My Creator, today grant me the wisdom to seek Your wisdom. Help me to Walk of the Red Road.

Many of you will not know this but I am adopted. The details surrounding my adoption are not clear but one thing is for certain I am Haudenosaunee. Iroquois is what we are most known as, this would be like Inuit is to Eskimo. While my adoption papers are varied and interesting one word does come through clearly - Iroquois. Both my parents are listed as Iroquois. Of course I'm not allowed to know which tribe of the nation; Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, Cayuga or Tuscarora, let alone which clan I am. This lineage would be matriarchal although at this point I would be happy for any clan at all. While I have good Tuscarora friends who have adopted me into the turtle clan I still miss that which I do not have. I do have a sense of place and self yet I wish for the family from who I was taken.

Recently I watched the 500 Nations documentary and what remains with me is the end of the series when the narrator mentions how the last thing to be taken from the Indians were their children. I am one of those children, one of many. As I find my way home it is my wish in sharing this part of my life that no matter what rain may fall in my own life that others will reap from the seeds I have sown, in this, my quest. May the waters of my life nourish your own.

So as I enter my 41st year, journeying on the Red Road, guided on my path by only my heart, I am being lead once again to come home. I have recently been given some new information to help me on my way. I have been heading in the direction of the setting sun for many days and I believe my time has come. I am inviting you all to join me on this leg of my journey, not into the past but into the present, as I continue on my way home.

Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA): ICWA is a Federal law that takes precedence over the local adoption laws of every state and gives Native American Indian Nations and Tribes, including the Alaskan Aleuts, the right to control adoptions that involve their tribal members, the children of their tribal members, those individuals that could become tribal members, or even those individuals that a tribe would otherwise give appropriate recognition to under the terms of ICWA, even though the required tribal affiliation has not yet been formally established. In any instance where the provisions of any state law might conflict with ICWA, ICWA will always prevail. ICWA recognizes that the role of Indian tribes is critical in the placement of Indian children, and provides that tribes have a legal interest in their children that is even greater than the competing legal interests of the biological parents of the child. ICWA also provides that an Indian child has an independent right to grow up with an active knowledge of its cultural roots and an opportunity to be involved in its Indian culture and heritage. ICWA applies to cases that involve both voluntary and involuntary terminations of parental rights, as well as to the adoption of Indian children or their placement in foster care.

http://glossary.adoption.com/indian-child-welfare-act-of-1978.html

http://www.ncsl.org/programs/statetribe/ICWA.htm

http://www.nicwa.org/policy/law/icwa/ICWA.pdf

~Peace~