From Solidarity Spring To Sovereignty Summer: An International Callout To All Indigenous Peoples, Supporters, Allies Of Idle No More & Defenders Of The Land

Over the past few months, Idle No More has ignited a spiritual fire in the hearts of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples to come together to address issues related to: Honoring Treaties and Indigenous Sovereignty, Human Rights, Deepening Democracy reflecting a meaningful Nation to Nation relationship, and increasing Environmental Protections and protecting Mother Earth.

In March, Idle No More joined forces with Defenders of the Land to launch a Declaration that calls on all People to participate in a campaign that was called “Solidarity Spring” and “Sovereignty Summer”.

Idle No More and Defenders of the Land are now transitioning into Sovereignty Summer and people are calling for increased and escalated activities.  The actions aim to bring attention to the Harper government agenda that undermines the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Canadian citizens, and the ongoing policies disrupting Indigenous peoples’ lives – such as land claims, third party management, and no free and prior consent to development on Indigenous lands. We are in a critical time where lives, lands, waters and Creation are at-risk and they must be protected.

The Harper government is moving quickly to pass the suite of legislation (C-45, C-428, S-2, S-6, S-8, S-212, C-27, and the First Nation Education Act) that undermines the treaties, our nation-to-nation relationship and Indigenous sovereignty, which is the last stand to protect our lands. Idle No More calls on non-Indigenous people to join Indigenous communities in coordinated non-violent direct actions in the summer. Alternatives will only come to life if we escalate our actions, taking bold non-violent direct action that challenges the illegitimate power of corporations who dictate government policy.

People have been inspired to engage in creative activities of reclaiming, resurgence and resistance in exercising their Nationhood in ways they see appropriate for them.  There has been a historic “Turtle Lodge Treaty” signing ceremony on Indigenous education, nations have reclaimed sacred spaces and peoples continue to protect their lands from invasion.  There is a spiritual energy stirring and a large awakening is on the horizon as we transition to Sovereignty Summer.  The spirit in which Idle No More began was through the resurgence of Indigenous laws and it is only appropriate for the resurgence of our spiritual and ceremonial practices – which are the foundation of our Nations – to guide us into this transitioning period.  The time for Unity and Solidarity is NOW, our future generations are depending on us and asking us to come together to think about what we will leave for them.

~ A CALLOUT TO ALL INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, SUPPORTERS AND ALLIES OF IDLE NO MORE ~

Leading into Sovereignty Summer, Idle No More calls on all people to join in a grassroots gathering for a Public Awareness Campaign in all Cities, Towns, Indigenous Communities and Villages across Canada and Internationally.

WHEN: An on-going gathering and occupation, starting on Saturday, May 25, 2013 at 5:00pm and continuing once a week, at the same time and at the same place as people/ groups see appropriate for them. As we move closer to summer, Nations/peoples/ groups may want to increase the frequency of their gatherings to each day of the week on a consistent basis.

WHERE: People can determine for themselves the appropriate location that has significance to them.  For those in urban Centre’s this could be: prominent Government Buildings (Federal or Provincial) in Canada and at Canadian Embassies around the World. For those in their communities, this could be sacred sites, places of cultural importance and locations that are significant to people.

WHY: To bring awareness to the public at large of the mission of the Idle No More Movement. To honor, fulfill and solidify Unity and Solidarity with all who support Idle No More in your community, city, town or village. This is not a onetime event but an ONGOING CAMPAIGN leading into Sovereignty Summer.

HOW: Gather, Occupy, Rally and bring your songs, dancing, drums, signs, banner, flags and get to know and network with those who share your passion for the mission of the Idle No More Movement.  Those events that wish to end with a March are encouraged to do so if your numbers permit.

The following Events and ongoing Activities have confirmed their participation in this Call to Action:

Our Water is NOT for Sale

Edmonton, AB Friday May 24, 2013 10:30-2:00 March from Canada Place to Alberta Legislature

Grassroots Gathering Public Awareness Campaign Toronto, ON Starting Saturday May 25, 2013 at 5:00pm (Every Saturday) Queens Park, University Ave and College Street March afterward if numbers permit

Million First Peoples March and Welcoming the Sacred Journey Walkers Ottawa, ON June 21, 2013 Ottawa, ON Parliament Hill

The inspiration for this Call to Action came from an Idle No More supporter in the Toronto region and other supporters asking for people to come together to take action to bring attention to the current Harper agenda and ongoing narrative of colonialism.

The sessions on wildlife and child protection were running concurrently, and it was interesting to see that the wildlife protection session had more than double the participants of the session on child protection. Is that because the tourism professionals or tourists themselves care more about animal’s rights? Or is it because most people are unaware of the staggering amount of child rights violations being perpetrated every day by global tourism operators?

I believe the later to be true. While living in Siem Reap, Cambodia, one of the hotbeds of volunteer travel, I watched the growth of child’s rights violations increase, fueled by the good intentions of travelers. During the six years I lived in Cambodia, the number of orphanage tourism offerings, and number of orphanages themselves grew as the number of tourists grew. In fact, according to a recent UNICEF report, three out of every four children in Cambodian “orphanages” have one or more living parents. A well-meaning tourism sector is spawning some horrible orphanages, fueling the separation of children and parents, keeping kids out of school to entertain tourists and aiding corruption by adults who are using these children to profiteer, all in the name of “service.”

A group in Siem Reap, Cambodia, recently released a comprehensive website detailing many of the issues relating to orphanage tourism and the institutionalization of children: orphanages.no. They explore the realities I also saw in Cambodia on a day-to-day basis: men with signs saying “visit our orphanage” dragging children through streets of tourist-filled bars, gathering the next day’s emotional pray. The visits are listed as “free orphanage tourism dance shows” or “please volunteer for our children in need,” and once the travelers arrive the experience can be quite scripted:

The cutest young girl runs out grab the hand of the visiting traveler. The foreigners are allowed to walk through the center, even enter young kids rooms, usually unsupervised. A dance show is performed.

In a recent Al Jazeera micro-documentary on the issue, “Cambodia’s Orphanage Business,” explores the orphanage tourism and volunteer travel issues in Cambodia and in the film you can see how easy it is for children to be harmed (the film maker is allowed to walk into an orphanage and remove a few children to play with for a day, like one would check-out a library book). The volunteer travel sector is profiteering from these “pet-an-orphan” type travel opportunities. I questioned the American manager of one of the major volunteer sending companies in Siem Reap, who had approached me to find more English teaching placements for his volunteers in schools and orphanages, asking why he didn’t look for other volunteer opportunities for travelers. His response was “Everyone wants to play with kids. It’s the biggest seller. We need to find more placements for these people since there is so much demand for it.”

Did that “pet-an-orphan” phrasing bother you? It should. I assure you it would bother you even more if you watched it day after day, fueled by the good intentions of travelers who are unaware that they have a double standard about child’s rights. When travelers to Cambodia ask me “Well which orphanage is good that I could visit today,” my answer is “Any orphanage that will let you walk in off the street and subjects children to a revolving door of visiting volunteers is not one you want to support.” This demand for child tourism is the tail wagging the dog, yet these global volunteers traveling from all around the world thinking they are coming to “help” have no idea they are fueling this harm.

I was one of them. I have volunteered and visited orphanages in a number of countries, and I even set up my own volunteer travel company in Cambodia seven years ago. It wasn’t until I stayed around longer and realized the long-term harm many of these volunteer practices were fueling that I began to realize the extent of the problem. I shared what I learned in a recent TEDx talk, “What’s Wrong With Volunteer Travel?” in the hopes of preventing other well-intentioned travelers from making the same mistakes I did. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oYWl6Wz2NB8

It’s time the tourism sector and travelers themselves became aware of these issues as, and in order to stop this problem, you too can help by:

1) Spreading the word. Put this article, orphanages.no and a website by Friends International highlighting the fact that “Children are not tourist attractions” on your Facebook, Twitter and blog pages and pass these links on to people you know are traveling in emerging markets where orphanage tourism is prevalent.

2) Write to tour operators and ask them to remove orphanage tours from their offerings and tell them you won’t use their services if they continue to offer orphanage tours.

c) If you are in London at the end of this month, join this debate screening Al Jazeera’s documentary about Cambodian orphanage tourism with a discussion panel including the founder of Projects Abroad, one of the large volunteer sending organizations accused of abusing child rights in this documentary for their poor vetting practices when it comes to volunteer placement partners.

And, if you find yourself in a place where someone is offering you a “free visit to an orphanage” and you want to help, seek out the organizations working to protect child’s rights with a focus on family based care and support them instead. Hopefully, with your help, tourists will stop demanding orphanage tourism and next year’s WTM session on protecting children will be at least as well attended as those protecting the children in the rest of the animal kingdom.

Karen Pickell:  Let’s talk a little more about these orphanages, and particularly about the situation in Ethiopia, which is covered in chapter four. Joyce points out how the demand for adoptable children spawns new “orphanages” that do not even exist before U.S. adoption agencies descend on these impoverished countries searching for kids to send back to waiting American families. I was saddened to learn of the Ethiopian government‘s role in perpetuating the criminal activity of procuring children to be sent overseas by demanding humanitarian aid from the adoption agencies, amounting to $3.7 million annually. There was such a strong financial incentive to keep this business going.

Rebecca Hawkes:  Yes, Karen, and also a financial incentive for agencies to try to stay in business, even if that meant hopping from country to country and engaging in unethical practices. “’Corruption skips from one unprepared country to the another—until that country gets wise, changes its laws, and corrupt adoptions shift to the next unprepared nation,’ wrote journalist E. J. Graff, who researched international adoption corruption for several years at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.” There’s a huge money factor, and it comes into play in so many ways.

Lynn Grubb:  I was quite shocked to learn of this, Karen. But it makes sense. Families hear the rumors that the neighbor’s kids are going to the U.S. for an education and other families jump on the bandwagon and put their “orphans” in “orphanages” for opportunities. Sadly, they don’t even fully understand that they are relinquishing their rights forever. That is so wrong to me.

Rebecca:  I’d also like to highlight the point that the book makes about prospective adoptive parents’ wish lists (wanting a young child, a female child, etc.) driving demand, creating an underworld in which children are procured to fill the orders. It’s chilling to think of it this way, but the money coming into poor countries from U.S. adopters and agencies is a huge influence. Corruption is bound to happen in such circumstances.

I agree, Lynn. So wrong!

Susan Perry:  The money factor drives the business, and adoption is a subject, unfortunately, that can easily be misrepresented and simplified. Who can argue with the assertion that “every child deserves a loving home?” People don’t want to look at the unsettling truths behind the business, either overseas or here.

Rebecca:  And then there are the people like the Bradshaws, American adoptive parents who spoke out about the corruption and lies they encountered and faced strong retribution, almost losing their own bio kids as a result of speaking out. Scary.

Lynn:  Yes, Rebecca. I recall somebody receiving death threats as well. Big money in adoption.

Rebecca:  Chilling. This book has certainly stimulated a strong sense of outrage in me!

Karen P.:  Lynn, this truth that our western idea of adoption is not understood in these countries is pointed out repeatedly in the book. How awful that parents are sending their kids off thinking they’re getting a chance at a good education, only to later learn that they’ve lost their children forever? As I read about Haiti back in chapter two, I kept thinking, “How do these adoptive parents live with themselves once they learn what they’ve really done?” I was pleased to find Joyce interviewing adoptive parents of some of the Ethiopian children in chapter four. One mother, Jessie Hawkins, says, “Finding out that you have someone else’s child simply because you happen to have been born in a country where you’re more privileged than they are? You want to throw up, you don’t know what to do.” Many of these adoptive parents are also being scammed by the agencies. I was a little confused, though, by the story of the Bradshaws, who discovered their adopted children were not really orphans and wanted to return them to their family in Ethiopia, but couldn’t for some legal reason that wasn’t clearly explained. I do wish Joyce would have made it clear why these children could not be reunited with their families. I was left wondering whether the Bradshaws really did everything they could have to get these kids back where they belonged.

Yes, Rebecca, the way their agency turned on the Bradshaws was very scary.

Carlynne Hershberger:  I questioned that aspect of it too, Karen. She says several times that it would be illegal for the child to be sent back. How can that be? The whole idea that people would mislead a family to think they’re simply giving their child an education opportunity while all along taking the child away permanently just sickens me to the core. I don’t understand a human who could do that.

Rebecca:  You make a good point, Karen. I got the sense that they were stuck—financially, legally, and otherwise—but that aspect wasn’t fully explained.

Mila:  With you, Karen, on the confusion over the Bradshaws’ situation. The adoptive mom in Tennessee sent Artyom back and “Criminal charges were never filed, but the adoption agency she used, the World Association for Children and Parents, which is based in Seattle, sued her last year for child support.”

Karen P.:  And knowing what they did, why did the Bradshaws change the girls’ names? Maybe it’s a small point compared to everything else in the book, but this whole idea of renaming children—especially older children—bothers me. It seems so much like a way of taking ownership of them.

Mila:  Karen—yes! I was very perturbed by the Bradshaws’ decision to insist upon changing their names.

Rebecca:  I suspect there was an “emerging from the fog” process for the Bradshaws. Some of the confusion is around sequencing. At what point did they know what? I’m not sure, but the adoption appears to have been finalized months before the children were brought to the United States, which seems a questionable practice in and of itself.

Mila:  Good point, Rebecca. Hadn’t thought of it like that . . . .

K. Dahlquist & R. Bangert

Lynn:  One theme I noticed in the adoptive parents who later learned their children were not orphans by any means, was that they were under so much pressure by others in the adoption community to not speak up, to not post the information on message boards warning other parents, to just go along with the program. Kind of like, “You have your kids now be quiet and let the rest of us get ours”. The adoptive parents who later discovered the truth were in this “don’t ask, don’t tell” position and the only thing that mattered to the other prospective adoptive parents was getting children—orphans or not.

Karen P.:  It’s frightening, isn’t it, that there are so many prospective adoptive parents who do not want to hear about any negatives prior to adopting? As an adoptee, I find it very hurtful, because I know they do not have the best interest of their future children in mind if they don’t care to learn about the reality of living inside of adoption. In this age when so much information is available 24/7 via the internet, there is no excuse for not knowing what’s really going on.

Mila:  Karen—I have had personal experience with this. A friend had contacted me expressing she wanted to hear what I had to say about adopting from Ethiopia because she and her husband were seriously considering it—and basically already had begun the process through an agency. I shared a ton of links and resources with her that discussed the complexities and warned against adopting from Ethiopia. She responded by distancing herself from me after telling me that she had never heard a perspective like mine (even though it wasn’t solely my perspective). Now she sends me requests for money to help maternity clinics in Ethiopia, which is great (their adopted children’s mother died in labor—although their father and full siblings are of course still alive and it does seem that the father did not have a full understanding of what he was doing when he brought the newborns to the orphanage out of desperation for their lives). But of course, she’s doing this AFTER she and her husband adopted from Ethiopia—again, back to your point, Karen, that they didn’t want to face the truth until they were able to get the children they wanted. That may sound really harsh and judgmental but dang it, that’s sure the way it seems. But on the flip side, another friend who contacted me for the same reason—wanting to learn more about adopting from Ethiopia—responded by actually deciding not to adopt from Ethiopia after researching the links, resources, and info I emailed to her.

Karen P.:  Those are two very powerful examples, Mila. And this is why we need to keep speaking and educating as many people as we can about the truth of adoption.

Lynn:  On an unrelated topic on page 89, I like how the author paints a picture of the Baby Scoop Era and was interested to learn that “many were pressured to deny that they knew the fathers of their children” and “it was so traumatizing that many do not remember the births.” This is true for my own mother, I suspect, who did not remember my birthday.

Carlynne:  One other part I wanted to mention was the comeback of the maternity home. So many times when I discuss this issue and how I was treated as a mother I get the instant reply of “that was then, it doesn’t happen anymore.” It’s interesting that so much of the funding coming from programs like “choose life” license plates goes to help CPC’s and homes but only if the woman chooses adoption. The story of the girls in Utah who felt they had to resort to assault to escape one of these homes and keep their babies, should be evidence that coercive tactics are alive and well.

Forgot to mention that was in 2007.

Karen P.:  Yes, Carlynne, the Baby Scoop Era may be over in terms of the great number of women who were forced to relinquish, but unfortunately the tactics from that era haven’t completely been eradicated. It angers me that there are people who believe, as Joyce makes the point, that it is God’s will that one family should suffer to make another family happy.

Rebecca:  Karen, you wrote above “As an adoptee, I find it very hurtful, because I know they do not have the best interest of their future children in mind if they don’t care to learn about the reality of living inside of adoption.” This hits on something about the God’s-will, rescue narrative that is particularly challenging for me. The adoptee is assumed to benefit, but little to no effort is put into determining if the adoptee actually does get the “better life” the adoption promoters are so certain about. To the contrary, when adoptees come forward to say “Hey, our experience wasn’t actually all that great,” we are dismissed. If an adoptee’s actual experience doesn’t fit with the established framework, it must be the adoptee who is flawed—hence the stereotype of the bitter, ungrateful adoptee who is viewed as an aberration who can be disregarded. Where is the space for corrective feedback? Where is critical thought and reevaluation of the framework itself based on its impact on the very people it is supposed to benefit?

Carlynne:  Totally agree Rebecca. As an adoptee and a natural mother, this book not only gives me that impression but it fills me with such rage that our lives could be so manipulated for so many decades with so many people just seemingly to not care or just want to look the other way for the sake of profit.

To be continued . . . Please join us next Thursday, May 23, when we will begin discussing the second half of The Child Catchers, starting with chapter five.