A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World

Part 2

part two The Indian Child Welfare Crisis in Indian Country 67 john’s story I met “John” at an academic conference. He is one of the most inquisitive academics I have ever encountered. He read all the conference papers carefully in advance and found the most incisive—and often infuriating— questions to ask each presenter. He picked out the flaws in each presenter’s arguments and the weaknesses in our evidence. He is not in my field of history but has done much research about mental health in Indian communities. He has become my go-to reference whenever I have a question in this area. I know he will be able to point me in the right direction. I asked him one day if there is much recent scholarship on the longterm psychological impact of Indian adoptions. He shared a few articles and dissertations with me, then casually mentioned that by the way, he was adopted. I wanted to know more about his perspective, so we arranged to have a phone conversation. He told me that a white couple, an attorney and a homemaker, adopted him when he was six months old. They separated when he was five. His family did not live far from Indian communities and wanted him to be aware of his heritage as he grew up. His father, in fact, had worked on an Indian reservation for a while and made sure that John was enrolled in his tribe. His family adopted another Indian boy, too, and John danced in powwows when he was young. For a time John hoped to become a minister, then after a period of enlistment , he entered one of the nation’s military academies. Soon he was studying at an Ivy League university. And today he works as a professor at one of the top public universities in the United States, is happily married, and has three small children. All did not go as well for his adopted brother, 68 who has struggled with alcohol addiction and has had recurrent trouble with the law. While in college, John found an opportunity to identify his birth family. One spring break when he was in his early twenties, he made a trip to visit his tribe’s reservation and met his family. Describing that visit as “completely overwhelming,” John learned that his father had once struggled with alcohol but had sobered up and become an activist. He characterized some other members of his family as “a mess.” John tells me he is grateful that he was raised by his adoptive mother and believes that if he hadn’t been adopted, he might have shared the fate of too many of his reservation relatives: lost, broken, wounded, or dead before their time. Still, after that first visit, he calls his reservation home, and he has found other relatives whose resilience, he says, is “remarkable.” Since then he has become a full-fledged member of his Indian family. ...