Tag: Native American children

Goldwater Institute challenges Indian Child Welfare Act

Suzette Brewer, Indian Country Today Media Network

PHOENIX, Ariz. – On July 7, the Phoenix, Arizona-based Goldwater Institute announced the filing of A.D. v. Washburn in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, a class-action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) based on its contention that the federal legislation “discriminates against Native children.”

Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn, and Gregory McKay, director of the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) were named as defendants in the case.

The suit is being filed on behalf of “all off-reservation Arizona-resident children with Indian ancestry in child custody proceedings and the foster, pre-adoptive or prospective adoptive parents of these children,” according to the organization’s press release. “This case will not impact current or future cases that involve children or parents living on a reservation where a tribal court has jurisdiction; it will change the law so that state courts and agencies cannot discriminate against Native American children.”

Washburn marks the third major legal challenge to the 38-year-old federal law since the Bureau of Indian Affairs published new ICWA guidelines in the Federal Registry in February of this year, followed by the agency’s declared intention to seek a federal rule, which would make the statute more enforceable on state courts and social service agencies.

“While we have not yet reviewed the filing, we understand that a lawsuit challenging ICWA was filed yesterday. In matters in litigation, we will speak primarily through our briefs in court, but I want to assure the public that we will defend the Indian Child Welfare Act,” said BIA assistant secretary Washburn in a written statement. “Nearly 40 years ago, Congress determined that Indian children were being treated unfairly in the context of foster care and adoption. Congress determined that ‘an alarmingly high percentage of [Indian] children’ were subjected to ‘unwarranted’ removal from their homes and that a federal law was needed to protect Indian children. This law has been an important feature of the legal landscape for many years now and we firmly believe that the protection of the best interests of Indian children continues to be important today.”

According to the suit, the plaintiffs are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against “certain provisions of ICWA and the accompanying BIA guidelines” on behalf of “A.D.,” a 10-month-old baby girl who is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community. Another child plaintiff is a 4-year-old boy who is a member or eligible for membership in the Navajo Nation. The birth parents of both children have had their parental rights terminated by the state and both children reside off-reservation in Arizona. The Navajo Nation, as outlined in the brief, has repeatedly attempted to find ICWA-compliant homes for the boy – all of which were rejected by the state as “inappropriate” placements. If not for the Indian Child Welfare Act, according to the brief, the boy would already be in a permanent home under “race-neutral” Arizona law.

“When an abused child is removed from his home and placed in foster care or made available for adoption, judges are required to make a decision about where he will live based on his best interest. Except for Native American children. Courts are bound by federal law to disregard a Native American child’s best interest and place him in a home with other Native Americans, even if it is not in his best interest,” said Darcy Olsen, president of the Goldwater Institute in the organization’s press release. “We want federal and state laws to be changed to give abused, neglected or abandoned Native American children the same protections that are given to all other American children – the right to be placed in a safe home based on their best interests, not based on their race.”

But the original author of the Indian Child Welfare Act, retired South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk, took the Goldwater Institute to task for its attempt to overturn one of his signature legislative achievements during his time in the United States Senate. Ironically, Abourezk’s late friend and colleague Sen. Barry Goldwater actually voted in favor of ICWA when it was approved by the Senate in 1977.

“I knew Barry Goldwater – he was my friend and often came to me for advice on most tribal matters,” said Abourezk from his home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “I wish he were alive to see this travesty because he would never approve of it and you can quote me on that and make sure you emphasize the word ‘never.'”

Tribal leaders, their legal teams and ICWA advocates across the country seem universally opposed to the litigation. They view with skepticism adoption practices in the United States, and the economic factors and profits at play.

“The Native American Rights Fund is closely following the lawsuits filed in Virginia, Minnesota, and now Arizona,” said NARF staff attorney Matthew Newman. “What is abundantly clear is that these lawsuits are part of a coordinated, well-financed attack on the rights of tribal nations to protect their children. It is open season on the Indian Child Welfare Act.”

“At this point it is pretty clear that anti-ICWA advocates, who primarily represent adoption interests, have started a coordinated attack on ICWA,” said Kate Fort, staff attorney and adjunct professor for the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University College of Law. “They are looking for cases of opportunity in courts across the country by inserting themselves and trying to make the same constitutional arguments against ICWA. But this lawsuit will absolutely hurt vulnerable children and families in our state child welfare systems. Their claims that ICWA’s protections are substandard is simply not true. ICWA’s standards are considered the gold standard of child welfare practice. To say these lawsuits to dismantle ICWA are in the best interest of the child is really contrary to what is considered best practices by child welfare professionals.”

Stephen Pevar, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, says the whole point of enacting ICWA was to end decades of unnecessary removals of Indian children from their homes and communities.

“Congress held years of hearings [before enacting ICWA] and many Indians who were victims of state foster care cases testified,” Pevar said. “Based on that testimony and other research, Congress found that it is in the best interests of Indian children to be raised in an Indian home except in extraordinary circumstances. Therefore, the Goldwater Institute is wrong in saying that Congress overlooked the ‘best interest’ standard. Instead, Congress accepted that standard and concluded that there’s a presumption that it’s in the best interest of Indian children to be raised in an Indian home. In addition, the Supreme Court has already rejected the notion that ICWA creates racial discrimination when it imposes minimum federal standards on state courts in their handling of Indian child custody cases.”

But ICWA has come under assault in courts all over the country in the last several months, say legal experts, in states unwilling to deviate from the “business-as-usual” approach, in which an average adoption can bring anywhere from $40,000 to 100,000 in fees and costs for private adoptions, depending on various factors, including living expenses for the birth mother.

In May, for example, Washington, D.C.-based attorneys Lori McGill and her husband, Matthew McGill, filed suit in federal court in Virginia seeking to challenge the new BIA guidelines which they believe impose “federalism” on state courts regarding the adoption of Indian children. Mrs. McGill, who played a key role in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl in 2013, told the National Law Journal in May that she gets emails on a weekly basis “from lawyers and adoptive parents telling me how ICWA is ripping their families apart.”

That same month, the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals openly dismissed the new BIA guidelines in a case involving a 4-year-old Cherokee girl who had been placed in a non-Indian foster home during emergency proceedings in 2013. At the time, an ICWA-compliant home was not available, though a year later the tribe filed a motion to transfer the girl to a Cherokee family that the tribe had located. In ordering the girl to stay with her foster parents over the tribe’s objection, the court’s contempt for the new guidelines was palpable.

“The BIA guidelines’ intentional disregard of these factors results in a one-size-fits-all approach to the placement of children with any tribal affiliation,” the judges wrote. “That result may bear little resemblance to what is really in the child’s best interests, despite the self-serving pronouncements of the BIA guidelines.”

In June, adoption attorneys representing tribal parents in Minnesota filed another suit, Doe v. Jesson, in which they argued the Minnesota Indian Family Protection Act (MIFPA) violates constitutional due process in requiring notice of adoptions to the tribe. However, the Minnesota District Court denied a preliminary injunction based on state law requiring notice to tribes. The Court ruled that the MIFPA posed no threat of irreparable harm to the two tribal plaintiffs in complying with notice requirements. The tribe in the case, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, have declined to intervene.

But the litigation, said observers, strikes at the heart of not only of the Indian Child Welfare Act, but also the keystone of tribal sovereignty as a whole – the right of Indian tribes to determine their own membership and raise their children in their home communities.

“Using tragic stories to try to destroy the constitutionality of ICWA is not appropriate. As we know from Morton v. Mancari, Native status is a political identity not racial or ethnic, so laws that give any type of Indian preference or preferential treatment are not in violation of the equal protection clause,” said Victoria Sweet, a program attorney for the Reno, Nevada-based National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. “It’s ironic that [the Goldwater Institute] would argue that Native children get less protections when they actually get more and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise when the reality is clearly the opposite. We are not yet at a point where the initial purpose of ICWA has disappeared. We still need this law. It still protects Native children.”

“It’s 38 years later and I still get mail from Indian people who tell me how important this legislation is,” Abourezk said. “The tribes need to mount a unified attack against this lawsuit because it’s good law and what they’re doing is wrong. It would be an enormous tragedy to see them overturn it.”

Arizona youth among 1,000 at first White House Tribal Youth Gathering

About half of more than a thousand youth at the White House Tribal Youth gathering wore traditional tribal clothing. More than 230 tribes from across the country were represented. (Cronkite News Photo/Aubrey Rumore)
About half of more than a thousand youth at the White House Tribal Youth gathering wore traditional tribal clothing. More than 230 tribes from across the country were represented. (Cronkite News Photo/Aubrey Rumore)

By Aubrey Rumore, Cronkite News

WASHINGTON — Brooke Overturf of Window Rock, Arizona, was momentarily flustered as she stood holding hands Thursday with Michelle Obama, while hundreds of other Native American youth crowded around, hoping for a handshake.

But the Navajo 19-year-old quickly recovered and pulled a turquoise ring from her hand to give to the first lady.

“I told my mom last night that if I met her (Obama) I was going to give her my ring. I gave her a ring my grandmother gave me,” said Overturf, emerging from the crowd one accessory shy of when she went in.

Overturf was one of more than 1,000 Native American youth representing more than 230 tribes from across the country who had come to Washington for what organizers were calling a “historic” first White House Tribal Youth Gathering. Dozens of youth from Arizona were at the event.

President Barack Obama had called for the meeting in April as part of his Generation Indigenous, or Gen-I, initiative.

The event brought together Cabinet secretaries and elected officials – and the first lady – for speeches and small-group sessions to discuss issues in Indian country and share their stories with tribes and various federal officials.

“Your cultures, your values, your discoveries are at the heart of the American story,” Obama told the cheering gathering, but she said tribes rarely receive credit for their contributions.

But the gathering was less about history than it was about finding solutions to current problems on tribal lands. Most Native youth, including those at the gathering, face what Attorney General Loretta Lynch called “tremendous” challenges.

“Many Native American children suffer post-traumatic stress similar to the level of veterans who have come home from Iraq and Afghanistan,” Lynch said.

For a long time the federal government has tried to “prescribe how the nations should live,” but Lynch said the U.S. government needs to recognize that tribal decisions are best left to the tribes.

“You have to lead, and we have to be your partners,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, not the other way around.

Lynch, Burwell and other speakers encouraged the youth there to raise their voices. Lynch noted that “when it comes to civil rights and human rights,” young people have the “determination” to generate change.

“Every movement in this country has really been fueled by the energy of young people,” Lynch said.

The young people at the event had to be involved in order to get invited: The gathering was open to Native Americans ages 14-24 who had took the Gen-I challenge to create and document a project in their communities.

For Overturf, that meant organizing a free basketball camp on the Navajo Nation, recruiting help from a former women’s basketball player at Arizona State University, where Overturf is Miss Indian ASU.

She got her invitation in May and had help getting to Washington from ASU and from various sponsors. But many youth had to raise funds to make the trip.

“I know it was a challenge for a lot of Native youth to get here,” said Elton Naswood, a Navajo who works at HHS’ Office of Minority Health Resource Center in Washington.

Overturf said she reached out to other Navajo youth and other youth through the Indian community at ASU before making the trip.

“I could easily go by myself, but I am representing them too,” said Overturf, who routinely reminds tribal youth to “be proud of who you are and where you came from.”

Youth at the event were lauded by the Washington officials who turned out Thursday.

That was echoed by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota.

“We know one thing is for certain,” Heitkamp said. “We must involve youth.”

Despite the emphasis on self-reliance, however, the U.S. government still has to play a role in the betterment of Indian country, Heitkamp said.

“If by the time I’ve left office we have not changed opportunity, education, safety and healthcare on Indian reservations, then I have done nothing,” she pledged to the crowd.

The comments were well received but the first lady was clearly the star of the show.

“Every single one of your lives is precious and sacred,” Obama said. “And you definitely have a president and a first lady who have your back.”

Lawsuit challenges Native American adoption law

By Mary Jo Pitzl, The Arizona Republic

Native American children are being deprived of equal protection when it comes to foster care and adoptions because federal law places tribal supremacy ahead of the children’s best interests, a class-action lawsuit filed today alleges.

The suit, filed by the Goldwater Institute in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, challenges portions of the Indian Child Welfare Act as it applies to Native American children living off-reservation.

The suit details the cases of two Arizona families, each of which sought to adopt a child with Native American heritage only to have their plans held by the provisions of the 37-year-old federal law.

“Alone among American children, their adoption and foster care placements are determined not in accord with their best interests but by their ethnicity, as a result of a well-intentioned but profoundly flawed and unconstitutional federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act,” the suit states.

It names as defendants the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the state Department of Child Safety.

Federal officials did not have an immediate response.

Arizona Department of Child Safety Director Greg McKay is named in the suit because his agency has to follow the provisions of the federal law. The agency said it would not comment until the case is resolved.

The suit noted 1,336 Native American children were in out-of-home placements as of last September, citing the latest DCS data. If not for the federal law, the suit alleges, some of those children could be in permanent family situations.

The lawsuit does not involve Native American children living on reservation, where tribal courts have jurisdiction

What to know about federally run Indian schools

In this photo taken Sept. 25, 2014, students walk between buildings at the Little Singer Community School in Birdsprings, Ariz. on the Navajo Nation. Like other schools in the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Education, remoteness, extreme poverty, bureaucracy and a lack of construction dollars have enhanced the challenges at Little Singer. The Obama administration is pushing ahead with a plan to improve the schools that gives tribes more control. But the endeavor is complicated.
In this photo taken Sept. 25, 2014, students walk between buildings at the Little Singer Community School in Birdsprings, Ariz. on the Navajo Nation. Like other schools in the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Education, remoteness, extreme poverty, bureaucracy and a lack of construction dollars have enhanced the challenges at Little Singer. The Obama administration is pushing ahead with a plan to improve the schools that gives tribes more control. But the endeavor is complicated.

By Kimberly Hefling, AP Education Writer

WINSLOW, Ariz. (AP) — The federal government finances 183 schools and dormitories for Native American children on or near reservations in 23 states. The schools are some of the nation’s lowest performing.

An effort is underway to improve them.

Five things to know about the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Education schools:

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THE IMPROVEMENT PLAN

The Obama administration wants to turn day-to-day operations of more of the schools over to tribes, bring in more board-certified teachers, upgrade Internet access and make it easier to hire teachers and buy textbooks. The plan also seeks to provide more support to schools to advance American Indian languages and culture.

But many the schools are in poor physical condition. An estimated $1.3 billion is needed to replace or refurbish rundown facilities, and not much money is coming from Washington. There also is much mistrust of the federal government, given the history of forced assimilation.

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TAINTED HISTORY

The system of government boarding schools to educate Native American students was established in the 19th century as part of an assimilation policy to “eradicate Native cultures and languages through Western education,” according to a government study group.

One of the first to be run directly by Washington was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which opened in 1879. It was founded by Richard Henry Pratt, an Army officer who said, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” according to Jon Reyhner, an education professor at Northern Arizona University.

Many commissions have called for improvements to Indian schools. One, in the 1920s, said the students should be treated as “human beings.”

In 1966, what was then called the Rough Rock Demonstration School opened in Chinle, Arizona, a prototype of the schools that are today owned by the federal government but run by tribes.

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MODERN HISTORY

While about 7 percent of Indian students attend a bureau school today, the great majority are at traditional public schools.

Only a few bureau schools fully immerse students in a Native American language or culture. Others offer them in lesser degrees. But this type of instruction is a draw for parents.

About 6,900 students live in dorms operated by the bureau.

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ONE SCHOOL

Little Singer Community School outside Winslow, Arizona, was the vision in the 1970s of a medicine man who longed for area children to attend a local school. Today, it serves 81 students and school leaders emphasize a nurturing environment. But the rundown classroom buildings have problems with asbestos, radon, mice, mold and flimsy outside door locks. The school has been on a government priority list since at least 2004 for new construction.

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PERFORMANCE OF NATIVE AMERICAN STUDENTS

Indian students overall score higher overall on assessments than those who attend bureau schools.

Native American students overall have high school graduation rates that are lower than the student population as a whole, 68 percent compared with 81 percent, according to government figures from 2011-2012. They also lag peers on a national assessment known as the “nation’s report card” and have lower rates of college completion.

In a 2011 survey conducted as part of the national assessment, 56 percent of Native American and Alaska Native students reported knowing some or a lot about their tribe or group’s history. The rest reported knowing little or nothing.

Kelso’s successful Indian Education programs mix classroom, culture

By Lauren Kronebusch, The Daily News

Kelso’s Indian Education Program shares the qualities of Hermia, a pint-sized but spirited character featured in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

The core of the program is a small classroom on the first level of Wallace Elementary School. It protects a wealth of history. A glass display case full of traditional Native American objects greets visitors at the front entrance. Several bookshelves laden with children’s and educational books about Native American culture sit against a wall adorned with dream catchers. In the back of the classroom a map of the United States is stabbed with push pins locating which tribes students in the program have roots.

Shelley Hamrick, the program’s coordinator since 1997, sees the classroom as the source of the program’s strength and uniqueness. When the district formed its diversity committee around 1995, it had a broad mission that the room came to physically exemplify.

“(The district wanted) to make kids feel connected and included,” she said. “And then they saw everything that we have.”

Hamrick smiles as she sweeps her hand through the air to point to dozens of artifacts in the room, donated over time by community families. The district decided to give the program its permanent home at Wallace in 1997, when it moved from a portable classroom to a room inside the school.

Native American cultural education is having a big year in Kelso and the state. Kelso’s annual Pow Wow will celebrate its 30th anniversary in May. In March, Washington’s House of Representatives formalized the Friday after Thanksgiving as Native American Heritage Day.

Kelso created its program in the 1970s in response to the federal Indian Education Act, adopted in 1972 to restore and preserve cultural traditions weakened when many Native American children were sent to boarding schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“It was kind of like (the government, schools and tribes) wanted to bring that (knowledge) back to the people,” Hamrick said of Kelso’s participation in the Indian Education Act.

Few other districts in their area have built up their Indian Education programs as thoroughly as has Kelso. When Hamrick began as a tutor in 1989, the program had about 240 students. The program has 400 students this year. Hamrick said the district now includes students with ancestral links to 63 tribes. The program’s success, Hamrick said, has been a result of a close working relationship between her and district administrators that Hamrick said fosters a sense of inclusion for the district’s Native students.

Hamrick said the program’s educational and cultural missions reinforce each other.

“Many students who were really, really struggling in school, they’d get some extra help in school, and they’d start valuing their culture, because they (didn’t) have that connection to the reservation anymore or maybe they didn’t at all,” she said.

Wallace Elementary students beat on a rawhide drum with LaMere. Photo/ Roger Werth / The Daily News
Wallace Elementary students beat on a rawhide drum with LaMere. Photo/ Roger Werth / The Daily News

Lory Evans brings her two grandchildren to Tuesday’s culture class. She said it has helped her and her children feel more connected to their Native American heritage.

“I thought they should have some of the culture,” Evans said. “I never got any (cultural education) when I grew up so I wanted them to have some.”

Her granddaughter Kaydince Evans talked excitedly of the free “Ratatouille” cooking book she got from the program. Her grandson Quincy Evans picked “Buffalo Before Breakfast,” a Magic Tree House series novel. He said it only took him a few days to read. Both books come from First Book Grants, which donated more than 2,200 books in the last five years.

Marie Dancing Star LaMere, a Native drummer, singer, dancer and educator, teaches the program’s culture class.

She said she thinks Native Americans learn differently. Like herself, she said her students are more oral learners. LaMere said that’s why she tries to teach her culture class through demonstration and activity.

“I think that’s our culture,” she said. “Just like our stories — they’re passed down from generation to generation (through speech).”

Program tutor and parent Elizabeth Jones said the culture class has helped keep her and her children connected to her tribe, the Lummi of western Washington.

“It’s so hands-on, they don’t even realize they’re (learning),” Jones said. “They don’t understand that while they’re having fun, they’re getting the education part of it, too.”

LaMere said her culture class is most effective for a simple reason: it’s fun.

“Kids love movement,” she said.

LaMere’s class involves plenty of it. The room boomed Tuesday night with the guttural voice of a raw hide drum, beaten as LaMere sang a coastal Native American song to the class. Students circled the display case, rowing along to her song with drum sticks.

LaMere said the program reaches students at a level beyond the cultural and educational.

“I think it touches on a spiritual level as well,” she said.

Partnerships helping rebuild Spirit Lake child protection programs

By Patrick Springer, The Jamestown Sun

FARGO — Partnerships involving the Spirit Lake Tribe, Bureau of Indian Affairs and others are credited with helping to rebuild child protection programs on the reservation.Wednesday will mark the two-year anniversary of the handover of child protection and foster care services from the Spirit Lake Tribe to the BIA.The switch, made at the prodding of the North Dakota congressional delegation, came in the midst of major gaps in the safety net for children on the reservation.Among other problems, Spirit Lake children were being placed in unsafe foster homes, and suspected abuse and neglect cases were not always investigated and followed up.The BIA continues to operate the child protection programs while the tribe delivers most other social services, although the tribe hopes someday to resume full responsibility for social services.“They’re making progress,” said Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who noted staff vacancies still pose challenges. “Getting the right people and getting them trained is the priority.”The BIA has filled a supervisory social worker position but continues to bring in staff from other reservations to run programs. It is contracting with a firm to help maintain services until positions are permanently filled.“The contract will provide some stability there,” said Lawrence Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior for Indian Affairs, who visited Spirit Lake for 2½ days last week.“These social workers will be starting in a matter of weeks,” he said, referring to the contract workers, who first must clear a background check.Social workers are in demand throughout North Dakota, complicating the search, Roberts said.Meanwhile, the Spirit Lake tribe also is filling social services positions. It recently hired a case manager and is working to fill another case manager position, said Melissa Merrick-Brady.Candidates have been interviewed, and the position should be filled soon, and the tribe’s social services will be fully staffed, she said.“When I came, we had no case managers; we were struggling,” said Merrick-Brady, who became the tribe’s social services director in July after being appointed interim director in March. “The staff was overwhelmed, overworked.”The Department of Interior is providing a grant of almost $800,000 to bolster Spirit Lake’s tribal court and guardianship programs.The grant will pay for two guardians to represent vulnerable children, and a child service and Indian child welfare presenter to appear in court, Roberts said.The training and grants will help social services better coordinate with tribal court and guardians, and help lift some of the burden on social workers, Merrick-Brady said.The collaborative approach was highlighted last week with a symposium at Candeska Cikana Community College in Fort Totten, when officials laid out plans for improving services at Spirit Lake.“The discussion was extremely productive,” Roberts said. “You had all the relevant players in the room,” including the tribe, BIA, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and state and local officials.“We have a lot of work to do, but I think the foundation was laid,” Roberts said.The North Dakota congressional delegation also is pursuing legislative remedies, including more stringent background checks of foster households for American Indian children.Legislation in the House and Senate would apply the same foster care standards in Indian Country that now are required elsewhere. The legislation has passed a House committee, and Hoeven expects Senate approval later this year or early next year.Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., has introduced legislation to create a Commission on Native Children. If passed, she said, the bill “would help us tackle many of the challenges we’ve seen on Spirit Lake and go a long way in improving the lives of Native children.”The bill also would provide for a study into issues facing Native children, including high rates of poverty – such as unemployment, child abuse, domestic violence, crime, substance abuse and few economic opportunities – and make recommendations on how to make sure Native children are better taken care of and given the opportunities to thrive.Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., agreed that coordination among service providers at Spirit Lake has improved.“We have seen an improvement in terms of communication,” he said.

Study finds widespread oral health problems among Navajo

By Medical Press

A new study from Colorado School of Public Health shows that despite some modest improvements, poor oral health remains a major problem in the Navajo Nation and among American Indians overall.

“The among Native Americans is abysmal with more than three times the disease of the rest of the country,” said Terrence Batliner, DDS, MBA, associate director of the Center for Native Oral Health Research at the School of Public Health. “The number one problem is access to care.”

The study, published recently in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry, showed that 69.5 percent of Navajo had untreated tooth decay. While that’s better than the 82.9 percent in 1999, it’s still unacceptably high.

“The percentage of children with untreated decay appears to have declined in the past decade, although it remains today substantially higher (three to four times) than national averages,” the study said.

Batliner and his colleagues, including Patricia Braun, MD, MPH, who directed the study on the Navajo Nation, looked at 981 children in 52 Head Start classrooms on the reservation. Of those, 89.3 percent had oral disease in the past and 69.5 percent had untreated tooth decay.

That 69.5 percent of untreated decay compares with 20.48 percent among all other race and ethnic groups.

The Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in the country, stretching over 25,000 square miles. Much of it is remote with 22 dental clinics serving 225,639 residents. The dentist-to-patient ratio is 32.3 dentists per 100,000 residents, among the lowest in the country.

The researchers found that half of all Native American children need to be treated in the operating room due to the severity of their .

To increase access to care, Batliner advocates the creation of dental therapists for the reservation.

“They learn how to do fillings and extractions along with providing preventative services,” Batliner said. “This program has proved to be a raging success among tribes in Alaska. The quality of care is good.”

The American Dental Assn. opposes dental therapists and has filed suit to block their use on tribal lands.

“The American Dental Association is fighting the idea of dental therapists,” Batliner said. “But many of us perceive as a Native solution to a Native problem. Children and adults are suffering and this is a solution that can help.”

Tribe: Problems linger with child protection

By HENRY C. JACKSON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – The chairman of the Spirit Lake Indian Tribe said Tuesday that his reservation in northeastern North Dakota still has difficulty handling child protection issues and finding resources.

“The problems still remain,” Leander R. McDonald told a House subcommittee hearing organized by U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer. “We continue to struggle to meet the child protection needs of our community.”

McDonald said the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation is trying to change its culture and improve the way it handles justice and child care issues. But he said tribal officials have struggled to fill key social worker positions and have found limited help from the federal government.

Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, said he pushed for the hearing because he is trying to gauge whether Congress needs to take action in order to improve conditions at the reservation. He said he was disturbed by repeated cases of child abuse and two cases involving child deaths on the reservation.

“The system is failing,” he said.

Spirit Lake has had numerous documented cases of child abuse, and last year federal prosecutors successfully tried two cases involving child deaths on the reservation. The tribe has ousted a former chairman and taken other steps to fix what officials have called a broken child protection system, since it initially came under fire in 2012.

Last year, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs intervened, taking over some operations to try and improve conditions. The agency assigned seven agents to the reservation.

Tribal members agreed about a year ago to remove Chairman Roger Yankton Sr. in a recall vote, saying his administration was corrupt and ineffective and had allowed a culture of child abuse and child sexual abuse to worsen on the reservation. Yankton has denied the allegations.

Members of Congress seemed skeptical Tuesday that enough was being done to correct dire problems on the reservation. Earlier in the hearing, Cramer and other members of the House Natural Resources subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs pressed federal officials about why more wasn’t being done.

Rep. Don Young was dismissive when addressing remarks from Michael S. Black, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Young said he was annoyed the bureau had not accomplished more during its stewardship of Spirit Lake.

“This is good words,” the Alaska Republican said. “It doesn’t necessarily accomplish something.”

Black and another federal official, Joo Yeum Chang, an associate commissioner with the Administration for Children and Families, defended the federal response and said they were doing the best they could with limited resources.

Black said conditions had improved but that his agency simply didn’t have enough resources to deal with all of Spirit Lake’s issues.

“We’re reaching a point where we’re talking to other tribes to try and recruit some of them,” he said. “To have them come up and address issues they can help us resolve.”

He added, “I think we as a community have been making progress.”

Kickapoo chairman: K-12 bill could hurt Native American students

Cuts to bus aid would hit rural areas hard, warns Steve Cadue

By Celia Llopis-Jepsen, cjonline.com

2011 FILE PHOTO/THE CAPITAL-JOURNALIn this 2011 photo, Steve Cadue, center, accepts a proclamation from Gov. Sam Brownback at the Kansas Museum of History. In a letter to Brownback this week, Cadue expressed concern that the Legislature might cut transportation aid to school districts.
2011 FILE PHOTO/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
In this 2011 photo, Steve Cadue, center, accepts a proclamation from Gov. Sam Brownback at the Kansas Museum of History. In a letter to Brownback this week, Cadue expressed concern that the Legislature might cut transportation aid to school districts.

The head of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas expressed concern in a letter to Gov. Sam Brownback this week that the Legislature could cut transportation aid to school districts to help foot the bill for court-ordered equalization funding.

Tribal Chairman Steve Cadue suggested cuts to state aid for busing students to school would hit rural districts — and therefore Native American students — especially hard.

“As indicated in your own Governor’s Proclamations, the legacy of illegal and unscrupulous land cession treaties has left many tribes such as the Kickapoo located in rural areas on remote plots of land,” Cadue wrote. “Native American children will be disproportionately impacted by funding cuts to school bus services.”

Last week, House Republicans unveiled a K-12 finance bill that addresses a recent Kansas Supreme Court ruling ordering the state to fill a gap in equalization funding to school districts with weaker local tax bases.

In addition to addressing the court order to remedy the estimated $129 million shortfall, the bill proposed cutting an estimated $14.8 million in transportation aid for schools.

Cadue invited the governor to meet one-on-one to discuss the potential effects of such cuts.

“The current state of education for Native Americans is such that it cannot withstand funding cuts and service disruptions without increasing the educational achievement gap,” Cadue said. “I urge you to ensure that our Native American children have the same educational opportunities as the most fortunate children in Kansas.”

The Capital-Journal has contacted the Governor’s Office seeking comment.

A House budget panel has been holding hearings on the K-12 funding bill this week. The bill has drawn criticism from all sides. School districts are concerned lawmakers aren’t making a good faith effort to satisfy the court order, and are instead trimming funding from elsewhere in public education, such as aid for busing and for virtual schools. At the same time, some conservative Republican lawmakers and education-reform advocates would like to include school-choice options in the bill, such as expanding charter schools or allowing corporate tax breaks for private school tuition scholarships.

The governor released a statement earlier this month calling on the Legislature to fully fund the court’s equalization order and acknowledging “the solution to the equity problem will require significant new funding.”

Priests to be named in sexual-abuse case

Bishop George L. Thomas will “give the benefit of the doubt to the accuser” when it comes to naming names of priests accused of sex abuse from the 1930s through the 1970s. The settlement of a lawsuit filed against the Catholic church of western Montana calls for it (Photo by Eliza Wiley/Helena Independent Record).
Bishop George L. Thomas will “give the benefit of the doubt to the accuser” when it comes to naming names of priests accused of sex abuse from the 1930s through the 1970s. The settlement of a lawsuit filed against the Catholic church of western Montana calls for it (Photo by Eliza Wiley/Helena Independent Record).

By Vince Devlin, The Buffalo Post

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena will post names of priests accused of sexual abuse as part of an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed against it and the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province.

The Diocese of Helena filed for bankruptcy protection as part of the proposed settlement, according to a story by Mike Dennison of Montana’s Lee State Bureau, and will pay $15 million to the victims.The Ursuline Sisters ran a school in St. Ignatius on the Flathead Indian Reservation that enrolled many Native American children.

George Thomas, bishop of the Diocese of Helena since 2004, said in a recent interview that a church review board will look at abuse claims, but that he doesn’t expect the church to quibble over the naming of abusers.

“I give the benefit of the doubt to the accuser,” he said. “The one thing I want to punctuate is that I have been committed from the beginning to transparency. There are no names that I will hold in secret.

“If an accusation is made against (someone) and the facts line up, I think the public has a right to know.”

There were 362 victims who filed the 2011 lawsuit in state District Court in Helena.

Seattle attorney Tim Kosnoff, who represents 271 of them, told Dennison that more than 50 Catholic priests will be named as sexual abusers of children.

Most, if not all, are dead. The abuse occurred from the 1930s through the 1970s.