Comments on: Awareness http://twicetherice.wordpress.com/2006/11/03/awareness/ Open mind. Insert perspective. Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:18:25 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Tasha http://twicetherice.wordpress.com/2006/11/03/awareness/#comment-6482 Tasha Tue, 19 Dec 2006 01:39:59 +0000 http://twicetherice.wordpress.com/2006/11/03/awareness/#comment-6482 This is an excellent post/blog article! I appreciate someone speaking pointedly about this issue. As a native amerian woman, I am aware of the many native children who were stolen away in an attempt to commit cultural genocide against native populations all across the Americas and Canada -- complete with the same self-serving pats on the backs of the inevitable white, christian families who adopted these children, never admitting their complicity with the further disinegration of a viable, if poverty striken, culture. I think adoption is great. I wish all who adopt the best but there needs to be a recognition and deliberate attempt at keeping cultural ties alive -- if a child MUST be placed in a home outside the child's cultural background. There needs to be a realization that cultural knowledge is precious and important to the health of these children. I have met so many "lost birds" (the well-known name given to native children who were "adopted out" of native families) who are fundamentally at a loss because they were never exposed to their own culture's ideas, religion, and traditional stories. I can only assume this trauma is the same for the children from other third world nations who have been taken away from their own cultures. Tasha This is an excellent post/blog article! I appreciate someone speaking pointedly about this issue. As a native amerian woman, I am aware of the many native children who were stolen away in an attempt to commit cultural genocide against native populations all across the Americas and Canada — complete with the same self-serving pats on the backs of the inevitable white, christian families who adopted these children, never admitting their complicity with the further disinegration of a viable, if poverty striken, culture.

I think adoption is great. I wish all who adopt the best but there needs to be a recognition and deliberate attempt at keeping cultural ties alive — if a child MUST be placed in a home outside the child’s cultural background. There needs to be a realization that cultural knowledge is precious and important to the health of these children.

I have met so many “lost birds” (the well-known name given to native children who were “adopted out” of native families) who are fundamentally at a loss because they were never exposed to their own culture’s ideas, religion, and traditional stories. I can only assume this trauma is the same for the children from other third world nations who have been taken away from their own cultures.

Tasha

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