Armed Polite Society

Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: tokugawa on March 22, 2016, 07:30:32 PM

Title: State monsters
Post by: tokugawa on March 22, 2016, 07:30:32 PM
  *expletive deleted*ing sadistic bullies.  How could they do this to a little kid.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/california-girl-removed-foster-family-over-her-native-041458771.html



 

 
Title: Re:
Post by: makattak on March 22, 2016, 07:38:10 PM
The article must be wrong,  otherwise,  1.5% Choctaw???

I'm WAY more Indian* than that, and I'm not an Indian. 

*(Cherokee, at least.  I'll have to look up what my grandmother's side was as well)

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: MillCreek on March 22, 2016, 08:49:35 PM
I have seen this at work with some of our patients.  The Indian Child Welfare Act is serious business when it comes to maintaining tribal integrity.  A lot of the tribes give no slack when it comes to enforcing their rights under the Act.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: zxcvbob on March 22, 2016, 09:04:25 PM
Damn, I thought this was gonna be a cryptozoology thread.  (is the state monster of Texas the jackalope or the chupacabra?)
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: RoadKingLarry on March 22, 2016, 09:06:44 PM
And yet we recently had a case here where the child was taken from her biological father and returned to an adoptive family in spite of the ICWA.
The girl's mother had given the child up for adoption against his wishes while he was deployed. The father had regained custody but ultimately lost the fight in the courts. Pretty screwed up mess all around.

Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: tokugawa on March 22, 2016, 10:31:26 PM
The kid had been with the adoptive family since the age of two.  reminds me of the Clinton thugs grabbing Elian at gunpoint to send him to Cuba.

 
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: HankB on March 23, 2016, 12:25:51 AM
One day they're going to pull this on the wrong person - someone who is not just angry, but thoughtful as well. And the result won't be pretty.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: K Frame on March 23, 2016, 07:25:10 AM
Heap big bullshit.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: brimic on March 23, 2016, 07:41:30 AM
So in other words, ICWA is a race based ownership law similar to the Fugitive Slaves Act... nice.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: Perd Hapley on March 23, 2016, 08:30:19 AM
Racial solidarity is a very important principle of The New America. For the special races, of course.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: T.O.M. on March 23, 2016, 09:22:10 AM
ICWA was signed in 1978.  There are a lot of hoops that the family has to go through.  Can't just say "the kid is Indian" and have the law apply.  The family must be actual members of a tribe.  That said, ICWA does, IMHO, put the best interests of the kinds behind the interests of the tribes in maintaining its culture.  But, that's the law.

Now with this said, I have worked with a couple of the tribal courts, and found them to be pretty reasonable in terms of trying to balance what was best for the kids with the ICWA laws.  Can't say that's true of all tribal courts, or tribe attorneys, but my experiences have been pretty good.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: Scout26 on March 23, 2016, 10:31:54 AM
Damn, I thought this was gonna be a cryptozoology thread.  (is the state monster of Texas the jackalope or the chupacabra?)

In Illinois, the State Monster is Pension Debt...
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: Firethorn on March 23, 2016, 02:43:04 PM
Read about this on another site.  The father has been trying to regain custody for ages.  The act applies because, despite the low percentage, mom was/is an active member of the tribe. 

Part of the problem is that the foster parents were trying to push through an adoption, but chose to use the wrong courts - state when, because of mom, it needed to be the federal courts.

The girl is currently staying with relatives of the father, who are also taking care of another of their children.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: HankB on March 24, 2016, 02:14:56 PM
. . . The act applies because, despite the low percentage, mom was/is an active member of the tribe . . .
With the kid's Indian blood only around 1.5%, Mom must also have a very, very low percentage of Indian blood . . . is her name by any chance Elizabeth Warren? (And . . . is daddy Ward Churchill?)
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: makattak on March 24, 2016, 02:16:39 PM
With the kid's Indian blood only around 1.5%, Mom must also have a very, very low percentage of Indian blood . . . is her name by any chance Elizabeth Warren? (And . . . is daddy Ward Churchill?)

Yeah, mom is also far below my percentage. I need to see about getting into the Choctaw tribe.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: MillCreek on March 24, 2016, 02:33:36 PM
^^^ Something that has been going on for the last couple of years up here is some of the local tribes are actively disenrolling members.  This has led to litigation in the tribal and Federal courts and all sorts of conniptions.  As far as I can tell, it is not just your percentage of Native American heritage that is the deciding factor, in many of these cases, it is also who your ancestors are and if you are on the tribal council's *expletive deleted*it list.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: Firethorn on March 24, 2016, 03:14:01 PM
Yeah, mom is also far below my percentage. I need to see about getting into the Choctaw tribe.

I presumably have a higher percentage as well. 

But, consider it like citizenship.  If your mother is one citizenship and your father is another, are you 'half-citizens' of each country?  No, you're either a citizen or you're not. 

In the interests of racial purity or some such, if you have sufficient descent from the tribe, they'll let you back in without much hassle.  Otherwise, well, as long as their family has kept that membership card going, it doesn't matter how low the percentage goes.

And as Mill mentions, Native Americans aren't above petty politics, though my understanding is that they were mostly disenrolling 'inactive' members who weren't living on the reservation, didn't attend tribal meetings, etc...
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: HeroHog on March 24, 2016, 05:11:58 PM
I'm supposed to be Choctaw on my mother's side (1/16 - 1/32 or so) and about the same amount of Cherokee on my father's side. I have yet to be able to find any solid proof of this though it has been passed down through the families as fact for years now. My father, in his younger years, really had native american facial features in my mind.

Dad and I when I was 11 or 12 (yes, really) after I had just tubbed some rapids in Colorado.
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fherohog.com%2Fimages%2Ffamily%2FVacationOnTheRapids.jpg&hash=e0ff309d8776c4ba050fe1b9575472b6bbefb364)
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: Hawkmoon on March 24, 2016, 11:41:03 PM
In the interests of racial purity or some such, if you have sufficient descent from the tribe, they'll let you back in without much hassle.  Otherwise, well, as long as their family has kept that membership card going, it doesn't matter how low the percentage goes.

Decades ago, I worked in a small firm whose secretary/bookkeeper was a member of the Flathead tribe (from western Montana). She was 25 percent Flathead, and an enrolled member of the tribe. She said the threshold for being a member of their tribe was 1/8 Flathead blood -- 12.5%. She said the lowest she knew of any tribe accepting for enrollment was 1/16 -- 6.25%.

This little girl, at 1.5%, is 1/64 Native American. That's like saying George Washington was America's first Black president. I'd like to know if that tribe has formal rules for what percentage of tribal blood is necessary for being enrolled as a member, and -- if so -- what the official percentage is.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: De Selby on March 25, 2016, 06:13:25 AM
Decades ago, I worked in a small firm whose secretary/bookkeeper was a member of the Flathead tribe (from western Montana). She was 25 percent Flathead, and an enrolled member of the tribe. She said the threshold for being a member of their tribe was 1/8 Flathead blood -- 12.5%. She said the lowest she knew of any tribe accepting for enrollment was 1/16 -- 6.25%.

This little girl, at 1.5%, is 1/64 Native American. That's like saying George Washington was America's first Black president. I'd like to know if that tribe has formal rules for what percentage of tribal blood is necessary for being enrolled as a member, and -- if so -- what the official percentage is.

Remember that there's a difference between being Indian for federal law purposes like benefits, and being an Indian member of a tribe.  Tribes are semi sovereign and their decisions on tribal citizenship are generally unreviewable. 

Sounds like a sad situation, but given that her dad has been trying to be with his daughter from day one I'm not ready to call this "state monsters."  Not when the state already intervened to take the girl away from her natural parents.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: Hawkmoon on March 25, 2016, 06:49:00 AM
Remember that there's a difference between being Indian for federal law purposes like benefits, and being an Indian member of a tribe.  Tribes are semi sovereign and their decisions on tribal citizenship are generally unreviewable.

That's why I would like to know what this tribe's rules are. If their "rules" say 1/8 or 1/16 tribal blood to be a member, then they should not be allowed to invoke the federal law to assert jurisdiction over a child who is only 1/64 related to the tribe.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on March 25, 2016, 11:44:00 AM
Remember that there's a difference between being Indian for federal law purposes like benefits, and being an Indian member of a tribe.  Tribes are semi sovereign and their decisions on tribal citizenship are generally unreviewable. 

Sounds like a sad situation, but given that her dad has been trying to be with his daughter from day one I'm not ready to call this "state monsters."  Not when the state already intervened to take the girl away from her natural parents.

Yup . Just like Elian Gonzalez it's hard for me to be against a child being returned to its dad
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: AJ Dual on March 25, 2016, 02:50:03 PM
If I had ancestry from people who were a few thousand years late on iron, the wheel, and the triangular sail, I wouldn't brag about it either.


KIDDING! JUST KIDDING!  :angel:

(For those who know my alphabet-soup last name, I'm Polish... and we've had our ass kicked by everyone too.  =D )
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: lupinus on March 25, 2016, 04:33:59 PM
If I had ancestry from people who were a few thousand years late on iron, the wheel, and the triangular sail, I wouldn't brag about it either.


KIDDING! JUST KIDDING!  :angel:

(For those who know my alphabet-soup last name, I'm Polish... and we've had our ass kicked by everyone too.  =D )
Yeah but at least you've made a useful contribution or two throughout history.


Sent from my iPhone. Freaking autocorrect.
Title: Re: State monsters
Post by: dogmush on March 25, 2016, 05:04:41 PM
Sounds like a sad situation, but given that her dad has been trying to be with his daughter from day one I'm not ready to call this "state monsters."  Not when the state already intervened to take the girl away from her natural parents.

Quote from: cassandra and sara's daddy
Yup . Just like Elian Gonzalez it's hard for me to be against a child being returned to its dad

But as far as I can tell from reading several articles on the subject that's not what happened at all.  Dad getting custody is not in the cards. She is currently living with a couple that is related to her father's lineage through marriage.  Dad's Indian blood is being used to shuffle her around, but the actual people getting to raise her, one assumes in accordance to her heritage, isn't her father, or apparently even Indians.