My thoughts of being displaced repeatedly as a child came up this week as I watched the documentary film “Blood Memory” at the Kansas International Film Festival. The film follows Sandy White Hawk, an American Indian woman taken from her home at 18 months of age and placed in a white family’s home 400 miles away. The federal government ran the Indian Adoption Project from 1958 to 1967 in collaboration with the Child Welfare League of America in an effort to assimilate Indian children into the white culture. An estimated one-third of Indian children were taken from their families between 1941 and 1967, according to the Association American Indian Affairs.
Sandy struggled all her life to overcome the trauma of being removed from her community. She says that as a child, she was rejected for her skin color and cultural heritage. She missed knowing her parents, siblings, and extended family. Sixty years later, Sandy helps others who were adopted heal through song and ceremony. She organized a welcome-home ceremony for adopted relatives of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. “Blood Memory” follows Sandy’s journey and celebrates her work. The other side of the story follows Mark Fidler, a private adoption attorney and member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. He struggles with defending a law passed in 1978 to end Indian adoption. He represents adoptive parents and he think he is doing what is right for children.
Doing what is right for children is critical. It’s also sometimes hard to determine. My own story has led me to question when it’s alright to remove a child from a community. I was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, near my father’s hometown. My mom was from Warren, Ohio, not far from Pittsburgh. In my first six years of life we participated in life in a big Irish Catholic family, playing with cousins and going to grandma’s for Sunday Dinner. On the other side of my family, I had an Italian grandmother and Hungarian grandfather, both second-generation Americans. I was learning their heritage, as well.
All that changed when we moved to Marina, California when I was in second grade. We lived there two years, then it was off to the next destination. My dad was a retail manager and his company moved him a lot. Following California, we moved to Colorado, then Texas, Missouri, and Michigan. He left the company while we lived in Michigan and decided to move back to Missouri. I was in 10th grade at the time. High school was never the same for me after that. I had lost my friends, my swim team, and my status in high school society. I attended ten schools in all before graduating from high school.
I regret being rootless. I don’t have lifelong friends, a church home I’ve been part of forever, and I definitely do not attend class reunions. (No loss there, from what I hear!) Moving around as an adult hasn’t helped. Given that I don’t have roots, and I know how to adapt to a new home, I have accepted positions that required me to move. That meant I had to uproot my four children, including moving my daughter while she was in high school. I did what I said I wouldn’t do to my kids. Haven’t we all?
Why do parents choose to uproot their children from a school and community to move across a country or the world? What do we value—advancement in our careers, more money, a new house in a different school district? Or do we value community, lifelong friendships, and stability? At age 57, looking back on my life, I would choose the latter.