Torn apart

Coming from a minority group, with a cultural heritage and traditions that you are proud of can be part of what makes you special and different. But imagine what would have happened if you were whisked away from your family at a young age and never got to know the culture that makes up part of who you are.

For one in every five Native American children in Multnomah County, this is exactly what happens. These children are taken from their parents and often placed with white families. They grow up far away from their roots.

“Certainly there are circumstances when youth can not be safe in their own homes,” said Ann Curry-Stevens, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Portland State. “But the racial bias that comes into assessing the risks and assets of families of color interferes with an accurate assessment of the risks to the child, and the family’s assets and strengths are often overlooked.”

A mere 1 percent of Native American children placed in foster care were subject to a legitimate case of abuse. In the other 99 percent of cases, however, “neglect” is listed as the reason for removing the child from that home, most likely meaning the welfare institution that placed them in foster care did so because of poverty, which is not the same as neglect.

Most of these children were likely placed in foster care because of a lack of modern plumbing in their homes. It could be any one of dozens of aspects of that family’s life that welfare institutions view, through their prejudice and a lack of understanding of Native American culture, as unsuitable for the child or not in the child’s best interests.

Oregon is one of the five worst-performing states in terms of placing children in foster care, with 7.4 of every 1,000 Hispanic children, 4.7 of every 1,000 Asian children and 32 of every 1,000 African American children being placed in foster care. The number rises even more when Native American children are added to this grotesque math problem. A whopping 218 of every 1,000 Native American children in Oregon are placed in foster care. The percentage of Native American children placed in foster care is particularly high in Multnomah County, though it is already higher in Oregon than in most of the country.

Foster care in general has its consequences, making it an unfit alternative to the child’s home situation if poverty was the sole reason for placing a child in foster care. When a child ages out of foster care, he or she suddenly ceases to receive help from anybody, has no support for higher education and has no family to stay with when they need to save money or are going through a rough patch. Therefore, foster care is not the best option for children who do not absolutely need to be removed from their homes.

The fact that only 17 percent of Native American students go on to receive a college degree is one of the many aspects of Native life that makes Native families look unfit to take care of their children. However, this is not remedied by foster care, because all support suddenly stops when a child ages out of foster care.

Children of color are no more likely to be abused by their families than anyone else, so why is it that so many children of minority groups, especially Native American children, are placed in foster care? And furthermore, why do welfare institutions around the country insist on placing Native Americans with white families?

With the motto “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” the 18th and 19th centuries were full of welfare agencies removing Native American children from their families. The Indian Adoption Project had a mission to place Native American children with white families far away from the reservation. They promoted the adoption of Native children so well that the demand by families who wanted to adopt Native children exceeded what the project was able to accomplish.

It is hard to see why one would find it acceptable to destroy a culture by brainwashing its people. It is even more difficult to see how it can still be acceptable today, in an era that generally has more understanding and tolerance of other cultures.

Removing children entirely from their culture is doing them a disservice. Native children should not be removed from their families simply because a welfare employee finds the conditions of their impoverished home environment unsuitable.

If abuse is part of the problem, and the child needs to be removed from that home, he or she should be placed with another Indian family, or even relatives. According to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 that is not being followed by 32 U.S. states.

“The primary reason for the Indian Child Welfare Act was because Native children were being removed at such an alarming rate,” said Tawna Sanchez, director of family services at the Native American Youth Association. “We know that many of these children grew up confused and damaged by the lack of understanding of their own identity.”

Instead of removing children from poor families, something should be done to help these families. Foster care should be used as a last resort instead of as an immediate reaction to the conditions of a child’s home.

“Poverty is often confused with neglect in the child welfare system,” Sanchez said. NAYA does its best to help impoverished Native families and places a child in foster care only if there is a real problem in the child’s home environment.

The child welfare system, despite working with foster children, has too little understanding for what a child in foster care goes through. A Native child growing up in a non-Native foster home loses a lot of the cultural identity, stability, spirituality and self worth along with their cultural connections, giving them an extra disadvantage to growing up in foster care.

For children who do not absolutely need to be removed from their homes, foster care is a poor choice.