- Originally published by the NY Times on April 5, 2005 [here]
By SARAH KERSHAW
LUMMI INDIAN RESERVATION, Wash., March 29 - The very full house
on Gumel Place was steeped in the usual loud weekend chaos when
14-year-old Cecilia Morris burst through the door.
"Hey," she said. "Is Mom in jail?"
No, said her uncle, Jasper Cladoosby, but her mother had gone back into drug treatment. Her father is the one in prison.
Mr. Cladoosby, 27, who is raising four of his own children along
with Cecilia and two of her sisters, is one of possibly hundreds of
uncles, aunts, grandparents and others caring for children whose
parents are unable to raise them because of dire poverty, alcoholism
and epidemic drug abuse on this reservation on Bellingham Bay in
Northwest Washington. Cecilia's four remaining siblings are being cared
for by other relatives.
"Their parents basically left them last summer," said Mr. Cladoosby,
who works as a part-time crabber and mechanic but relies mostly on food
stamps and his wife's salary and tips as a dealer at the new Lummi
casino to care for his children and nieces. "It's pretty much
overwhelming."
Tribal officials here estimate that fewer than half of the 1,500
children on the reservation are living with a parent full time. A
breakdown of the American Indian family, mirrored throughout
reservations across the country, has been building for generations but
is now growing worse, tribal and outside experts say.
The crisis gained new attention last month after a troubled youth went
on a shooting rampage on the Red Lake reservation in northern
Minnesota. The broken family of the teenager, Jeff Weise, 16, who the
police say killed nine people and then himself, is typical among
Indians. With his father dead and his mother disabled by a
drunken-driving accident, he was staying with his grandmother on the
reservation, after living with his mother, before her accident, in
Minneapolis.
"The breakdown is huge," said Danita Washington, coordinator of
Lummi's drug abuse prevention program, who is caring for three nieces
and a nephew because her sister is addicted to heroin. "We're trying to
find a solution."
Lummi tribal officials say their roster shows that 11 percent of the
children on the reservation have been placed in foster care or with
relatives receiving foster care payments. Statewide, about 8 percent of
Indian children are in foster care, Washington officials say. But like
national statistics, those numbers tell only a sliver of the story.
Even though tribes have made great strides over the last two
decades in keeping children from troubled homes, a cascade of
statistics paints a bleak picture of the roughly 850,000 Indian and
Alaska Native youths, about half of them living on Indian reservations,
according to the Census Bureau. Compared with whites and with other
minorities, Indians have extremely high teenage suicide rates, are more
likely to get into fights at school and carry weapons to school, and
have high rates of substance abuse, several recent reports show.
"It's not so much the idea of a traditional mother and father,
but the concept of family, and the idea of supportive, safe and
nurturing family is very important," said Dr. Jon T. Perez, director of
the division of behavioral health for the Indian Health Service, the
primary government agency responsible for providing health care to more
than 560 federally recognized tribes. "And when you have generations of
people for whom that has not been the case, it can be problematic."
According to the latest federal statistics, nearly 10,000 Indian and
Alaska Native children, or about 1.2 percent, are in foster care,
living with relatives or others. (Indians and Alaska Natives make up
1.5 percent of the nation's population. ) The federal data, from the
Department of Health and Human Services, show that about 1.8 percent of
black children and about 0.5 percent of white children are in foster
care.
Terry L. Cross, executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare
Association, based in Portland, Ore., said that at least 25,000 Indians
under the age of 18, or 3 percent, were living in foster care or with
relatives, although he acknowledged that his surveys, which do not
include Alaska Native children, probably failed to take into account
many more informal living arrangements.
"I think Native Americans aren't really on anybody's radar," said
Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform, based in Alexandria, Va. "When people write federal
legislation, they keep leaving the tribes out."
While the shuttling of children between relatives is typical in inner
cities and poor rural areas - and much public attention has been paid
to the large numbers of black and other minority children in foster
care - the crisis is growing more acute on the many isolated Indian
reservations, several experts said.
"Basic human needs are in very short supply," said Esther
Wattenberg, professor of social work and an associate at the Center for
Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota. "That is,
food, shelter, income and a sense of having access and availability to
services."
As public assistance benefits have dried up under time limits for
federal welfare payments, Professor Wattenberg said, Indians and their
children who were living in cities have begun to return in significant
numbers to their reservations. There, they may find space on a
relative's couch and add more families to the roster of the desperately
poor.
Many experts say the crisis for Indian children stems not so much from
living without their parents - the role of the extended family in child
rearing is crucial in Indian culture - but from a lack of mental health
services and recreation on reservations, some so destitute that there
is no swimming pool or basketball court, let alone a counselor.
Money for health and mental health care on reservations, which
comes mostly from the federal government but is increasingly
supplemented by gambling revenues, falls far short of the demand, many
experts say.
Here at Lummi Nation, the Silver Reef Casino opened in 2002 but has
only recently begun to yield steady profits. The tribe has invested $2
million in a new home, scheduled to open April 13, that can hold 28
troubled children; a "safe home" for youths; and more counselors. Now,
there are seven counselors available for the 1,500 children, well above
the national average for Indians.
But tribal officials acknowledge that Lummi families still bear
the brunt of caring for neglected children and emotionally supporting
them.
Ms. Washington, the Lummi drug prevention program coordinator who is
caring for her sister Geraldine's four children, runs a tight ship. The
children, ages 9 to 16, sleep in the front room of Ms. Washington's
three-bedroom home, along with another sister of Ms. Washington and the
sister's teenage son. Their clothes are kept in makeshift dressers in
the garage.
Ms. Washington, 49, who is divorced but still lives with her
ex-husband, has two children of her own, a son, 20, and a daughter, 24,
who live with her. Her daughter is helping raise her boyfriend's
2-year-old daughter, who stays at the house every other weekend.
Geraldine Washington's children were placed with her sister by
the Lummi Tribal Court, which works with the state to arrange foster
care; the state pays Danita Washington $647 monthly for their care.
On a recent Sunday, Geraldine, 40, who is living with a relative, came to visit. Her children had not seen her in two weeks.
Sitting on her sister's couch, she said she quit using heroin on
Oct. 14, her daughter Hannah's 11th birthday. But Danita said she
doubted that Geraldine was clean.
"Nobody can really get you cleaned up," Geraldine said, as Hannah
fiddled with her mother's rings and watch and grasped her hand tightly.
"I was tired of going to jail. This round is really different. I have
had enough."
Danita Washington said she worried most about her nephew, Justin
Zollner, who was to turn 16 on Wednesday, and who, she said, has an
anger problem. The children's father, she said, has "been out of the
picture" for a long time and has not come to see them in many years.
Justin has uncles who live nearby, and they attend his football
games and take him canoe racing, a passionate pursuit for the tribe.
"My brothers and I talk a lot about this," Danita Washington
said. "We made conscious choices. We can't change our sisters, but we
can influence their children."
Still, it is painful when Justin talks, fairly often, about missing his father, she said.
"Mostly, every kid wants their parents," said Justin, who has the
biggest mattress in his aunt's front room and plays football for the
Golden Eagles at Ferndale High School near here. "Right now, I kind of
wish my dad was still here because I've played football for like seven
years now, and he never got to watch me."
He was happy to see his mother, though he was not sure when he would see her again.
"I think she's doing good now," he said. " She's trying. I can see it."
And on this day, for his birthday, she was going with him, his aunt and his sisters to ride indoor go-carts.
Eli Sanders contributed reporting from Seattle for this article.