© Denver Public Library
“All the customs of our people were held to be divinely instituted, and customs involving the training of children were scrupulously adhered to and transmitted from one generation to another.
"It is true that we had no schoolhouses, no books, no regular school hours. Our children were trained in the natural way—they kept in close contact with the natural world. In this way, they found themselves and became conscious of their relationship to all of life.
"The spiritual world was real to them, and the splendor of life stood out above all else. And beyond all, and in all, was seen to dwell the Great Mystery, unsolved and unsolvable, except in those things that it is good for one’s spirit to know.”
—From The Soul of an Indian, by Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman)
© Denver Public Library
“All the customs of our people were held to be divinely instituted, and customs involving the training of children were scrupulously adhered to and transmitted from one generation to another."It is true that we had no schoolhouses, no books, no regular school hours. Our children were trained in the natural way—they kept in close contact with the natural world. In this way, they found themselves and became conscious of their relationship to all of life.
"The spiritual world was real to them, and the splendor of life stood out above all else. And beyond all, and in all, was seen to dwell the Great Mystery, unsolved and unsolvable, except in those things that it is good for one’s spirit to know.”
—From The Soul of an Indian, by Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman)
Rescue the Children
Wakanyeja—The Children are Sacred
For more than 100 years our children have been taken from us.
In our culture we refer to our children as wakanyeja, which in Lakota means sacred gift, and there was a time when Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota children grew up in a safe and loving environment. They were surrounded by their extended family—or tiospaye—and were valued, taught to be responsible members of a traditional society, and protected from physical discipline or abuse. But then everything changed.
Along with the reservation system came a U.S. Government policy of forced assimilation and intentional destruction of our kinship system and sociaety. From the 1880s all the way through the 1960s Indian children as young as 5 years old were removed from their homes and sent away to boarding schools to learn White culture. These schools had a strict, military-like environment: children’s hair was cut, their traditional clothes were taken, and they were forbidden to speak their own language. If they violated these rules, they were beaten.
Today, while the practice of sending Indian children to boarding schools is generally a thing of the past, our children are still being taken at an alarming rate. But now it is the State that does the taking. Under the guise of protecting Indian children, the Department of Social Services removes them from their families and places them in non-Indian households and foster-care settings. There they often experience sexual and emotional abuse, medical over-drugging, and inadequate education. Not surprisingly, the system is a failure. In South Dakota, one of the worst offenders, nearly two-thirds of children in state foster care are Native American. By age twenty, 60% of these children are dead, homeless, or in prison.
A heightened awareness of Native Americans and Indian issues in the 1970s brought some relief. Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which mandates that states make every effort to keep Indian children with their families or place them in Indian institutions or homes. However, due to a flaw in the law ICWA is only partially enforceable, and instances abound of grandparents, siblings, and extended family members volunteering to care for children but being completely ignored—and ultimately denied their legal rights—by the state. In fact, a recent survey conducted by the Lakota People’s Law Project found this very problem to be the number one issue facing “most” tribal child-welfare offices around the country.
The taking of our children is nothing new, and the reclaiming of our children will be no small task. At the national level the Lakota People’s Law Project has undertaken an initiative to amend the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and make it enforceable in federal court. We are working at the state level to stop and prevent the illegal seizure of Indian children. Locally we provide technical assistance to tribal ICWA offices, train Qualified Expert Witnesses for child custody hearings, and help tribal governments develop the institutional capacity to build successful child and family welfare institutions on their reservations. We also support individuals and families by providing free public education, advising them of their legal rights, and generally supporting them in a difficult time. Many of these families eventually become clients as we prepare class action litigation to change the legal system and win the return of thousands of our children.
In our language,we say Wakanyeja ota wokakijapi kiksuapo!—the children are suffering, remember them! Any effort to renew our culture must begin with rescuing our children, without our children we have no future.