A NRS82 - Domestic
Non-Profit Corporation

Today, almost one in three Americans identifies as a racial or ethnic minority. Nearly one out of every five school aged children in the United States speak a language other than English at home. By 2010 nearly half the total workforce of the United States will be comprised of women and people of color. By the year 2050, one fourth of the total United States population will be Hispanic; half of the total United States population will be people of color. The combined buying power of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native American Indians will have totaled 1.4 trillion dollars, three times that of  the year 1990.

 Native Americans and Indian children have a unique political status as members of Sovereign Tribal Governments. Congress, through the Constitution, statutes, treaties, and the general course of dealing with Indian Tribes, is charged with the responsibility for the protection and preservation of Indian Tribes and their resources, including Indian children.

The special political status of Indian Tribes, as well as the history of biased treatment of Indian children and families under public and non-Indian private child welfare systems, was the basis for the enactment of ICWA (25 U.S.C. § 1901) The Indian Child Welfare Advocacy Law. The United States Congress stated in Section 1901(3) of I.C.W.A. “that there is no resource that is more vital to the continued existence and integrity of Indian Tribes than their children and that the United States has a direct interest, as trustee, in protecting Indian children who are members of or are eligible for membership in an Indian Tribe…”.

 

The purpose of this application for a scholarship for this training is for a American Indian staff person. Services to Native Americans will include a counseling component for mental health, domestic violence & anger management counseling and Indian Child Welfare Training. Other referral services will be to native clinics and physicians licensed and under contracts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) and Indian Health Services (I.H.S.).

 

The Indigenous People’s Law Services project takes place in Nevada’s heaviest native populated county: Clark.  The State of Nevada is home to approximately 107,000+ indigenous peoples. Of those, 47,000 were identified in Census 2000 as Native Americans from 26 Nevada Tribes. It comes under the Congressional Districts of Reid, Berkley, Ensign and Gibbons (Congressional Districts 1. & 2.)

 

Services to be developed within the Indigenous people’s Law Services will include:

• Marriage education of proposed couples

• Counseling services to strengthen and concentrate on the preservation of the family

• Targeting parents of native children with support groups and sacred “Talking Circles”

• Promoting healthy marital practices

• Promoting cultural child rearing practices

• Case management

• Crisis intervention services including a hotline for counseling services 24/7

• Respite care on a case by case basis with reservation based foster care facilities

• Siblings crisis management

• Parenting classes on reservations

• Training in special needs, HIV and other disabling disease and disabilities that a new child might have (Cancer, blindness, deafness, etc.)

• Development of volunteer auxiliaries on reservations

• Interdisciplinary team meetings/case management

• Advocacy

• Family Court representation for families in all matters

• Amices curie for children in Family Court matters

 

Reservations and Native Americans have been dealing with the abuse of their children for many hundreds of years. Tribes were moved across the nation and placed in areas that did not financially support the raising of children. Desert homelands such as the SouthWest contain an enormous amount of the native community.  Each Tribe is distinctly different with its own value system. The one common factor is the value placed on the family especially the Elders and the children. In this application, the counselor will design an Auxiliary Advisory made up of grandparents and Elders to help in the healing process of the family. The importance of protecting and preserving the strength of the native family cannot be stressed enough. Sacred “Talking Circles” have been used for centuries to allow fathers, Elders and members of the Tribe opportunities to share and gather community thoughts and wisdom.