Natasha an Alaskan Native adopted into a non native family shares her recovery journey.

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The Practice of Native American Boarding Schools and Adoption

The history of adoption and Native American boarding schools is a tough one, deeply intertwined with attempts to assimilate Native children into white culture, often at the cost of their own identity and heritage. This all kicked off in the late 19th century with the establishment of Native boarding schools like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879. These schools were built on the idea of “Kill the Indian, save the man,” with a mission to transform Native kids into what was seen as “civilized” by European-American standards. They banned students from speaking their languages, wearing traditional clothes, or practicing their customs, pushing them instead to adopt English and learn trades that fit into mainstream American society.

These boarding schools were, frankly, brutal. Many kids were taken from their families against their will, subjected to harsh discipline, poor living conditions, and even physical and emotional abuse. With the goal of erasing Native culture, children were forced to reject their heritage, and it led to a deep sense of cultural dislocation that still impacts families today. While this system peaked in the early 1900s, it persisted well into the 1960s.

In the mid-20th century, this approach continued through government programs that encouraged Native American adoption by white families. The Indian Adoption Project of the 1950s to the 1970s led to many Native kids being adopted out, often without proper consent or understanding from their families. This effort to remove Native children from their cultural backgrounds and place them with non-Native families has led to generations of Native people growing up disconnected from their roots, sometimes called a “Lost Generation.”

After years of activism and resistance from Native communities, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed in 1978. The ICWA pushed back on these forced assimilation efforts, aiming to keep Native kids within Native communities whenever possible. Today, there’s a lot of work being done by boarding school survivors, adoptees, and their descendants to reconnect with their culture, share their stories, and heal the historical trauma created by these policies.

For more information visit https://boardingschoolhealing.org/list/ and https://www.pbs.org/articles/native-american-history-documentaries-about-residential-schools-and-forced-adoptions

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Thought to Consider…

Take a walk with God. He will meet you at the Steps.
The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.
Don’t mess up an amends with an excuse.

AACRONYMS

F E A R = Fools Every Alcoholic Repeatedly
G O D = Good Orderly Direction

The Four Horsemen

“The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places, hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did – then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen – Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair.”

Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things – these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes.”

We found that God does not make too hard terms for those who seek Him. To us, the Realm of the Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men.”

Tolerance Keeps Us Sober

“Honesty with ourselves and others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.”

“Experience shows that few alcoholics will long stay away from a group just because they don’t like the way it is run. Most return and adjust themselves to whatever conditions they must. Some go to a different group, or form a new one. “In other words, once an alcoholic fully realizes that he cannot get well alone, he will somehow find a way to get well and stay well in the company of others.

“The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.”

“If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the power needed for change wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. Lack of power: That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live – and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.”

Dianne