"Lost Birds"

Yes, this has been a common problem for more than a century. The ICWA addressed some of the most egregious problems. It is under attack at present.

In my own family there have been many cases where children were kidnapped by whites. The whites call this adoption, but it absolutely is not legitimate adoption, it's kidnapping and it's an act of violence.

In fact, the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2 clause e states that it is genocide to:

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Thus it is genocide, as defined by UN international convention, which has been agreed to by all nation-states.

In my own family the kidnapped people were able to find each other again. Sometimes though it took to the second generation. But the damage in every case was great. My case is not uncommon. It is very common for indians to have this history in their families of children taken away, of lies, of abuse by whites. We are treated as collector's dolls. In their view, who wouldn't want an adorable indian child to raise christian and enjoy the praise and admiration from their white peers that they have heroically saved an innocent red child from the devil's influence of diabolical native faiths, assuring a place in heaven seated next to Jesus. Clearly anyone opposing the white man's plan here is doing bad.

But what they are doing is not good but evil.

The term Lost Bird originated with Lost Bird, a baby who survived the Wounded Knee massacre. She was found four days after the slaughter underneath her mother's frozen bullet-riddled body. She was "adopted" by one of her family's murderers, who raised her in a miserable and unhappy existence. She died of influenza at age 29.

These days Lost Bird often refers now to someone who was "adopted" and who does not even know what nation/people they are from, due to records being sealed, destroyed, or never existing in the first place. Such a person eventually comes to know they are indigenous, but they have no ability to find their own people or even know what sort of people they are, who their ancestors are, where their land is. Their indian identity dies with them. They can not pass it on to their children because they don't know what nation they are from.

What white people do here is what is diabolical. There are so many cases of this and it is still going on.

/r/NativeAmerican Thread