TEDxMileHigh is a wrap! Now, let’s talk…
Ok, I just gotta say this: being a speaker at TEDxMileHigh is a (terrifying) rush! And for me, a relative introvert, it overwhelmed my senses. After preparing for this moment for almost 2 months, complete with several intense and interesting trainings, Rick and I walked down the hall and toward the dressing room. One of […]
Essay published in High Country News – Adoption Didn’t Solve the “Indian Problem”
During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, American Indian children were placed with white families at a phenomenal rate. By 1974, approximately 30% American Indian children were removed from their American Indian families and placed with non-Indian families. Neglect was cited most often, a vague term that was responsible for changing the lives of Indian children, […]
A Re-post of my interview for Montana Public Radio’s In Other Words
This episode of In Other Words was originally aired on June 7, 2014. Interviewer Ann Szalda-Petree probed the issues that were brought to light in my study of American Indian transracial adoption. This type of child placement was an informal policy during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and the outcomes for adoptees were, many times, […]
Adoption and Suicide
No one wants to talk about suicide. But NO one wants to talk about adoption and suicide. Because, as Judith Modell writes in her book A Sealed and Secret Kinship: the culture of Policies and Practices in American Adoption (2002), “Adoption is a benign, pleasurable and apparently uneventful event–except to those who are involved.” I’ve heard […]
Bitterroot – Interview by Deborah Kalb
Last September I spoke with author, editor and blogger, Deborah Kalb. It was the first interview I had done regarding the writing of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, and it was eye-opening for me. I’d finished writing the book, but I had not spent a lot of time reflecting on it; after three years […]
Colonization and Adoption – A History
This first appeared in Gazillion Voices, November 2014, Issue 16 Recently, after giving a presentation on American Indian Transracial adoption, I was asked a question. “Where do you think you’d be now if you hadn’t been adopted?” Without pausing, the man who asked the question answered for me. “I bet you wouldn’t be giving presentations […]
Being Indian – A Memory
THE AMERICAN WEST is stunningly beautiful. Its images, quilted together, form a landscape that can be brought to mind with the aroma of pine that stings my nostrils, the feel of soil between my fingers, the sound of a waterfall or the taste of chokecherry jelly that Mom used to make in August. To me, everything […]
Adoption Researchers, Take Note…
My response to Daniel Ibn Zayd’s (of Transracialeyes.com blog fame) query regarding recruitment advertising for transracial adoption research. As a researcher who has studied “us”, I would like to weigh in. I, as an American Indian transracial adoptee, wanted to study us because no one was talking about our experiences. As transracial adoptees we […]
The Challenges of Reunion…
A friend of mine asked if I would ever be interested in helping adoptees search for their birth-families, or assist in some way an adoptee’s return home. Or perhaps I could work with them to understand the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead for them once they make that decision. However, how do you tell […]