A recent decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court exemplifies how this issue may thwart the goals of the ICWA. In a termination of parental rights case,⁵ the court determined that evidence was insufficient to demonstrate that the children had a tribal connection, therefore tribal notification was not required. The children’s grandmother indicated that her grandmother was the tribal member of an Ojibwa⁶ tribe in Canada, then moved to Marinette, Wisconsin and was associated with a tribe there. Since no tribe was located in Marinette, the court decided that there was no necessity to contact any tribe about possible tribal membership and that the ICWA did not apply.

Chief Justice Abrahamson’s dissent in the case argued that several tribal nations should have been contacted to let the possible tribes make the determination whether these children were eligible for tribal membership in any one of them. Since the United States Supreme Court has asserted in Santa Clara Pueblo that only tribes can make that determination, her dissent seems to comport with precedent, and also with the dual purposes of the ICWA to protect tribal sovereign authority and protect the link between child and tribal heritage.

The Indian Child Welfare Act requires the state to give notice to the tribal nation that the tribe can participate in the state hearing, of the status of a case as the status changes, and that the tribe can intervene and take jurisdiction at any point in the proceeding. In some cases tribal intervention has been honored at the appellate level of a case.⁷ Without notification to the tribe, the protections of ICWA are rendered meaningless.

In a Wisconsin child placement case the state claimed that notice had been given to the tribe because of a discussion that took place between a state social worker and a tribal social worker.⁸ Such a discussion does not comport with the mandates of ICWA for notice to the tribe, but is often the way that business is informally conducted.

Notice to the tribe is not required when the child is given up on a voluntary basis, recognizing a parent’s right to seek tribal or state jurisdiction. In one Wisconsin case a woman had been sentenced to prison and therefore her child was to be placed by the state for care.⁹ The issue turned on whether or not being incarcerated is a voluntary relinquishment of a child, and a strong argument can be made that tribal notification is required in such a case because it is not voluntary.

A child can be placed by the state due to an emergency or crisis in the home, but the Indian Child Welfare Act can become relevant when the crisis has ended. When the crisis ends the tribal child should be returned to the home or to the tribe’s jurisdiction for placement. In a Wisconsin case involving such an issue, a psychologist testified under oath that the mother was unfit.¹⁰ On cross examination the psychologist admitted that he had never met her, never spoken to her, read no record about her, never reviewed previous social services information about her, conducted no home visit, nor read a record of any other home visit. The state was ultimately compelled to relinquish jurisdiction over the child.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services required Wisconsin to assess its child welfare system in 2003, resulting in the Child and Family Services Review: Wisconsin Statewide Assessment (Statewide Assessment). During this assessment process the state was asked to address many questions, including the following:

Citing any data available, discuss how effective the State has been in meeting State plan requirements for determining whether children are American Indian and ensuring compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act.¹¹

The discussion of this issue comprised less than one and a half pages in a report of one hundred forty-one pages, although some tangential issues were cited throughout the report.

The Statewide Assessment asserts that “most of the eleven tribes in Wisconsin have established tribal courts to deal with child welfare issues.”¹² In fact all of the eleven federally recognized tribes have tribal courts. On the topic of compliance with the mandates of the ICWA, the Statewide Assessment indicates that:

Inconsistency of ICWA notifications to tribes by counties is a concern. Counties may not routinely identify children as Indian or may not identify a specific tribal affiliation for the children. When ICWA notification is made, counties may not keep tribes informed about the progress of cases. Increased awareness and training regarding ICWA requirements and effective coordination with tribes is needed to improve implementation of ICWA in Wisconsin.¹³

In another document, Child Welfare in Wisconsin: A Report on Wisconsin’s Child and Family Services Federal Review (Federal Review), concise summaries are offered of how the federal government has evaluated Wisconsin’s child welfare system. The Federal Review states that in a small sample of three individual cases involving tribal children, the tribe was not timely notified in two of the cases.

In the State Assessment Wisconsin stressed that it consulted with the tribes, however the Federal Review indicated that often, “Consultation with tribes is limited to discussions with one staff person at the Great Lakes Intertribal Council . . . ”¹⁴ The Great Lakes Intertribal Council does not include all the federally recognized tribes in Wisconsin, and evidence seems to be lacking that state personnel have consulted with each tribal nation independently and on a regular basis. The Federal Review also indicated that Wisconsin is rated as “needing improvement overall” on consultation,¹⁵ and goes on to declare, “There is a need for a clearly delineated and structured consultation process that allows for tribal and other stakeholders to provide input into goals and objectives of the CFSP.”¹⁶

An assertion in the State Assessment indicates that the DCFS “consults with tribes before issuing standards and policies addressing child welfare concerns”.¹⁷ As the Federal Review clarifies, “Consultation often means the opportunity to review a document rather than to be involved with the creation of the document.”¹⁸

The Federal Review indicated a concern that in providing services to Indian children and families there is “a lack of culturally appropriate services.”¹⁹ This concern may have less to do with turning jurisdiction over to the tribe when tribal children are involved in a case, and more to do with services rendered directly from the state to Indian children and families. Culturally appropriate services do have relevance when a tribe and county work together to serve Indian children after the tribe has taken jurisdiction of a case, or if a tribe declines jurisdiction.

Although some deficiencies in ICWA compliance are glaring, significant efforts are underway by the state of Wisconsin to alleviate such deficiencies. The 2004 Federal Review indicates that Wisconsin compliance with ICWA does have strengths to be acknowledged.

In Wisconsin the Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has an ongoing program of 161 Agreements between tribes and counties as part of the process of state compliance with ICWA. The original purpose of 161 Agreements was to “pay for placements ordered through tribal courts”,²⁰ yet that purpose has been expanded to create voluntary tribe-county cooperative relationships. These agreements can also include, for example, treatment services to tribal children and their families, independent living, and child protective service investigations.²¹ The agreements require the tribe to provide notice to the county of child placement or removal from placement, and to create a case plan and case review for the county. Some tribes have 161 Agreements with several counties, not all counties have agreed to 161 Agreements, and problems do occur when a county is lax in abiding by these agreements.

The Federal Review seemed to put a great deal of pressure on the state overall to assure a permanent setting for children, and to do so as soon as possible. These pressures may sometimes work against ICWA compliance because the state might not take extra time to determine whether a child is a tribal member or eligible to be so, nor to provide notice to tribal nations. When the state relinquishes jurisdiction to the tribe, 161 Agreements can facilitate the process of providing permanence for tribal children, as pointed out by the Federal Review in its statement that:

Division staff have been meeting for over a year with representatives of the Indian Child Welfare agencies operated by each of Wisconsin’s 11 tribes. There are philosophical and cultural issues associated with the concept of permanence that vary among tribes. It is critical that procedures for protecting and providing for permanence for Indian children and assuring the rights of tribes toraise their children are safeguarded through 161 Agreements and other policies that are uniform across the state.²²

This statement indicates, first, that the Federal Review considers 161 agreements to be critical to adequate ICWA compliant.

Secondly, the statement indicates that Wisconsin has recently begun meaningful efforts to meet with tribal child welfare personnel. This is confirmed in a letter written by the Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services introducing the evaluations in the Federal Review. She stated:

There is great momentum to build a response to the federal review. In August of 2003, the Department began an extraordinary collaboration with counties and tribes to develop a plan to improve child welfare. . . .In respectful collaboration with sovereign tribes, we will ensure that the traditions and connection of Indian children and all children are honored and sustained to the best of our ability.²³

Some other creative efforts at state-tribal cooperation include the creation of an annual conference of state and tribal child welfare personnel to discuss issues of concern. The tribes have teamed with the state to create Child Welfare Training Partnerships so that there can be ongoing efforts at educating county child welfare personnel on ICWA compliance. Although the state was rated as “needing improvement overall” in the Federal Review for not requiring ICWA training for all child welfare personnel and for not providing optional training to all counties in the past,²⁴ the state appears to be taking the issue of adequate training more seriously since 2003. The state has recently begun the creation of a web based training program that has yet to be perfected. Wisconsin also has requested technical assistance from the National Indian Child Welfare Association for further ICWA training.

Work is also underway by the state to assist tribes in gaining status for more direct IV-E funding for child placement under the Social Security Act. This funding presently must go from the federal government through the state to the county and then to the tribe, but has the potential to be more directly available to the tribes by not going through the county. The Kinship Care program provides money when placement is made with (what non-Indians call) extended family members who care for a child not living with parents. This has potential to greatly benefit tribal members who come forward to care for nieces, nephews, grandchildren, or cousins.

Even when the state follows through on the requirements of ICWA, a critical issue in whether tribal children can retain a family and cultural link with the tribe is the availability of tribal families for placement. Though in the tribal setting placement is often done by placing the child with family members, and if not, then with other tribal families, a critical problem faced by most (if not all) tribal nations in Wisconsin is that the number of tribal families available for child placement is inadequate to meet the need. As a result of this situation tribal children sometimes must be placed by the tribe in a non-Indian family, even after the requirements of ICWA have been met.

The overarching issue of ICWA compliance involves both the state child welfare system and the state judicial system which lends authority to child placement. Both systems are required to meet ICWA mandates. An historic collaboration by the Wisconsin Tribal Judges Association (WTJA), Wisconsin Judicare,²⁵ and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside will provide ICWA training for state judges at the university. This training session for state judges, to be held in October 2004 and sponsored by the WTJA, qualifies for judicial education credits, with training from Wisconsin Judicare attorneys, tribal judges and attorneys, and university faculty. The training is offered at no cost to the judges, and hopefully will be the initiation of a continual training process.

Education for state child welfare personnel, state judges, tribal welfare personnel, and tribal judges may well be the greatest hope for improvement in Wisconsin compliance with the mandates of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Something more happens though, at these training sessions. People get to know and respect each other.

1. 25 U.S.C. § 1903 (1978); Congress identified the practices in Wisconsin, one of several states in which tribal children were removed in significant numbers from their families and placed in non-Indian homes, as justification for passage of ICWA.

5. In re the Termination of Parental Rights to Arianna G., 2003 WI 11 (unedited).

Family Services, 1 Wilson Street, Madison, WI, 53708-8916 (June 17, 2003), p. 60.

Academic criminologists and criminal justice researchers have a long tradition of focusing attention on minority crime, victimization and justice issues. With each generation of researchers, the growing cultural diversity in the United States expanded research interests exponentially. From the late 19^th Century through the 1940s, criminological and sociological research targeted mainly European immigrant and social class crime and justice issues in large urban cities such as New York and Chicago. During the 1950s and 1960s, research attention gradually shifted to focus on the African American struggle for social justice and equality, crime and justice issues. By the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Spanish speaking or Hispanic minorities joined African-Americans as being research targets. Cultural diversity research interests broadened further in the late 1970s and early 1980s as concern about Asian minority populations were included. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, research interests became truly multi-cultural with the influx of Former Eastern Block Europeans, Middle Eastern peoples of Islamic traditions, diverse East Asian peoples from many lands, Caribbean Island peoples, diverse Spanish speaking peoples from Mexico, South and Central America, among others.

Yet, despite all this interest in minority criminal justice issues, criminal justice and criminology research continued (arguably continue) to ignore one highly diverse minority category of human beings. These humans are the descendents of the original indigenous peoples to inhabit the lands known as the United States of America. These people are better known by government and academic labels: American Indians, Native Americans, or First Nation Peoples, and include Alaskan and Hawaiian Nativesⁱⁱ.

Until the mid-1990s when government policy changed under the Clinton Administration and research money was provided for crime and justice issues and programs that included American Indians, academic criminology and criminal justice treatment of Native American crime and justice issues was one of benign neglect as best, ethnic bias and racism at worst. Many main-stream academic criminal justice and criminological journals refused (and some still do) to publish research conducted on Native American populations. Many faculty in many universities were told that if they wanted tenure or promotion, research on American Indian crime and justice issues was not acceptable.

Prior Research

Some insight into the extent of the problem of benign neglect of Academic criminology and criminal to address Indian justice issues was outlined in a paper, entitled “Academic Neglect of Crime and Justice Issues Affecting Native America,” that presented by this author at the 44^th Western Social Science Association Annual Meeting. In this paper two fundamental questions were asked:

First, to what extent are Native American populations and their relevant justice issues given comparable research attention in federally funded and published crime, justice and corrections studies published since 1995, as compared to other ethnic minorities, include African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians?

· First, it was found that 92.6% of these publications either totally ignored the existence of American Indian populations or did not treat Native American crime and justice issues on par with other minorities.

· Secondly, one hundred ninety-eight articles from four mainstream academic criminology or criminal justice research journals were examined: Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, Criminology and The Journal Of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Content analysis revealed that 99% of the one hundred ninety-eight articles reviewed either totally ignored the existence of American Indian populations or did not treat Native American crime and justice issues on par with other minorities.

· Thirdly, of the eighty-seven federally funded research reports examined, 78% either totally ignored the existence of American Indian populations or did not treat Native American crime and justice issues on par with other minorities.

It was concluded from this review of published literature that American Indian crime and justice issues were not being treated on a par with the issues of other minorities. Editors and reviewers for these top criminal justice and criminological journals apparently did not consider research on American Indian issues to be worthy of publication. This bias appears to continue in the journals identified. As a follow-up to this earlier paper and in preparation for this one, these journals were again examined as of April 2004. In the two years since the paper was delivered, only three articles were published in the above selected journals.

The continuing benign neglect, and perhaps bias, toward American Indian crime and justice issues in main stream criminal justice and criminology journals are surprising given the funding and policy impetus given under the Clinton Administration. During the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, research and social justice program funding priorities changed dramatically. Research and funding for American Indian projects and research became a priority at least on par with the treatment of other minority groups. More research dealing with American Indians and their crime and justice issues were published during the Clinton Administration than any other Presidential Administration past or present.

Furthermore, during the 2000 Census the number of Americans labeling themselves as American Indian or American Indian and other mixed blood rose to 4.1 million people. With approximately three out of four Indian people living in urban or suburban areas throughout the United States, the potential voting power of Indian Peoples is significant in both local and national elections.

Background to Current Research

In a paper presented last year at the Annual Western Social Science Association Conference, entitled “Assessing the Impact of Presidential Politics on Academic Research into Native American Crime and Justice Issues,” the direction shifted in this on-going research. The paper attempted to address two questions:

· The mean annual number of minority focused research abstracts, as recorded on the National Criminal Justice Reference Service web site, dropped from 156.4 under the Clinton Administration to 97.8 under the Bush, Jr. Administration. This was even lower than for the Bush, Sr. Administration which preceded the Clinton Administration. Under Bush, Sr. the mean annual number was 122.8.

· The mean annual number of American Indian focused research abstracts, as recorded on the National Criminal Justice Reference Service web site, dropped from 21 under the Clinton Administration to 12.6 under the Bush, Jr. Administration, although this was higher than for the Bush, Sr. Administration which preceded the Clinton Administration. Under Bush, Sr. the mean annual number was 11.5.

· As of April, 2003, only 2 abstracts dealing with Native Americans had been found for the current year.

When the search was completed of related abstracts in the National Criminal Justice Reference Service data base as of April 1, 2004, however, a slightly more hopeful data picture emerged, as the following data analysis report indicates.

FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

This paper is a continuation of the research into effects of Presidential Politics on the funding research priorities into Native American crime and justice issues. The procedures followed in collecting data are these:

· First, using the abstract data base of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) <www.ncjrs.org>, a search was made for each year beginning January 1, 1972, through April 1, 2004.

· For the construct, “All Minority Abstracts,” the search words were “Minorities, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American or American Indian.”

· For the construct, “American Indian Abstracts,” the search words were “Native American” or “American Indian.” An additional screening was necessary, to remove references to immigrant people from India.

Discussed below are the results of these procedures.

FINDINGS: Tables 1-A,B,C and Charts 1,2,3
     Tables 1-A, B, and C show the distribution of “All Minority ” and “American Indian” abstracts by Presidential Administration from January 1972 through April 1, 2004. Shown on these Tables are the respective Nixon-Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. Presidencies. Displayed under each Presidency are the following data items:
·        Number of “All Minority” and “American Indian” abstracts by year
·        Number of Years of Presidential Influence over research funding policies of the Federal Governmentⁱⁱⁱ
·        Total abstracts published for both “All Minority” and “American Indians” respectively.
·        Mean number of abstracts per year for both “All Minority” and “American Indians” respectively.
·        Percent of “All Minority Abstracts” that included “American Indians.”

Table 1-C shows that 3,480 “All Minority” abstracts were published between January 1, 1972 and April 1, 2004 which included 421 (12.1%) “American Indian” abstracts. A visual examination of Chart 1 gives the reader a clear picture of the trends in the numbers of published abstracts during this period. The disparity in research attention given American Indian populations, as compared to other minorities, is evident. The spikes in 1980 and in 1996 reflect changes in funding research priorities and grant monies available for such research^iv.

·        When the White House was occupied by Democrats, the mean annual number of “Minority Abstracts” published was 141, as compared to 87.9 when Republicans occupied the White House.

·        Correspondingly, when the White House was occupied by Democrats, the mean annual number of “American Indian Abstracts” published was 18, as compared to 10.1 when Republicans occupied the White House.

     The total and mean annual numbers of abstracts by political party in power are shown in Chart 4.

            Chart 5 shows the mean annual number of abstracts published since 1998. During this time three Presidential Administrative occupied the White House in which Republicans were in control seven and one-third years and Democrats for eight years.

During Democrat controlled years, the mean average number of Minority research Abstracts publishing each year was 140.63 which included 21 American Indian Abstracts.
By comparison, during Republican controlled years, the mean average number of Minority research Abstracts published each year was 109.19 that included 15 American Indian Abstracts.

These data would tend to support the conclusion that the mean annual number of “American Indian” related abstracts are significantly higher when a Democrat occupies the White House, than when a Republican is President. Arguably, this suggests that American Indian crime and justice research interests are better served by a Democrat in the White House, than a Republican.

FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIAN CRIME AND JUSTICE ISSUES

While academic criminology and criminal justice was slow to catch up with the political realities of American Indian political influence, the applied and political worlds of criminal justice made mammoth leaps in the mid-1990s. One of the major changes in Federal policy was the creation of the American Indian & Alaska Native Affairs Section under the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. This Section is responsible for grant funding initiatives, conference, research and statistics, articles and other matters relating to research into Native American crime and justice issues. For example, for Fiscal Year 2004 here is a list of funding grants which will result in future research abstracts:

RETURNING TO BEAUTY: EFFORTS AT OVERCOMING PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL GENOCIDE AMONGST INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

It seems probable that virtually all psychological and behavioral problems, and many physical ailments, have their origin in trauma, which is often the source of a host of social problems. If not adequately healed, the impact of the trauma continues to cause personal and social difficulties and is passed on to future generations as unresolved historical trauma and grief, creating a new round of personal and social tribulations.¹ These problems become even more serious when compounded by difficult and/or threatening economic or political conditions.

This is currently evident in the countries that make up former Yugoslavia which are in danger of experiencing a third round of serious ethnic conflict, stemming from the unresolved trauma of the genocidal struggles in the region during World War II, exacerbated by difficult current conditions. The Coalition for Work With Psychotrauma and Peace (CWWPP) reported in its March 15 E-mail newsletter that the situation with regard to psychological trauma, non-violent conflict resolution and reconciliation continues to be poor and/or is deteriorating in the nations of the former Yugoslavia.² Suicides and domestic violence continue to increase. Unemployment remains catastrophically high and is not improving. People hold little hope that solutions will be found. What is needed is a set of holistic remedies, appropriately applied with sufficient resources to accomplish a sizable and complex task. However, this region on the edge of Europe is being largely ignored. There is little input from local and national governments and international organizations on any of these issues, while politics remains a major barrier to progress. What foreign assistance exists is mostly on the surface level of economic development aid, along with diplomatic initiatives on limited issues and peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo and Bosnia. Non-governmental organizations, both local and foreign, including the few (among them CWWPP) that attempt to deal with the whole range of relevant issues, fight from month to month to survive and to do what they can. But it is difficult for most organizations to remain alive with funding difficult to obtain. This is a dangerous situation for Europe and the world, as the problems of the region have not even begun to be solved. Meanwhile, the recent elections in both Croatia and Serbia give cause for concern, with the parties that started the recent war wining in both countries. While both have expressed more conciliatory sentiments than in the past, it remains to be seen if their actions will follow their rhetoric.

In the Americas there is a long history of European and successor governments imposing a destructive colonialism of considerable physical and cultural genocide. In the United States, the situation for native people is much improved, and, in many respects improving, but significant remnants of colonialism continue to trouble Indian communities and people.³ This is reflected in very high rates of alcoholism and other substance abuse, suicide and various forms of abuse suffered by many Native Americans. In Latin America, in many places the situation for indigenous people is more like that of the United States 150 years ago. As the reports in these pages indicate, Indian people are engaged in deadly struggles in Central and South America to retain land, autonomy, culture and a viable way of life. Here the trauma is both old and current.

Where there has been peace and indigenous people have been able to run or collaborate in carrying out culturally appropriate programs, progress has been made in addressing current and historical trauma. Building upon work with Jungian psychology and studies of work with Jewish holocaust survivors, combined with traditional knowledge, Eduardo and Bonnie Duran have developed a Native American postcolonial psychology.⁴ There are a growing number of instances of progress in healing, including reducing or overcoming behavioral symptoms, involving the use of traditional ceremonies, and, in some cases with urban Indians, neo traditional rituals.⁵

Recently, a non-profit corporation, Therapists With Wings, has been involved in teaching a new form of trauma relief work, Seemorg Matrix Work, at Navajo Nation and for Mayans in Guatemala.⁶ At Navajo Nation, a team led by Asha Clinton, Ph.D was brought in by Jayne Talk-Sanchez and the Indian Health Service to train Dine practitioners to use a version of the approach specifically adapted for people with historical trauma. So far two Seemorg Matrix Work Basic trainings have been undertaken, and there are tentative plans for a more advanced session. Once trained, the local practitioners use the technique in culturally appropriate ways to treat trauma quickly and painlessly, with long lasting results.

A group led by Clinton visited Guatemala during each of the past three years to teach Guatemalan psychotherapists Seemorg Matrix Work, a psychotherapy which treats trauma quickly and painlessly. The program was initiated by Ligia Barascout de Piedra Santa, a Guatemalan psychotherapist, who invited Dr. Clinton and the Therapists With Wings Trainers to teach in Guatemala because of the many massacres of Mayan people that occurred there during the civil war. The team teaches quick, painless, and highly effective methods for the treatment of trauma, historical trauma and related issues. By teaching the therapy to local practitioners who can apply it in culturally appropriate ways, the Therapists With Wings team avoids the cultural impasses and misunderstandings that often occur when Western therapists try to treat non-Western people directly. Guatemalan psychotherapists who work with Mayan massacre survivors plan to use Seemorg Matrix trauma work within the context of the Mayan rituals that have been developed to help people heal from the massacres.

In 2005, Therapists With Wings will bring its program to Quiche province, where the largest numbers of massacres occurred. An innovative program developed by Sister Virginia Searing, a Sister of Charity, and run partially under the auspices of USAID does exhumations of mass graves there, and helps surviving relatives and friends deal with what has happened. Seemorg Matrix Work will provide a way to permanently treat the multiple traumata they have suffered.

Seemorg Matrix Work is a dynamic energy psychotherapy that provides individuals lasting relief from a range of intractable psychological disorders, physical diseases, and spiritual impasses. Starting from the premise that all upsetting events are types of trauma that are housed within the body, mind, and spirit, this new therapy gently removes the after-effects of such traumatic events, including disturbing emotions, negative beliefs and attitudes, destructive desire and fantasies, addictions, compulsions, obsessions, dissociation, spiritual blockage, physical abreaction, sensitivities, and some disease. For more information, go to: www.SeemorgMatrix.org.

The treatment of trauma as part of a broad, culturally appropriate, program of renewal is important if the injuries of the past are to be successfully overcome. Unfortunately, such work is not sufficiently appreciated or adequately funded. In the Balkans, for example, existing programs are able to provide only a small fraction of what is needed, and have to struggle just to continue at a low level. To bring healing to Guatemala, Therapists With Wings have had to operate almost entirely out of their own pockets, which are rapidly emptying. As a result, they are seeking funding from public and private sources to continue the bulk of their work.

1. Stephen M. Sachs, LaDonna Harris, Barbara Morris and Deborah Hunt, "Recreating the Circle: Overcoming Colonialism and Returning to Harmony in American Indian Communities," Proceedings of the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association), Parts II and III.

2. For more information contact: Dr. Charles David Tauber, Head of Mission, Coalition for Work With Psychotrauma and Peace, Gunduliceva 18, 32000 Vukovar, Croatia, tel and fax +385-32-441975, tel only +385-32-444662, cwwppvuk@zamir.net, http://www.cwwpp.org. Reports of CWWPP's work and observations have been carried in the last several issues of the on-line journal, Nonviolent Change. The Spring 2004 issue, including a dialogue about the issue of unresolved trauma, following up on two discussions in the Winter 2004, is at: http://mypage.iu.edu/~sachs/. Several immediately prior issues of NCJ are at: www.circlepoint.org.

3. Sachs, Harris, Morris and Hunt, "Recreating the Circle," presents a holistic overview of this development.

4. Eduardo Duran and Bonnie Duran, Native American Postcolonial Psychology (Albany, New York State University Press, 1995). The Durans now have further developed the approach set out in this work, according to oral reports from people involved with their work received by this author.

5. Some examples are discussed in Duran and Duran, Native American Postcolonial Psychology, pp. 42-53, and 180; Sachs, Harris, Morris and Hunt, "Recreating the Circle," Part III, B; James A. Moran, "Preventing Alcohol Use Among Urban American Youth: The Seventh Generation Program" in Hillary and Weaver, Voices of First Nation People: Human Service Considerations (New York: Haworth Press, 1999), pp. 51-68, and Brave Heart," Oyate Ptayela: Rebuilding the Lakota Nation," in Ibid., pp. 106-126; and C.G. Gurnee, D.E. Vigil, S. Krill-Smith and T.J. Crowley, "Substance abuse among American Indians in an urban treatment program," American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1990, pp. 17-26.

¹ Based on analysis of abstracts recorded on National Criminal Justice Reference Service Web Site, searching for key words “Minorities,” “African-American,” “Hispanic,”“Asian,” “American Indian” and “Native American.” <www.ncjrs.org>

² Based on analysis of abstracts recorded on National Criminal Justice Reference Service Web Site, searching for key words “American Indian” and “Native American.” <www.ncjrs.org>

³ Based on analysis of abstracts recorded on National Criminal Justice Reference Service Web Site, searching for key words “Minorities,” “African-American,” “Hispanic,”“Asian,” “American Indian” and “Native American.” <www.ncjrs.org>

⁴ Based on analysis of abstracts recorded on National Criminal Justice Reference Service Web Site, searching for key words “American Indian” and “Native American.” <www.ncjrs.org>

⁵ Based on analysis of abstracts recorded on National Criminal Justice Reference Service Web Site, searching for key words “Minorities,” “African-American,” “Hispanic,”“Asian,” “American Indian” and “Native American.” <www.ncjrs.org>

⁶ Based on analysis of abstracts recorded on National Criminal Justice Reference Service Web Site, searching for key words “American Indian” and “Native American.” <www.ncjrs.org>

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"THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY'RE STILL THE SAME"

PAUL MARTIN'S ABORIGINAL ROUNDTABLES SERVE THE SAME LEGISLATIVE FARE AS CHRETIEN'S FIRST NATIONS GOVERNANCE INITIATIVE

Michael W. Posluns, Ph.D.,

The Still Waters Group, First Nations Relations & Public Policy. MPosluns@accglobal.net

Paul Martin succeeded Jean Chrétien as Prime Minister of Canada after winning the Liberal Party leadership late last fall. For most of the ten years that Chrétien had been Prime Minister, Martin had been his Minister of Finance. However, during the six months before the Liberal Party Convention, Martin ensured that he would be dismissed from Cabinet.¹ This would let him put on the appearance of being a critic of the Chrétien Government rather than its chief financial officer.

What does this have to do with “Indian Policy.” Well, just about everything.

In the election campaign of 1993, Chrétien’s Red Book, the Liberal book of campaign promises, assured First Nations citizens that the Government would respect these decisions and would not seek to impose taxes on monies earned “on reserve.” Sure enough, as soon as the earliest opportunity presented itself, Paul Martin, Chrétien’s Minister of Finance was there trying to claw back this very important gain.

Martin’s campaign for the Liberal leadership ran through most of 1993 and, as a result, coincided, with the Chrétien Government’s campaign to push through Parliament “a suite of bills” the plain sense of which was to reinforce the colonial domination of First Nations by the federal government and to allow “band councils” and other First Nations political institutions less actual authority, while claiming to give them more. (This difference is demonstrated by allowing that if the quantum of authority under the present Indian Act is “x” then all the changes proposed can be added or subtracted. The minister and his officials kept claiming to have found a net gain. All other persons doing this calculation came up with a net loss.)

Martin spoke against the First Nations Governance Bill, at an AFN assembly and then absented himself from the vote in the House of Commons.

On Monday, April 19, Martin convened a one day summit termed the *Canada-Aboriginal Roundtable* and consisting of about 70 “Aboriginal leaders” and 20 cabinet ministers. The term “Aboriginal leaders” is a distinctly Canadian contribution to political confusion. Section 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act says that “Aboriginal peoples” includes Indians, Métis and Inuit. This all-inclusive definition works well enough in constitutional discourse. It starts to break down when a new Prime Minister promises in repeated statements to the media that he will bring new light to Aboriginal problems. Historically, the relationship of First Nations, i.e., “the several Indian nations” referred to in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and the Métis have had very different relationships with the Canadian federal government. Until the courts decided otherwise, in 1939, the Government had denied that Inuit (formerly known by the Cree epithet “Eskimo”) were, constitutionally, “Indians”.

The notion of “solving the Aboriginal problem” in a one day meeting is redeemed from its deeply offensive quality only by its sheer silliness. First Nations leaders have consistently urged the government to act on the “recognition and affirmation” of Aboriginal and treaty rights guaranteed in section 35 of the Constitution Act. Governments have consistently replied that they would not act on a “rights based agenda” but on a needs based agenda. The greatest shortcoming with the needs based agendas has been that it has been Ministers of Indian Affairs and their officials who have defined the needs of First Nations communities.

The rhetoric coming out of the meeting might all of have been written by public relations staff some weeks before the event. It is, nonetheless, indicative of a government that intends to continue to keeps its hands on the reins and allow no real development of First Nations’ autonomy: “First we will prepare a ‘what we heard’ report … Second, we want to get from what we heard to what we’re going to do in the key quality of life areas … Third, further to the work of the Cabinet Committee, I’m asking individual ministers to conduct a series of policy roundtables …”

The next morning, Martin’s new minister of Indian Affairs, Andy Mitchell, a person who appears to be more kindly, more sensitive and more ready to listen than Bob Nault, Chrétien’s minister appeared before the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. The Chair, Nick Sibbeston, who had, when he first became chairman, spoke favorably of abolishing the Indian Affairs Branch, was lavish in his congratulations to the minister for his role in the Prime Minister’s Aboriginal Summit. The minister then spoke about his department’s objectives for the new budget year and the “three specific different policy thrusts” that the Prime Minister wished to take “to establish new and invigorated relationships with the Aboriginal communities in Canada.”

Mitchell told the Senate Committee that “Much of what we talked about yesterday was identifying the types of processes that we need in order to be most effective in those investments.” Time and again he returned to the theme of the Government realizing a benefit from the investment that it was making in First Nations.

As for the “policy roundtable discussions” that had been promised the day before, they were not going to impede the Martin Government’s determination to go ahead with the First Nations Governance legislation introduced in the previous session by the Chrétien Government.

Indeed, five weeks earlier, on March 10, Andy Mitchell had reintroduced Nault’s First Nations Financial Institutions Bill, unchanged from the previous session except for the name of the sponsor and the new number of the bill (C-23).² This bill had been opposed by an overwhelming majority of the chiefs in meetings of the Assembly of First Nations because it would, in effect, make reserves into federal municipalities, i.e., local bodies whose authority came from Ottawa. The bill would allow First Nations to tax businesses and non-members to whom they rent land, but would require that their tax laws be consistent with the policies of the provinces in which they are located and consistent with the practice of other municipalities in their locale. Should they choose not to impose taxes, their grants from Ottawa would be reduced anyway because they are not using assets available to them.

Not only did this bill, already before Parliament with a Martin stamp of approval, not to the ministers’ roundtables promised by Prime Minister Martin, later the same week as the Prime Ministers’ Roundtable, Indian Affairs Minister Mitchell stood up in the House of Commons and moved the bill to the next stage in its passage.

In the Commons, there was so little interest in the bill that there were not enough MPs for debate to continue. When the bells rang, the Liberal MPs showed up and voted the government line.

The only real hope for the death of this bill lies in the Prime Minister deciding to call an election before C-23 can complete its passage through both the Commons and the Senate.

As for the claim that the Martin Government has a different, more benign, more respectful Aboriginal agenda reports of these differences occur regularly in the newspapers. None of these reports are sustained by an examination of the parliamentary debates and committee proceedings.

Mitchell is quickly proving himself to be the perfect understudy for Bob Nault. He continues Nault’s role without a single change in the script.

END NOTES

[1] . For the sake of saving space I am writing this note as though the readers were familiar with parliamentary systems of government. If anyone wants some background to how this game is played there is an excellent booklet available through the Canadian parliamentary web site, How Canada Govern Themselves by Sen. Eugene Forsey, at www.parl.gc.ca/inforamtion/library/idb/forsey.

2. Bills that die at the end of a session can continue their passage through the House of Commons in the next session where they left off, provided that there are no changes at all in the text. Apparently, the sponsorship does not count as a change for this purpose.

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WISCONSIN COMPLIANCE WITH THE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT MANDATES: SOME PRELIMINARY RESEARCH OBSERVATIONS

Prior Research

Background to Current Research

WISCONSIN COMPLIANCE WITH THE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT MANDATES:
SOME PRELIMINARY RESEARCH OBSERVATIONS