Jennie Stockle: Oklahoma must repair relationship with Natives

In 2011 Mary Fallin assumed office as Governor of the Oklahoma and, like it or not, the events that have followed exemplify some of the worst atrocities against Native Americans in any recent memory. One of the first things that got axed by the state legislature [by HB 2172] that Spring was Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission. After 43 years of having an OIAC, the OIAC staff had dwindled from a 9 member board with up to 15 advisors to just a two-person staff. Two Native women were tasked to handle the needs of 39 Tribal Nations, nations that predate the state of Oklahoma in governance. It wasn't until September of 2012 that Jacque Secondine Hensley was appointed as Oklahoma's Native American liaison to the Governor's office.

In October 2013, Dusten Brown and the Cherokee Nation has had US Marshalls arrive in military vehicles to the gates of Tahlequah and remove a four-year-old Cherokee girl. General sentiment from Native Americans , Native American adoptees, and others across the country has been one of horrifying disbelief. Many people wanted to believe that the forced removal of American Indian children to be adopted by non-Natives or taken to American Indian residential schools had not returned to the pages of this nation's history, but it had. Allegations of corruption by the Oklahoma Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children about the Baby Veronica case, and many others like it, have been flooding Native News headlines since.