THE COUNT 2024: SURVEY FOR NATIVE ADOPTEES

GOOGLE DRIVE PDF - take your cellphone to a printer like Staples or CVS to print out. Make copies for yourself, too.

PRINT THIS PAGE  (on computer: hit Ctrl/p buttons) (or copy and paste into new document) or request this survey using contact form

 

THE COUNT 2024 – SURVEY of NATIVE AMERICAN FIRST NATIONS ADOPTEES

FILL OUT WHAT YOU KNOW AS BEST YOU CAN. (Adoptees may not have all this information. ) If you are born in the US or Canada and were adopted, PLEASE PRINT and FILL out THIS SURVEY.  Make copies.  SAVE this paperwork in a safe place. (USE INK PEN)

TRIBALLY ENROLLED? Yes or No or Unsure. (circle one)

USA or CANADA?

 

IN REUNION? Yes or No.

YOUR BIRTH NAME:

YOUR ADOPTED NAME:

BIRTHDATE: (if known)

Where were you born?

CITY:

STATE/PROVINCE:

RESERVATION:

HOSPITAL:

BIRTH PARENTS NAMES:

 

ADOPTIVE PARENTS NAMES:

 

Original Birth Certificate : do you have a copy? Yes or No.

Fake Birth Certificate : do you have a copy? Yes or No.

MOST IMPORTANT: YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION:

HOME PHONE: (     )

MESSAGE PHONE: (a friend or relative) (     )

CELLPHONE: (      )

EMAIL: 

 

YOUR MAILING ADDRESS:

 

Did you have ADOPTEE SIBLINGS:  NAME, BIRTH DATES

100% CONFIDENTIAL

THIS PRIVATE INFORMATION will be used later to create a class action lawsuit.  Adoptees will be required to file an AFFIDAVIT with the court system at a later date.  This form and copies of your original adoption documents will be needed.

The count is to determine how many children were adopted through state and federal programs.

No accurate account has ever been published before.

It could be millions.

SHARE THIS SURVEY WITH OTHER ADOPTEES.

 

EACH MEMBER OF YOUR FAMILY WHO IS AN ADOPTEE NEEDS A FORM COMPLETED IN HIS OR HER NAME.

If you are born in the US or Canada, please complete this survey and print, store a copy in a safe place. 

If you are an adoptive parent or the birth parent of Native children (living or dead), fill out this form for each child.

If you know an adoptee who is incarcerated, fill out this form for them or mail them a copy of this survey. (LET US KNOW VIA EMAIL THEIR NAME AND PRISON AND PRISON NUMBER)

If you know an adoptee who committed suicide, fill out this survey form for them.

If you are the child of an adoptee who is deceased, fill out this form with your information.

QUESTIONS:

 

EMAIL: tracelara@pm.me to request a COPY OF THIS FORM.

Later, you will be given an address to mail COPIES of your adoption documents. 

KEEP THE ORIGINAL ADOPTION DOCUMENTS in a safe secure place.

MAIL SURVEY TO:

Trace Hentz

General Delivery

Greenfield, MA 01301

Adoptee Activist and Author Trace Hentz Announces “THE COUNT 2024,” a New Project to Coincide with the Release of a New History Book “Almost Dead Indians”

BUY: https://a.co/d/8luflBZ

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact Only:

Liz Hill; liz@lizhillpr.com

 

GREENFIELD, Mass., Dec. 27, 2023 — Adoptee activist, award-winning journalist and author Trace Hentz, who created the American Indian Adoptees website in 2009, has announced a new project, “THE COUNT 2024.” It will coincide with the release of a new history book, “Almost Dead Indians,” Book 5 in the Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects series.

When Hentz moved to Massachusetts in 2004 she began to tirelessly investigate numerous adoption programs, such as the Indian Adoption Projects and ARENA (The Adoption Resource Exchange of America). Both involved moving Native American babies and children across North America into adoptions with non-Native families.

After her 2009 memoir, “One Small Sacrifice” and a second edition, which followed in 2012,  Hentz met more adoptees and asked them to write their personal narratives, which resulted in three anthologies: “Two Worlds: Lost Children” (2012), “Called Home: The RoadMap,” (updated second edition, 2016), and “Stolen Generations: Survivors of the Indian Adoption Projects and 60s Scoop” (2016).  A poetry collection on the same topic, “In The Veins,” the fourth book in the series, was published in 2017.

“In these closed (sealed) adoptions, adoptees are unable to access the vital information they need to find their tribal families and communities,” Hentz said. “This new history book, “Almost Dead Indians,” with a lengthy chapter I wrote, titled “Disappeared,” which is about our history, ties in how these government-funded programs were run by churches and charities and were meant to erase children permanently from tribal rolls, making us dead Indians — almost.”

“Most people have heard how the governments of Canada and the United States ran residential boarding schools like the first U.S. school, which was Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania,” Hentz said. “Today, tribes are finding unmarked graves at these schools. I realized after 20 years that we deserve to see the numbers on these various federal and state-run adoption programs. We need “THE COUNT 2024” of Native American and First Nations adoptees to solidify facts and see actual numbers of adoptees in these government-funded projects that crisscrossed the U.S. and Canada.”

“Neither government has been forthcoming and some academics who looked at available reports claim nearly 13,000 children were adopted in the U.S., some by force and some by gunpoint,” Hentz said. “In Canada, they have already settled a class action lawsuit with adoptees called the Sixties Scoop.”

Hentz recommends the new PBS series “Little Bird” to understand what happened in Canada also happened in the U.S.

“Before first grade, I knew I was adopted, that these people were not my birthparents,” Hentz said. “I wasn’t sure what happened but it took me a lifetime to open my adoption file and finally meet my relatives.” Hentz had a reunion in 1994 with her birthfather Earl Bland in Illinois when she was 38 years old. Since then, she has found her ancestry includes Shawnee and Anishinaabe.

Hentz got the idea of a count when she could not find reliable information. “I set up a new website: https://thecount2024.blogspot.com. Native American and First Nations adoptees simply fill out a comment form and I will send them a survey.”  She hopes people will share this link and get the word out. “The COUNT” begins January 1, 2024.

Hentz’s new book, “Almost Dead Indians,” is available at Amazon (paperback and ebook) and will be soon at Bookshop. Visit: www.blueindianbooks.com or https://blog.americanindianadoptees.com

THE COUNT 2024

or kill...

The Count begins in 2024  

👆Use the contact form on this website. You will receive detailed instructions.
 

The government of the United States of America has not issued an official apology or offered any settlement to adoptees for the Indian Adoption Projects or ARENA (a program that moved Indigenous children from the US to Canada and other countries.) I helped to edit and publish a book series LOST CHILDREN so one day, someday soon, we will have this important history to use in the courts. - Trace
 

WE NEED A COUNT of (First Nations Indigenous) adoptees first.

 

Remember: "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one,"
General Pratt said.
They didn’t kill all of us, so we win.

 

BACKGROUND: What happened to so many of us and does this still matter?  How many adoptees are out there?  We'll find answers.  

NEW HISTORY BOOK:  Almost Dead Indians: Book 5: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects coming January 2024 (free pdf to anyone who requests it.)

Who are we Looking For? Lost Birds Adoptees in US and Canada

The COUNT is meant to find all the Native Adoptees who were sent from the USA to Canada, Canada to the USA, or to parts of Europe, even Iceland, Australia, etc....  Also the adoptees who were a part of the INDIAN ADOPTION PROJECTS, more than one in the USA.  And we hope to find Native American/First Nations adoptees who could be anywhere in the world.

WHY? No one has ever published an actual count, one that we can look at and trust. It's long overdue.

WHAT WE KNOW:

Outcomes of the Indian Adoption Project

Officially, only 395 Native children from 16 States were adopted in the scope of the IAP contract.  Thirty-one agencies under contract with the League participated in the project.  Realistically, the adoption of Native children in white families went far beyond Lyslo’s expectation as other non-member agencies made adoptive placements for Native children.  Many sources bear out this view: 

A letter dated July 6, 1962 written by Joseph H. Reid underlined that 585 Indian children had been adopted in 1961.

 A report written by Lyslo on October 11, 1966 presenting the results of the participation of 66 adoption agencies revealed that 696 children from Indian origins had been adopted in 1965.

A report that the Association on American Indian Affairs released to the Senate Commission in 1977 stated that 11,157 Native children were adopted between 1964 and 1976 (survey for 13 states).

A letter from Arlene L Nash, director of ARENA (Adoptive Resource Exchange of North America), claimed that 48 Native children were adopted in 1972.

We can infer that approximately 12,486 children were adopted between 1961 and 1976 out of the scope of the Indian Adoption Project.

Number of adoptions:

1964-1976   Native Adoptees - 11,157

1959-1967   Native Adoptees - 395

1961   Native Adoptees - 585

1965   Native Adoptees - 696

From Claire Palmiste, Indigenous Policy Journal Vol. XXII, No.1 (Summer 2011) 

NOTE:

As for the Indian Adoption projects, I needed a calculator.  If the Native American population was 2 million and if just one quarter of all children were removed before the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, then on-paper, 80,000+ children were removed from their families during the early to mid-1900s.  If the population of American Indians was 3 million, then over 100,000 babies were removed.   I hated this math…85 percent of children were removed by adoption in 16 states. That’s genocide. - Trace Hentz

EMAIL:  tracelara@pm.me 

PHONE: 413-772-6996