SW Pioneers Podcast

Evelyn Lance Blanchard, an indigenous woman from the Laguna Yaqui Nations, played a crucial role in advocating for the rights of Native peoples, particularly children. She fought against the harmful policies of colonialism and the forced assimilation of indigenous children into white families. Blanchard was instrumental in the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, which aimed to prioritize placing Native American children with their families and tribes. She continued her advocacy work in both the US and Canada, and her contributions to social work and the rights of indigenous communities should be recognized and included in social work curricula. Welcome back to Social Work Pioneers. I'm your host, Ben Wilson, a social work student at the University of Louisville. On this Sunday, October 20th, we will be learning about Evelyn Lance Blanchard. As current and future social workers, we pledge to fight against oppression in all of its forms, from racism to classism, anti-LGBTQ+, hate, xenophobia, and more. We'll work with clients in the micro-scale who face these injustices, and at the macro-scale, we have a responsibility to advocate for more just and liberatory policies. I don't know about you, but this can sometimes be a little overwhelming. How do we move forward, make any progress, when the U.S. was found on these very principles? This week, we're looking at colonialism, perhaps one of the earliest forms of oppression on this land. Literally, the land that we live, practice, learn, and serve on was stolen as part of colonialism. To ground us in this conversation, I'd first like to invite us to take a moment and consider our own changing perceptions of indigenous communities. Maybe consider what you learned about them in elementary school, what you know now, and why there's a discrepancy. Or I'd also recommend visiting native-land.ca, which I've included in the show notes of this episode. Enter your address and spend some time learning about and understanding the land that you occupy, including actually with a focus on the communities and people whose land it is. How much do you know about these nations? If you've heard of them before, where, what did you hear, and are you thinking about them in the past tense? We're used to thinking about colonialism and indigenous communities as things that were, not are. However, these communities are incredibly resilient, exhibiting unparalleled strength in the face of oppression that continues today. That being said, it's still our responsibility to reorient society away from colonialism, including current land back campaigns. Evelyn Lance Blanchard, born in 1938 as part of the Laguna Yaqui Nations, is one of the incredible indigenous women who have shaped U.S. policy and practice on the rights of Native peoples, especially children. One part of colonialism is the theft of land, which in the United States was tied up with the idea of manifest destiny, that it was the colonists' God-given right to settle the whole United States from Atlantic to Pacific, no matter the cost, human or otherwise. Even after the displacement, genocide, and breaking up their communities, they've persisted, but we still occupy that land. For over 50 years, from 1879 and continuing past 1930, U.S. government policy took indigenous children from their families and homelands to boarding schools, where their culture was stripped from them. They were punished when they spoke in their own language or practiced their culture and forced into the American mold. That could be a podcast in and of itself, and I encourage you to read up more on it. This is the other side of colonialism that complements stolen land, forced and violent assimilation and erasure of culture. After activism to close the schools, or at least ended forced removal in that way, the country resorted to adopting children out to white families as a workaround, still achieving the goal of kill the Indian and save the man, as Captain Richard Pratt put it. 75 to 80% of families on reservations lost at least one child to the foster care system, and an association on American Indian Affairs survey taken in 1974, 85% of those children were placed into white families and our institutions. Knowing the detriments of these policies and how critical cultural knowledge is to children's development of themselves and their sense of community, Dr. Evelyn Lance Blanchard became a key figure in the effort to end this harmful policy. She too had an intimate relationship with these practices. Her father was enrolled for five years at Carlisle Industrial School, and her mother was incarcerated in a state institution for six years. In 1962, Dr. Blanchard received her bachelor's in sociology from the University of Mexico, and continued to receive her master's in social work from the University of Denver in 1969. Most recently, she received her doctorate of philosophy in American studies from the University of New Mexico in July 2010. Dr. Blanchard was instrumental in the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, which legislated that Native American tribes have exclusive jurisdiction over children living on reservations, and prioritized placing children with family and tribal members. It also provided tribal child and family service programs. At the hearings in 1974, when they were discussing these issues, she testified and presented her own experiences. In one particular session, she said, the only solution is in providing competent Indian social workers who are given the funds to work within the community. We must be allowed to develop programs and facilities on a reservation, which will enable the child who has to be removed from the home, the source of this distress, to develop not according to the norms and wars of the outside, but according to his or her own needs, and the prevailing conditions and precepts of his or her tribe. Emphasis must be placed on keeping children within their own or substitute families. Once again, those are her words, not mine. She took this opportunity to meet with tribal leaders and directly engage with organizers and organizations that had been in this fight, and this experience propelled her to the national stage. In the interim, between the hearings in 1974 and the passage of the law in 1978, she left her job at the Bureau of Indian Affairs to work in Washington State. Along with the Association on American Indian Affairs, she convinced the state to implement regulations that required significant involvement of tribal community members in placement decisions for indigenous children, exactly what her goal was for the nation under ICWA. Her advocacy led to her nickname as the Mother of the ICWA, and this work continued even after the passage of the law, when it came time to implement it, as she worked with tribal and other organizations to enact it. Her work also extends to Canada, where she continued her work as an advocate and witness and helped to develop Native social work programs and curricula, including at Grant MacEwan College, Dalui University, and others. There, she also worked with national officials to develop an equivalent of the ICWA. Back in the U.S., she continued to testify at congressional hearings with the National Indian Social Workers Association, sharing updates and advocating for continued and increased funding to implement the ICWA. Branstad is still fighting for these issues as a family and children advocate at the Native Family Study Institute at the University of New Mexico. Child welfare remains an issue that faces indigenous communities, as Native children continue to be four times more likely to be removed compared to non-Native children, and 56% of adopted children are adopted outside of their families and communities. As current and future social workers, we're bound to cultural competence as a core part of our ethics. Just as Evelyn Blanchard advocated for children to be raised by members of their family and tribe, who have the best and most intimate knowledge of their culture, traditions, and family, we must yield our privileges as social workers to the communities and individuals we serve. There's no one better equipped to understand a person and community's circumstances and address those concerns than the person and community themselves. Furthermore, while we can't change the colonial past, we have an option to change the future. At the beginning of this episode, I touched upon a concern I'm sure that we might share. When a country and its social, economic, and cultural institutions were built on colonialism and genocide, how did we move forward? Blanchard offers lessons in this respect also. She fought for policies that kept family together, but that act directly impacts the ability of indigenous communities to maintain their culture. In this way, it's a direct affront to the systemic issue of colonialism, which seeks to erase this history. I myself encountered this during my own research for this episode, but information I could find about Evelyn stemmed from two sources, a brief bio related to a fellowship she won and her own thesis to prevent the breakup of the Indian family, the development of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, which also served as a brief memoir. I've included that and all of my sources in the show notes for your reference. History has been whitewashed, just like the culture of indigenous children who were placed with white families or in boarding schools, and this extends to school curricula too. I'll leave you with this one last point. As current and future social workers, we're called upon to challenge our institutions. We are encouraged to develop a critical lens that is to view the world. Evelyn Blanchard is a trailblazer, not just for indigenous children in North America, but social work as a profession. Why aren't her contributions and those of others featured in this series in the social work curriculum? As part of our mandate, we must turn that critical lens towards our own schools, social work, governing bodies, organizations, and more. Social workers are not immune to these issues. Thank you so much for listening. I learned a lot hearing about Evelyn Blanchard and I'm already working to implement her lessons into my practice. I hope you will too.