Albert Bender: Help tribes in South Dakota with foster care


YouTube: Hearts On The Ground: Bring Lakota Children Home

Albert Bender seeks support for a petition that calls on President Barack Obama to support tribal foster care programs in South Dakota:
As part of a new campaign to stop the genocide of Native American people in South Dakota, the Lakota People's Law Project has initiated the Campaign to Free Lakota Children with a national petition. The petition calls on President Obama to authorize federal grants from the Departments of the Interior, Justice and Health and Human Services to start tribal foster care programs, in order to stop the kidnapping of Lakota children by South Dakota and to bring those held in state-mandated captivity home.

The epidemic of state-sanctioned kidnappings of Native children by South Dakota's Department of Social Services (DSS) to placements in white foster homes is ongoing. Thousands of children have been removed from their homes. The children often are removed for alleged "neglect." They are taken sometimes at gunpoint, sometimes from school, sometimes in the middle of the night, and sometimes the parents are tasered. In the minds of DSS workers Native American poverty is the same as "neglect." White children in similar economic circumstances are not removed from their homes.

Get the Story:
Albert Bender: Petition campaign launched to halt South Dakota genocide of Native people (The People's World 1/28)

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