Adoption and Foster Care of American Indian Children — Closing the Cultural Divide
By Kate Jackson
Social Work Today
Vol. 5 NO. 5 P. 30

Through adoption and foster care placement, American Indian children and families often are fractured by separation and sometimes further traumatized by a cultural disconnect. As important as a home is, the sense of belonging that contributes to security and identity is essential to overall well-being. Through the efforts of the Rural Expansion of Adoptive Communities and Homes (REACH) Project, individuals and agencies are joining forces to help establish permanent homes for American Indian children in need without wrenching them from their culture, their community, and, often, their biological families.

Last year, a weekend community forum and healing ceremony was held in the Upper Sioux community in Granite Falls, MN, to address such American Indian adoption issues. Presented by REACH in association with the First Nations Orphan Association (FNOA), the healing ceremony—which through songs and storytelling gave voice to the unresolved or disenfranchised grief experienced by children removed from their homes and placed in foster or adoptive homes as well as by the families that mourn the loss of those children—offered comfort and communicated the need to work together to mend hearts and minds shattered by loss. The forum—which brought together individuals affected by adoption, tribal leaders, community members, and social service workers—addressed preadoption and postadoption issues for American Indians within the social work community. One goal of the ceremony was to reach out to American Indian families who may serve as foster or adoptive parents to the many children in need.

Working with local, state, and tribal agencies, REACH facilitates preadoption and postadoption services to adoptive families in a tristate area serving rural communities in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Its overarching goal is to connect families willing to adopt to children with special needs, including American Indians. Part of its mission involves focusing on the unique needs of American Indian communities, which have traditions of caring for children that may be misunderstood by other cultures. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was passed to protect the American Indian heritage of children in need of permanent homes. Before the passage of the act, more than one-quarter of American Indian children were taken from their homes and placed in non-American Indian homes that were thought to be more appropriate—a notion that often ignored the cultural norms and values of the community. REACH, which is managed by the Professional Association of Treatment Homes (PATH), a nonprofit agency, works to honor and advocate for tribal customs and values and keep children in their home communities while providing culturally relevant education and resources.

Staying Connected
REACH, which is funded in part by a grant from the Health and Human Services Children’s Bureau, joined forces with the FNOA to create a culturally relevant model through which to recruit adoptive families. According to REACH Director Sheila Brommel, MSW, LISW, such a mission wasn’t identified in the organization’s original grant. One of the first things she did when she came on board the project, she says, was emphasize special outreach to American Indian communities.

“They have especially challenging geographic and cultural barriers and issues of poverty added to that mix, not to mention the historical grief and trauma caused by removal of kids from their families in that particular culture,” Brommel says. She talked to people from different American Indian communities, learned about their problems and needs, and subsequently began collaborating with the FNOA. “We thought it made sense to try to bring healing to a community first before we began the recruitment effort.” REACH and the FNOA collaborated on a one-time pilot project with the Upper Sioux community in Minnesota to try out that thesis. “It was something that seemed to make sense. It felt like the right thing to do, but it hadn’t been tried in this context before, and we wanted to see where it would go,” Brommel says. The project, which if it is to continue will need new funding, was one way the two organizations were trying to find and identify lifelong families for American Indian children.

That program, Brommel explains, is a small component of the work REACH is doing. “The whole REACH project is in fact a demonstration project, and what the Children’s Bureau has asked us to do is find different ways to address some of the ongoing needs and encouraged us to try different things. Some of them may work, some may not, but the whole point is to try something different because current methods aren’t as effective as they can be.”

Cultural Differences
In American Indian communities, child rearing is based on a long history of native customs by which tribal members and extended families participate in the care of children. Models of adoption that work outside the community may not work within it. Brommel explains that in mainstream American culture, child welfare practices dictate particular standards for adoption. “Yet if you go to an American Indian reservation, families who might otherwise be interested in pursuing adoption may not meet the standards that are found elsewhere in the state.”

An example, she says, may be the number of people living in a particular household. It’s not uncommon in tribes, she observes, for extended family to live together in large numbers in one home. She recalls hearing a tribal council member at the Turtle Mountain reservation comment, “If only our homes were as big as our hearts.” Extended family members are close, she explains, and they’ll welcome individuals in need with open arms into their family homes. Mainstream home study standards for foster care or adoption licensing, however, she says, may dictate that there be only one child per bedroom or that two children of opposite sexes can’t share the same room. “What is appropriate in the tribal community may be very different than what the state requires, which would then be a barrier that would prevent them from formalizing an adoption and providing permanency for a child,” Brommel says.

Therefore, REACH helps communities adopt and adapt legal yet culturally appropriate alternatives to traditional formal adoption. Because family services and resources are often linked to legal status, tribes are working to adapt their adoption practices yet retain their values, and above all to stress the importance of keeping children in their own communities, whether that means joining homes of extended family members, other tribal members, or American Indian families of different tribes. “Many tribes are starting to look at or recognize what’s called customary adoption—a process of formalizing a permanent family for a child without actually terminating the original parents’ rights,” says Brommel. While termination of rights is a common practice in mainstream American culture, tribes often do not want to consider termination of rights, yet, says Brommel, they still have the dilemma of providing permanency for their children.

The Role of Social Workers
Social workers, explains Brommel, play a critical role in this effort. PATH, the agency that comprises REACH, has an office on the Turtle Mountain reservation where the social workers are key to effective service delivery, she says. The responsibility of social workers in this process has been to complete pending adoptions and provide information to the community about providing homes for children in need. This, explains Jody Goodell-Lange, MSW, LSW, social work supervisor for the Devil’s Lake and Turtle Mountain PATH offices, may not involve termination of parental rights and adoption, but rather may involve guardianship, kinship care, and foster care to provide permanent living arrangements. She and Linda M. Gunville, LSW, social worker at the Turtle Mountain PATH office, assist in the recruitment and education of foster and adoptive parents and make themselves available to help train potential parents. “We’re working on setting up a support system for adoptive parents so that they can get together and talk about issues that affect them as new parents,” says Goodell-Lange.

Cultural Sensitivity
Stimulating public awareness, recruiting new families that may be interested in adopting, matching families to children, and helping the families move on to finalization of the adoption, says Goodell-Lange, are the chief tasks of social workers—responsibilities that demand a high level of cultural sensitivity. Social workers must work within the value systems and customs of the tribes, and so must have a thorough understanding of the cultural differences that inform those customs. Customary adoption, for example, says Goodell-Lange, is not an option outside of reservations, so there are unique aspects of working with the American Indian population on a reservation. “We either look for a social worker who is from the community or who has a very strong knowledge, background, and experience working with that population and that community,” Goodell-Lange says.

Gunville, who is an American Indian, suggests that it takes more than mere familiarity with a culture, but rather a deep knowledge and affinity to work with individuals whose beliefs and customs may be different. “You want to come in as an advocate, but you don’t want to scare clients away, so you must be culturally sensitive and understanding.” For outsiders, that’s not an easy bill to fit. Says Goodell-Lange, “It takes spending considerable time in the community talking to members and really experiencing what it’s like to live within that population. People trust you more when you’re an insider because they know you understand how things work, what’s really needed, and what’s available.”

For that reason, explains Brommel, wherever possible, American Indian social workers who are a part of the community and the culture are hired because they’re best positioned to facilitate the needed services. “They have the connections and the cultural sensitivities, and REACH brings them more resources that they can use in that community.” Those who come from the outside, however, must realize their limitations and learn, above all else, to listen. Brommel, who is not herself an American Indian but has worked in North Dakota with American Indian populations, suggests that outsiders must realign their attitudes. “I didn’t work in those situations with the presumption that because I’ve worked in mainstream child welfare that I know the best practices or what’s most useful in that particular community,” she says. When she goes into the community, she asks questions and listens. “I’m trying to hear from them what their expressed needs are, and it’s up to me to trust what the community is asking for and try to match them with whatever resources I have.”

Brommel recalls her first visit to the Turtle Mountain reservation to discuss the work of increasing the number of rural adoptions through education and recruitment. “Their reaction was that recruitment and education were all fine, but what they really needed were social workers to do the work and finalize the adoptions. They were telling me that what I had to offer wasn’t exactly what they needed, so I was able to take that information back to the Children’s Bureau and ask for permission to revise our grant so that I could provide funding to contract with social workers to do the actual adoption work.” That, she says, is an example of listening to what people say they want and need, rather than telling them what you can do for them. That was the approach taken with the REACH and FNOA pilot project, she explains. “Because we went to the tribal social service director of the Upper Sioux community who told us that they tried everything else and wanted to try healing first, that’s the approach we took. It’s not about talking,” says Brommel. “It’s all about asking questions and then listening.”
For more information, visit www.adoptinfo.org.

— Kate Jackson is a staff writer for Social Work Today.

Since this article was written, the Minnesota Department of Human Services awarded the Professional Association of Treatment Homes (PATH) a new four-year contract under its Public/Private Adoption Initiative that includes funding for an annual community forum/healing ceremony. In North Dakota, the work the Rural Expansion of Adoptive Communities and Homes and PATH did with the Turtle Mountain reservation was instrumental in the North Dakota Department of Human Services awarding a contract for special needs adoption to a new collaboration between PATH and Catholic Charities North Dakota, the Adults Adopting Special Kids Program. There is now a full-time adoption worker on the Turtle Mountain reservation as well as statewide recruitment of American Indian families.