Child Welfare League of America CEO on the Future of Indian Child Welfare
One day, long before she became head of the Child Welfare League of America, Linda Spears sat in her office in tears, surrounded by archival records pulled from an old cardboard box.
The dry documents told a disturbing story.
Between 1958 and 1967, the League partnered with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to enact the Indian Adoption Project, a federal initiative across 16 western states promoting the systematic separation of Indigenous families. Some children didn’t have families. Others were removed by social workers who went into tribal homes and arbitrarily deem families unfit — if they talked to the adults at all. Then tribal children were sent to live with white families, in an attempt to assimilate them through adoption.
Newspapers at the time colloquially called the effort the “Papoose Project.’’ A 1964 Miami Herald article stated, “Frequently the illegitimate children run wild and uncared for on reservations and help must be found among the white population.’’
It was an effort Spears’ organization once called “one of the League’s most satisfying activities.”
For Spears, that pivotal moment in her office offered a glimpse of her purpose within the League. As the first Indigenous woman to lead the Washington D.C.-based advocacy nonprofit, she said that along with looking out for all the nation’s children, she feels it’s also her responsibility to help right the course of an organization that has historically caused harm to tribal children and families.
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