Toddler’s plight a wake up call to Rez sense of community <br>
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The names and details concerning the child in this story have been changed or omitted to respect the privacy of all concerned.)
Which do you want first?
The good news:
Reservation communities stick together. A strong communication network exists because of extended families and friends. While sometimes that network is engaged in good-natured (alright, sometimes not-so-good-natured) gossip, in an emergency that network becomes a vital tool in working towards solutions.
The social service networks that serve these communities, though hard pressed by lack of sufficient staff and funding, fight to keep those communities safe.
The bad news:
Sometimes, due to lack of effective communication, the private and official systems lack synchronicity.
On Wednesday, March 3, my friend Berta and I found ourselves at a store in one of the small reservation communities we frequent. We noticed the little child walking around the front of the store. We assumed the toddler was with the women standing outside the store.
We did our shopping and returned to the nearby school where we are both employed part time. Around 11 a.m., I was by Berta, who told me that the toddler had walked up to the home of another co-worker. His daughter Jamie had found the toddler and taken the child into the home. Now the child’s face was bloody, and had lost the white socks we remembered.
A network of concerned individuals began making calls, trying to reach Social Services. There was no answer. Linda who also works at the school, called her sister-in-law, who works with a youth home. She thought perhaps Mattie could help. As it turned out, Mattie was in a meeting with the director of the social services office in question.
The caseworker was at lunch. Linda was assured that the police had been called.
After 1 p.m., the receptionist at social services answered the phone and reported that the caseworker was still out to lunch. Both Linda and Jamie made separate calls. Jamie was told that the office of social services was aware of the problem and that the police had been notified
Jamie called her father again to tell him that the toddler had soiled its diaper, and several people huddled to decide whether or not the child should be given a bath. Jamie was the only person home. She would have no witness while a bath was given. Because no one was sure how or why the child was in the condition it had found itself, it was decided that it would be best not to. If the child had been injured or molested, it was decided best not to risk washing away evidence.
By this time, the group of adults who had been involved were getting fed up. Linda called both her sister and the social services office again, repeating several times that she did not understand why it was taking so long for someone to come and care for this child.
Finally, we called the police ourselves, certain that the mother had telephoned, frantic for her missing child. This, we were told, was the first call made to the police.
At 1:45 p.m. Child Protective Services arrived at Jamie’s house.
As time stretched over several hours, those of us who are mothers imagined the terror of having a child come up missing, too young to talk.
We were saddened by the situation that dictated no warm bath and dry warm clothes be provided to the child.
As far as blame—it is easy to point fingers, but without the entire story, who should be saddled with it?
My friend and I didn’t even think to question the women standing around whether one of them was the mother of that child. By the same token, perhaps each woman thought one of the others was the mother.
How the small toddler made it around the back of the store, across a wide parking lot serving several businesses, through a barbed wire fence (or over the cattle guard)—an area where free-roaming dogs have been known to pull down sheep—to a safe house is a frightening story.
Once, my own small son actually walked a quarter of a mile down the dirt road from my isolated, rural home. As I searched under cars and in sheds on my property, frantic, I imagined all sorts of dangers. Rattlesnakes, yes—traffic or kidnapping, no. And when I finally found him out on the road along our property, I cannot describe the relief I felt after finding my son.
In this instance, the child is too young to talk, therefore cannot tell its own story. But there is a message here for all of us who call ourselves members of a community.
(Northern Arizona writer S.J. Wilson is a regular contributor to the Navajo-Hopi Observer.)
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