DEE: Hoping for a happy ending

I just read Dee’s story. It is a sad story. While I am not surprised, I am shocked. The safety and well-being of any child is important. Dee’s safety, love, care and support system have been jeopardized. How sad this is.

I am (we are) adoptive parents to a racial child. He is now 46 years old. We adopted him when he was 4 years old. His birth mom was full French Canadian Indian as far as we know. His father, we found out years later was white and Quinault Indian. We were blessed in that when we adopted our Bruce, the law hadn’t yet changed that said he would have had to go to a Native family. When we adopted, we were told that he was taken away from his birth mom because he was found eating out of garbage cans and begging from linemen in Tacoma, Wash. He had been in the foster care system for more than a year in a family that was caring for 14 kids. Some they had adopted; others were foster. He had to call her Mrs. Williams, but was allowed to call the father figure “Dad.” Thus, not the best of foster situations.

We put in for adoption nine months before we got to bring him home. Thus, had he been properly cased in the system, he would not have been in foster care that long. We could have had him three months after he entered the home.

Bruce needed all shots that were required supposedly for children to have when we adopted him. That care was available to the foster home. Although he was not beaten or abused, he was not well cared for. He acted starved when we first got him. He drank a half gallon of milk a day. He would go to the garbage and get onion peels out and eat them. His knees were thick with embedded dirt. I worked hours with vaseline trying to get them clean without hurting him.

Years after we adopted Bruce the law changed, and he would have only been placed in a Native home. (In 2001, when he found his birth mom by accident, he then found that his birth father was white.) His birth mom has passed. He actually took care of her and was with her when she passed away. His birth father, who our Bruce was named after, is still alive in the states but wants nothing to do with his kids from Bruce’s mom. Our adopted son now resides in Port Renfrew, B.C., and is the custodial parent of our only grandchild. He wants to return to Idaho to finish raising her. The suicide rate there among the natives who are being raised by natives, who are alcoholics and are mentally abusive, is horrible. Bruce has had two girl cousins who have committed suicide in the last two weeks. One a drug overdose; the other hung herself due to the grief at the loss of the other. Thus returning a child to a native home is not always best for the child.

Dee’s foster home is obviously a blessed one where she has been cared for well and loved unconditionally. I am so sad to read her story. I do hope that it is brought to the forefront and that she will be returned to the loving care of her foster mom and that she can be adopted and have a forever home.

Thank you for any attention you can bring to this child’s life. Praying that she will be returned to the only mom she has known.

JOANN D. CARLSON

Kootenai County