Not only does it create more confusion as to what rights a child may or may not have it also contributes to an everlasting political and inter-agency play of who actually retains custody of the child and what is actually in the best welfare of the child so that they will become one of the best productive citizens that they are capable of once they vacate from the system either through reunification, long-termed foster care, adoption, or eventual emancipation from the Child Welfare system after reaching the age of majority. Well I can honestly state, from my experience, oversight is just as effective as when those in Washington D.C., state that one agency will have oversight of another. The secondary effect of being an ICWA child is that most tribes allow the various state child welfare agencies to be involved in the child’s welfare with what is, on paper, termed as “oversight” from the tribe. This experience started at being just day’s old but would become a recurring involvement during my multi-year battle with foster care to include self-discovery, identity, sexual identity, education, and now advocacy and reform. The tribal foster care system which is allowed under the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, was the first experience of foster care I had. What caused me to go into foster care initially, I may never know. I went from a situation of being abused and neglected to an even more impossible situation of fighting for my own survival with no one to listen to me, but simply send me for me for more evaluations, add more diagnoses, increase my housing classification (from what initially started as a foster home to ending up in a group home) by the time I aged-out of the system, we so affectionately call foster care. Being that was not the case, what was I to do as a young man to grow into his now mid-30’s? Build walls, push people away, find ways to be isolated, and yes, there were a few times that I failed at suicide. Take a single moment and understand that this began when I was in the Fifth grade approximately 10 years old now, take another moment and realize this wasn’t only from my peer group at the educational facility that I attended this happened repeatedly at home!įrom my understanding, I was in foster care to escape neglect and abuse from all aspects of physical, sexual, and the hardest abuse to overcome, psychological.
Let’s just start this article out with some of the most memorable names that I have been called: fag, faggot, queer, gay, homosexual, sinner, and even told multiple times I should just kill myself and die.