Presentation – Bitterroot

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.

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The Weight of Time and Its Endless Lessons

Like last year, autumn will be slow in coming.  It will be awhile before we can leave behind the 90+ degree days that we’ve experienced too many times this summer, and last. I look forward to autumn. There is a change in the air that other seasons don’t convey; autumn encompasses all the senses.  It […]

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Is American Indian a ‘racial’ or ‘political’ identity?

Is American Indian a ‘racial’ or ‘political’ identity? It’s complicated. I’d just posted on FB how the conservative right (the Goldwater Institute) is attempting to upend the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) through its state-by-state litigation.  There are two legal arguments, both funded by right-wing think-tanks, whose money can be traced to the […]

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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, […]

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