From One Raven's Eye

Foester home experiences

Page 7

Once, at the first foster home I can clearly remember being in, all nine of us tried to escape the place at once. All that night we spent skulking along, jumping in the bush every time a set of headlights swung by.

What happened was someone had used a cake-pan for bow and arrow practise.

Of course they blamed us Indians right away. The only surprising part was that nobody confessed or ratted out, which usually always happened. There we were, enough to start a small reserve, nervously awaiting interrogation and punishment when that same run-for-your-life impulse hit us.

We ended up running in this big ten mile circle and they found us all sleeping in a wrecked car within sight of the house. As it turned out, until each of us reached 16, there was really no place for any of us to run to anyway.

In many ways, living there was pretty much like living in slavery only without the visible chains and the cotton picking songs. We went sent to school but at "home" we worked. The only other difference was that those people got money for keeping us but we never saw any money change hands. All we knew was that we were trapped and being held against our will and no chance of escape, trapped in a situation in which all of us were from time to time physically abused and some sexually abused as well.

Another time at this same place, I fell out of a barn and landed on my heaviest end, which was and still is my head. The person who kept us picked me up and carried me to the truck. There I was bleeding like crazy and screaming even crazier when all of a sudden my screaming ceased. The reason I quit crying was because of the sensation of being held so close to this person with whom I had never shared human contact, much less concerned physical contact. Well that sensation wore off pretty quick and I resumed my screeching, but that moment still sticks in my mind all these years later.

The next home my brother and I ended up in was a decent one. The people were kind and understanding and treated us really well. After we shot all their chickens, though, they told us they were taking a holiday and we would therefore be staying someplace else for awhile. They must have got lost in Kentucky or wherever it was they went to replenish their poultry supply because we never saw them again.

The fact is there are many well-intentioned people out there trying their best to raise other people's kids. Apart from the problem of culture, many of them do pretty good at it, too. Most of them are ones who add up the numbers to see if the budget can handle another kid, discover it can't but go ahead and take one in anyway. They get by, sharing their homes and their hearts as best they can, but it's never very easy. If you think it is, try keeping two suspicious-minded, sullen, seemingly ungrateful chicken killers around your place for awhile.

How I see it is that a kid needs their own mom and their own dad in a strong, happy and functioning home. Anything less than that is just that - less.

My niece left her last foster home, parented by Native people, because she had a hard time communicating with them. We looked after her for a time as well, but she asked to leave to be with her sisters which constituted the only attainable sense of family she had. Foster homes, except for almost miraculous exceptions, fall short of meeting natural needs and expectations. The problem is we can't leave kids suffering in harmful situations, or going hungry or being neglected, can we? It seems the only choice is to provide some suitable alternative and right now fostering, in some form, is it. The long range answer is to create or recreate conditions in which families are no longer so commonly broken up and scattered all over. The last place I stayed in for any length of time was another farm from years 12 to 18. That guy still hates me, but then he hates just about everybody. A part from the fact he is a closet racist, he routinely psyologically harassed people. I tried to get another place to stay but my social worker always told me that I was no longer young enough or cute enough for anyone else to want to take me in.

I'm not sure there is a foolproof way to keep messed up people from getting their hands on foster kids, but those in the field should sure give a closer listen when a kid keeps complaining and asking for their help.

In talking to other foster kids, I find that most of them checked out at age 16 or before. My brother did that, too. Up until he was 14, though, he would do anything those people would ask just to win some approval and acceptance. He kept waiting for those you're a part-of-this-family-too promises to be fulfilled but they never were. He left looking for the precious stuff he always needed, about as hurt as a person can get having been made a fool of all those years.

As for me, well I quite believing that pie-in-the-sky talk real early. I withdrew and hid myself where I figured nobody could ever find me or touch me. I finally went looking for the same things normal people seek. I discovered how great the distance of social isolation I had inflicted on myself.

To backtrack accross all of that turned out to be a deadly dark and dangerous trail.. Some like my brother and Richard Cardinal and William Boucher didn't survive it. Except for a few breaks here and there, I have few illusions about where I would be now too.

How I sort of try to understand this whole thing now is like when my cousin and her baby came to visit us. Whenever that baby, Jennifer, came around, just naturally we took turns smiling at her, trying to surprise her, or picking her up - in some way interacting with her. From her earliest days until she starts in with her own friends, that kid is being constantly told in some way that she matters, that how she is feeling and what she's doing is important. I think the fact we raise so many caring, generous, and just plain nice-to-be-around adults is somhw tied to those loving beginnings.

What happens to a person who grows up without that kind of attention? Don't ask me, there is very much about this child-in-artificial-care business that's cloudy to me yet and probably always will be. About the only thing I know for sure is that these alter-Native homes sometimes do work out if your name happens to be Foster, but hasn't done all that well for the rest of us.

Next week, in chapter two, the lost kid reunites with his mother and his Native past. Until then, give your kids a nice big hug for no special reason at all and think of those others far away who are just wishing for someone to hug them once in a while, too.