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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Indian siblings can’t go to funeral

A Spokane County Juvenile Court judge denied a tribe’s motion to allow two Native American foster children in Spokane to attend the funeral in Alaska of their brother, who died this month in foster care.

The ruling is the latest chapter in a child dependency case that began in 1992, involving four siblings of Indian ancestry who were abused while in foster care on the Nooksack Reservation in northwestern Washington.

The children are descended from the Nooksack Tribe and the Hoonah Tribe in Alaska, where the body of 15-year-old Robley “Bobby” Carr Jr. will be buried.

Bobby Carr died Dec. 9 in his rural Stevens County home.

The Stevens County coroner is awaiting a toxicology report before determining what caused the boy’s death.

In ruling against the Hoonah Tribe on Tuesday, court Commissioner Paul Bastine expressed dismay that after more than a decade, the parties in the Carr case remain at odds.

“You’re asking the court to make a decision that you all should have made a long time ago,” said Bastine.

In 2003, the state and federal governments agreed to pay the Carr children $5 million after they were repeatedly abused at a foster home on the Nooksack Reservation in 2000.

The money is held for the children in trust.

Although the children have lived in foster homes in the Spokane area for the past six years, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 entitles the tribes to maintain a relationship with them.

After the death of their brother, the children’s Hoonah relatives asked the court to allow the two Carr children in the foster care of Vance and Sandy Peterson, of Spokane, to be allowed to travel to the Hoonah island, where their 16-year-old sister lives in the care of her great uncle.

The Petersons opposed the trip, citing a therapist’s declaration that it would be detrimental to the mental health of the 13-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy.

They said, however, that the relatives were welcome to visit the children in Spokane.

Though the tribe is entitled to have a relationship with the children, “this is not the time” to send them to Alaska, said Bastine, a retired judge who heard the case Tuesday after other county judges recused themselves because of their acquaintance with Vance Peterson, who is a Spokane County District Court judge.

“I’m not prepared to allow these children to go to Alaska without appropriate preparation,” Bastine said in denying the motion.

Present at Tuesday’s hearing were the children’s maternal grandmother and great uncle from Alaska; their biological father; a caseworker from the state Division of Child and Family Services; a representative of the Hoonah Tribe; and various attorneys.

“You got to get your act together,” Bastine told them all, citing the Division of Child and Family Services in particular.