"Adoption is utterly life-changing for a child. It also upends the ordinary lives of the parents involved. The adoption process is complicated, but when it reaches across cultures, especially the cultures of Indian tribes, it can be a worst-case scenario.

The 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act was instrumental in helping tribes hold their children within their communities. Keeping children with their Native families - no matter how humble the home - is keeping who we are alive.

Since the law was enacted in 1978, 250 state and federal court decisions have been rendered, Jones said. Before 1978 in Minnesota, "an average of one of every four Indian children younger than age 1 was removed from his or her Indian home and adopted by a non-Indian couple - a number of them just because the system didn't understand Indian culture," he said.

It seems simple to me. A culture and nation cannot flourish if the youngest - the children - are removed from the community."

Get the Story:
DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN: At stake -- the survival of a culture (The Grand Forks Herald 2/1)

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