits liberal needs? If the adopting couple were other than Evangelicals from Texas, commenters here would be supportive of their adoption efforts as, you know, we’re all of the same race.
13
Race is a social construct. Culture is, to risk redundancy, a cultural construct. That doesn’t mean they’re not real and powerful forces that inevitably shape our families and our lives.
7
As gay Americans adopt more children regardless of race, color, various mental capabilities from all over the globe the judge should not consider DNA paramount or a hindrance to their adoption unless the biological parents took legal action to preserve this preference during the placement process in writing. In my humble opinion that would be unconstitutional as well but probably permissible.
Genetically identifiable groups regardless of their physical characteristics, cultural backgrounds, and historical significance have no rights to discriminate against loving, capable, caring-families.
12
@Charlie What about a straight christian couple adopting a child that does no Identify as their birth gender. And imposing Good christian values on that child to keep them from being gay? Wouldn't you rather that child be adopted by parent who will love them know matter who they are, and can sympathize to some level their struggle? How is that any different from letting Indians raise their own children in a country that has killed off their people, stole their ancestral land and then ostracized them?
The author uses the term “Indian” a number of times to refer to Native American children without any attempt to even qualify it as “American Indian”. In 2019 this seems inaccurate and archaic.
9
‘Indian’ is still the preferred and normal word used for self-identification by the vast majority of indigenous in the United States in daily speech. My family and members of my tribe have used it since long before I was born in the seventies and continue to do so today. It’s not uncommon to code-switch when talking to non-tribal members and use ‘Native American’, but for us the issue is one of defining ourselves on our terms, rather by the norms and desires of others. I suspect that one of the two authors of the article have a close relationship with the Navajo and the voices she heard on the reservation made there way into the article.
14
@Jq
When I lived in Missoula, Montana for a few years, I played in a pool league at a small neighborhood bar with regulars once a week. Two of the other players were Indian; they carefully drank only coffee. After some time, when I felt accepted, I ventured to ask them: Would you prefer to called Native Americans?
They actually laughed out loud, and one said to me, as if I were a small child: "Indian will do just fine."
6
Are you really a liberal? Pointing out that they only drank coffee at a bar seems like a gross characterization of group of people who may or may not as individuals have any more troubles with alcohol and drugs than the rest of us. It’s a myth that American Indians process alcohol differently than any other person.
1
All of the readers here see something obvious about the importance of respecting the true roots and culture of the child. Let's hope the US justice system is wise enough to recognize this.
6
When will we as a nation begin to realize that Native Americans are sovereign under the Constitution? They have laws to protect their people because throughout American history that has not been the case. Missionaries in the past made decisions for Native people because they thought they weren't educated enough or too barbaric to understand white culture. Well they have their own culture and they want to pass that on to their children. This adopted family appears to love the children but will they in the future know how to answer questions the kids have about their culture, their people where they come from? Will they treat them differently or will the community they live in treat them differently? There has been a movement throughout our history to assimilate Native peoples with horrible consequences. If the tribe has a loving family available to take, love and care for the children then that's where they belong.
16
The children were born in TX, not the reservation. Reservations are sovereign but the people aren't.
3
@Nan - If an American gives birth in a foreign land, that child is American and has the rights thereof. I imagine the Navajos have a similar system.
2
The issue should be decided in the best interests of the CHILD. Not the tribe or some political bias. This little girl should be with her brother and the family that adopted him.
17
Or .. let’s think here.. would you want your adult child’s baby be given to a family in another state when you or your sibling (the aunt or uncle) offered a good home and blood ties?
2
If anyone thought that we aren't still actively trying to obliterate Native Americans and their culture, just read this article. As for Mr. Backeen's feigned concern about a baby growing up in a small home or with few financial resources, here's an idea: send Ms. James money every month to help her cover costs associated with raising her great-niece. Or take all the money you're spending in legal fees and set up a 529 account for the girl and her siblings. There are so many ways to help a family, but the Backeens aren't interested in doing that. They want ownership of baby and their white privilege (and the Koch brothers) tell them there ain't nothing wrong with that.
83
@alejitas
Thank you for your great reply.
1
What most Americans do not understand is that Native tribes, by Treaty, are sovereign NATIONS. This is no different than if a family decided to adopt a child whose Polish parents happened to be in the US when he was removed. Of course the state would have sent that child to Poland! A no brainer! Just because tribal lands are within the physical US makes no difference. The family was warned, they should have started working with the tribe right then to get the child placed. That’s what would have been in the best interest of the child.
21
@Lori B
"This is no different than if a family decided to adopt a child whose Polish parents happened to be in the US when he was removed."
Not really. If a Polish citizen was visiting the US with a child, US child services has ni authority to remove that child and put them into foster care in the US. The Polish parent can't just dump their kid in the US foster system.
If there is a problem with the kid, all would go through the Polish embassy.
Native tribes aren't sovereign nations at all. They have special standing in regards to taxes and government aid, but that's about it.
3
@Lori
No, Polish visitors are not US citizens. Native Americans are.
2
The Brackeen's behavior is sickening, as is the court's response. They've stolen this girl from her family, her tribe, her own culture and even her language, and they aren't even willing for her to have a couple weeks in the summer to connect with them. They've used their privilege, wealth, and power to take these children away, and the courts have let them. These people never should have been allowed to adopt Zachary, and now they've used that mistake to wrest a little girl away from her loving family.
24
@FG
Zachary's Mother wanted this family to adopt him.
But, you know better, don't you?
Nowhere in this article does it say this family is wealthy.
3
I wish we could put child over culture. But it's not that easy. Every child is a culture, the sum of its parts. At the same time, how many thousands of Chinese babies, girls mostly, were adopted into this country without such harsh judgement of the parents? At what point, too, does one's heritage recede into the past? I participate in none of the Germanic Teutonic culture of my ancestry. However, if I had to render a legal opinion, mine would be to restore the children, both of them, to their tribe. Unlike the Chinese baby girls, they are wanted by their nation. They have blood family. Unlike others, I think the parents have good intentions that go beyond white privilege. But they have two little boys already, so it's not their one and only chance to be parents, and yes, there are so many other lovely children waiting for homes. They knew what foster care meant, what the outcome might be, and here it is. Honor it.
14
@Bill Prange Did you just really equate participating in Germanic heritage to Native American? Can you not see the very existential difference?
So, if I needed to be adopted, I should only be adopted by Irish Americans to preserve my Irish ancestry? I do feel intense kinship with Ireland and lived there many years as an adult but it’s ludicrous to believe that’s the best environment for me to have grown up in. Oh but I don’t get people anymore. Multiculturalism and inclusivity is great as long as we actually stay in our cultural lanes?
18
While I support the law that tries to keep Native American children in their birth culture, I must add that after seeing a Reservation, the idea that our government cares and wants the best for the first people here is a terrible lie. I urge all to visit a Reservation, then call their congress person to discuss reparations.
10
@Carr Kleeb
What you have witnessed on reservations is one outstanding reason why illegal immigration must be curtailed. The enormous lacks in the longstanding governmental treatment of Native Americans on reservations need to be prioritized over those who feel that they can insert themselves, without any respect for our law, into the US openly expecting every want to be met by Americans . We owe the ancient native peoples of the American lands our very best of everything.
All of southwestern US was at one time Mexican.
1
Just another way of insulting and controling an Indigenous Community. Cultural disrespect.
16
This is peak whiteness. "Feelings," "space," "privacy," "financial resources": That is why the white people should be able to quasi-abscond with a Native child.
But, the argument in court against ICWA will be, ironically, about "race."
16
After we stopped trying to exterminate them, white Americans spent decades trying to eradicate native American cultures and language. One major tactic was the removal of children from families and sending to schools to be "civilized". This was done, by ignorant and, I would like to believe, well meaning people to help "save" the children and help them integrate into white society. The incalculable damage being done to indigenous cultures wasn't even part of the equation. Apparently to this Texas family it still isn't. Dr. Brackeen said it was hard not to get attached - you're fostering the child. It's part of the job description to NOT get attached.
There is so much wrong with turning the clock back to where we legitimize white paternalism that there isn't enough room here to cover it. The law is a good middle ground giving native families fair preference for the adoption of native children. It's a very small thing that is an attempt to right massive wrongs.
26
We have taken just about everything we can away from the Navajos and other Native American tribes. Why not their children? In this case, Kandis Martine defined a core issue. “How will they be told that their tribe and their family fought for them, but this non-Native, non-relative family won?” Maybe someone can tell them that the Brackeens, had a large brick home on an acre, with pool, greenhouse, zip line and a place he could zoom around on Rollerblades. In other words, they have more money than the Navajo family. Plus, they have the Koch brother's bank account sitting in the background. And by the way, they are Evangelicals. On the other hand, the Navaho only had “sheep, goats, herding dogs, chickens and horses.” How can that compete with rollerblades? If the child did not have a Navajo family who wanted him, maybe. I met a man who told me that he and his wife were saving up enough to adopt a Chinese baby. I asked him why didn't he look here. There are plenty of children who want a family, Wednesday's Child works to find adoptive parents. He told me they didn't want just any baby. They wanted a China baby. Recently there was a report that a central American mother had her baby stolen and sold to an American white couple. She somehow tract it down. But the court ruled that we didn’t have a treaty with her country so tough luck. It seems stealing babies is ok if we don’t have a treaty. Anyway, the white couple had more money.
14
What the Brackeens don't understand is that it's not that they don't have the right color of skin that bodes ill for the sweet little kids they want to adopt. It's that they think the issue is only something a simple as skin color. By reducing the issue to something so simplistic, they have already shown themselves unprepared for raising these two children to be strong, culturally rooted, and secure in their identity. Certainly they have the material means for a comfortable life, but we all know that those benefits are a small part of a child's sense of well-being. These children are Native Americans, and spring from a distinct, deeply-rooted culture. They should not be deprived of that just so the Brackeens should feel good about their material success.
17
The Brackeens describe why they are unfit. They admit they don't know how to explain the situation bc its too traumatic. How are they suppose to teach the children about their culture, their roots, and make sure they're proud to be Native. These children can't be raised as white bc unfortunately people will see them as other. The Brackeens don't have the capacity or knowledge to raise the children. They are too focused on being financially stable instead. Sure that will help the children, but there's a reason why Native people are so poor and lack many of the opportunities we all take for granted. It seems that the Brackeens really haven't given this any serious thought or considered the history of Natives in America
376
@al
Nonsense. It is the Navajo is insist upon being regarded as "other."
The median household in on the Navajo Nation is $20,005
Unemployment is 42% and 43% lives below the poverty level. Only 56% have high school degrees and only 7% college degree.
25
@al Oh please. It will always present a challenge for how best to talk to a child about heritage and adoption issues. That doesn't make them unfit, quite the reverse if they are wrestling with how to do so best.
22
@al I'm not sure that we read the same article.
14
This is an incredibly interesting read. As an international/transracial adoptee, my heart breaks for the Zachary and his sister. While I have no doubt that the adoptive parents believe that they have good intentions, I cannot help but already feel the loss, anger, and confusion Zachary and his sister will have in the future. I, myself, have struggled with the loss of culture that was a direct result of my own adoption. I truly hope that Zachary and his sister will find the strength in the future to make peace with a decision that was made for them.
20
I started reading these comments with trepidation, but the top ten most recommended give me real hope that we're developing a deeper understanding of culture, our troubled history, and a growing sociopolitical awareness--and it's not just the comments, but the number of those recommending them.
Ugliness is everywhere, but so too appears to be growth and understanding.
Thanks for this feeling of hope.
7
an emotional story, but the idea of race as a factor is a dead end street because we are all part of the same race, the human race. cultural and social differences certainy exist, with long histories, as do sovereignty and property rights for Native Americans, but to codify the divisive notion that there are actual different races, if only as a legal fiction, is wrong and divisive. we shoud be moig toward a society that brigs everyone together, not one that pushes people apart... because look where that's gotten us.
5
I think the issue is culture and history, not race.
2
Read “There There” by Tommy Orange. He puts it all in perspective in this amazing and enlightening novel.
4
The are several disconcerting aspects of this case, chief among them the ignorance and erasure of Native American identity and culture and how undermining ICWA will open the floodgates for more legal battles geared towards gutting protections for minorities.
It is astounding that an educated person of legal standing can equate immigration from another country to a Native American moving between states. Once a Native American leaves the reservation, they repudiate their Native American heritage and tribal rights, too? Does that make sense?
The adoptive parents, especially the father, offer a troubling glimpse of how they will approach their adoptive children's identity. Adopting Zachary's sibling because Zachary needs one "who looks more like him than we do" and "who shares his story" is actually not in these children's best interest, because they have been already cast as Others with an origin story unlike anyone in that family. Throughout this entire article, there is not one mention of the Brackeens attempting to reach out to the Navajo to preserve a sense of cultural identity. How will these children know their story if they are kept from it? And how will this family engage with the painful history of Manifest Destiny and its repercussions?
Their reluctance to accept a custody arrangement speaks volumes as to how they will treat the cultural heritage of these children -- through negation.
30
“How can it not be in his best interest,” Mr. Brackeen said, “to grow up with a sibling who looks more like him than we do, who knows what he’s gone through and who shares his story more than anyone else?” Does he not realize that this is also a an argument for staying with his tribal people? There are scores of Native Americans that were "adopted out" throughout the 50's, 60's and 70's and they come back to their tribes trying to reconnect with their culture and their community, because that's what they have been missing since they were children. This is why we have the Indian Child Welfare Act, because it didn't end with boarding schools taking children, they continued to steal children from their tribes and the Koch brothers want to make sure it happens again.
34
While I salute their intentions and care for a young (unrelated) child, this family needs to read a few books to gain a broader historical context for why this custody case is making national headlines. That fact coupled with the comments by the parent(s) regarding “skin color” show a lack of understanding for the greater implications of their actions and defiance of the law. As another reader commented below, there is so much more rolled into this situation, it’s not as simple as the parents believe.
22
It’s a custody case. It’s about the child not the tribe! Racism has two sides. This child should be treated as any other. Her best interest should be the only issue.
5
Once again, those of European descent think that they know what is best for everyone. If they truly cared about both children, they would allow them to be surrounded by those who love them and can teach them their culture, language, etc. And just because they have more money doesn’t mean that this couple can give the children better lives. Money and all it can give isn’t necessarily the best for the children.
As an immigrant from Portugal, I know the value of having parents who taught me my language, family history, culture, etc. Had for some reason my parents not been able to care for me, I would have wanted to have been surrounded by my poor relatives who would have loved me and provided me with the knowledge of where I came from.
12
@M. Natália Clemente Vieira
In addition, it seems that there are other siblings who care about these children and share their experiences. So instead of wanting to separate the little ones from their relatives, this well to do couple should work to eradicate poverty and get help for the biological mother. She needs assistance with her drug problem and she needs birth control education so that she doesn’t have any more children. She is only 33 and Zachary is the seventh child to be removed from her care. And then she has the little girl.
Why doesn’t the Goldwater Institute and its donors with ties to the Koch brothers stop targeting the law and use the money do something to help improve the lives of Native Americans rather than enrich the lawyers?
9
Since the Brackeens, with all their money, are so concerned about the poverty of the children’s relatives, why on earth don’t they provide financially for the great-aunt and half-siblings? I guarantee that the little boy and his sister will grow up to question why their wealthy adoptive parents didn’t strive to help their children’s other family. It’s a recipe for alienation and pain once the kids are older. And it’s appalling that the Brackeens are appealing the judge’s ruling re: the little girl’s short visits with her bio family. They should be planning to bring both children as often as possible, and should start thinking of the other family and its culture as part of their own. Only in this way might they avoid future estrangement from these kids they purport to care about. But can their narrow evangelical worldview expand to what is truly in the children’s best interest? Or will their blind white colonial Christian privilege come back to bite them - hard - when these kids realize what was done to them?
64
@Kiki B It will come back to bite them.
2
Another way to look a this is that in the shared custody arrangment, the children will grow up in both cultures. And at some point these children WILL make their own choice which to me is more important than other people making the choice for them. And their lives probably will have a richer meaning for us as they share grow up and share their experience.
And another concern is if this progress to the Supreme Court, it will have many other unforseen consequences. There are many different kinds of people in our country at this point, and having a Supreme Court precident will setup a much more difficult way to deal with the reality of all situations like this that arise in the future.
1
Thank goodness for judges. They cut through the baggage to get to
what’s best for the child. Shared custody in this case is the best choice. It might be different in another similar case so
I wouldn’t count on family court accepting it as knee jerk precedence.
13
Nothing easy about this. I hope this couple comes to realize the value of the judge’s decision. They and their entire family could benefit enormously from a relationship with the tribal community. They don’t see this now, they only see material wealth as a measure of environment. But the tribe would do them a great honor and service by welcoming them as co-parents and therefore part of an extended family.
8
This story just hurts my heart.
My two siblings are adopted, so I am aware that adoption can be beneficial for children who might otherwise suffer in a non-loving home, or in abusive foster care. I used to be very against white families adopting black children, for the same reasons as this article presents: that the kids would grow up not seeing themselves reflected in their parents faces, nor would the parents be able to understand the world that these kids come from, or would face, based upon their race/ethnicity. My opinion has softened on this, because at the end of the day, a child raised with love and stability can eventually find their cultural home.
In this instance, however, both of these Native children have loving family and homes who desperately wish to raise them. While Zachary has bonded with the Brackeens and they seem to have financial well being, he will not grow up with the day to day of his culture and blood-relatives. He might be raised with all of the benefits the Brackeens can provide, but that comes at a cost that he may or may not be able to realize later in life.
The last bitter pill is that the Brackeens are evangelical, a form of religion that is miles away from the spiritual world of Native Americans, and the type of religion that underlies the oppression of native peoples across the Globe.
For the Brackeens not to understand this, and to hold these children away from their natural and cultural family, is the epitome of white privilege.
62
Another legal theory propounded by a Koch Brothers funded organization. Does anybody actually think they are doing this because they actually care about kids? They care about stealing whatever Native Americans have left for their own benefit. Just like they want everything else.
30
Oh, these people are clueless! It's not about "skin color" as Jennifer Brackeen said, it's about so very much more.
Why would they have more rights than the child's family members? That astonishes me. Why would adopting one boy give them any claim to any of his siblings?
Stay far away from people like the Brakeens. Don't let them foster any children that they can't eventually adopt. What a bad idea that turned out to be.
46
The people bankrolling this case could care less about these kids or the Brackeens. The real goal is to confuse the meaning behind the equal protection clause in the U.S. Constitution, to come to the defense of people in the majority, i.e. white people. The Times should have done an explainer of the legal arguments. (See the main precedent where equal protection was raised in a custody case, Palmore v. Sidoti. It was used to protect the rights of a black mother seeking custody of her child after she entered into an interracial marriage)
If you can confuse the meaning behind the equal protection clause you can get rid of Brown, you can get rid of affirmative action, etc. The equal protection clause was clearly written into the 14th Amendment to protect minority rights from the majority. Now, some want to use this as a hammer to beat back those protections. We all need to worry about what is happening here.
45
@Agarre Thank you for stating that. You are indeed correct that Zachary, the Brackeens and the tribe are all pawns in a game that is probably funded by the treasonist Koch brothers. The end result is indeed the protection of the right of whites over people of color. And yes this is another assault on our rights and freedoms that we must remain vigilant to protect.
5
There was a time when white people could not adopt a black child. I hope the child's best interests are always taken in consideration.
15
@Julia-What would you say about a black couple adopting a white child?
1
@Sallie
Same thing. Is it so inconceivable that black people could be well off enough to want a white kid?
3
@Sallie
I want to offer this suggestion to the Brackens family:
Have you tried abandoning the lawyer and all the money you give him for a few months,
In the meantime, try spending the money and the time to learn the Navajo language, culture including culinary traditions, lifestyle, history...use that money to hire a cultural advisor instead.
Then come back to talk to the Navajo people again. Maybe even in their language.
It appears to me that the Brackeens truly love Zachary and his sister. But coming from top down has worked out poorly. Lawyers are bad at being mediators. I hope the Brackeens will stand under, so to understand.
The above suggestion is inspired by a Caucasian couple, staunch Catholics, and Democrats, who spend their free time learning how to do the African American hair on their adopted African American girls and doing all other things they could think of to keep the girls’ identity, while offering the so-called “white people privileges” they can give. All sides were pleased during the adoption process.
10
Native Americans have been victims of violent cultural genocide for centuries—forced to erase their culture and like like colonizers on their own land. The adoption preference for native families makes sense—a Navajo child deserves to know who he is—a white family can not provide that. White Adoption is a kind of cultural genocide, too—if it’s the best option for a child’s safety, ok. But a preference for a family of the own race makes a lot of sense beyond native Americans also.
White people whining about racial discrimination against them is appalling.
22
No dilemma here, it’s pretty well documented Native families have their children stolen by for profit adoption agencies. Just another case of genocide. Good job America.
16
As a tribal member, there's nothing new under the sun here. It's just another rich, white holy roller family trying to save the Indians while helping themselves to their children.
Their privilege and sense of entitlement to our children practically drips off the page.
#PROTECTICWA
52
@BothSides it is so telling that two (count 'em) white folks can challenge the ICWA and get this kind of traction when the historical record shows that the entirety of the First Nations had no recourse when the US government broke tenet after tenet of treaty after treaty. Perfectly illustrates what privilege is.
4
Oh boy, here we go again God telling White people that it's their purpose to foster other races. The audacity of this couple is astonishing, these child should be kept with his tribe and his people. Just imagine if this was a Jewish child and a non Jew was trying to adopt the child against the wishes of the community all hell would break loose. It's only because Native Americans lack any political clout that this is being allowed to happen, White people you have done quite enough for the Native Americans already, at least let them keep their children, they've lost everything else.
33
@Concerned Citizen nope - the aunt wants him and is a relative. Also, I would be terrified for my child to grow up evangelical. Way more terrified than if my kid gew up in a loving but poor home.
5
@Concerned Citizen "Navajo social workers said they had found an unrelated tribal couple in New Mexico to adopt the boy. A Texas judge ruled for the tribe, citing the child welfare law. The Brackeens had three days to pack up Zachary and say goodbye....They obtained an emergency stay of the judge’s order. The tribe ultimately backed out, and in January, the Brackeens finalized the adoption." Did you conveniently leave out this part? The found a couple that wanted him but the White family used their money to appeal the courts decision and fight the tribe. So no there is more than a great aunt who is "on welfare" as you so condescendingly put it that wanted the child. If it were you you would want that child with a Jewish couple (and there have been several Jewish orphanages that only place Jewish babies with Jewish families) rather than someone who has no connection (except maybe their ancestors killed off the Natives) to the child and cannot give them any insight into their unique background.
3
What I find lacking in any of the Brackeen’s comments is a sense that they are committed to ensuring that those kids will grow up learning about their birth culture, that the family will celebrate that culture. Instead, they believe that a big house, a lot of money, and God’s will make them the better parents for these kids. While the article is about the challenge to existing law, I was stuck on how distasteful this couple and their prosperity theology came across and how I really did not want these kids to grow up in that environment.
35
This article, although well done, completely ignores one of the most basic principles behind ICWA. Believe it or not, the fight over ICWA as depicted by this article is over one of the secondary provisions of ICWA, the guidelines to be used in state courts. This is somewhat misleading.
The purpose of ICWA was certainly to help protect tribal identity, but primarily and fundamentally, it was to give tribes more dominion over the children in their care, and that meant that tribal courts could decide the placement of their children. Tribal courts are not bound by the state placement guidelines, and are able to make fair decisions for families who might otherwise experience prejudice or cultural misunderstandings.
8
It isn't a money thing otherwise one with more money might get your child. I wonder why this child was in foster care anyway. Did both Indian parents want to leave the reservation, so to speak? If they did there is no heritage to recover. The parents had chosen to move on from poor heritage hogans in the middle of nowhere and it would be right to raise their kid in the environment the parents wanted. Did someone steal the kid from the reservation? Did Mom or Dad petition the tribe for foster care? Lots of issues. My granddaughter came up and said "grandpa, I'm Mexican" Her dad is but her mom is American. I told her, no, Mexicans live in Mexico. You were born American. No hyphen no dichotomy, no confusion. Now she is proudly going to the Naval Academy as an American. We make too much of heritage.
9
It is past time to do away with the Native American thing and to treat all Americans the same regardless of race or ethnic background. Anyone born in this country is a native of this country.
9
@Aaron Adams -- I wonder if you'd say the same if your own culture, language, foods and family traditions were forcibly taken from you, at times violently beaten out of you, and you were removed from your own home and city to a place hundreds of miles away and forced to cooperate or die?
Just imagine... and bear with me since this is all I can come up with for "American culture"... no more NFL or any other professional sports league, no more 4th of July fireworks and hotdogs and BBQ's, no more speaking English, no more Disney or Mickey Mouse, no more Christmas, no more Star Wars, no turkey on Thanksgiving, no Easter egg hunts... And how about a forced hairstyle and clothing you would never choose to wear yourself, on top of being dragged away from your family?
Do you see why this might be problematic? And how do we define "American"? Isn't the epitome of being an American having the right to live your own life the way you please?
100
@Aaron Adams What exactly does "do away with the Native American thing" mean?
4
@Dee
Sounds like what Progressives are doing
to America as we speak.
2
Many of the people who are saying that race doesn't matter are looking at this from a very one-sided (that side being white) perspective. If an African-American family or a Native or Asian-American family wanted to adopt a white child, would these people still say that race doesn't matter? That it's not a factor?
11
Yes, whole-heartedly. I would think many of them wouldn't bat an eye.
9
@Sean Garner-I wish I shared your rose-colored outlook but I'm not so sure.
1
@Sean Garner Nonsense. You must be looking through rose colored glasses if you believe that.
1
White Americans are an odd bunch. On one hand they flock to ancestry sites and have their DNA analyzed because they are convinced it’s somehow foundational. They search for every blood relative and claim them as kin and even start taking on various aspects of some new found heritage. While at the same time they completely discount the importance of culture or ancestry or kinship when discussing Native culture or the importance of tribal affiliation except of course when they are dishonestly claiming it for themselves.
23
@Anon One can be interested in one's ancestry without considering it foundational. Taking on aspects of some newfound heritage? Who does this? I don't know anyone - give examples. And then these same people discount Native American culture? They not only discount it, they completely discount it. Unless they are claiming it for themselves, and not only claiming it, dishonestly claiming it. Who are these terrible, myopic people?
6
I honestly do not understand the one half sibling importance over the importance of other half siblings and a biological relative. Also, on the Crow Reservation near me, cousins are considered as brothers and sisters so a lot of cultural words for family have different meanings-in the Crow tribe anyway.
I grew up, a white girl, in an upper middle class white suburb back East. I have 3 siblings and there is no connection really between us-maybe a Facebook “like” now and then, if that counts. So I am confused as to why the judge used the half sibling term as a justification.
However, the baby is there now. I just hope that money was not the reason.
6
The act, he continued, “was about stopping unjustified breakups of Indian families, but this child has never lived in an Indian family.”
So by this lawyer’ s reasoning, just because children have never lived with their cultural family, breakups are justified. I’m greatly saddened but not surprised by this attitude.
Only adoptees can truly understand what it’s like to separated from their origins...
11
@Kathy
Thank you for your comment. You quoted the
“Unjustified breakups of families” and argued based on the individual child. He and his sister now with the family in Oklahoma are not the only members of the family. Certainly the children are THE priority but given the stability of their amazing family in Arizona, that family should also have their legal standing be considered.
1
I'm born American, to two immigrant parents. Ask any other person born to immigrant parents; around their teen/college years, they'll stop soaking up white American culture and want to reconnect with their parent's heritage. Having "the right color of skin" isn't what heritage is about. These kids might not feel disconnected from their heritage now, but they will when they grow up. Maybe their biological parents aren't in the right space to take care of them, but they have so many other loving Navajo family members to take care of them. Just because they might not be affluent doesn't make them any less capable or loving. I'm sure the Brackeens are lovely people, but they don't have the right to say that they can provide more because they've got money and some Manifest Destiny mindset. (Side note, Judge Kim's family moved to America, knowing that they would lose ties to Korean heritage. Navajo people have lost their ties to heritage because it was stolen from them...)
32
@A.A: Very true. I am a first-generation American and my parents made well sure that we spoke our native language and had connections to our extended family because of the psychological issues too many immigrant kids had in feeling something missing in their lives.
4
Zachary was the seventh child to be removed by authorities from Jackie, his birth mother, now 33, - that is a stunning and sad point made in this difficult issue. Obviously the supports for this women are inadequate.
28
Yes, let’s blame the system for this one woman’s failings.
4
@American. No, the legitimate question is: why did the tribes not intervene more quickly with this individual?? Somewhere around the 3rd or 4th kid, the tribe(s) had to know how she was. They could not stop her behaviors, but could have made advance provisions for her kids. It should not have taken 7 kids. And the old, distant relative already a caregiver is not trying to get the 4 yo—so much for sacred family or tribal connections.
3
@Citizen60 -- Just wondering how "a tribe" or any other member of her family is meant to keep track of one woman who is somewhere in Texas from using drugs (while the tribe/family is in Arizona), and also somehow prevent her from having more children? This is completely unrealistic and potentially illegal.
How do you suggest the tribe should have "stopped her behaviors"?
Unfortunately, this happens every day in America, amongst every race and ethnic group, due to the dangerous and addictive nature of drugs.
1
Placing children with adoptive families that don't share the same cultural heritage, ethnicity, etc., is a form of genocide. It is yet another form of violence perpetuated against already marginalized people.
9
I believe that it is a well meaning but flawed concept to give preference based upon race. Should a black family be given less preference in adopting a white child? Should a Catholic family be given less preference than a Jewish family? To carve out a single group based on anything but the overall good of the child taking ALL aspects into account is simply wrong. The real issue for the judge is trying the impossible task of balancing all of those many aspects and variables and trying to foresee what will be the best option for the child while setting aside the titanic emotion coming from all sides. That is a heroic task because any such judge will inevitably become a saviour to half and a devil to the other.
6
@NYer Yes. Absolutely. A Black family should be given preference in adopting a black child.
Rather irresponsible of this family to pursue such a course of action. If you care so deeply for the children why would you want to severely damage their cultural heritage? This seems extraordinarily selfish and I hope the family reconsiders.
5
Here, we have the Nisenan Tribe. Their Federal Land Trust was established by W Wilson, and based on original treaty. Then came the Rancherias terminations, and the white court dissolved the trust illegally, then dismissed the case by statute of limitations. Now we have white politicians advocating to “get out of the reservation business” and grant the land as individual parcels.
When you talk about cultural “erasure” , this is what our legal system means. The individual native land owners will be tempted to sell their parcels, so eventually there will be no Nisenan lands. The individual families are deemed unfit, so eventually there will be no Nisenan children.
White privilege. Christian “values”.
9
“And the only explanation is that we don’t have the right color of skin? How do we explain that to our own children?”
No, you explain to your children the history of white Americans - like us - forcibly removing American Indian children from their homes and communities (this after driving them - violently - out of their own territory). You should be doing this already: we all have a duty to be clear about our legacy of destruction in Native communities. Even more so if you are trying to provide a home for a child from that community! It is not about skin color or race - it is about a complex, tragic, and bloody history. How quick we all want to forget it!
17
Oh dear, this sounds a lot like a glorified version of "the white man's burden." Well intentioned wealthy white Christians taking in poor little native children to give them a better life - despite the fact that they are taking away these children's cultural patrimony. How will they learn Navajo if they are not living with the Din'eh? How will they learn the sacred significance of the landscape if they live in Texas where to drill for oil is a social duty? And how will the children grow when they discover as adolescents that they may not be "white" enough or "american" enough for some?
10
We adopted a Native American child many years ago, who was relinquished by both birth parents. Our experience with open adoption has been nothing short of miraculous. We are and have been in constant contact with the birth family, who are our extended family. Our child, now an adult, has grown up with a strong sense of who she is - Native American to the core. I realize our story is different in that there are no foster care or state issues involved; however, adoption of Native American children is and will always be a complex issue. These kids are citizens of sovereign nations, just like South Korea or Russia, only smaller. Their courts typically have a say in whether inter-country adoptions are allowed. That doesn't seem to be the case here.
Navajo relatives are rightfully concerned about losing their sacred children. In the not-too-distant past, children were forcefully taken off reservations and put into boarding schools or other foster facilities in order to Christianize and Whiten them. In many cases those children died; mass graves have been found. The painful memories drive a spear of fear through Native's hearts. We must respect and honor the decisions of sovereign Native courts. In this case, it doesn't appear that the Native court was involved at all. The children are clearly citizens of the Navajo Nation. I wonder why and also wonder how they would rule.
25
@Petra -- I'm so glad your adoption situation has worked out well. Thank you for thinking of both parties, for honoring your daughter's native heritage, and for reminding us all of the not-so-distant past and why these laws, aiming to protect native children and native sovereignty, were put into place in the first place.
2
Shouldn't a child's well-being be the number one consideration for adoption? Shouldn't siblings be kept together - isn't that more important than politics? Loving adoptive parents will support their children's cultural heritage, regardless of who they are. Keeping siblings together should be of utmost importance.
16
@ TR NJ
I see the value for the siblings the Brackeens advocate to be together. But TR the story also reports on and gives us photos of the other siblings in Arizona. So it does not seem so easy.
What is best for the child should always be what is best for the law. In our continuing evolution of racial diversity and the preference for that diversity among the young in America, a child's ethnic heritage should have minimal to no bearing on adoption. Racial disparities will seem "quaint" by the time children born in America today become adults.
7
It would be better to assimilate immigrants into Native American culture than the other way around. Historically, Native Americans have a culture that views themselves and their environment as one. The immigrants proceeded to treat both Native Americans and the environment as obstructions to their progress, with the inevitable result for both.
7
For decades I have been an advocate around various indigenous issues including ICWA cases. Nothing is easy and it is often a case of intentions, usually good, not equaling outcome, often quite nuanced between good and not good. If the Brackeens truly want the best for the children I suggest they learn Navajo and include the cultural celebrations in their home. Otherwise they are simply perpetuating white systemic supremacy with a strong touch of fundamentalist Christianity neither of which legally is in the best interest of the child. Isn't this a clash of spiritualities/religions as much as a clash of legal systems? If in fact they want the best for both children they will help them in every possible way to keep their culture and heritage, no Christian conversions or summer Bible schools or any indoctrination outside Navajo culture and spirituality. It isn't about saving anyone, this is about community, culture and history.
23
@Sherrie Noble
The child might be grown by the time they learn Navajo. Being realistic, there are many quite suitable parents who will never learn a native language. OTOH, there are far from enough foster parents and many who do it for the money too.
When I was a superintendent of a Juvenile treatment facility it was very common to see kids with multiple foster placements, from 5-10 was commonly seen with difficult kids. That was in the mid 1970's then again from mid 1980's for 5 years. Juvenile workers and social worker jobs had the highest turnover of all state jobs then and still remain a tough job. Foster parent agencies seem to be more plentiful than the actual parents? Look at the money foster parents get for difficult kids-it's so far from reality it isn't funny.
Judge Kim got it as close to right as can be.
7-8 kids and we are having this conversation about whats right for the kid...
10
Native Americans may have some similarities with immigrants (coming from a different culture and being a minority in their country) but they are not immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. The judge's comparison was faulty. Native maericans are people who were conquered and dispossessed of much of their property rights and self-determination. And until recently, they were the victims of de jure discrimination by the governments of their conquerors.
We have an obligation to help Native Americans preserve their culture and community if that is their wish. Our courts should not make the mistake of looking at Zachary and his sister as autonomous children and narrowly applying the standard "best interest of the child" doctrine which tends to separate these children from the Native American community.
22
There is an old legal cliché - "hard cases make bad law" that may well apply to this situation. It applies to this situation very strongly.
First, you have the abuses that led to the Indian Child Welfare Act, on its face a logical and sensible effort to redress a terrible wrong done to native Americans. Second, you have the basic problem that there are a lot of native Americans with substance abuse problems, etc. whose children require intervention, and a shortage of suitable adoptive and foster parents in the Native American community. Third, you have the need to place the children in a stable home environment as soon as possible.
To this you add an adoptive family, the Brackeens, who seem highly suitable, although I'd be happier if they were more willing to help their adoptive children maintain an association with their Cherokee and Navajo families. Still, in this particular instance you have a good family that offers stability. Hard case - and now it is being used to challenge a good law, the ICWA, probably quite cynically by conservatives with an "axe to grind." So while what is needed is balance and nuance, you have people with an agenda, trying to make bad law with a hard case.
21
No one "owns" a child, regardless of biology, religion, etc. The best interest of the child should be the ONLY factor, not just one of them.
23
@Observer-If an African-American family wanted to adopt a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed child, would you still say that race doesn't matter?
2
@Sallie If I said no, race doesn't matter, would you even believe me?
3
@ Observer. Yes the best interest of the child - but who determines and what are the criteria. Is financial stability more important than culture and unification with loving family.
1
Fascinating story and in my opinion, exceptional journalism on the part of Ms. Hoffman. She led us through all the emotional twists and turns producing a very sympathetic portrait of both families. As skeptical as I am of the wisdom of our partisan elected judiciary in Texas, my experience is that our Family court bench is a cut above the rest. Child placement in Texas Family courts is a rigorous business. The child is always represented by his/her own ad-litem attorney and the social studies are detailed and exhaustive. I actually have great confidence that Judge Kim made the right decision. This is precisely the kind of case where a competent judge is preferable to the arbitrary operation of statute however laudatory the the creation of that law might have been.
11
The foster parents need to read two books -- "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and "Lucky Boy" (a 2017 novel by Shanthi Sekaran) -- to get some context around what they are hoping to achieve.
10
“The only explanation is that we don’t have the right color of skin.”
This is a common misunderstanding and one that we need to talk about. It’s not about skin color. It is a history of very real destruction and theft that has led to where Native communities are today. This society is responsible, and has to make it right, and taking children away is not doing that. It doesn’t matter if we personally weren’t the ones who did the damage. The damage is done and we should all feel responsible to make amends.
48
This is about doing right by the child. The foster parents adore him and his future is assured. It is a presumption that two highly educated individuals would shut out his access to his culture. I am sure in the future when he asks or wants to take part in ceremonies neither of his families should deny him his rights. For now, if displaced he would grow with a cultural identity and a rather dim future. Not fair. Such laws based on identity stem from the cultural guilt of a white nation that stole. At no stage is the welfare of the child taken into consideration. If his Native American family cares for him, then let them offer him the best life he can have, with the Brackeens. That is love, no conditions.
9
They are trying to shut out her culture as we speak by fighting Judge Kim’s ruling that the child spend time with her biological family for short visits every year.
20
I'm amazed the Brackeen family can't see the contradiction in trying to claim they have some right to adopt the second child based on the family rights of the first child ... yet the family rights of the Navajo don't matter at all.
66
I don’t care so much about either sets of parents. It’s about little kids and stability. Time is of the essence. Whatever you’re going to do, do it.
Through an unfortunate set of events, I lived (quite happily) with my grandparents until I was seven. I then went to live with my father and stepmother, whom I barely knew. I wanted to go home. This was not the desired reaction in the minds of the adults. You can figure out the rest.
You’d think at my age, I’d be over it by now. But when I look at my little grandchildren, I can’t imagine one of them being uprooted and placed with strangers. Given enough time or distance relatives can be strangers.
That being said, we don’t want the State to easily to remove our children from us. This could become arbitrary, punitive, or politically driven.
Foster care is foster care. Parents are parents. Dragging this through the court system has ostensibly given an advantage to the foster parents. Another commenter suggested shared custody. While not ideal, if amenable to both parties it may be a best case solution.
Time is of the essence. Best wishes to the children.
18
The United States Government did everything in it's power to destroy the culture, language and families of Native Americans. Now, because they are ravaged by the results of that policy, they are losing their children again. If these children were white, they would have been automatically placed with a relative before going into the foster care system.
34
@Jacqueline Gauvin
Sure, in a dream world? There are too few relatives in many cases and too few foster parents in all cases, overall. White isn't in the foster kids mind-love, food, safety/shelter more so.
Pointing fingers is not conducive to a proper home setting solution.
6
@Concerned Citizen they have generations of blood relatives and half siblings in their Navajo community, but you and other white people seem to happily ignore it.
1
@Mike
Kids don’t need to have a kitchen they can roller skate around to have a happy childhood. They need family, their culture. They may not be upset now, but once that 3 year old boy becomes an adult he will want to know about the culture he came from, and it’s clear from their statements that the foster parents want to hide their culture from them as much as possible. Most likely because they want to brainwash them with extremist Evangelical views.
What if they were a devout Muslim couple adopting these children? Would we be seeing so much sympathy if that were the case? Most likely no.
The fact that these parents signed up for temporary adoption very much knowing that it was supposedly to be temporary, and then are now pushing for custody of BOTH kids speaks volumes about these parents and how dishonest their motives are.
1
“We wonder what will happen to these children down the road and how this will all be explained to them,” she said. “How will they be told that their tribe and their family fought for them, but this non-Native, nonrelative family won?” Children grow up and ask questions. Most "personal responsibility" advocates ignore the context in which the impoverished and often grieving many of who self-medicate, came to where they are. The overall cultural legacies of Christian residential schools, unwed mothers homes and forced adoptions, and economic predation and privilege continue and will continue to unfold. "Solomonic wisdom" concerning mothers and infants, or mothers' families and mothers' infants is not so wise. The Biblical Solomonic offer to cut a child in two to see which woman backs away because she loves a child more is the sort of emotional blackmail long inflicted on young while single mothers to get them to "surrender" their children out of love. My heart goes out to these two Navajo children.
16
Maybe it would be better for Zachary to have his sister living with him but it would clearly be better for his sister to live with her obviously loving extended family and four other half siblings. How will the Brakeens explain to Zachary that they separated him from this large vibrant family that wanted him?
30
The boy should have never been allowed to be adopted by the non-native family. Not sure how the tribe dropped the ball on that one, thus opening up this can of worms.
8
Why not provide financial help to the birth parents helping them to raise this kid? Why go through this legal hassle to adopt this kid? I am sure there are plenty of "different" kids waiting to be adopted.
13
@Usok- So true Usok. Native-Americans and African-Americans are far more likely to have their children removed from their homes than white children by the authorities. It makes much more sense to help out the biological families rather than giving money to strangers to raise their children which is what foster care does.
2
Because of America's state and federal mistreatment of Native Tribes for over 500 years (which includes but is not limited to mass genocide, putting them on reservations with no means of support, a lack of jobs, forced cultural assimilation and religious conversion, forcibly taking their children away at the age of 5 to missionary schools 100s of miles away where they can't speak their language or be with their family and only returning them when they were 18) most Native American's are desperately poor and a large minority have drug and alcohol problems because of our mistreatment.
Because so many tribal members are poor, state and local authorities take their children away, causing a further cultural erosion of that. Taking tribal children away from a tribe is cultural genocide and should not continue. FYI, I learned all about this when I did my Master's thesis on economic development on tribal lands.
16
The Goldwater Institute has used a tactic that conservatives have been fashioning for years. Pick a perfect test case, a very sympathetic one in this instance. Then use that case as precedent to go after the laws that they really want overturned.
Here those laws have to do with Indian preferences for casinos tax breaks, but also certain restrictions on land use and mining.
A Christian family providing a home for an Indian child makes a much better case than a multinational mining company.
It also plays to the Supreme Courts efforts to transform the Equal Protection Clause from a vehicle requiring real equality, to a set on inert words promising only formal equality.
The greatest irony of this case is that our courts have repeatedly refused to recognize tribal treaty rights that have been violated by whites for over two hundred years (see the Onandoga case right here in New York State as an example) At the same time they vigorously seek to limit tribal rights under our constitutional framework.
This case is not about race. Race is simply being used as the proxy for another purpose. Viewed in the broader frame in which it was instituted, it is about continuing the process begun 400 years ago to limit and now extinguish the few remnants of the sovereignty and independence of Native people.
The strategic goal aims for of this litigation is to set a legal precedent for the real target, which are money, land and power.
90
@drspock. Thank you for your informative comment. It is an important addendum to the article and subsequent comments.
2
@Drspock; Thank you for your clarity. Shame on the Koch Brothers and their Koch Institute. They are trying to change good laws; they are conservative. This law is not un-constitutional, but the Koch Institute is. God help us.
God help the Supreme Court. I am very frustrated and angry about this Judge's decision.
Oh, how sad for the great aunt and all the cousins, to lose this baby girl. Centuries of white privilege, settler attitudes..."money, land and power."
3
@Drspock
Thank you. Given the parties and players involved here, I knew there is more to this than meets the eye and ear but I couldn't put my finger on it.
You did.
5
I’m a white foster dad who has adopted native children. One of my native kids had 14 tribal placements, the other two had 7 and 8 before being placed with us. We were supportive of tribal placements from the beginning but the kids were removed over and over. This lack of stability, which I blame on child and family services, not the tribe, contributed so many problems that these kids suffer. While I try to push tribal identity on my kids, one of them told me he just wants to be fully a part of our family and said he hates being “different,” aka white. I know that I cannot, in any way, give these kids cultural or tribal identity. They will be judged in the world as native people and yet have no native identity because they were raised in a white, Anglo Saxon Protestant environment. I love them with all my heart but it’s a travesty all around.
77
Certainly a dilemma. Shared custody seems a reasonable compromise. The judge’s observation that the birth mother had made her decision to live off the reservation was persuasive. But should that decision bind her children?
My solution; the Navaho tribe should adopt the Brackeens, the parents. Having gone through the recent discussions (Sen. Warren and the Cherokees) on tribal membership, culture v. blood, maybe tribes should reverse their approach- invite non tribal members, in. Share cultures. All the siblings would surely benefit from cross-culture visits, experiences. They will live in a multicultural world.
As for the federal law, can it, should it, be considered a treaty? Part of a treaty?
9
Yet another decision by our courts that places monetary wealth on a pedestal, while dismissing the wealth and heritage of non-white poor people.
61
What a horrible decision. The baby should be with her great aunt and sisters, no question. No one is owed someone else's child. The Brackeens are basically child stealers. Just because they are rich doesn't mean they will be better parents to the little girl or that she will be happier with them. I understand that it would be traumatic at this point to remove the boy, but the little girl needs to go home to her actual relatives. Also, Indians are a sovereign nation -- it's not about race - (which is what? anyway) it is about ethnicity. Would it be okay to put a Jewish child in a fundamentalist Christian family and have that child raised Chrisitan? Nope. And not okay here, either.
73
The perceived internal social problems that the Brackeen’s feel the need to save the Navajo children from, should first make them halt, consider American and colonialist history and Christianity’s hand therein. Similar with the institution of Slavery and Jim Crow (I.e. systemic racism), those perceived internal social problems should be interpreted, translated and flipped into policy - action, your action!
11
@Frank Livingston It is unquestionable that Zachary was in need of "saving" from his biological mother.
1
The Brackeen's have a lot of stuff, zip lining, pool, in house rollerblading, activities. Children with them will certainly never lack. I am bothered by the twice a week commitment to Evangelism because Evangelical actions, with the current administration, seem out of whack with simply following a belief to be a better person. The birth mother is certainly troubled, too troubled to parent a child. But the great aunt, Ms James a traditional Navajo homemaker, offers lessons in taking care of others, foraging, being active in an extended family, culture and community. Where would the child fare best? I would need more information but simply having material wealth does not do it for me.
28
It is not being sufficiently recognized that there is no possibility whatsoever of a completely satisfactory answer to this. It seems obvious to me that the welfare of the Navajo Tribe and the welfare of individual Navajo children are not only two completely different things, but may actually be mutually contradictory. The state has to decide wherein its interests lie; it is not coherent public policy to try to decide on a case by case basis.
11
The biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit reality that there is only one human race species that began in Africa 300, 000 years ago is belied by the fact that color aka race aka ethnicity has a malign socioeconomic political educational demographic historical separate and unequal inhumane reality.
Color aka race is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at different altitudes and latitudes primarily related to producing Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations in ecologically isolated human populations.
There is only one race aka human. And there is only one national origin aka Earth.
But human beings are driven by their African primate ape animal mammal nature and nurture to crave fat, salt, sugar, habitat, water, kin and sex by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation.
2
As usual, the misconception here is that money equates to a better life. A surprising perspective coming from God-fearing people.
50
@fe bencos
Many Evangelicals now worship mammon in the form of a “prosperity gospel”
8
Ah, no real surprise.
5
I can’t get past the part where the Brackeens were told “this child is not available for adoption” but chose to go ahead and pursue it anyway. Their wealth —and their whiteness — has allowed them to steal two children from biological family that wanted them and from several other siblings with whom they will not have a relationship, as a result. When people of color talk about “white privilege,” this is precisely they type of situation they’re referring to.
It seems that wealth is a primary determining factor here: the adoptive family is wealthy, and the Native family is not. Money can get you everything in this country, including other people’s children. The second determination here was race: white people have a greater claim than POC. (And I say this as a white person.)
As others have noted, there are thousands of children in foster care, legitimately available for adoption with no family willing to claim them. Neither of these children are in that situation.
And to Judge Kim: your grandfather may have immigrated, willingly, from Korea. Native Americans were conquered, had their land stolen and promises made by our government repeatedly broken. They never agreed to give up their culture the way judge Kim’s grandfather did. Judge Kim’s family had a choice; Native Americans never did.
The whole situation is sickening.
274
@EWood
I agree. I have a friend who had a foster child for a few years. Eventually the child was adopted by a nice family who thought (she thought mistakenly) the child would be best off not keeping ties with her old foster mom.
I watched my friend deal with this sad situation with grace. She said it was part of what you do when you take in foster kids, even if sad. She also knew the girl was being raised by loving people and knew she had a part in raising her, even if it was over.
THAT is what you are supposed to do.
34
@EWood - You're so correct. Also, Native and African-American children are far more likely to be removed from their homes by the authorities than white parents are. Often parents are punished for being poor. Instead of removing children from poor families on the reservation, perhaps we could instead help them out financially so that they can afford food, day care, etc.
9
@Sallie
Children aren't removed from poor stable families. But being poor in America, because of our very leaky safety net, often correlates with signs of dysfunction like criminality, drug abuse, obesity, sub-par educational performance.
Should a poor dysfunctional family be given preference over a richer, stable one for racial reasons?
That's what the issues are here it seems.
3
These fundamentalists just want another “soul” for their particular sect of Christianity. This has been going on in adoption for a long time. The Mormons were finally stopped by laws protecting Native American children. The evangelicals need to be stopped as well.
The overt racism expressed in some of these comments, even some with high “recommend” levels is appalling.
55
The Brackeens have done very little to help the child learn about his native identity and balk about sharing him with his biological family that want him- that’s why the child belongs with his family. They want him.
39
@Deirdre
But he’ll learn to read and write and that’s a bigger world available to him that waiting for his per cap check every month.
The Brakeens are in the wrong. These children can be safely placed with tribal foster parents and/or relatives. There is no evidence to suggest these tribal caretakers would not love or take good care of the children. The sister’s relatives cared enough for her to travel quite a distance for the legal hearings. For an unrelated couple from a different nation and culture to try to assert their claim largely based on material wealth and a sense of cultural superiority is just wrong. I feel truly sorry for the heartbreak they will feel but they knew going into this that it was a temporary foster situation. I am an adoptive mother myself. I had the opportunity to foster my daughter in infancy while the adoption was in process. I knew that her birth mother or relatives could halt the adoption at any time in that process. It was scary to give my heart to my daughter knowing this but I made the conscious choice to give her my love and support even knowing she might return to her birth family. I would have mourned but I would also have accepted their decision to reclaim her and have been happy for her.
89
@Alexandra Hamilton-You're right Alexandra, also, Native-American and African-American children are far more likely to be taken away from their families that white children are.
1
@Alexandra Hamilton
So the 55 year old who has, to my count, 6 dependents and is already on foodstamps does not qualify as evidence to suggest these tribal caretakers would not take good care of the children
1
And what colors are the parents’ hair and eyes? Exoticism strikes again.
5
It’s not about color, it’s about culture and keeping families together.
13
The Brackeens started down this journey to, what, share what blessing they had? Now they’re stealing not only from other people, but from the very children they claim to be helping. They are cursing these children more than they know.
63
Poor kids. Seven children from the same mother “taken away” because of drugs.
And the main concern is culture in the homeland.
Sad.
79
@Concerned Citizen -- I think we can all see the mother is not fit to have custody. But the baby's aunts, siblings and cousins are fit and are trying to bring their own family member back; that's the point of this article.
7
This is racism, for sure - but it is the colonizing racism of white supremacy, imbued with the arrogance of evangelicalism. The baby should stay with her biological relatives. The older boy should be transitioned back to them gradually. The Brackeen's can find another way to atone for their blessings, or whatever nonsense they are telling themselves. Here's a few ideas to get started: Donate some money to a tribe. Teach your biological children not to be racist.
179
Absolutely there are better ways to support this kid and his sister. If you are concerned about their long term future why not create a college fund for both? Why not create a trust for their other material needs that would provide for a higher standard of living? Clearly the bio mom in this case is a really sad example of what all the racism and deprivation in the Indian community has resulted in. Forcing her children to grow up in a (however well meaning) white world is no solution.
39
@RalphJP
Yeah, they volunteered to take care of someone else's child out of the goodness of their heart and you're telling them to give the tribe money instead?
Disgusting.
4
The baby has a family and she belongs with them.
36
These children need to be with their Navajo family.
38
There is a long and evil history of state courts being used to subjugate native Americans to the wishes of white Christians who considered native Americans heathens. No Native American family was untouched by it.
Voila.
46
It's misguided for the foster father to turn around and say the only reason is because "We don't have the right colored skin" and just shows that he is missing the entire point.
this is not about the colour of your skin, it's about the fact that you are taking this child away from the rich culture and history of his family and bringing him into a completely different one.
It's ignorant and naive to reduce this right down to skin tone and ignore everything else
877
@K “Color of their skin,” no but the blood colored history and failure to interpret and sincerely repatriate with meaningful policy, yes.
I’m not entirely disagreeing, but just saying - color, race is tragically unseverable from financial, intellectual or social inequity
3
@K
Ok, so what's your post say about Jackie, who left the reservation AND the baby?
24
Or @K, you could say the brother and sister have a right to be with his biological family that love and want them
17
Moving adoptive parents to the head of the line on the basis of their race or ethnicity is by definition racist.
18
They are moving them to the head of the line because of their culture, language and clan affiliations.
9
So what would you call moving one to the head of the line based on material wealth? It’s privilege and it’s what’s wrong with this country.
I don’t agree with the decision about the brother but I can accept it. But when the family went after her sister it shows their greed and real intent and it isn’t pretty. Shame on them calling themselves Christians.
5
Mr Brakeen needs to learn that the difference is not just the colour of his skin.
33
A big congrats to the Koch brothers and their puppets: what a perfect test dummy family you’ve found - mom’s a rich doctor with a house-spouse daddy but the family is still so conservative that twice each week they stop rollerblading around the kitchen table to go to church to praise Jesus. Wealthy non-traditional conservative Christians adopting drug-addicted babies of color? Why, it’s a made-for-Lifetime-TV movie!
Judge Kim’s mangled rationalizations aside, we all understand this is about a rich white family buying a beautiful baby girl.
127
@Concerned Citizen
They bought both these children- just clearly as if money had been handed over across the judge's desk. Their wealth, their whiteness, their public images, their inappropriate and manipulative "religious" reasoning, coupled by their "greed begets greed" mentality ( We already are so great with our two children let's indulge in a social experiment with another culture's offspring ) that is what is in the virtual moneybag.
It will be meaningful to revisit this story in the future : Is Zachary interacting with other Native American children in his present preschool ? If he and his sister seek to expand their connections to their birth family and to their culture, will the Brackeen's lovingly and supportively yield to the children's wishes ?
Why would anyone with a conscience for others make a child stand with one leg each in two different worlds ?
8
@Concerned Citizen The baby is NOT Christian. Adopting children does not show kindness anymore than having a child does. They wanted a kid for their own reasons. They wanted a kid so badly that they are trying to steal a kid that is not up for adoption and has family that wants her. While the boy has been there a long time and it would be traumatic at this point to remove him completely, the little sister will be less traumatized by going to live with her actual family.
7
Wow, the Brackeens are a perfect example of a still continuing white colonizer attitude tinged with a big dose of classism and privilege. That they are so clueless as to think "the only explanation [for them not getting to adopt the little girl] is that we don’t have the right color of skin" is stunning. They may have advanced degrees, but their cultural and historical knowledge is zero.
150
@Lindsey I agree. There was no mention that the Brackeens intended to keep their son's deep cultural heritage alive. Did they learn a few Navaho phrases? Do they talk about the richness of Zachary's sisters' and brothers' lives? Had they thought, before his sister's birth and court decision, of reacquainting him with his family? Or were they disinclined toward an open adoption? This situation has to be thought of through
the strength of this country's pre-invasion culture.
7
The extreme privilege of the Brackeen family and their belief that by adopting Navajo children they are serving a higher purpose - their God - is completely in keeping with the destructive manifest destiny belief. With manifest destiny people believed it was their divine right to conquer, kill, seize land and property. It was used to justify the genocide that led to the creation of the United States by Europeans.
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@Julie Risser Amen. This is manifest destiny with iPads and swimming pools.
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@Julie Risser
More appropriate to say hard work, success and achievement....not "extreme privilege".
These seem like good people who wished to serve their God by fostering and adopting. They did not set out to foster a native child, but it happened, there was a need. I am an old school lib, not an evangelical, not even a Christian, and yet I see no fault in this family's actions.
39
@Julie Risser
We all need to get a grip. A child is placed in a loving home and you are waxing poetic about the evils of manifest destiny.
51
My grandfather was sent to the Carlisle Indian school "for his own benefit". He could never talk about that experience, even as an adult. As a child I sat on his knee and he talked about being in the trenches during WWI and the horrors of mustard gas. But the shame and horrors of Carlisle he could not discuss. Those of European settler descent do not understand that Native Americans have profound ancestral connections and memories which are broken only with a great sense of loss. I just spent two years writing a book about this in my own life, the return of such connectivity several generations "off the rez". Well-intentioned non-Native Americans cannot uproot Native American children and then replant them in suburban greenhouses without shattering a spiritual connection. If this seems too mystical, just think Treaty Rights. They are not "merely" legal, they are moral obligations. Canada is moving toward truth and reconciliation, providing economic support to its First Nations people so that families and communities can be preserved. And we south of the Canadian border? Are we about to undermine Native American rights in order to advance the larger agenda of white people who would eviscerate any mild concession to righting historical wrongs?
Randy from Vermont
An enrolled member of the Citizens Potawatomi Nation
686
The history of Australia also mirrors that of The US. Check out the movie, “Rabbit Fence”.
8
@Jane K. “Rabbit Proof Fence”
7
@Randy Kritkausky Many white "unmarried" mothers in the USA, Canada and Australia were deemed wayward and unfit mothers simply because they were unmarried. White "Christian" religious culture has long marginalized and sought dominion over women of all skin tones and men of darker skin tones. The primary familial relationship anywhere and everywhere involve the mother-child bond. That bond has been the least respected of any connection. Being separated from one's family is painful and terminally humiliating. My heart is with your family.
14
“How can it not be in his best interest,” Mr. Brackeen said, “to grow up with a sibling who looks more like him than we do, who knows what he’s gone through and who shares his story more than anyone else?”
And in that question, Mr. Brackeen unwittingly makes a defense for why Native children benefit from adoption by Native families.
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What about that little girl’s right to be raised by her family?! She is not some comfort object for her half brother as they seem to callously imply. If they understand how difficult it will be for Zachary to be raised far from his people then they should understand why they need to let him go to a relative or foster family within his own tribe.
24
This country has a long brutal history of removing Native children from their families with the intent of culture genocide.
There is nothing different about this case.
I am sure that the Brackeens are lovely (wealthy) people who care for Zachary, and the new baby they selfishly wrested from her family. Still, it does not undo the damage done to the Navajo nation, in losing 2 precious children, not to mention the damage done to the children in growing up apart from their culture..while being quite different in appearance from the rest of this family.
But skin color is not the issue - the erasure of culture and sense of self is.
fwiw- I have a friend who was adopted.. after urging from a fellow adoptee, began a search for her birth family at the age of 50. She didn't know why, but had always been drawn to powwows although they left her in tears.. she wore a hat and sunglasses when she went so her emotion would not show.
She found her mother's obituary - she had recently died.. but the legacy page was maintained by a cousin.. Through her cousin she regained her original family, and the entire Citizen Potawatomi Nation who welcomed her saying, "we knew you were out there and were waiting for you to find your way home".
Although she is grateful for the more affluent life her adoptive parents gave her, she is firmly against adoption now, and the deracination and cultural genocide she endured.
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@Ellen Shared custody works just like with divorced parents. Everyone has to do "what is in the best interest of the child" and get along. If the Indian tribes want to keep their children within the tribe they MUST step-up and find foster care placements for them. Having worked in the juvenile court system this often does not happen. The tribes let the case work through the court system, children are placed with non-Indian families for years. When parental rights are terminated they step in and rip the child out of the only family they've known. It's best for this little girl to be with her brother. And for the Brackeens to allow visits with members of their Indian families.
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@Ellen
Really? Skin color isn't the issue? Have you read these comments?
3
@Mikki. I agree. I think that this is a good way to "split the baby". Allow the two children to be together, but also to establish a connection with their other blood relatives and their cultural heritage. I'm sure the Brackeens are nervous about how this will all work out but I don't see how it will be all that traumatic and hard to explain, if the visits work as laid out by the judge. The Brackeens saying that would be so hard took them down a notch in my estimation (along with the focus on financials). Go with the kids at least at first when visiting, be happy about it, just as if they were going to visit the white grandparents. I'd bet if they play it right that the white parents and white children will be quasi-adopted and expand their own lives by being involved with the Native relatives.
7
For me, a lot of the Brackeens arguments on why they should be given custody of both children were undone by their own words. Mr Brackeen states “how can it not be in his best interest, to grow up with a sibling who looks more like him then we do? Who knows what he’s gone through, and who shares his story more then anyone else?”....while I sympathize with the Brackeens, it also exasperates me that even to do this day, people can seem to understand the history behind why things like the Indian child welfare act were passed to begin with. The rape of the modern native nations continues to this day. Sad, on all sides around
71
Dear Zachary,
I'm an adoptee like you and my heart goes out to you. The adults in this article (Are they adults?) don't mean to treat you like a piece of property. They don't know what it's like to grow up and develop into an adult as an adoptee and never bothered to ask one. Therefore, they don't know how to talk about you and your life as your own and that will be a theme throughout your life. Some day, you'll be old enough to learn about this case and have some really weird, inexplicable feelings about the way these people have been talking about you and that's okay. Just know that you were very much wanted as a part of this world and that you matter. One of these days, you'll be able to make your own decisions for your life. Coming from the other side, I can assure you that this will be exhilarating.
In solidarity,
A fellow adoptee
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@Ali
Thank you for this. As the mother of a non-native child adopted from foster care, who was not wanted by his family, I find this so moving. My child has had questions about his origins as long as he has known he was adopted, and I'm sure that those questions will never stop. They are part of our journey as a family and part of his journey as a growing little person in this world.
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@Ali
I am an adoptee too, but I disagree. Adoptive families can and do adopt children for good reasons. Birth parents are not always the best ones to raise a child.
15
The judge in the case is to be commended for his ruling that attempts to blend cultures and families for the child. Her best interests should be paramount.
14
This strikes me as a decision based on economic welfare not tribal and cultural connections. How will Zachary ever learn Navajo and his culture living with the Brackens? More importantly, Zachary and his sister have a family who wants them. For Mr. Bracken to say that the girl is better off with them because their house is bigger is ridiculous. Shared custody is an injustice to all parties. This judge and the Brackens have displayed another example of disparaging Native Americans on the basis of their material possessions or the lack thereof. They do not put value on the close connection and cultural traditions. New clothes and a big house do not substitute for family. I do not doubt that the Brackens love Zachary but that does not trump his right to a family with biological and cultural ties. This case shines on light on the continued prejudice against indigenous peoples.
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@R By supplying him with books written about the atrocities Native Americans have endured. By sending him on visits to relatives still on the reservation , so he sees how they live. When he gets to college, encourage him to take courses in Native American history. And, do your best to answer his questions truthfully about his heritage as he grows up.
Lastly, trust him to make his own judgments about his birthright as he gets older.
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@Concerned Citizen
Mr. Brackeen's words:
He was thinking of the baby “not as an infant living in a room with a great-aunt but maybe as an adolescent in smaller, confined homes,” he said. “I don’t know what that looks like — if she needs space, if she needs privacy. I’m a little bit concerned with the limited financial resources possibly to care for this child, should an emergency come up.”
2
@Concerned Citizen
Concerned,
I did not support the mother having custody; other members of the family are willing and able to raise the baby sister.
Mr. Bracken did use the size of his house as a selling point for custody.
You assume that the Great Aunt is carrying all of the load. That may be your cultural bias kicking in and ignoring a more community approach in her family. Native Americans are more likely to live near their relatives and have intergenerational support expectations and lifestyles.
15
I’ve read some stories where beng places with a tribal family doesn’t seem to be in the child’s best interest, but this doesn’t seem like one of them. From my understanding of adoption law it would be hard to adopt any foster child when they have living biological family members that want them. The Brackens
2
Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver looked at this issue with clarity. Unfortunately, it’s a novel and ties everything up nicely in the end
5
"Legal scholars say that if the rationale for striking down the law survives, it could also threaten laws that guard tribal casinos ..." Which shows just how silly these laws really are.
5
As was stated in the article, the law protecting Indian Children “was about stopping unjustified breakups of Indian families, but this child has never lived in an Indian family.” The mother chose to go "off the reservation", in more ways than one. She is clearly unfit to be a mother--drug addicted & irresponsible. What about the child's welfare? Growing up in a loving home with her biological Native American brother and regularly visiting her Native American family on the reservation would seem to be the best of both worlds. These old laws that are distorted to protect "tribalism" over the welfare of a child are WRONG. Love & doing the right thing must be prioritized over flawed human laws.
22
The author, Barbara Kingsolver, wrote about this in the '80s in her novel, THE BEAN TREES.
5
So, wanting Zachary to grow up with a sibling who looks like him is justification for adopting another Native American child Zachary has never met, but not justification for placing him with a Native American adoptive family?
756
@MTERRE Zachary has already bonded with his adoptive family. It would be beyond cruel to tear him away from them at this age.
47
@Sue Transitioning children to their permanent home is an expected part of being a foster parent. It happens every day and with minimal disruption to the child if the foster family is on board and acts in the child’s best interest. This family is a perfect example of privileged people demanding that the rules of the system bend to meet their own needs, and framing the child’s best interest around what is actually best for them.
113
@MTERRE, that hypocritical statement by Mr. Brackeen struck me, too--he and his wife need to look into a mirror and face facts. No one asked them to be foster parents, but once they did, they agreed to the terms, i.e., they were told they could NOT adopt this child.
74
All that should matter is what is best for the child.
20
This has to stop. The Brackeens should stop trying to steal this child if they feel so guilty about being wealthy, let them give $50k to the American Indian College Fund, or other Rez programs the federal government has been decimating for decades. This is so wrong. What will evangelicals teach. Native kid about the four directions? I’m just beside myself I’m so mad.
58
Exactly! Well said.
3
@Concerned Citizen I do, but that family should be from his own nation of native indians.
Could expanding the pool of adoptive parents to include Latinos be a good compromise? They are, after all, indigenous Americans albeit with Spanish heritage as well. That would allow more chance of adoption for Native children whose families are in crisis and can't raise them. This is coming someone who is not Native American so I apologize in advance if my question is received poorly.
2
“Why do you want her?”
This just killed me. There's reasons the laws exist, and this shouldn't even really be up for debate. Zachary went to this family and they were well aware it was temporary, and now with his half sister, they're just being greedy. Why are they fighting so hard? I'm sure it's coming from a good place...mostly. But if they want to do "God's will", maybe they should try to adopt a child that needs a home. To me, the fact that they're doing this at all just proves disrespect of a culture their ancestors worked so hard to abolish, and only perpetuates bad relations.
48
Building a family through adoption brings additional aspects and responsibilities to parenting, especially interracial adoption. If I do a half way decent job at it, it's because the adoption agency provided classes and counseling before and after my son arrived, including many opportunities to meet and talk with adults adoptees who were not of the same race as their families. Though they probably cant perceive it right now, there's an opportunity in this very sad and difficult situation for the adoptive parents to see the re-connection with their youngest son's bio family as a kind of gift- an opening that could enable them to give him a fuller and more complete view of himself, which as an adolescent he will seek. And for themselves and their bio children, a richer and more expansive definition of "family". There are wonderful social workers and family counselors out there who guide adoptive and blended families through these evolutions - I m hoping all the adults, including the attorneys, can step outside themselves a bit and begin thinking about what life/sense of family/sense of self will be like for these two very little children in 10, 15, 20 years. Sending them all prayers, good thoughts.
40
At first I thought laws to protect Native Americans were worthy. But now I’m not so sure. The problem is that many tribes now abuse the laws and sovereignty they’ve been given. There is a famous case of a payday loan company that used Native American tribes as the technical owners which meant they could not be sued by the State. Is it seems they’re using similar laws to place foster children with Native American families, whether it’s better for the child or not. Maybe it is time to remove these laws.
19
@Mike L “Abuse” is an unjust term here in speaking of laws and sovereignty. It’s well-known is de-colonization studies that this abuse is really a oppressed and so feeble attempt at rectification. Similar with the institution of Slavery and Jim Crow (I.e. systemic racism), that “abuse” should be interpreted, translated and flipped into policy - action, your action!
5
So the Brackeens take in a foster child who they knew was not eligible for adoption. This is an openhearted and generous thing to do, for sure (so long as motives were pure).
He is cute, adorable, and filled with joy so now they want to keep him.
It is always a tragedy when a child's birth family struggles like this and when children must rely on kind strangers for a time.
But I really can't get past that the Brackeens signed up for something temporary and I question if the outcome would have been the same if this boy were a bit harder to love.
127
As a former Tribal Social Worker representing ICWA tribal children, this scenario was not unfamiliar. When a child enters into the State custody, there is a period of time parents are given for reunification efforts. During this period, if the child has been placed with a non native family, they understand they are temporarily fostering the child. If, the reunification efforts are moving towards termination of parental rights, searches for relative and tribal placements are made. It takes time to interview and to approve the placement and adoption. For the judge to make statements concerning materialistic values above that of the tribe is a cultural affront to our tribal customs. For him to say the mother gave up her cultural connection because she chose to move off the (man made )reservation is ridiculous. Tribal blood and connection is inherent. It is not based on “place”. These children have been taken from their tribe. This is exactly the reason ICWA, was created. The judge , and lawyers evidently do not understand ICWA, and tribal sovereignty.
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@Raven
With your talk of "tribal blood and connection" as "inherent," you are making racial arguments that render your case far more vulnerable.
You're right, the "rez" is manmade and possibly the source of all this dysfunction. The rates of drug use, alcohol abuse (particularly FAS), obesity from carb-heavy diets (and alcohol), teen pregnancy and general criminality are so high that I wonder if the judge isn't doing right keeping the child off the rez. I'm no fan of evangelicals, particularly the Texas brand ("church" twice a week?), but the reservations, while offering strong cultural and linguistic advantages (though the young rarely speak the native tongue) are simply too full of pitfalls awaiting any child who is raised there.
The "compromise" of having the child live at times both off and on the reservation seems an imperfect solution to a knotty problem.
2
@Concerned Citizen
Couldn't agree more. But in this era of identity politics, the group and its collective grievances seem to take precedence over the welfare of individual children.
It's funny how those who often oppose Trump's "racial motivations" display the same "race over individual" bias.
1
When I was five years old I chose to leave my Navajo parents to live with a white family. I was never adopted by this family. Eventually my mom wanted me back and it turned into a bitter lawsuit. My white parents were able to obtain legal guardianship because at 12, I did not want to go back. I refused to speak with my family until I turned 18 and graduated from high school. During breaks from college, I spent more and more time with my large Navajo family. As I became more integrated into my family's life, I came to realize what I lost in relationships, culture, language and especially spirituality. Today I live in New York, but I am learning to speak Navajo. My grandmother passed away and she only spoke Navajo. I would sit with her, but other than smiles I could not communicate. I am so sad I could not speak Navajo to any of my grandparents. Now I try to speak Navajo with my mom but I'm still a long way from fluent. Growing up without my mom left a huge hole in my heart even though my white parents loved and cared for me. I see the struggles my brothers underwent, the poverty, the neglect and I know I'd be a different person if I had grown up there. Today, I love visiting my mom on my grandmother's land in the middle of nowhere. A month ago she got hot water in her shower and a toilet that actually flushes. She rises before dawn to tend to the sheep and other animals. This is the life I was born to and knowing everything I do, I would choose my Navajo family this time.
295
@sabamaki
Middle of nowhere?
You have a lot to learn.
10
You have a lot to learn!
The US Government did not “give” the Native Americans decent lands. There were lands that no one else had any interest in—In the middle of nowhere and barren.
18
Everywhere is the middle of “nowhere” when you’re from New York.
15
Due to the unique relationship between the United States and most Indian tribes, these tribes are considered for most intents and purposes to be sovereign nations with their own laws and jurisdictions separate from and independent of the US legal system.
For whites to adopt a Native American child is like a Turkish family trying to adopt a German child when there are German families ready and able to adopt the child. Different cultures, different languages, different laws, different jurisdictions.
This is not to say that the Brackeens are not good or loving parents; they most probably are. However, the Navajo Nation has its own legal rights and social needs to consider. If the children in question are raised by the Brackeens they will certainly not become Navajo in speech or culture, even if the Brackeens teach their children about the Navajos and even arrange visits to the Navajo reservation. The Brackeens are unable to teach their children the Navajo language and beliefs.
Given tribes’ status as sovereign nations it is almost certain that this case will reach the Supreme Court.
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@Mon Ray
If we apply your Turkish/German analogy to the case at hand, we would have a German mother [Jackie] who moves to Turkey [Texas]. While in Turkey she gives birth to a daughter, but - unable to safely raise her - forfeits the child to local authorities.
Whether there are willing parents back in Germany interested in adopting the child, the case would still be handled under Turkish rules. Similarly, Germany's status as a sovereign nation (or not) wouldn't likely affect the outcome.
Carrying forward the analogy, if Turkey had a race-based adoption law - which specifically singled-out infants born to immigrants from Germany - would that conflict with any equal-protection standards which apply to all Turkish-born children?
10
The Brackeens are worried about how visits with the natural family will work, how they will explain it to a child. What if that child grows up and wants to learn their origins? What will they say then? We kept you away because they didn’t have room in their house? We are better than them because we are Christian and they are not? I’ve always wondered what erasure truly means. This article is an object lesson in the concept. If the brackeens faith and love of those children is true and strong, they have nothing to worry, the children will love them regardless. We cling hardest when we are insecure. Maybe they need to introspect a little, find out why the indigenous way of life is so threatening to them.
186
The answer is question number 5. We are better than them because we are Christian and they are not. This is common evangelical dogma.
17
@Mike
I disagree. The Brackeens are insecure because underneath they think they may have done the wrong thing.
1
Judge Kim's comment about the decision to come to this country implying an agreement to assimilate was as tone deaf as it's possible to be. Has he forgotten who came to this country and who was already here?
346
He was talking about JACKIE, the mother, who voluntarily moved away from the tribe.
34
@Laura Lape
Nobody was "already here."
Everyone's ancestors came.
10
@ST ah you mean she moved away to other land that was taken away from hers and others tribes. Sure...
15
Why can't the Brackeen's develop some kind of legal arrangement with the children's Native parents and tribal family? The Natives would still be the parents, but the children would live with the Brackeen's and they would raise them. Like foster parents, but with security that the children could not be taken away from them.
There could be annual or semi-annual visits with the tribal family, assuring that the children would know their Native family and culture. There could be mandated Native cultural education. This could be a win/win situation.
13
I once worked for an Indian tribe and part of getting the job was to read a book explaining the legal status of various tribes and to pass a test on the book. This is what I learned. Native American tribe function as separate nations within ot ur nation. They have their own legal system that coordinates with the pervasive American legal system.
Another take away. They have their own cultural foundation that is ancient and rich. Various attempts have been implemented to remove them from this culture.
Also, there is a great concern for people who became removed from their cultural roots. Most tribe have experts that meet with people who drop in to tribal offices seeking information about their roots. Also, at pow wows, there are always people who look Native American, but have no idea what their tribal connections may be. Most frequently they are adopted as babies.
I have an idea. Why not adopt children who are not wanted? It seems to me that these parents have some kind of idea that tribal culture is inferior and that they are "saving" a child.
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@Kuhlsue "Why not adopt children who are not wanted?" Exactly.
This was a well-constructed article, and I wanted to applaud the Brackeen's altruism, but sensed some sort of contrived behind the scenes maneuvering. The evangelical Church of Christ combined with the conservative think tank with influencers with ties to the Koch brothers cast a shade over what should be noble efforts to help.
Indigenous people suffer devastating social ills. Strengthening their communities with excellent schools, employment, home ownership, and healthcare would be more helpful than petitioning for wanted children. And, by the way, children are not "possessions."
197
@The year of GOP ethic cleansing-2020 - We also have AMAZING resistance in the face of continued genocide and oppression. We are organizing, fighting anti-Indian colonial laws, decolonizing, healing, etc. There are awesome things we are doing right now! But we need some movement from the apathetic majority culture that believes the myths of the American Dream - which is a nightmare for many. Rise up and fight with us. Don't speak for us but let us have the stage and microphone!
3