Aspects of Life – Thoughts and Conversations
I have the honor of being asked to speak for the Utah’s Annual ICWA Conference. I will be giving a virtual presentation. American Indian children who have been removed from their home and are being considered for placement in foster care or adoption require stability. The removal itself is traumatizing, with effects that last late […]
I will be giving a presentation of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption and talking about the writing of it, and why it was an important book to be out in the public space. Please join me at the LaVeta Library at 1:oo p.m. for a reading, conversation and questions.
In 2019, I was interviewed by Huffpost as part of an article that explores the question Who Should Be Allowed to Adopt American Indian Children? Great question as conservatives and religious communities attempt to remove the Indian Child Welfare Act from Legislation. Read the article; watch the mini–documentary, by journalists Jennifer Bendery,Isaac Himmelman, and Lena […]
We never know where our paths will take us. We just know we are going on a direction, many times, we are being led. For me, it is deeper into the forest. Now, that forest isn’t scary, but it is relatively unexplored. That forest is American Indian child placement. I was in my 40s when […]
Last month, I participated in a podcast with the Archibald Project, an organization that uses storytelling to address the orphan and child vulnerability crisis in creative and educated ways. I loved talking with them because they asked the hard questions, those questions that reveal the complexity and depth of tough issues, the ones that make […]
Book ideas don’t materialize out of nothing. Built on foundations of experience, or rooted in something larger than a single story, ideas begin as ethereal and boundless shapes. Over time they take form, eventually becoming distinct and real. Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption is such a book. Although shaping the story has its […]
Just before I left for London last week, I was notified that Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption had been chosen as one of four finalists in the Creative Nonfiction category of the Colorado Book Awards. I am thrilled and I am so very honored to be among this list of great writers with […]
Unless you are Stephen King, publishing is like graduating from college – people aren’t knocking down your door asking you to work for them, or in this case, talking about your book. At least not until you get your name out there. And that can take a bit of time, a lot of patience, and […]
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, […]
The Indian Childwelfare Act of 1978 was established to stop the wholesale removal of American Indian kids from their families and communities. Prior to its legislation, Indian children were placed and hidden behind closed adoptions, with no way to find our way back to our families, our tribes. We were forced to live in a […]