Our guest today is scholar and author Susan Devan Harness. Susan shares from an anthropological perspective about the policies in place behind the Indian Adoption Project and why Indigenous placement with white families was preferred by the government. She also shares some of the current action in the US courts to undermine and remove the Indian Child Welfare Act and why it is so critical for us to pay attention to the cascading effects this could have. We do get personal too, about what happened for Susan in her forties as she unravelled what being adopted really meant: being separated both from her original family and from her original culture.

Show Notes

Recommended Resources

Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption by Susan Devan Harness
Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption: Outcomes of the Indian Adoption Project (1958-1967) by Susan Devan Harness
White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 by Margaret D. Jacobs
The Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture - Eighth Biennial Conference on Adoption and Culture, where Susan Devan Harness is one of the keynote speakers. Available virtually, most sessions were released on October 8, 2021 and there will be live Q&As October 22 & 23, 2021.
Adoptees Off Script Book Club with Susan Devan Harness October 30, 2021

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