Articles

It could be degrading name-calling or humiliation, or survivors of domestic abuse needing to talk about how a partner has isolated them from friends and family. At other times, they say they’re being physically harmed and lack the money to flee. Often, they simply need someone to share with who won’t judge them for being […]

Earlier this summer, a group of children on the Taos Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico gathered to paint with plant-based materials native to the land of their grandparents and great-grandparents. Deep rust-colored adobe homes, snow-capped mountains and bright bursts of sunlight covered the canvases, once derived from thin stretches of deer hide. The gathering for […]

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the right of Native children to remain with their families and tribes, reaffirming for the first time, the Indian Child Welfare Act. The measure regulates the adoption and fostering of Indigenous children. Because a tribe’s most precious resource is its children, the ruling — and the history of the […]

In 2017, foster mother Jess Ahūgišįnįwįga Lopez-Walker welcomed a social worker into her Sioux City, Iowa, home as she prepared to adopt her second child, a baby girl. The enrolled member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska wanted the infant close to her body, to nurture and carry her the same way her people had […]

In her new memoir, author Sandy White Hawk writes of her abusive adoptive home and how she went on to empower other adoptees across the country. The book takes its title from documents finalizing White Hawk’s adoption, where she is identified as “a child of the indian race (sic).” White Hawk, whose Lakota name is […]

Amid a thunderous beating of red animal-skin drums and powerful song, survivors of Indian boarding schools met in southern Oklahoma on a hot July day with the nation’s ranking official in charge of strengthening tribal self-determination in Indian Country and upholding the government’s treaty obligations to tribes. Hundreds of former students and their descendants had […]

By Jeremiah Donier Hopi and Navajo tribal member Albert Pooley hears the echoes of his forefathers every day in the work he does as president of the Native American Fatherhood and Families Association (NAFFA). “Imagine what our forefathers would say to us today,” said Pooley. “They would probably shout, ‘We are here with you. We […]

Several years ago, the Lummi Tribal Council told Diana Phair, the executive director of the tribe’s Housing Authority: “We have 200-some children in foster care. We need to bring our children home.” What would it take, Phair asked tribal members of the nation that sits on Washington’s Pacific coast near Canada, to keep their families […]