a blog for and by American Indian and First Nations adoptees who are called a STOLEN GENERATION #WhoTellsTheStoryMatters #WhyICWAMatters
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Saturday, October 23, 2010
Adoption Legislation Primer (a must read!)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
My recent book tour (October 2010)
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I had a blast! |
Sometimes it takes me awhile to process what just happened. In other words, I had to recover from my recent mini-book tour/road trip to
Driving is my therapy. I think best while driving. This time I used the 30+ hours to pray and ask “what should I read?” Great Spirit answered loud and clear. Four times I read from One Small Sacrifice and each time was different!
The first time I visited the Menominee tribe in 2001, it was to attend the Wiping the Tears ceremony, led by the most sacred holy men Chief Arvol Looking Horse and Elder Chris Leith. Here I was, nine years later, back there with my own story. That ceremony for adoptees was the first one ever and the miracle I attended was not lost on me. My writing about Lost Birds feels like ceremony.
On Sept. 27, I met my friend
Monday night
Tuesday: One of the saddest moments for me was when I asked the high school students how many of their parents had attended boarding school and practically all their hands shot up. Their parents had been sent as far away as
Next stop: the audience at the
Late Tuesday afternoon I drove north. I was going home. I’d see cousins, old friends and even friend’s parents who remembered me but lost contact when I moved away after college. This was going to be the real test, sharing my personal life. Writing at
My grade school classmate
Wednesday morning, I was interviewed by the local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate at the
On Wednesday night at the Public Library, I read a few chapters about my younger days in
That hour went by so fast at the library, I barely remember details. There were a few tears. I did survive emotionally, I told them. What irony I was reading on the birthdays of my favorite uncle, Chet McIntyre, and my own birthmother, Helen Thrall. Neither of them lived long enough to see this homecoming or know I wrote about them in my memoir.
On Friday, the reading at
That week I had dinner with my first cousins Scott and
I didn’t catch the bug going around during my week in
To wrap up my talk, I shared this story with the high school students on the Menominee rez: “The old story goes there was a farmer who found a wounded eagle and placed him in a chicken coop to recover. The eagle started to act like a chicken, he bobbed his head like a chicken, he ate like a chicken, and otherwise thought he was a chicken. Until one day an Indian came along and asked what the eagle was doing with the chickens. The farmer told him the story, and the Indian asked if he could remove the eagle. The Farmer gave his permission to do so. So the Indian took the eagle to the mountain and said, “You have to know who you are and what you stand for...” The eagle started to flex his wings. His keen eyesight started to return, and the strength in him started to come back. The eagle flew and soared and everything came back to him, who he was and that he wasn’t a chicken. He gained everything back he lost because of where he was placed.”
I told the students Lost Birds are that eagle and every adoptee raised away from their tribe and traditions needs to return home.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Our Adoptee Culture
BLOGS:
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A Meme and a Prayer4 weeks ago
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Ghosts1 month ago
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Is Healing Possible2 months ago
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What is driving license credit?5 months ago
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In Writing Motherhood10 months ago
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Such a shame11 months ago
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NEW MEMOIR
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
Diane Tells His Name

We conclude this series & continue the conversation by naming that adoption is genocide. This naming refers to the process of genocide that breaks kinship ties through adoption & other forms of family separation & policing 🧵#NAAM2022 #AdoptionIsTraumaAND #AdopteeTwitter #FFY 1/6 pic.twitter.com/46v0mWISZ1
— Adoptee Futures CIC (@AdopteeFutures) November 29, 2022
ADOPTION TRUTH
The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

Original Birth Certificate Map in the USA
Why tribes do not recommend the DNA swab
Detailed discussion of the Bering Strait theory and other scientific theories about the population of the modern-day Americas is beyond the scope of this essay. However, it should be noted that Indian people have expressed suspicion that DNA analysis is a tool that scientists will use to support theories about the origins of tribal people that contradict tribal oral histories and origin stories. Perhaps more important,the alternative origin stories of scientists are seen as intending to weaken tribal land and other legal claims (and even diminish a history of colonialism?) that are supported in U.S. federal and tribal law. As genetic evidence has already been used to resolve land conflicts in Asian and Eastern European countries, this is not an unfounded fear.