They’re Still Taking Our Children: The Evolution of Boarding Schools

This event will focus on how the legacy of Indian Boarding Schools evolved into our current child welfare system in Minnesota and how the Indian Child Welfare Act works to protect our Native families. Leaning on lived experience working in Indian Child Welfare, our speakers will walk us through the evolution of boarding schools and how we can work to counteract this harmful legacy.  Please register using the link below, and use the provided zoom link.

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Speaker Bios:
Briana Blackhawk (Ho-Chunk) works with Native families and represents the interests of Native children in issues of child welfare as an ICWA Guardian Ad Litem for the state of Minnesota. In addition, her family was an ICWA foster home for 13 years, caring for more than 100 Native children in that time. Briana attended Minneapolis Community and Technical College and Hamline University. She is a lifelong member at Salem Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis and mother to a really cool three-year-old daughter. 

Sandra White Hawk is a Sicangu Lakota adoptee from the Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota. She is the founder and Director of First Nations Repatriation Institute. 

First Nations Repatriation Institute (FNRI) is the first organization of its kind whose goal it is to create a resource for First Nations people impacted by foster care or adoption to return home, reconnect, and reclaim their identity.  The Institute also serves as a resource to enhance the knowledge and skills of practitioners who serve First Nations people. 

Sandra organizes Truth Healing Reconciliation Community Forums that bring together adoptees/fostered individuals and their families and professionals with the goal to identify post adoption issues and to identify strategies that will prevent removal of First Nations children.  She has also initiated an ongoing support group for adoptees and birth relatives in the Twin Cities Area. 

Sandra is the Elder in Residence at the Indian Child Welfare Law Office, Minneapolis, MN and is a consultant for the Capacity Building Center for Tribes, Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies University of Duluth, Minnesota. 

Sandra has become a spokesperson on the issues of the adoption and the foster care system and how it has impacted First Nations People. She has traveled throughout the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, Australia, Japan, and Alaska sharing her inspirational story of healing. 

She served as Commissioner for the Maine Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission and served as an Honorary Witness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools in Canada. 

She serves on the boards of: The Legal Rights Center of Minneapolis and The Association for American Indian Affairs.  

Registration Link: 
https://forms.gle/gu7hq9gEztLakRJ16  

Zoom Link: 
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86804682372?pwd=Wkp3TXgySWh5Ylo0bkxtR0FFdXlFZz09 

Meeting ID: 868 0468 2372
Passcode: 600
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