Native American Child Welfare – Washington

Tribe takes control of child welfare from state, By Jennifer Sullivan, March 28, 2012, Seattle Times: “Jessie Scheibner’s eyes cloud with tears and her voice trembles as she talks about the day, almost 70 years ago, when a stranger’s car pulled up to her parents’ home on the Port Gamble S’Klallam Reservation and took her and her two sisters away. The memories of that car ride when she was 3 and the years spent in one foster home after another are hazy. Foster care was difficult enough, but Scheibner, now 72, clearly recalls being ashamed of her dark hair, brown skin and Native American roots as she bounced from home to home off the reservation. She eventually was reunited with her mother and her sisters when she was 7, but the emotional scars remain. For decades, children who were removed from their homes in child-welfare cases among the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and other tribes across the United States were taken off their reservations and placed in the homes of nontribal members. Because individual states handled child-welfare issues for Native-American tribes, including foster care, abused and neglected children were forced to leave their communities and, often, their cultures…”