Off the Rez

The fair is mid-stride, but the horses take a break today and let the tractor pull take center stage at the grandstands. The saddle club arena is next to the grandstands, and the tractor pull is cover-your-ears-and-grimace kind of loud. Clyde does not appreciate it so much; it stresses him right out.

So Clyde will rest in his stall today, and I get a day to spend at home.

This week, I have effectively kept my mind off of work. It's difficult to enter a family's world during a time of crisis, take some sort of action, and then, leave for a week.

But one family, specifically, one mom's story, has not left the back of my mind. This mom struggles with alcoholism and has struggled for years. Her kids have been removed from her before, and she has gone through treatment programs before. As I sat across from her in the small, cold meeting room at the jail, I began to learn her story. She told me that she just moved here a few weeks ago. She came here to find a job, and she brought her young boys to this area for a better life. She doesn't want them to grow up the way that she did. She wants them to have opportunities and a good education.

She recognized that she had a problem. She knew she needed treatment. She told me that the treatment programs that were available for her weren't sufficient. They were short-term, and she was sent right back to the toxic environment where she lived.

I was able to contact the kids' grandmother, who lives where the family used to live. She told me that she had custody of the kids in the past because of the mother's alcoholism, but she was not sure if she could take the kids back because she was caring for all of her other grandchildren. Her husband and all of her adult children struggle with drugs and alcohol; most were in jail. 

The mom and her kids weren't immigrants or refugees. They didn't come from another country or an impoverished, inner-city area.

They are Native Americans from a tribe out west. They lived on the reservation.

My knowledge and experience with Native Americans is limited. I took a couple of short-term mission trips to Navajo Nation in high school. We worked with a church and an orphanage there. Unfortunately, some of the stereotypes that I had heard about were proven true. Many of the people appeared to be lazy. I know, how dare I say the "L" word. They did not work, yet they had satellite tv, fancy vehicles, and expensive toys for their children. Alcohol and drugs were a big problem, but it wasn't policed. The people appeared to have no purpose or aspirations. It wasn't the cultural mecca that I hoped it would be.

In the realm of child protective services, there is the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Under this legislation, if I get involved with a family that is registered with a tribe, the tribe can take jurisdiction. When I removed this mother's children, I contacted social services with the tribe. They were very difficult to get a hold of because they don't work that often. Anyways, they didn't want to take jurisdiction now, but they may at some point during the case so I need to keep them updated of court dates.

The mother told the judge that she does not want the children to be sent back to the reservation. She wants a better life for them.

I really don't care for politics or political debates, but I simply can't ignore this.

The way that our government treats Native Americans confuses and pains me. Their efforts to protect them and provide them with reparation seems to be harming them. The government gives them financial support and a place to live in an attempt to shield them from hardship and repay them for apparent sins committed against their ancestors. But perhaps this "helping" isn't really helping at all.  

All in all, the government should be ashamed that a Native American family will leave the reservation and travel across the country to pursue a better life, a job, an education for the kids, and legitimate treatment for alcoholism.