A Peek into Native American Adoptions

Last week, Craig and I met with someone from Washington State DSHS to get some insight into adopting Native American children. I have Indian heritage not too far back in my bloodline (Narragansett from Rhode Island) and we were told this may be a reasonable option for us to pursue. We were so wrong.

Since I don't have permission to give his name I won't, but the person we met with specializes in foster care and adoptions for Indian children. His wife is Native American and along with raising his birth son, he has fostered several Indian children. He was a wealth of information and advice for us.

There are so many layers of complexity when it comes to adopting Indian children. It is a tenuous and delicate subject and we were wary to even consider it. Our nation's history of adoption within tribal cultures is both shady and embarrassing so we were sensitive about being the white folks who wanted to adopt the Indian kid. Before the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 was enacted to protect the rights of tribal families, it is estimated that nearly one quarter of all Indian children, before 1978, were removed from their families and placed in the homes of white adoptive and foster parents. This fact simply astounds me. I've read a bit about ICWA and those who have been affected by it and it seems like a frustrating, bureaucratic, and tangled mess, nevertheless I can see why it was created, why it is still in place, and why tribes are cautious of doing away with it.

I won't go into some of the stories I've read of why many people (both Native and Non-native) find ICWA compliance to be detrimental to the welfare of individual children, as I am not informed enough to do the issue justice. What I will say is that our chances of adopting an Indian child are pretty much nil. The order of ideal placement for a Native child is: first immediate family, then distant relatives, then other tribe members, then any native family, then anyone else in the world, then us. And if by some miracle we were given the chance to adopt an Indian child, the tribe would most likely never relinquish the birth parent's rights, thereby allowing the child to be removed from our home at any time for any reason. We've also learned that this actually happens quite a bit. Needless to say, this is not a road we will pursue with great tenacity at this time.

Even though we just touched the surface, we learned so much about this issue and my heart goes out to all those people who are trying to provide the best care choices possible for a Native child within all that red tape.

Even so, I will admit that we left there a bit sad that no one was waiting at DSHS with a swaddled babe meant just for us. So, alas, we are still searching for our baby Fischer. However, we will not be discouraged. We actually have a two-part plan (which makes us sound so much more strategic than if we just had a one-part plan, or just a plan for that matter). During our meeting at DSHS we learned a bit about becoming certified foster-adoption parents. Washington State requires about 30 hours of pre-adoption training prior to the adoption process. (It's really too bad that all parents aren't required to do 30 hours of parenting training.) We are going to look into this more as it may open another path to our future family. In addition, we are going to arrange to meet with an adoption agency in Portland for a 12-hour pre-adoption seminar that will look at the issues involved in an open adoption. During this seminar a panel of birth parents and adoptive parents will share their adoption stories, and an adoption attorney discusses legal issues. At this point we will decide if this is the agency we will use for our adoption or if we are going to keep looking.

We will keep you posted on what comes next. In the meantime, thank you for your words of encouragement and keep sending us your good thoughts.