[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 98 (Thursday, June 15, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H6023-H6025]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ICWA APPLIED UNFAIRLY

  (Ms. PRYCE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks, and include extraneous 
material.)
  Ms. PRYCE. Mr. Speaker, when will it stop? Today we have another 
heart-wrenching front page story of an adoption gone awry.
  Nineteen months ago Jim and Colette Rost of Columbus, OH, adopted 
twin baby girls and have cared for them every day of their young lives.
  Yesterday, a judge in California took these girls away from the only 
family they have ever known and awarded custody to a perfect stranger, 
the birth grandmother.
  The only reason for this is that the girls are \1/32\ Pomo Indian and 
the judge ruled that the Indian Child Welfare Act applies to these 
children and that tribal rights supercede all other interests.
  Mr. Speaker, when are we going to come to our senses?
  As an adoptive mother, I can tell you these rulings will have a 
chilling effect on couples wishing to provide good homes to children 
through adoption. Who will want to risk the potential heartache and the 
terrifying prospect that your child might have some far-removed native 
American heritage and be taken away?
  Mr. Speaker, I have introduced legislation to amend the ICWA to 
prevent these injustices in the future.
  I welcome input and advice of the native American community and I ask 
the support of my colleagues for H.R. 1448, so that future tragedies 
such as this can be avoided.
  Mr. Speaker, I include the following materials:

                                                 February 7, 1995.
       Dear Representative Pryce: I'm writing to you as a mother 
     looking for help. My family is being threatened by an 
     ``adoption gone bad.'' My husband and I took immediate 
     custody of twin baby girls in California in November of 1993. 
     We were involved in an open adoption where we met the birth 
     mother and birth father. These unmarried birth parents were 
     20 years old and they already had 2 boys. They made a 
     decision to allow the twins to be adopted because they 
     couldn't give them the attention and care they deserved. 
     Moreover, they felt it would be unfair to their 2 sons that 
     they already had. The birth father at that time did not 
     disclose his Native American background (which turns out to 
     be only \1/16\ making the twins \1/32\ and had chosen not to 
     tell his parents about the adoption. In February of 1994, 
     when the twins were 3 months old, he broke up with the birth 
     mother, went home to his parents and told them about the 
     adoption. The birth father's mother contacted a tribe in 
     California (that she was not registered with until April 
     1994) who then contacted the attorney who arranged the 
     adoptions demanding the return of the twins.
       This was the first time we knew of his Native American 
     Heritage. Since that time we have been involved in a fight to 
     keep our babies. The twins, Lucy and Bridget are now 15 
     months old and have been with us since their discharge from 
     the hospital. We have brought them into our family where they 
     have bonded with their big sister Hannah [[Page H6024]] (age 
     7\1/2\), grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins on both 
     sides.
       They are so precious to us and we live in terror of losing 
     them because of the Indian Child Welfare Act; an act that 
     does not take into consideration the best interest of the 
     child and more or less gives the tribe absolute power.
       Please help us in any way you can. We can't become another 
     adoption ``fatality.'' These little girls would go back to a 
     pathological family situation and they would be robbed of the 
     love we would give them.
           Sincerely,
     Colette Rost.
                                                                    ____

                   Rost Case Illustrates Law's Racism

       In a new book titled Life on the Color Line, Gregory Howard 
     Williams, dean of the Ohio State University law school, 
     describes the day--more than 30 years ago--that he learned he 
     was ``really'' black, not white. Greg and his brother were 
     traveling with their father to his family home in Muncie, 
     Ind.--their mother had run off with two younger siblings--
     when their father explained that the relatives they were 
     going to live with were black.
       Greg's father, James, it seems, was the product of a black-
     white union. While living with his white wife, James had 
     called himself white. Simple arithmetic should have suggested 
     that Greg and his brother were three-quarters white.
       But not in the United States of the 1950s. So brutal was 
     the hostility of whites to blacks and so horrified were 
     whites by the concept of racial mixing (miscegenation) that a 
     person with even the smallest amount of Negro heritage was 
     considered entirely black.
       And so, at the age of 10, Greg Williams, with Caucasian 
     features and fair skin, began a new life as a black person. 
     As a teen-ager, dating was a trauma. ``Dating for me was . . 
     . like swimming in shark-infested waters,'' he wrote. Whites 
     who ``knew'' that he was black didn't want him to date white 
     girls, while those who didn't know disliked seeing him with 
     black girls.
       We've come a long way since the 1950s. Interracial couples 
     are, for the most part, well-accepted among both blacks and 
     whites. And yet, we still tend to think of people in racial 
     terms. When someone's skin color or facial features do not 
     yield an instant category, we want to know what race that 
     person is. We want to know--even if there is no answer.
       Must one choose? What if your mother is Asian and your 
     father is half black and half white? Is someone's race so 
     important?
       A case now being considered in California suggests that we 
     haven't come as far as we ought since the 1950s.
       A couple in Columbus, Ohio, adopted a set of twin girls 
     through an agency in California. Both birth parents, 
     unmarried at the time of the birth, signed all of the 
     relevant paperwork surrendering their rights to the twins. 
     They also signed sworn affidavits, routine in California, to 
     the effect that neither they nor their children (they have 
     two older boys) were members of any Indian tribe. The girls 
     were immediately placed for adoption with Jim and Colette 
     Rost of Columbus.
       Six months later, when the Rosts attempted to have the 
     adoption finalized, the agency (which had legal custody) 
     balked. The birth father and his mother (the birth 
     grandmother) were contesting the adoption, claiming now that 
     the children were Indian and thus covered by the Indian Child 
     Welfare Act.
       It seems that someone, perhaps the young (age 42) birth 
     grandmother, had decided to search the family records and had 
     come up with something. The twins' parents are not Indian. 
     Their four grandparents are not Indian. Their eight great-
     grandparents are not Indian. Their 16 great-great-
     grandparents were not Indian. But one of the twins' great-
     great-great-grandparents was an Indian. That makes the twins 
     \1/32\ Indian, and that, apparently, is enough to trigger the 
     federal law. So ruled a judge in California. The federal law 
     provides that if a child is Indian and the subject of a 
     custody dispute, the birth parents have first claim, the 
     extended family has second claim and the tribe has the final 
     word.
       The twins are now 18 months old, and while no final 
     disposition has been made by the judge, they have been 
     ordered to visit with their birth grandmother.
       Clearly, this is a case of some unscrupulous white folks 
     gaming the system. But the law permits it. And the law is 
     racist. If one distant Indian ancestor is enough to make you 
     fully Indian, isn't this uncomfortably close to the tainted-
     blood view of miscegenation from the Jim Crow era--to say 
     nothing of the racial schemes of the old South Africa or Nazi 
     Germany?
       Very few of us are ``pure'' members of one race or another. 
     Our ancestors got around. And racial categorization--though 
     slavishly worshiped by the politically correct--is almost 
     always pernicious.
                                                                    ____

              [From the Columbus Dispatch, June 15, 1955]

                   Twin Girls Will Go to Birth Family

                          (By Randall Edwards)

       Bridget and Lucy Ruiz, 19-month-old twins who have lived 
     with a Columbus couple since their birth, will be placed in 
     the custody of their biological grandparents in California 
     and will not return to Ohio, a judge in Los Angeles ruled 
     yesterday.
       The time and place of the transfer, when Jim and Colette 
     Rost must turn the twins over to grandparents Karen and 
     Richard O. Adams, will be kept secret based on a strict order 
     from Judge John Henning of the Los Angeles County Superior 
     Court.
       ``I'm mad. I'm worried about Bridget and Lucy, and I don't 
     know what else to say,'' a distraught Jim Rost said after the 
     ruling.
       ``I'm going to miss them,'' he added. ``Lots of tears. It's 
     like a death in the family.''
       The judge's decision represents a victory for members of 
     the birth family, who are part Pomo Indian, in a bitter legal 
     battle with the Rosts, who are white.
       The litigation has drawn international media attention and 
     has launched a national debate over a federal law that 
     restricts the adoption of American Indian children.
       The Rosts' lawyer immediately appealed, but she rated her 
     chances of victory as ``slim.''
       ``The Rosts are completely out of it,'' said attorney Jane 
     Gorman.
       ``If we could have kept custody of the girls, I think we 
     might have won on appeal, because I think the judge's 
     decision was wrong,'' she said. ``But with the court having 
     transferred custody, our chances are slim.''
       Henning does not want members of the news media, who have 
     surrounded the courthouse in recent days, to be present when 
     the children are given to their biological grandparents, 
     Gorman said. The judge has barred reporters from the 
     courtroom throughout the proceedings.
       Henning had ordered the Rosts to bring the children to Los 
     Angeles in late May for a series of visits with Karen Adams 
     and the birth parents--Adams' son Richard E. Adams, and 
     Cynthia Ruiz. Last week, Henning issued an order prohibiting 
     the Rosts from taking the twins out of Los Angeles County.
       Reached by telephone in his chambers yesterday, Henning 
     would say only that he had established a temporary 
     guardianship and made Karen and Richard O. Adams custodians.
       Richard E. Adams' lawyer Leslie Glick, said the birth 
     parents hope to one day take custody of the twins ``when they 
     are stable.''
       ``Rick and Cindy, but that they had no money, would have 
     kept those children to begin with, Glick said. She denied 
     that the couple, who married after the adoption dispute 
     began, have had serious domestic violence problems. Richard 
     E. Adams had been charged, but was not convicted, of battery 
     stemming from a domestic violence complaint filed by Ruiz.
       Glick called Henning's decision ``very thoughtful'' and 
     said the guardianship plan is ``in the best interests of the 
     children.''
       ``The birth family is so happy. They want their children 
     back.''
       Adams and Ruiz voluntarily consented to the adoption, but 
     Adams changed his mind about three months later, saying he 
     wanted his mother to have custody and revealing that the 
     children are part Pomo Indian.
       The terms of the Indian Child Welfare Act, a 1978 law that 
     gives Indian families and Indian tribes powerful influence 
     over the adoption of Indian children were not followed in the 
     adoption, lawyers said.
       The Rosts say they never knew the children were part Indian 
     until Adams tried to stop the adoption. And there was no 
     evidence produced that showed they were aware.
       Testimony that an adoption lawyer who represented Ruiz and 
     Adams knew about the Pomo claims proved to be a turning point 
     in the case, however, said Arnold Klein, a lawyer appointed 
     to represent the twins. Adoption lawyer D. Durand Cook, who 
     represented Ruiz and Adams, produced documents, that showed 
     he knew Adams was claiming Pomo ancestry, said Klein.
       Adams had testified that Cook told him his Pomo ancestry 
     would complicate and slow the adoption process, so he 
     concealed his Indian background.
       Cook also said he never told the Rosts about the Pomo 
     Ancestry, Klein and Gorman confirmed. The Rosts paid Cook's 
     $4,200 legal bill as part of the adoption agreement, Jim Rost 
     confirmed.
       According to the Indian Child Welfare Act, Cook should have 
     contacted tribal authorities, who would have determined the 
     placement of the children.
       Mr. Rost said he was shocked by Cook's revelation.
       ``It was incredible to me that he had a conversation that 
     involved the American Indian issue and that he chose not to 
     disclose that to us.'' Mr. Rost said. But he added he thinks 
     the focus on Cook's testimony misses the point.
       ``Nobody is saying anything about the fact that two adults 
     made this decision to give up these children. They sought out 
     Durand Cook, and now they are invoking this law to take the 
     children away from us.
       ``It's incredible for us to see almost unanimous support 
     from everyone we meet and have our legal system make a ruling 
     that flies in the face of that,'' Mr. Rost said.
       Mr. Rost said he is frustrated that nether he nor Mrs. Rost 
     ever had a chance to testify in the case.
       ``We never had a chance to present any evidence. The judge 
     said his hands were tied.''
       U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce, who tried to amend the Indian 
     Child Welfare Act in time to help the Rosts maintain custody 
     of the twins, said yesterday that she is disappointed.
       ``These children have become the innocent victims of a 
     badly written law,'' Pryce, R-Perry Township, said in a 
     prepared release. Pryce said the use of the Indian Child 
     Welfare Act in the case is ``contrary not only to 
     [[Page H6025]] the best interests of the children, but to the 
     original intentions of the legislation.''
       The act was approved in 1978 after congressional 
     investigators found that as many as 35 percent of Indian 
     Children were being adopted away from their homes, usually by 
     white adoptive parents.
       Legislation introduced by Pryce and companion legislation 
     introduced by U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Columbus, would have 
     amended the law to prevent tribes, from bestowing retractive 
     membership as it relates to adoption cases.
       The amendments were stalled after a flurry of opposition 
     from American Indian groups, who testified that the law 
     challenges the sovereignty of American Indians.
     

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