The Culture of Adoption

In March 2007, I gave two workshops on the Culture of Adoption here in western Massachusetts. I used a subtitle, “We can’t fix adoption until we fix poverty.” I know that I’m different. I am a writer who successfully opened her adoption, which is rare.  I do understand the stigma for women who give up their baby and I knew the pain of infertility for my adoptive mom.

In my workshops, I gave un-apologetic, uncensored testimony of what I’d lived as an adoptee and some (shocking) facts I’d learned as a journalist.

My topic drew women who work in social service agencies in our area, in important programs that serve the poor. I structured the information using my adoption insights, using current statistics. I gave them handouts that focused on the adoptee, adoptee organizations, an up-to-date booklist, and opinions from a feminist who writes on adoption choices (with views contrary to public opinion of "good outcomes in adoption.")

My morning workshop, a trial run of sorts, was a disappointment - I felt I shared too much personal information, perhaps too quickly. A few women reacted as if they were shocked or they were just plain horrified. It was hard for them to accept what I was saying, even with my proof. I know the majority of people prefer to believe adoption is a good thing, a saving thing. That is adoption propaganda. Some even reacted to the words bastard and orphan when I said them.

The laws and secrecy about adoption were made for women but not necessarily controlled, managed or scrutinized by women. Saving children is a tiny fraction of a much bigger equation. I wanted them to see this, and see a bigger picture through my own experience.

It was a good learning experience for me. My perspective has been ignored and not widely broadcast, compared to a louder, more focused adoption industry. My reality affects everyone in a unique way, depending on their own involvement in adoption.

Fortunately, two adoptees and one adoptive parent were there to share their experience in my first workshop, and politely disagreed with some of what I presented, even challenging the statistics.

Little attention was given to the climate of oppression for the birthmother and the trauma of separation for the baby, I told them.

I asked both groups if they knew the definitions of many buzz words related to adoption – they didn’t. They were not even aware that hospitals and clinics are now serving a growing population of international adoptees. Many were unaware of a growing “bogus” ancestry in America because of sealed adoption records. Many couldn’t fathom that adoptees are so damaged they get committed to psych wards. Many had not heard that some adoptees are adopted for body parts, destined to become future transplant donors. Many had not heard of birth psychology, the bond between mother and child, even before birth. Many were surprised at what I’d experienced. They were shaking their heads when I said I might accidentally meet and date my own brother, or that I had no medical history… Most people don’t think about this.

Yes, this is the Culture of Adoption – a lot of missing information - even for those who work in social services, in agencies that serve the poor.

In hindsight, I would lay it out differently and not give so much information in a one and one-half hour presentation. It was too much! A book on Adoption Culture, which I plan to do eventually, can be administered in small doses, to process slowly.

Some people will always prefer the myths: Cuddly babies aren’t damaged but older children are…All babies need is love…Babies are given up by underage, over-sexed careless girls…

Since the 1990s, more adoptees come from poor families in foreign lands, since single Americans are not so quick to give up their baby. Some of the stigma of an unplanned pregnancy shifted. It's common now to find un-wed moms keeping the baby.

Many families who adopt don't realize such poor living conditions exist until they travel to foreign lands to adopt a child. It appeared some New Englanders at my workshop lived a rather sheltered existence. (They’re not the only ones.)

Truly this blog is about ideas. Not everyone will agree or accept my research. I accept that.

Some of my information can sure raise eyebrows.

Sterlization of Indian Women

The United States did attempt to destroy future generations of American Indians using their own agency Indian Health Services, who successfully sterilized 35% of Indian women without their knowledge and consent.

In his report "A History of Governmentally Coerced Sterilization: The Plight of the Native American Woman," published on May 1, 1997 by Michael Sullivan DeFine, University of Maine School of Law, writes:

The United States General Accounting Office Investigation of the Indian Health Service (HIS) Procedures and the Meaning behind Statistics of Population Growth: Complaints of these unethical sterilization practices continued, but little was done until the matter was brought to the attention of Senator James Abourezk (D-SD). Finally, affirmative steps were taken - specifically the commissioning of the General Accounting Office - to investigate the affair and to determine if the complaints of Indian women were true - that they were undergoing sterilization as a means of birth control, without consent. The problem with the investigation was that it was initially limited to only four area Indian Health Service hospitals (later twelve); therefore, the total number of Indian women sterilized remains unknown.

The General Accounting Office came up with a figure of 3,400 women who had been sterilized; but others speculate that at least that many had been sterilized each year from 1972 through 1976.

The General Accounting Office confined its investigation to Indian Health Service records and failed to probe case histories, to observe patient-doctor relationships, or to interview women who had been sterilized. This deplorable lack of thorough investigation only served as an attempt to placate the concerns of Indian people.

The General Accounting Office investigators concluded that Indian Health Service consent procedures lacked the basic elements of informed consent, particularly in informing a patient orally of the advantages and disadvantages of sterilization. Furthermore, the consent form had only a summary of the oral presentation, and the form lacked the information usually located at the top of the page notifying the patient that no federal benefits would be taken away if she did not accept sterilization. The General Accounting Office notified the Indian Health Service that it should implement better consent procedures. Some Indian Health Service Area Directors were pressured by local Indians and by Indian physicians and staff to suspend certain nurses and to move the hospital administrators to another post. Other than that, however, there was little else done by government officials.

Outraged by the level of governmental inaction, Indian people accused the Indian Health Service of making genocide a part of its policy. For the Indian Health Service, this was a serious accusation, as the purpose of this agency was to somehow alleviate the terrible health conditions in Indian communities. The Indian Health Service defended itself by relying on the inaccurate sterilization figures provided by the General Accounting Office. In reality, however, the accusation of genocide was not far off base.

As Thomas Littlewood stated in his book on the politics of population control, “non-white Americans are not unaware of how the American Indian came to be called the vanishing American . . . [t]his country’s starkest example of genocide in practice.”

From a statistical point of view, the reality of the devastation of Native American women victimized by sterilization can be observed through the comments of Senator Abourezk himself:  “...given the small American Indian population, the 3,400 Indian sterilization figure [out of 55,000 Indian women of childbearing age] would be compared to sterilizing 452,000 non-Indian women.”

Conclusion:  Science has provided a means of categorizing and victimizing those in society deemed unworthy of continued existence. Its influence in academic and political circles has created a pervasive social bigotry that rewards extermination over reform. The failure to embrace the racial and cultural diversity of this country has left a wake of destruction and oppression in minority populations. It is time for the pundits of social change to rearrange their thinking and give back to the people the power to choose what is right for themselves. [Footnotes removed]

Child Slavery, the precursor of adoption

The actual number of Native American adoptees is very hard to determine. The numbers are staggering if you begin 500+ years ago, when colonists were taking land, at war with or displacing tribes they needed to conquer and colonize.

Child slavery was the precursor of adoption. I found hidden records, very old files from colonial New England that state Native children were indentured (as servant or chattel slave) for their entire life, during the 17 to 19th centuries. The archives at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Connecticut have copies of such  “child slavery” indenture contracts.

The Schaghticoke Tribe in Kent, Connecticut, tell a story of a white couple who in colonial days stole an Indian couple’s two children, needing them for farm and domestic work. The farmers couldn’t do it legally so they got the Indian parents drunk. The Schaghticoke did everything they could to get their children back but were not successful. I heard their story at a history conference for Eastern tribes at the Pequot Museum.

Pequot and other tribal children in the East lived in poverty, a condition they didn’t create. State-appointed overseers controlled their land and what money families had, just like a slave owner. If you needed fabric or medicine, you had to ask the overseer. If a Pequot couple moved off their reservation to find work, they were never allowed to return. More than one Pequot family came home from work to find their children were taken, gone.

When non-Indian children were captured in wars, they were often intended for adoption into tribes, to replace lost or dead children. Captive white children were not forcibly assimilated.  In many instances, the captives chose to remain, marrying into the tribe, described in various narratives. The narrative I am reading now is about Mary Jemison who lived with the Seneca in the 1700s.

“Ritually adopted into an Indian family …time and the wealth of kinship relations they found in Indian society healed many wounds,” author Colin Calloway writes in New Worlds for All.

Conflicting goals of “civilization,” assimilation, and protecting Native people changed rapidly throughout the history of America’s “federal” Indian legislation, with origins in (primarily British) colonialism.

After slavery was abolished by the Brits, Canada and America no longer needed Indian people as fighting allies, so they decided it was better to civilize them and Christianize them. Isolating them on reservations was viewed by some as simply a protective measure, until the red Indian and his people should become extinct.

The following is a real document.

From a sales document of a child: “Know all men by these presents that I Zachariah Thomlinson, of Stratford in the County of Fairfield and Colony of Connecticut in New England, for the Consideration of eight barrels of good merchantable pork already in hand Recd of Joseph Woodruff of Milford which is to my full satisfaction and contentment, Do relinquish, release and pass over to him the said Joseph Woodruff and to his heirs and assigns forever, all my right, title and interest in, and unto the Servitude of one Certain malatto boy named Job, aged nine years, born of an Indian woman named Nab, to have and to hold said Malatto by free and clear from all claims and Demands made by me or my heirs and further I the said Zachariah Thomlinson Do for my Self and my heirs Covenant with the said Joseph Woodruff and his heirs that he and they Shall Quietly and peaceably possess and enjoy Said Malatto boy Job without the Least Interruption or molestation from or by me or under me or my heirs forever. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this 21st Day of May 1765.  The collection of the Fairfield Historical Society, Connecticut Colonial Records, Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, Volume 1 [Source: http://www.cslib.org/earlygr.htm]

It was not that long ago when it was actually better not to be an Indian, if you could somehow pass as White, to “blend in, be invisible,” to find work. For African Americans, some were called High Yeller or Yellow, for a lighter skin pigment, when they could pass for white.


Africans Americans, more than a few in Harlem, have told me they have American Indian ancestry from their southeastern ancestors. No doubt they do. It’s just hard to prove when census takers were color-blind about Native ancestry. If your skin was dark, you were Negro, or mulatto, even if you were a full-blood Indian.

New England Indians, especially the Pequot, were called black. They have their horror stories, fighting census takers over identity. Census takers would see black, write black and erase on paper any trace of Indian ancestry after generations of Pequot blood and ancestry.

The Pequot in southern Connecticut are an excellent example of diversity in skin pigment. People still question the validity of their ancestry, spouting, “Those are black people masquerading as Indians just to get rich.” Every single Pequot enrolled now traces back to someone on the 1900, 1905 or 1910 census. Those with Pequot ancestors before that census are not enrolled, at least not yet.

Our American government defines us, using census reports that are highly suspicious and definitely untrustworthy to define our sovereign status.

Remember this entire continent was colonized. America will never be totally white. There will always be black and white Indians.

The Colonizer

The lesson (is) to realize the value of an alternative perspective. And that is why we are here. That is why the Creator allowed some of us to remain, in spite of all the attempts to destroy us.
- Tall Oak (Everett Weeden), Absentee Pequot/Narragansett, 500 Nations documentary

Not all tribes are alike, mind you, but many share beliefs and bloody conflicts. America is clearly in denial about its conquest of Turtle Island. It’s easier not to know.

But long ago the colonizer used bad medicine to hasten treaties, to subdue warriors, to ensure internal conflict within tribes. Alcohol, the bad medicine, killed many prisoners, men, women, even children, on and off the reservation.

To add insult to injury, high-sugar, high-fat commodities and processed foods are boxed and delivered by truckloads to each reservation, compliments of the American government. This treaty diet causes obesity, bad skin, bad health and slow starvation.

For more than 100 years, Indian Country has been dealing with weakened immune systems, sugar diabetes, amputations and heart disease. Genes do remain a factor as an adult. Without medical records, every lost child-adoptee is like a time bomb. If we don’t know our medical history, we are at greater risk.

Tribal leaders do struggle to make things right or better, but it’s not easy in this “conquered” Third World, fighting for the scraps we call food, sovereignty and dignity.

After an avalanche of alcohol, then an ever-increasing supply of new (sometimes) illegal drugs, reservations are facing new epidemics: fetal-alcohol syndrome, high suicide rates, drug addictions, crack cocaine, arrests, high prison populations and more than their fair share of domestic violence.

This “image” tarnishes reservations when typically these stories and photographs fill American newspapers.

Despite all this, there is hope. Each child brings renewed hope.

I make no claim to be an expert on any culture but I have lived on and near reservations most of my adult life. I cover Indian Country as a journalist. I’m part of a world community, a part of this tribalism, no matter where I live.

Being a Native person means everything to me but my birthfather Earl did not live in ancestral territory or on the Cherokee reservations in Oklahoma or the Carolinas. He was assimilated into American culture, lived in Pana and Chicago, Illinois, and died an alcoholic.

In any tribal culture, my relatives would need to invite adoptees to ceremonies, to teach and offer friendship. I have not lived on the Cherokee reservation. To live there, I’d need to be invited by my relatives. I sent one Cherokee newspaper a letter looking for my relatives but no one wrote me or emailed.

It felt funny knowing that many people claim some Cherokee ancestry. I needed to be certain so I asked my father when we first met. He and my aunts are proud of our ancestors and explained after Cherokee removals, people scattered all over the Midwest and south, when my paternal great-grandmother Mary Francis Morris got married and moved from Missouri to Illinois.
Mary and her daughter Lona Dell Harlow lived our culture. Until relatives assimilate me back into my culture, I remain Tsalgi, Cherokee.  It doesn’t take an ID card for me to be Indian.

It’s just as important to understand what these removals and adoptions accomplished in America and Canada as it is to see where Indians stand today.

Some American Indians say if we keep our languages strong and return to our ceremonies, our tribal nations and people will grow strong again. Reservations did change dramatically after treaties, when Indians were forced to buy food or rely heavily on Indian agents for rations and treaty commodities. For those living on their rez, they too have experienced upset and turmoil in ever-changing traditions, living in their two worlds.

Oppression creates new victims every day.

In contrast to the biblical book of Genesis, in which God creates man in his own image and gives him dominion over all other creatures, the Native American legends reflect the view that human beings are no more important than any other thing, whether alive or inanimate. In the eye of the Creator, they believe, man and woman, plant and animal, water and stone, are all equal, and they share the earth as partners — even as family. Recurring themes include the idea of Mother Earth as life host, the relationship of reciprocity that exists between human beings and animals, and the Indians' dependence on animals as teachers. The plots are often complex, take numerous twists and turns, and commonly include humor. But any comic elements never detract from the story's sacred purpose. 
-The Spirit World, Time-Life Books