A Red Child in a White Man's World

The bare facts: In April, Kelley and Tracy Cato adopted 4 month old Jacob from his mother, a Cherokee woman. The Catos are not Indian, although Kelley believes he has Cherokee blood. This creates a problem. It is generally illegal for an Indian child to be adopted by a non-Indian family, according to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. Now, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is fighting the adoption and trying to take Jacob away from the Catos.

Generally speaking, I like the Dallas Observer, but their writers do have a tendency to be every bit as biased as the Dallas Morning News (which they criticise unceasingly). The bias in this article is obviously toward the adoptive family (and from the writer's point of view, the child), and leaves out the history of Indian children being adopted out, which is vital to understanding the Cherokee Nation's drive to keep this child in a Cherokee home.

The people who have written letters to the Observer in support of the Catos make a valid point: the child should certainly be raised in a loving home with parents who both care and can financially support the child. But they're assuming that it's better for him to be raised in a white home where he can be assured of a certain level of care than in a Cherokee home, whether it be foster or no.

I'm certainly no romantic. I don't think that for the individual it's necessarily the worst thing to lose your heritage. You are a human being regardless of who your ancestors were and what they did, and that's the egalitarianism the Cato's supporters are supposedly advocating. But they're assuming two thing: that it is better to be raised white under reasonable circumstances than Cherokee under reasonable circumstances (because let's face it, the Cherokee nation isn't proposing to put him in slavery or some Dickensian orphanage), and that it makes no difference to his cultural awareness as to whether he's raised by white folk and reminded of his Cherokee-ness or whether he's actually raised Cherokee.

Why do I say that these people are assuming it's better to be raised white? Well, I'll use an analogy. Let's take a situation where an American child is taken for adoption by a Mexican family. They're well off and promise to raise the child with knowledge of his own heritage, even attempting to teach him the language. So off to Mexico he goes. Well, the parents don't speak English, so they can't speak it with him (and even if they try, they'll never be fluent). They only know about American holidays from books and perhaps seeing them once or twice, never fully understanding what they're about. They don't eat American food daily. They don't read American newspapers or watch American shows. Even with all the cultural education in the world, is this kid an American when he's 18? He may speak pretty decent English, but will that make him feel like an American? When he comes to visit (or live here), will he feel at home, even though he grew up in, say, Monterrey? I don't think so. I think he'd be an alien, a Mexican with a more than passing familiarity with America.

Would these same people say then that being Mexican is what's best for the child? That being raised by loving Mexican parents is better than being raised by even mediocre American parents? That the Mexican culture and lifestyle is the equal of the American lifestyle and that it doesn't matter if he's raised Mexican or not? I'm not entirely sure they would. Let's get over this idea that they can somehow raise a Cherokee kid to feel Cherokee through this second-hand method. That's not a decent enough argument.

Still, they can say, "why not let him live with parents who love him, even if he won't be a Cherokee?" Well, that's a good question, and if there weren't a historical precedent to this situation, the Cherokee nation probably wouldn't care. If this were the first time, instead of the umpteen-thousandth time, no one would think twice about letting it go. But instead of acknowledging that this is a historical problem (a problem for Indians created by whites), they just say, "Well, forget the past. We can't undo what's been done and we shouldn't have to pay the price." If you don't know what I'm talking about, then look at this: The Indian Adoption Project.

Most people (non-Indian people, that is) probably aren't aware that in the past, the US governments genocidal policies to the Indians were more than simply sending the cavalry out to destroy a few villages and kill all the Indians there. They forced Indian children into the infamous boarding schools. They wanted them to forget their culture, their ancestors, and their way of life. And given enough time, they would have succeeded too. Although that policy ended in the 1930s in the US, an unofficial (and later official) policy of adopting native children out of their tribal homes or reservations took its place. Hundreds of thousands of native children were abused in the earlier system, but plenty of children continued to be abused in the new system.

From the CWLA website:

A 1969 study by the Association on American Indian Affairs showed that roughly 25% to 35% of Indian children had been separated from their families. According to the First Nations Orphan Association, between 1941 and 1978, 68% of all Indian children were removed from their homes and placed in orphanages or white foster homes, or adopted into white families

If this had been done to Americans, would they forgive and forget? If they saw even the shadow of this kind of abuse to their children, would they allow it? If it was their culture threatened with destruction century after century, year after year, would they let it go just once? It was this genocide, both of people and of cultures, that led to the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. This act was meant to end the loss of Indian cultures because of the kidnaping of native children, and it has achieved that purpose.

Some of the people who have written in to the Observer criticise the Cherokee Nation for taking the action it has. I see it as the Cherokee Nation protecting itself. It is guaranteeing its survival. This goal should be understandable enough to Americans. We say that we have a right to ensure that our country survives, and even if I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, it was because I didn't believe that Iraq was a threat to us, not because I'm against fighting those who threaten us. In the same way, the Cherokee Nation has a right to fight those who threaten it. And even if you think the Catos are no threat to the Nation, it's for the Nation to decide what constitutes a threat to its future. Certainly the loss of its children is a threat, and they're responding to that threat. So they definitely have a legitimate cause for worry in this case.

And lastly, being that he's a mere 6 months old, as long as this case is settled quickly enough, it's not going to be harmful to him to be placed in a new home. For those who argue that he's "bonded" with his new parents, that's plainly ridiculous. At 6 months he's not going to remember them one bit, any more than he'd remember his birth mother. The simple fact of him being moved again is completely innocuous.

Now I'm not attacking the Catos for wanting to raise the child. I believe that is a noble sentiment. My purpose has been to defend the Cherokee Nation from the ignorance of the Cato's supporters. Everyone's side of the story should be presented fairly and equally. However you believe this should turn out, just remember this: both sides are doing what they think is best for the child. For the Cherokees, it is vitally important that this child be raised Cherokee. For the Catos, it is vitally important that this child be raised by a family who will love him and can financially support him. There is no wrong in either of those desires.

I don't know which side is worthier of support. I wish the Catos could just move to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma so their son could be raised around his people and feel like one of them. Then there would be no need for a choice to be made. Unfortunately, that can't happen, so a choice must be made. Cherokee or white. Either way, Jacob is going to be the one who loses something.