Partnerships helping rebuild Spirit Lake child protection programs

By Patrick Springer, The Jamestown Sun

FARGO — Partnerships involving the Spirit Lake Tribe, Bureau of Indian Affairs and others are credited with helping to rebuild child protection programs on the reservation.Wednesday will mark the two-year anniversary of the handover of child protection and foster care services from the Spirit Lake Tribe to the BIA.The switch, made at the prodding of the North Dakota congressional delegation, came in the midst of major gaps in the safety net for children on the reservation.Among other problems, Spirit Lake children were being placed in unsafe foster homes, and suspected abuse and neglect cases were not always investigated and followed up.The BIA continues to operate the child protection programs while the tribe delivers most other social services, although the tribe hopes someday to resume full responsibility for social services.“They’re making progress,” said Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who noted staff vacancies still pose challenges. “Getting the right people and getting them trained is the priority.”The BIA has filled a supervisory social worker position but continues to bring in staff from other reservations to run programs. It is contracting with a firm to help maintain services until positions are permanently filled.“The contract will provide some stability there,” said Lawrence Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior for Indian Affairs, who visited Spirit Lake for 2½ days last week.“These social workers will be starting in a matter of weeks,” he said, referring to the contract workers, who first must clear a background check.Social workers are in demand throughout North Dakota, complicating the search, Roberts said.Meanwhile, the Spirit Lake tribe also is filling social services positions. It recently hired a case manager and is working to fill another case manager position, said Melissa Merrick-Brady.Candidates have been interviewed, and the position should be filled soon, and the tribe’s social services will be fully staffed, she said.“When I came, we had no case managers; we were struggling,” said Merrick-Brady, who became the tribe’s social services director in July after being appointed interim director in March. “The staff was overwhelmed, overworked.”The Department of Interior is providing a grant of almost $800,000 to bolster Spirit Lake’s tribal court and guardianship programs.The grant will pay for two guardians to represent vulnerable children, and a child service and Indian child welfare presenter to appear in court, Roberts said.The training and grants will help social services better coordinate with tribal court and guardians, and help lift some of the burden on social workers, Merrick-Brady said.The collaborative approach was highlighted last week with a symposium at Candeska Cikana Community College in Fort Totten, when officials laid out plans for improving services at Spirit Lake.“The discussion was extremely productive,” Roberts said. “You had all the relevant players in the room,” including the tribe, BIA, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and state and local officials.“We have a lot of work to do, but I think the foundation was laid,” Roberts said.The North Dakota congressional delegation also is pursuing legislative remedies, including more stringent background checks of foster households for American Indian children.Legislation in the House and Senate would apply the same foster care standards in Indian Country that now are required elsewhere. The legislation has passed a House committee, and Hoeven expects Senate approval later this year or early next year.Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., has introduced legislation to create a Commission on Native Children. If passed, she said, the bill “would help us tackle many of the challenges we’ve seen on Spirit Lake and go a long way in improving the lives of Native children.”The bill also would provide for a study into issues facing Native children, including high rates of poverty – such as unemployment, child abuse, domestic violence, crime, substance abuse and few economic opportunities – and make recommendations on how to make sure Native children are better taken care of and given the opportunities to thrive.Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., agreed that coordination among service providers at Spirit Lake has improved.“We have seen an improvement in terms of communication,” he said.

Tribal Leaders Summit panel talks child welfare

 

By Karee Magee, The Bismark Tribune

Sandra Bercier, interim director of the Native American Training Institute, said there is an acute need for Native American foster homes in both North and South Dakota.
Sandra Bercier, interim director of the Native American Training Institute, said there is an acute need for Native American foster homes in both North and South Dakota.

BISMARCK, N.D. — A panel at the Tribal Leaders Summit on Thursday addressed problems facing the implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

The mission of ICWA, first founded in 1978, is to keep or reunite Indian children with their families.

According to the National Indian Child Welfare Association’s description, the act was created in “response to the alarmingly high number of Indian children being removed from their homes by both public and private agencies.”

According to panelists, the numbers of Indian children put in foster homes remains high.

The consensus among the panelists is that the obstacle facing implementation of child welfare programs on reservations is lack of funding.

Sandra Bercier, interim director of the Native American Training Institute, said that because the programs are underfunded, they also are understaffed.

It is also hard to find permanent employees, said Leander McDonald, chairman of the Spirit Lake Tribe.

Child welfare programs are the hardest place to work, Bercier said, because staff sometimes take children out of homes.

Another significant problem is the lack of foster homes and families on the reservations, she said. Indian children who are taken from their families will often end up in a non-native family instead.

“If you have room in your home, hook up wth Indian Child Welfare,” Bercier said. “If we want ICWA to work, we have to be the ones to drive that process.”

The tribal leaders from South Dakota, though, emphasized an issue specific to that state.

“The problem is that there was this systemic institution that incentivized the removal of Indian children,” said Chase Iron Eyes, tribal judge of Lakota People Law Project.

According to Iron Eyes, the state of South Dakota earns $60 million from the federal government for the placement of Indian children into foster care.

South Dakota has a system of 48 hour hearings. The parents are required to go to court within 48 hours after their children were taken away, according to Tom Disselhorst, attorney for United Tribes Technical College.

The timespan doesn’t give them a chance to find a lawyer, he said, and they often don’t know why their children have been removed.

B.J. Jones said that the majority of these situations in South Dakota have nothing to do with abuse or neglect, but more often it is because the parent committed a misdemeanor like forgetting their license while driving.

He said society criminalizes poverty and Indian mothers are now afraid to drive because, if they are stopped by the police, their child could be taken away.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe have filed a class action lawsuit against the state of South Dakota, and hope it will be part of the solution. They are accusing state officials of violating the Fifth Amendment by not providing opportunities for due process.

Due process includes that an attorney is required in court, which many Indian parents don’t have in the 48-hour hearings.

If the lawsuit reaches the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, it may require other states to change their policies as well, said Disselhorst.

Hearing set on Spirit Lake child protection

By Associated Press

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Cass County (N.D.) Jail shows Valentino Bagola who was convicted in September 2013 in the brutal killings of two children on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in May 2011. A U.S. House subcommittee has scheduled a hearing on June 24, 2014, on child protection and the justice system on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation. Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer requested the hearing saying he wants to assess whether congressional action is warranted to address problems with child abuse and deaths that have plagued the reservation. Jail, File) Photo: Courtesy Of The Cass County (N.D., AP
FILE – This undated file photo provided by the Cass County (N.D.) Jail shows Valentino Bagola who was convicted in September 2013 in the brutal killings of two children on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in May 2011. A U.S. House subcommittee has scheduled a hearing on June 24, 2014, on child protection and the justice system on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation. Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer requested the hearing saying he wants to assess whether congressional action is warranted to address problems with child abuse and deaths that have plagued the reservation. Jail, File) Photo: Courtesy Of The Cass County (N.D., AP

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A U.S. House subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for later this month on child protection and the justice system on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in northeastern North Dakota.

U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., requested the hearing, saying he wants to assess whether congressional action is needed to address problems with child abuse and deaths that have plagued the reservation in recent years.

“The recurring deaths and child abuse cases on Spirit Lake are unacceptable,” he said. “Clearly the current system is failing our children.”

The Spirit Lake tribe has been overhauling its child protection system, which came under fire in 2012. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs stepped in late that year to bolster and oversee the system. The agency late last year assigned seven agents to the reservation.

Federal prosecutors last year successfully tried two cases involving child deaths on the reservation. Valentino “Tino” Bagola was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted in September of killing his 9-year-old niece and her 6-year-old brother, who were stabbed a combined 100 times. In November, Hope Louise Tomahawk Whiteshield was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the death of her nearly 3-year-old step-granddaughter, who died after being thrown down an embankment.

Tribal members about a year ago also ousted Chairman Roger Yankton Sr. in a recall vote, saying his administration was corrupt and ineffective and had allowed a culture of child abuse and child sexual abuse to worsen on the reservation. Yankton denied the allegations.

The hearing of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs is set for June 24 in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C.