The Talking Drum: Veronica Brown

Cherokee Nation citizens Dusten Brown and daughter Veronica before he departs for mandatory Army National Guard training. Two days later, he was denied appeals by Brown and the Cherokee Nation for a “best interests” hearing regarding Veronica.

By: Meterib Meznkhepra

Recently in the media, a story about a four year old girl named Veronica Brown and her father Dusten Brown has made headlines. Dusten Brown, from the Cherokee Nation, has been fighting for the right to maintain custody of his daughter who was put up for adoption without his knowing by his ex-fiancé. Brown was enlisted in the U.S. Army and preparing to be deployed for Iraq, when he was asked by the mother of his child to give her full custody of their daughter. What he didn’t know was that the mother already had plans to give their daughter up for adoption and that when he signed the papers he, by default, relinquished his parental rights and allowed the adoptive parents to have sole custody of his daughter.

After signing the papers he was told by the attorneys, “You just gave your child up for adoption”. He immediately began to seek legal advice as to how to regain the custody of his daughter. Being that he was registered as a part of the Cherokee Nation, he believed he was protected by the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Due to this law, the family courts of South Carolina initially found that it was in the best interest of the child to return to live with her biological father. The adoptive parents took it to the Supreme Court, and after living with her biological father for two years, in July of 2013 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the adoptive parents.

The ICWA clearly states that a child that has a minimum of at least one great grandparent who is Native American and has at least one parent who is registered with an Indian Nation is granted protection under this law. Its primary purpose is to protect Indian culture and tribal integrity from the unnecessary removal of Indian children by state and federal agencies. The Indian Child Welfare Act was designed in 1978 to fight against institutional racism that systematically separated Native children from their traditional culture and placed them in Catholic and Christian boarding schools, and later non- Indian religious based foster homes during the 19th and 20th centuries. There they were taught religious propaganda that demonized their ancestors and their traditional way of life. This effectively weakened Native communities across the nation, causing emotional and psychological wounds that lasted for generations. Up until the 1970’s it was estimated that 25 to 35 percent of Native Indian children were being removed from their homes and placed in non-Indian homes, with presumably the absence of Indian culture.

The United States of America prides itself on having learned from its barbaric past in which separating families in the name of profit, stripping peoples from their traditional cultures, and forcing millions to live the nightmare of slavery was once rationalized as necessary to achieve civility. The history that this country has written for itself includes centuries of strategic disassembling of the family unit with the primary goal being to break the spirit of the individual and force them into submission. Colonizers learned that to do this successfully, one must break the human connection to the ancestral spirit. European colonizers observed this time and time again as they sought to conquer the planet in the name of religious and political power; traditional people connected to the ancestral spirit were much more difficult to dominate. During the progression of colonization, the strategies to conquer the mind and break its connection to the ancestral spirit became more and more sophisticated. Many institutions such as slavery, Christian missions and Indian boarding schools successfully destroyed the connection that hundreds of thousands of individuals had to their bloodline, their traditional language and inevitably their cultural identity.

Today this society says that it’s a new era. That political agendas of breaking apart families with the goal of whitewashing minds and making money off of the sale of humans is over. But, how can the United States say that with a clear conscious? Adoption is a huge money making industry. Adoption agencies and adoption attorneys don’t make money if birth parents are not willing to give up their child. Therefore, these agencies are not there to provide support services to expectant parents who in many cases are deciding to relinquish their child due to financial instabilities. In fact, legally, an expectant mother can receive up to 1,000 dollars a month plus medical benefits from prospective adoptive parents in exchange for a commitment to give up her baby. In the case of Veronica Brown, her adoptive parents testified in court to providing between 30,000 to 40,000 dollars to her birth mother during her pregnancy, including buying Christmas presents for her two older children. If this is not an example of the buying and selling of children, then what is?

This is not meant to demonize all adoptions. It is however, meant to bring awareness to the fact that every year the United States continues to perpetuate an illusion: that in too many cases it is in the best interest of the child to be removed from their family, their ancestry, and their legal right to reclaim birth records. There is another illusion that is perpetuated to support this money making industry: that the biological parents don’t want their children. This was not the situation in Brown’s case and in thousands of cases with biological parents. What is not disclosed to the parents considering the relinquishment of their child is that there are serious psychological consequences for them as the biological parents as well as their child that can last a lifetime. Depression, low self-esteem, lack of trust, and dissociation are common symptoms that an adopted child faces throughout their lifetime. Adopted teens are 4 times more likely to commit suicide than their peers raised within their natural family. Their biological parents suffer from similar symptoms and the regret often paralyzes their ability to move past the event.

One might ask in the case of Veronica Brown, how is it that our justice system would say that this child is better off never knowing the father and extended family that love her and want to raise her as a member of their family? The answer is clear, it has been written in this country’s history. The modern system gains its strength from the individual that is broken and has lost the connection to his/her ancestral spirit. Without that connection, an individual is likely to succumb to the values of modern society in hopes that it will provide the stability and strength needed to survive this world.