Home Is Where the Heritage Is : Indians Persevere to Keep Foster Children With Tribe

When he was 5 weeks old, Daniel H. was taken to an El Cajon doctor for treatment of a fractured skull and a cracked rib. Now, a year and a half later, the boy is the center of a fight to preserve the heritage of Indian children who are placed in foster homes.

After the tortuous process of separating the child from neglecting parents, the Indian Child Welfare Consortium wants to take Daniel, who is part Mission Indian, from his Caucasian foster home and place him with Indians. But the county and the child’s current foster mother are satisfied with his present home.

The battle will be resolved in Juvenile Court next month.

Daniel’s case is the most controversial in the Indian consortium’s six-year existence, and it goes to the heart of its mission: to preserve Indian heritage.

Empowered by a 1978 congressional act, the group finds homes, gives legal advice and counsels families for 12 tribes in San Diego and Riverside counties. The staff of eight faces a mammoth task in an area with 11,000 square miles of reservation and 21,500 Indians. The Escondido-based consortium monitors 80 children in a dozen foster homes, but its scope and effectiveness is being threatened by recent budget cuts.

The consortium acts as an aid to county foster placement. When the county takes in abused or neglected children, it generally tries to place them in homes with similar ethnic backgrounds. If a child appears to be of Indian descent, authorities notify the Indian group for help in locating a foster home. The consortium then attempts to place Indian children with relatives or members of the child’s tribe.

But San Diego County officials say that they cannot possibly check the ancestry of each foster child and that they are more concerned with finding a foster home with appropriate location, schooling and financial support than with preserving racial unity.

“There are a lot of variables,” said Carol Cain, chief of initial services for San Diego Social Services. “We wouldn’t make the assumption that every child is an Indian and check it against some registry; that wouldn’t be sensible. Most of the time, if the ethnicity of the child is a factor, it is brought to our attention, but I imagine there are times when that wouldn’t happen.”

In Daniel’s case, the county failed to coordinate with the Indians. Daniel was placed with Geraldine Freeland, a nurse in San Diego. She says she is part Indian but cannot prove tribal ancestry. She has cared for Daniel since early 1985, and both the foster mother and natural mother are pleased with the arrangement. The Indians want to place the child with Indian parents, but critics of the group say that would be disruptive.

“Now, some year and four months later, the Indians want to come in here and throw their weight around and prove they have power,” said Keith Kaylor, Freeland’s attorney. “At the tender age of 18 months, they want to rip him out of a perfect environment.”

Freeland said she has allowed Daniel’s natural mother and grandmother to visit him, and they want her to adopt the child. “There’s an Indian chief sitting on a piece of onyx by my fireplace,” she said. “It’s not that Daniel would be kept from anything Indian. This child never lived in an Indian culture in the first place.

“I’m not against everything that the consortium does, but this is one case they should stay out of.”

The Indian consortium works on cases like Daniel’s with less and less financial backing. Financed by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the agency will suffer a severe budget cut in August. The California budget for such programs will be cut in half, and the consortium will be one of four remaining Indian child advocacy groups in a state that used to support 22.

The Indian Child Welfare Consortium springs from noble special-interest legislation. In the 1960s and ‘70s, social workers concerned about alcoholism, abuse and neglect were removing Indian children from reservations at an inordinate rate. A 1974 study by the Assn. on American Indian Affairs showed that 25% to 35% of all Indian children were being separated from their families. In Minnesota, one in eight Indian children under 18 was living in an adoptive home; nationwide, 85% of all Indian foster children were living in non-Indian homes.

According to a congressional report, most Indian children were removed because of perceived neglect rather than physical abuse. Indian attorney Leroy Wilder got interested in the bill and lobbied for it after having fought a California foster care battle in which the mother was deemed an unfit parent because she sniffed paint.

A U.S. House of Representatives report called the removal of Indian children from their parents “shocking” and “discriminatory . . . based on middle-class values.” So, after minor opposition from states concerned about extra costs, the BIA and the Mormon Church, which was adopting Indian children, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 passed. It gave Indian tribes control of child custody proceedings in most cases.

Evelyn Hernandez, 68, upholds the law’s and the Indian consortium’s ideal. She is a quarter Mission, quarter Yaki, half Irish, and she has taken in about 15 Indian children in the last five years. Living in a four-bedroom apartment on the Rincon Indian Reservation, she currently cares for four children and has bought bunk beds to prepare for more.

“I get a big satisfaction out of it because all my life I’ve always felt sorry for elderly people and little children,” she said. “I try to do for them what nobody did for me when I was young.” As a child, she attended a federal Indian boarding school in Riverside, the kind of institution the Congress thought was breaking up families.

She cares for the children and has become the legal guardian of two of them. She wants them to retain their Indian heritage and still mix with mainstream society.

“I do Indian bead work and ceramics, and the little ones love to do that,” she said. “When they paint, I notice it’s always Indian figures. But I don’t want them to lean too much toward the Indian ways. When I came out of school, I didn’t know where I belonged, so I want them to be able to mix with all races.”

She keeps a small menagerie of geese, guinea hens, rabbits, six cats, three cockateels and two dogs--all to keep the children entertained. She also plans to hatch a peacock and raise a pig. When the children are old enough to ask about their parents or heritage, she’ll answer their questions. She said child advocates visit her several times a month, and she admires the Indian consortium for its vigilance. The consortium’s social workers, in turn, admire her ability to care for the children.

She said having Indian children come and go doesn’t bother her. “That goes with being a foster mother, but at least you get the satisfaction that they are healthy and surviving,” she said. “I figure if I can take care of that many, I can take care of a few more.”

Seven years after the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed, results appear spotty. “It works well for those Indian tribes that have the resources to make it work through litigation,” said Wilder, who pushed for the bill.

Eugene Madrigal, a lawyer with the California Indian Legal Services who represents the Indians in the Daniel case, said effectiveness of the act depends on the counties’ willingness to recognize Indian children and to tell tribes about them.

“We’ve had both extremes, from the most cooperative to those who don’t notify the tribes,” he said.

In addition, Indians find court battles tough because local judges are sometimes unaware of the act and because the law’s loose language allows an Indian child to remain with a non-Indian family if “good cause” is found. “That’s the main argument that is used--that everyone appears happy,” Madrigal said. “I think it defeats the main purpose of the act.”

He said only a handful of Indian cases have gone to court in California. “I think California is a little bit behind in litigating things because the Indian population is not so large and visible as in other states, like Arizona and New Mexico.”

And recent budget cuts are further slimming the possibility that Indians will make the bill stick in court. The Escondido group just changed offices to cut costs when its budget drops from $184,000 to $117,000 next month. “It’s more than a hefty cut,” said Margaret Orrantia, director of the consortium. “When it comes right down to it, we’re going to have to lay off some staff or cut back some hours, which of course limits the services you can provide.”

“One of the most important things that we do is advocate for these kids in court,” she said. “Without it, the state pretty much does what it wants.”

The cutbacks are happening throughout California. Funds for the state under the act dropped from $1 million in 1985 to less than $500,000 in 1986, further reduced by the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings automatic budget reduction act. The remaining four programs will be in Escondido, Bishop, Los Angeles and Trinidad, “not enough to cover the whole state,” Orrantia said.

Ben Chavarria, area vocational development officer for the BIA in Sacramento, said Escondido is an area that needs consortium support. “It’s a very important program and a very useful program,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. I have never seen a program cut that much. It’s disheartening.”

Chuck Toyebo, BIA community services officer, said the cuts, which spared food assistance to Indians, scuttled long-range efforts to build Indian networks and tribal courts.

In addition, the Indian foster care advocates face stiff resistance from non-Indian foster parents who believe the groups are carrying the preservation of Indian identity to an extreme.

But the Indian consortium presses on, armed with its charter and convinced preserving Indian identity through matching Indian foster children with fellow Indians is worthwhile.

“It’s the law,” said Silvanna Taylor, child advocate with the consortium. “Some Indians got together and said, ‘We’re tired of having our kids snatched away.’ Laws aren’t just made for no reason.”