The Lakota Child Rescue Project

it's just an ongoing thing this is no nobody's in shock or ah this happened you know maybe individually when it actually happened when they came and physically we remove the children maybe then there was somehow you know but our people are used to this stuff happening on all levels from ripping off land from contaminating water resources whatever our people are have been under fire you know for generations I have 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren that means grandmother and in our our beliefs are Lakota family teos by the grandmothers have the most important part in the whole whole family are traditional and with up where the caretakers it's terrible what's going on with our children and our bad children being taken out at the home this is helpful could care less about Native children until there was millions to be had and as far as organizing ones so child rescue project and I was in a meeting with the notch ah the male elders of the Oglala tribe and during the course of the meeting with these men the room started to fill up with grandmothers I went over and started to talk to some of the grandmothers and they started telling me virtually every one of them had grandchildren that were being taken away by the State Department of Social Services yeah it's a virtual epidemic their policy has been to scoop up as many Lakota kids as they can because because of the money that it brings into the state and they have to have a place to put them and they can't give them back to their family so they can't keep taking the money we are crisis oriented to the fact that well what next of course this is going to happen it's always that not so much focusing on oh my god this is happening is that what can we do how can how can we fight this you know I am so angry and I want to organize it you know tell you let the grandmothers know you know we need to stand up if you can because of who we are in our society it's so clear but the state is banking on everybody giving up and I think I think that they are real estate if the change that we're after is to get the federal district court to declare to be illegal what the Department of Social Services is doing and ignoring the Indian Child Welfare Act secondly to issue an injunction prohibiting them from continuing that policy and to order the Department Social Services to file amended recommendations as to where the children would be placed and that is the return to their extended families well if anybody's watching this now they know and they could just get online and go to the federal agencies in Washington DC and ask them what the heck what's going on here look what the people's long project has everything online there's no excuse for people who are interested not to know you

Channel: Lakota Peoples Law Project

Views: 8,838

Rating: 4.9495797 out of 5

Keywords: Romero Institute, Lakota People's Law Project, Daniel Sheehan, Sara Nelson, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Lakota

Id: JDMiWmI_bwE

Length: 6min 43sec (403 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 17 2012