Exploring Identity After American-Indian Transracial Adoption

 Hi, Susan. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for asking me. This is really an awesome opportunity and it's really good to meet you. I'm so glad to have you here. You have your memoir. It's called Bitter Root, and it's a really well written and important book. So I want to kick off, just start our discussion with 

if you could just briefly describe your adoption story. And when I say that, I, I know that when you were younger during your childhood, you didn't really know the facts of that, but now you have more facts, not necessarily all that you want to have, but you know, from, from your vantage point now, if you could just kind of describe what your adoption story was.

My adoption story was that I was born to my, my mom, who is a tribal member of the Salish and Kootenai Confederated Tribes. My father was white. He passed away when I was five. So I don't know anything really about him. I know a few, a few facts, but our mom was, she had trouble being a mom.

And by the time I came along, I have two older sisters, well, three older sisters and then there is a younger brother behind me. And three of us, the three younger ones, were placed into different families because of her neglect and When I've talked to family members, neglect was never for argument.

It's, it's the only thing that can describe what happened to us. And so at two years of age, I was removed from the home at 18 months. And at two years of age, I was placed with my, my white parents. They were unable to have children. And I lived pretty much in, in rural Montana, the rural American West.

Which has its own ideas about what it means to be American Indian. and, I started being, of course, curious as to where I came from very early, you know, when I was six or seven. But it was a, it was a question that my dad didn't want to answer. and he finally answered me when I was 15. And at that point, I became very curious about who I was and where I'd come from.

But it was going to take me almost another 15 years, a little over 15 years, to find out that information. I was in my 40s when I started realizing that I had a lot of questions, and not only about my situation, but what was it like for other adoptees like me, American Indians, that had been placed in white families.

So, I carried out my research at the Colorado State University, and that became the book, Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption, and then in my fifties, that's when I wrote the memoir, Bitterroot, a memoir of transracial adoption, and so now I'm in my mid sixties.

And when I look back on this arc of a life, I really feel strongly that there is an aging component to it of when we feel comfortable asking questions and when we feel comfortable speaking out. And when our questions cease to become just about us, but start to become about a larger cultural issue. Mm hmm.

So let me, let me talk to you about this. You've talked about your story, being American Indian and then being removed from your biological mother and placed with a white family. And in your book, you describe how you experienced, I would say, just a profound sense of not belonging because you're, you're.

living with this white family, but you're visibly, people see you as American Indian to some degree, and you're caught between these two cultures and that becomes much more of a,  I guess, intense situation for you as you learn about your American Indian family and you meet people and you, try to sort of integrate into that culture as well.

But it's just, there's no matter where you go. There's a sense of not fitting in is what you describe in your book. Tell me about that, about, and I'm sure a lot of people share this, you know, adoptees biracial people who grow up in, in one side of the family, not the other. Share this sense of division or a lack of belonging.

Tell me about that. Well, I, you know, I, the reason I delved into my research is because. The things that I was reading at the time about transracial adoption is that whatever, whatever issues we had, belong solely to us. You know, we were the ones that were messed up. 

We were the ones that had higher suicidal tendencies. We were the ones that had more drug abuse tendencies. And to be honest, I got tired of being blamed for something that really was so far out of my hands. And so in my anthropology, cultural anthropology course, I, I really wanted  to ask the question of what happened to us and what it, what really became clear to me is that we are not the ones with the problem.

We know who we are. We are American Indians who happen to show up in white America. Who had the problem with us was white America, because now we don't label easily. You know, I mean, we've got, we talk white, we know all the same education, we know all the same history. We have all these boxes checked for who is white in America, except we look very different.

And that, that looking different, being American Indian has a very specific history, and it's a very negative history in American culture.  When we try to go back to the reservation, we meet the same kind of problems. In that we look Indian, but we don't know our family. We don't know our customs. We don't know our culture.

We don't know our language. I mean, we have so many boxes that are not checked that we are seen as inauthentic, and there's been so many reasons for that. Inauthenticity. Which the government has visited on us, as far as a genocide, a cultural genocide and, and a, genocide in its, in its most pure form. So authenticity becomes a real important issue. in both of these communities. And if, if you look different, or if you act different, well, how authentic are you?

And do you really belong? Do you really belong in the circle? Exactly. I mean, it's like, you mentioned something about labels, I thought about this after I  read your book, and Contemplated different concepts from it because I think  that human tendency and not everyone.

And, you know, I'm just saying generally speaking to want to simplify or to label or categorize, to make it more simple, to make it more understandable. And so it's like this, this idea that we can't just, people can't just show up as they are, that you are. American Indian who grew up in a white family.

Like that's, that's who you are. That's the authentic you. And there's all these complexities to that, but then there's the additional aspect of belonging, a sense of belonging, a sense of being welcomed or accepted. And that's what I guess it's like, you're, you're talking about is there is not, there hasn't been a sense at times, or maybe at all of being accepted on either side of the aisle, fully accepted for who you are. And, and so you talked about in your research  that you've kind of delved into that a bit. So I'm, I'm curious what, what you have discovered, what kinds of conclusions you've drawn in terms of how society or groups cause that lack of sense of belonging in the individual.

Well, each group has its own criteria for belonging, right? And for, for white America, it's that, and, and status also. So there's, it's, it's a kind of a multidimensional space that we inhabit. It's not like, it's not like we can choose one circle or the other circle. Each of these circles have multiple floors.

So the more, the more  authenticity you have, the higher the floor. So in white America, I grew up middle class. I go up a floor. I have a college degree. I go up several floors.  I travel. I enjoy the arts. I am familiar with the literature. I'm, I'm heavily familiar with the cultural piece of white America because that's where I've been raised.

So I go up a lot of floors, but the thing is, is that I'm brown. So I'm never going to be at the top tier. Unless I bring a lot of money.  If I have a lot of money, I might make it closer. But,  so, So that'll only get me so far. And in the American Indian circle, which is now multi dimensional, I look Indian, so I'm automatically in that circle.

But I don't have, like I said, I don't have the language, I don't have the knowledge of family, I don't have a knowledge of a lot of things. College degree may or may not help me. What I do know is I know a lot about American Indian culture. uh, genocidal policies, historical genocidal policies. So that helps me, but I'm never going to get very high in that status in American Indian, in the American Indian place because I'm missing so much basic information that the tribe has determined as significant criteria for belonging.

And as a consequence, it's, it's not even so much that I get an issue, that I have the feeling of non belonging. What it sounds like is, and what it feels like, is a constant question from the people around you of, you're not like us, so why are you here? 

You know, when I walk in white America, I mean, believe me, I've been followed in stores. I have been actively questioned about why I inhabit these white spaces and, and when I go back into the Native community, I'm asked why I talk so white. Like, and all of these are, are basically questions of like, why are you in a space that you shouldn't be occupying?

Yeah. And that, that feels like,  when you say it that way, I feel like that would feel like a rejection or like an affront to me, like an attack, like, are you trying to, you know, take something that's not yours or take up space  that isn't yours or that you shouldn't have access to.

And why are you doing that? What is your motivation? Something feels. It's very, like, attacky to me about that. It is. And, you know, and then when you, when you talk about it being an attack, so many of us grew up with, like, no kind of self confidence whatsoever. And that's where a lot of that comes from,  of, you know, constantly being asked, essentially, what do you, what do you want by being here?

And, And plus, you know, I mean, if you add the, um, the historical policies and, and another, another theory that I, I talk a lot about is social memory and every culture has a social memory and what the social memory does is it, it reminds us who we are as  a conglomerate culture. And so in white America, we are,  I'm going to switch to they.

In white America, they are people who had absolute right to the land, and Indians were in the way. They are people who felt that a lot of Indians should just die, because they're not using the land properly, and We're just in the way. There are people who feel that because we couldn't, because we wouldn't respond necessarily well to the education system that we were forced into, that now we're stupid.

You know, we're not worthy of, like you said, taking up that space. And so, This is the type of thing, if you start looking at the history that we learn in grade school, it's a, it's a really one sided history. It's about the Indian wars. It's not about a group fighting back for something that is actively being taken from them and laws put into place to keep them.

from accessing it, it's about savages attacking trades, you know, the wagon trades. It's about savages doing this and savages doing that. And that's, that's the memory that we have to grow up in, which is why we are constantly questioned about what we're doing off the reservation. Yeah. And tell, tell me about that because in your book, you You talked about several examples of that where you were just out with your mother, for instance, your adoptive mother, for instance, or, you know, and it sounded like in the, like you talked about in where you grew up mostly in Montana, there was this very prevalent, you know, I grew up in Wisconsin and I didn't, just for an example, I didn't have a sense of American Indian culture or reservations or anybody saying anything.

about the American Indian community. I didn't have that where I grew up. But where you were was very different. And people had a lot of opinions. Your dad, your adoptive dad would say things. So tell me, talk a little bit about that. Some of those examples where you grew up and how it was more prevalent there.

Well, you've got to keep in mind Montana has seven Indian reservations. So we are a very visible people on the Montana landscape and it's a big agricultural space. We've been moved to these reservations and, you know, we didn't go willingly, but, but we were gonna go.

You know, it's either that or you're going to be in a war that decimates everybody.  So with that social memory comes kind of the idea of you're stupid. So when I went to high school, I wasn't really expected to do well. Everybody seemed to be surprised that I could do well. I wasn't expected to do much of anything.

 Now keep in mind, I'm starting to become aware of Asian adoptees and they're going to become lawyers. So they're going to become virtual, you know, virtuoso musicians. They're going to become doctors. I'm telling you, American Indians were not going to become any of that. And that was, That was just such a powerful, it wasn't even a conversation. 

It was just the way things were. So, for instance,  when I was in college and, I wanted to, I had to meet with an advisor and it was an economics advisor and math was not my forte and I didn't know anything about economics anyway. And he just said so, you know, he didn't look at my file because he felt that a conversation would be better than looking at somebody's file.

And he said, so what do you like to do? And I said, well, you know, I, I like a lot of things. I like science. I like, you know, I like literature, I like writing, I like anthropology, and I said, because I have to be honest, I have to be authentic, because that's the only life I've ever had to have, I'm not, I'm not good at math, so whatever I get into cannot have a lot of math in it.

And his first response. Like, he didn't say, well, you could go into dance, you could go into music, you could go into, you know, a social science of some sort, you could be a journalist.  Instead of saying that, he said, I think Vo Tec would be a better place for you than college. And at that period of time, that's where Indians were supposed to be going, Vo Tec.

Thank you.  Because, you know, we weren't supposed to accomplish much of anything. And I mean, and, and that was, that was the shuttling that was done. I can remember, shopping for a pair of jeans and my mom wasn't with me and the woman just kept glaring at me. And, you know, she talked nice to everybody who was in there.

And I mean, I was a teenager But, by the time my mom came in, I was so ashamed to be in that store, with such hatred staring me in the face, that I just, I bought a pair of jeans that were like, ten sizes too big for me, just so we could like, spend money and just get out of there. My mom knew what had happened, but you know, it was just,  And when I've told some people that story, they said, well, you're a teenager.

You know, you're gonna, you're gonna rip things off. And it's like, I wasn't just a teenager. I was an Indian teenager. And it's hard to explain to people who have not seen, and they're called microaggressions, who haven't seen those microaggressions, or they haven't been privy to being On the receiving end of the microaggressions,  and it's really hard to get people to understand how real they are and how many messages get passed during these really small, seemingly innocuous encounters.

Yeah, I think there's another example that, that just pops into my mind from your book where there was a, there was a man at some point, I think you were working during your college years, and he just says to you, I don't care what people say about you guys or you people. I think you're, you're pretty decent or something like, you know, something like that.

I don't care what people say. I think you guys are pretty cool. And it's like, like, he probably thinks that he's giving you a compliment, but like that to me is, is a microaggression. That is like, There's so many little examples of that, that you talk about that I think would just like wear a person down where it's like people asking you, you know, what ethnicity are you, and I really felt that in your book, that sort of exhaustion, emotional exhaustion from explaining yourself or for people making comments or asking questions.

So yeah, tell me, tell me a little bit about that because there, there were a lot of examples of that where I think that would really wear you down. You know, it is exhausting and it doesn't end with the book. Okay. You know, recently I was invited to participate in a Zoom book club, and I spent the whole hour defending why I wrote Bitterroot. 

Because what I kept getting was, well, that doesn't happen in our state.  You know, we don't, we don't even notice American Indians here. They're no different than anybody else. So maybe this was just in your family, or maybe this was just in your community. And and it was like an entire hour of that.  I, I don't know how else, I don't know how else to explain,  Explain the constant requirement to help somebody understand why you are here when you shouldn't be here.

And I mean, and it doesn't matter what you say. I mean, it doesn't matter if I say, well, I was adopted. You know, that opens up like a whole Pandora's box of, well, then what happened to your family? You know, did they drink? Did they, you know, do an Indian dance? You know, talk, talk to me in, in Indian language.

And, and it's just, it is, it's, it's constant. But in my forties at that point is when I gained enough strength to say, okay, what, what happened to us? as adoptees. What, what did we just go through? Because when I was looking around at my friends, my friends weren't going through things like that. And, and I want to also want to clarify something.

When I wrote Bitterroot, I really tried to portray my adopted parents as, as evenly and as real as I could. Because one of the big questions I get is, my God, you know, you were raised by an alcoholic father and a, and a mother who was, mentally ill. And it's just kind of like, well, my mom wasn't mentally ill all the time. 

You know, she was a really, really good mom. And my dad was an alcoholic, but you know what? A lot of people in Montana were alcoholics. A lot of people in Montana had mental issues. So, to me, it wasn't the issue of having, less than adequate parents, as some might think that I was saying. The issue really was, there is a lot of racism in that state. And it's the same thing in Idaho. It's the same thing in Washington. It's the same thing in North Dakota and South Dakota. You know, there's a lot of racism we had to deal with and, and to me it was the racism that was the most, challenging. And it was so, it was so prevalent. It was so prevalent that it entered into my home.

 My white father is sitting there, um, we were talking about a radio, a news radio thing that had, had come up about the, the newly founded American Indian movement. And my dad's response. As I'm sitting next to him is, what the hell are those goddamn drunken war hoops up to now? And at no time did he ever look at me like I was one of them.

And I think that's the thing about adoption, is that when you remove a child from, You know, an obvious, uh, dysfunction, that you've saved them, that somehow they're going to inherit all that's good about your raising them in white America. And what they don't realize is that you've got a lot of other issues to deal with it that they will never know about.

Right, right. And, you know, that's so interesting because he's saying that to you, not even thinking that you are one of them. And then you're, but you're having to live in this, like, I would call it like fractured existence of realizing that you do come from that. The American Indian world now living with him I don't know.

I don't know. I just feel like with, with identity, with belonging, it's so much more to grapple with as you're growing up.  Yeah. And the thing is, is that you're really taught to hate where you come from. I mean, you're really encouraged and taught to hate where you come from.  Which essentially begins to translate, and you're encouraged to hate who you are.

And I mean, and that is lifelong. You know, one of the things that I found out in my research is I talked with adoptees about positive and negative descriptions of American Indians that they heard in their families. And by far the vast majority of the adoptees heard negative descriptions about American Indians, you know, we were drunks.

We were, especially if you were a girl, you know, you were,  you know, you were loose. We were, um, thieving. We were,  all these negatives. The positives were somewhat positive, but they were also stereotypical, right? We were artistic, you know? We were. Family oriented. The thing that really, I think, made me angry is that  very few of us heard that we were intelligent.

Almost none of us heard we were intelligent.  And we have to get real and realize we're being raised in a culture that, that really values. intelligence and really values  education. And if you're never told that you not only can be part of that, but are part of that, man, you are never, it's going to be so hard for you to catch up with anything.

Yeah, it's, it's so, it's just astounding to think that as a, just a, as a group of, of kids that you guys who were adopted are just, or as a group in general, American Indians, that people just can think like, oh, they're just this, or they're the, just that. And even your dad said, he said to you, you know, don't ever get in touch with your, I don't know if it was your uncle, American Indian uncle, or any of those people because they're going to end up on your doorstep, you know, taking everything that you have, and, and so it's like, just example after example, just to give people who are listening, it's just kind of like, like you said, prevalent, or it's just ongoing. Um, just this idea of, of labeling a group. And again, I think maybe, I don't know if it goes back to that idea that it just simplifies things for people or makes them feel like, I don't know what it is, but, but it's crazy to think, and then not only that, but you're putting upon children that just not even saying anything, but by not maybe putting the expectations on them, like the counselor saying, go to VoTech, you know, just constantly, that's what I'm talking about is those little, they seem little, but they're big things that just add up and, and send messages, even if they're not directly stated.

Yeah, definitely, there's a lot that we can convey just through body movements. You know, just, just a look. And I think people absolutely have forgotten how much we can convey and how much we understand with so much of what's not being said.

Yep. And so let's, let's, let's, uh, switch gears a little bit to talking about when you did start to finally meet some of your American Indian family. And that, I mean, that was quite a journey that you had to go on to find out because you were not given this information. I mean, you had. None of this information when you were growing up and actually had faulty information.

So when you finally did discover them and were able to get in touch with them, tell me a little bit about that experience and how that's evolved over the years.  To meet your family for the first time, I'm going to be honest. It's, it can be a really uncomfortable situation for everybody involved.

Because you have expectations. You know, I had expectations about what my family would be like, what they would look like. I don't know. I'll be honest. I don't know what their expectations were, if anything. But when we come home, we are a reminder.  what somebody couldn't do. We are a reminder that somebody couldn't be a good mom.

We are a reminder  that we were removed for a reason. We are a reminder of shame and You know, in American culture we have a hard time, we have a hard time owning up to those bad parts of ourselves because we live in a punitive society. You know, don't, don't admit that you've made a mistake because by God you're going to pay for that your whole life.

Somebody will find out and somebody's going to make you pay and that's the society we live in. But. When I met my family, I just kept trying to find people who look like me and I didn't see me in them. And I think it's so interesting because what I realized years later is I have been surrounded by white faces my whole life  and American Indians have a very specific look. So as I'm looking at them, I'm expecting to see either an exact replica of me or something that looks maybe more white.

And it took me a long time to be able to look at photos and say, Oh my gosh, yeah, we got the same eyes. We've got the same nose and we've got, you know, we, we have. these things that you can see through the lineage, but it's a difficult thing to see when you have never been around that, that physicality very much at all.

 It was, you know, I did, I, I felt so sorry for my birth mom because she was ashamed. And, and when I, when I very first met her.  She'd been drinking a lot as a coping mechanism and, and I understand that.  it's, it's not healthy, but, but she's being asked to reckon with the past that is tough to reckon with  and she just said, I've, I've looked forward to this day and I've dreaded this day for so long.

And she said, I, I thought you'd come up and, and you'd call me all kinds of bad names and, and you'd. You'd tell me what a terrible person I was you know, there's no way that I was going to do that. You know, I mean, I think it's what happens, happens  and I wasn't going to make somebody feel bad in order for me to feel good.

I think that was kind of at the root of that. It was obvious she felt bad enough about herself. But I've known my family now for a little over 30 years and I, it's, 

how can I say this? 

I feel part of, but I also feel different from.

You know, at no time have they ever made me feel like I, I'm not part of them. But. You know, how, how can you, I don't know if you can create familial relationships when half your life is spent, more than half your life is spent without them in your life. And not even knowing about them, you, you, on your side, you didn't know that you even had siblings.

I had no idea. I had no idea. And when I found out, it was just like, there were nine of us, you know, and, and I mean, It's a lot of siblings when you were an only child, basically in your mind. It's overwhelming. I'm going to be honest, it's overwhelming when you start meeting these people  and people come up and I'm your aunt and I'm your cousin and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm sitting there.

Trying to make sense. I mean, your, your, your world changes so rapidly.  And you know, I asked my uncle that the one that my dad supposedly said lived in Arizona and he was a drunk and  don't make contact because they're going to want all your money.

They're going to want this. And I did ask my uncle, I said, did you ever live in Arizona? And he said, no,  like none of my uncles ever lived in Arizona. So, I mean, it was all things that my dad did to keep me from, from meeting the people that I came from. And I don't think it had so much to do with them being a threat to me as their existence was a threat to him.

Because when I did tell him I was going to go meet my family, he said, well, I suppose then you're going to be, you know, you're going to think that they would have done a much better job than I have. It's like, wow, not about you,  you know,  that, that was the piece is it was not about you. And I think adoptive parents need to understand is that we have this absolute need to  find out who we are and where we came from, because we live in a society that values a genealogy and values a heritage.

You know, people take such pride in their family trees  and when we're in the adoptive family, we are penciled in. We can be erased at any time.

I thought about that when I was reading your book. I felt that, I felt that before in these podcast interviews, it's like this realizing how much people who grow up within their family of origin. take for granted, and I don't mean it like it's not, I don't mean this like that it's a bad thing, but you just take for granted that you know where you come from, that you know your relatives, you know your family, even if you're not close with your relatives, you know who they are, you kind of hear stories from your family members and.

And so you don't ever have to question that. You don't have to grow up thinking, what about this? Where did I come from? Do I have other family? what are my, were my real grandparents like blah, blah, blah, real or, you know, bio, whatever. But, but I think that is such a big, piece of what I felt like reading your book and, and some of the other interviews I've done where that is such a missing thing.

There is a certain level of just comfort and  with identity, I think that is granted to you when you grow up with your family of origin. And that feels like that would feel like quite a void to not have that. Well, it is. I mean, you know, I, I noticed that in a high school as I'd go to my friend's house and then they're talking about their daughter You know, of how she really looks like her aunt.

Oh my God, my daughter looks just like their aunt or, you know, my son,  you know, hates peas just like his uncle or his grandfather. You know what I mean? I just sat there and I thought, I have no idea who I'm like or who I'm not like. I have none. And, and it's not a big thing. But it begins to feel like a big thing.

It feels like when you're reading a book, our life starts on chapter three. What happened on chapters one and two? Like, it's like those pages have been ripped out. We don't have any idea what happened on one and two.

And in any good story, that's foundational.  Chapters one and two are foundational.  Well, I can, I can a hundred percent understand why you went after this information.

I can totally understand that. I would not like that not knowing, I would not enjoy that. And I think you, you, you kept trying. And even though at times you give up because you're faced with a lot of obstacles, you would go back and you would, you would try again and you got there and you know now.

And I feel like knowing. Has got to be, even if it's, oh, it's not this perfect, you know, happily ever after, you know your story as much as you can. Right. Although you wanted to get your adoption file, but nobody will turn that over to you, it seems. Well, and it's, it's not even so much my adoption file, you know, I, I've got my adoption file from the, the judge.

 I do have that. Oh, you got it. Good. But I don't have the file that I want from social services. That's the one that I'm missing and I don't know if I'll ever be able to get that. But that one has the rest of the story. Because it seems like you really want to understand, you want to understand the time that you were taken more.

Like, um, what exactly happened, right? I got that from your book. Right.   It's not enough to know something happened and I was removed. It's it's like, well, what happened? You know, what was, I, I know what it is now, but at the time it's like, was this like a first offense and they removed me or.

How bad did it have to get before they remove me? And, you know, and this brings up another piece that I think is really important is, I think we have to be real about,  what that removal has, has done to us. I was asked. by an adoption lawyer to talk about the benefits of my adoption.

It was a very, it was a very public question. I was a keynote speaker. It was a very public question. And he said, ,  he said, well, you know, look at you, you're dressed nice.  You, you have. A good, way with language. He said, you're obviously educated. And, he said, do you think that you'd be up there at that podium having this conversation  if you'd remained with your Native family? 

And I mean, there's so many problematic things with that. It's pretty loaded.  It's very loaded. And it really wasn't until I was talking with my husband  about what he said, and my husband just looked at me and his jaw dropped. He's like, would he have said these things to a white woman who's up there? I just sat there and I thought, Oh my God, I didn't even think about that. 

But you know, I, I just, but I did say, you're right. You know, I received a lot of benefits. I did. I received a lot of benefits that probably would not have been available to  me,  but  I paid a high price for those benefits. Yeah,  it's not all one direction. Right. It's not like, wow, I get to go to college.

It's like, wow, I had so many people wondering what the heck I was doing in college. And I mean, it, it continues, it continues to this day. And I, I still fight self confidence issues to this day. It never goes away.

Those traumatic things that people say, that people do, that people assume that have built up over a lifetime. Oh, man. It's all of that. There's so many layers to it. And that's why I think it is so good that you did research into other transracial adoptions.

Because I think there's a lot of layers there's that we've, we've touched on a lot of these things, but it's, it's just not a simple situation. There's fractured identities, there's racism, even within your own adoptive family,  and then the society expectations on both sides, cultural expectations,  it's really complicated and, and I want to move into the idea because we're kind of touching on it, but this idea that you're basically, and there is a quote from your book that you, you kind of said, I'm not sure the spiritual reason for my adoption. You know, I was taken from this dismembered alcoholic family and put into a dismembered alcoholic family. And from one culture to another culture. so I, I do wanna discuss what is your take on that now and what is your take on each of your parents,  you don't know much about your biological father, but each of your parents and their role in your life now, and if you have to look at it from a big picture or a spiritual type vantage point. So to answer your first question, there is such a, there is such an overwhelming thought that when you are removed from a dysfunctional family, if you go to a white family, it's going to be great.

That's going to be like, that's where you're really going to unlearn all the awful things that you learned about being Indian. You're going to go into this white family, and they're going to have all these resources, and they're going to love you because you're a wanted child. And you will get all, access to all the rights and privileges of being white.

Except you won't.  You won't.  So when people say,  as a matter of course, well, they needed to be removed and placed with a good family and that good family is always white, there's a message there.

And if you want to see  what that really looks like, flip the script.  And I've asked this of white audiences before. How would you feel if suddenly one day you wake up and your children were being removed from your care and made to live with American Indians or made to live with African Americans?

And I mean, you could just see heads exploding, like, throughout the audience, because that wouldn't ever happen. Like, they couldn't even make the leap, like, that just wouldn't ever happen.  And so, you know, I, I still think that that's a valid question.

What constitutes a better family? It's a society wide issue, not just in adoptions, but, and I, and I'm not like, I'm not a, an American hater or white culture hater, or I'm not any of that.  But there is in our, in our culture, there is a general concept that white culture is best. Let's just put it, generally speaking, generally speaking, white culture is best. And it's like, you know, if you learn anything about other cultures, if you take the time and you get to know, you know, travel and get to know people in other countries and completely different cultures, you see all of these aspects that are absolutely beautiful.

in various different cultures. And they're, they're going to have things that maybe are not so great. They're going to have things that are great and that are just completely missing. Wonderful things that are completely missing almost from another culture. And so I don't know, like to me, I don't know how you could possibly think that one culture is the best.

I mean, maybe there are, if you sit around, sit down and study them all, maybe there is one that has wonderful elements all across the board. But, so right there, that's just a faulty premise. It's a faulty premise to think. And it's. Not just in adoptions, but it's across the board.  Well, and that's where that social memory comes in.

That's the social memory piece is we are not only taught that, you know, white is right.  We're also taught that Indians were in the way and they were, you know, not valuable and they were, just stupidly fighting. against people who had manifest destiny rights to this country.  So from that, you know, that, that white is right.

It's not a far leap because who is making that big emigration across the United States, so, you know, that's the social memory piece that I, I think is, is important. But then you asked about how I felt about all my family members. People are flawed. People are flawed for a variety of reasons.

And especially I think when I look back at the generation of who my family is, they were dealing with things that we've not had to deal with. My birth mom grew up in a, in a country that just hated her and she had to go to, Catholic school and,  got pregnant at 15. 

I don't think had a lot of people in her court. I think, you know, there are so many Native people from that generation. They were just trying to survive. And you can also see it in my adoptive dad's family. He comes from Slovaks,  whose heritage is being run over constantly by the West and Russia in their various wars.

They lost all kinds of men in those battles. And I think when you are living in a violent time, in a violent place, love and tenderness are luxuries. Survival is number one. You know, my mom grew up in the depression. They were poor, poor, poor, really poor. Her job was survival   when I look at them, I, I really do look at them.

Like we all ended up in this situation that people on the outside have ideas about, but until  you're in the midst of that tornado, You have no idea what it really looks like. Oh yeah, yep. And I think survival was number one and they tried to be good parents. I think they all, to some extent, tried to be good parents.

They had their own ghosts.

Yep, yep. Because I think, I think, you know, when you're, maybe, maybe it is like when you're younger, it's easier to think, Oh, they should be this, or they should be that. And then you learn more about life and the way mental illness can play into people's lives.  Like you talked about  alcohol as a coping mechanism.

He went down that path and it sounds like at one point he just really. really took a dive into alcoholism. Your adoptive mom had mental illness, she was diagnosed bipolar eventually, and it was really pretty intense at times when she was manic.

And she was probably just managing the best that she could, you know, and, and she, as you said, she was very loving towards you. It sounds like always, I mean, when she was in her mental health episodes, there's only so much she could do. But other than that, it sounds like she was very loving. Well, I think, you know, and as I've thought about my dad's situation, I thought, he went into the end of World War II and he was in the Philippines.

And that was some of the most awful and traumatic fighting that had happened during that era. Just absolutely brutal.  And he went in as an orderly. Which meant he was dealing with the dead and dying throughout his whole time there. In three years, he had moved up to being a medic. And he started off as this quiet, artistic boy.

And you put him through a meat grinder like that? How can we ever expect somebody under those circumstances to come out and be a good husband or be a good father when the very core of their being has been all but destroyed. You know, we have a lot of, we have a lot of hard questions we need to ask of ourselves . Yeah. And it is, it is so very complicated. It is so very complicated. All of this that we're talking about. And so usually when I start off my talks, that's like one of the big questions is, you know, well, what's it like being American Indian adopted like, well, it's complicated  , you know, there is, yeah, there is no, like, it's, it's not a fairytale, but yeah, let's let's have that conversation. It's a conversation that I think is important. So I, I thank you so much for asking the questions that you ask. It is so important to have this conversation in a public sphere. Oh, good. I'm so glad because I do think all of these kinds of, these kinds of experiences are ones that a lot of people in, even a lot of people who are in your exact situation, the transracial adoption, but other people in varying situations  degrees of situations similar that feel certain ways and are confused by it probably or, you know, feel ashamed or whatever.

And so I think it is so important to discuss it and hopefully just for people out there to be able to relate to some aspects of it,  I think is so important. I think that's really an important thing also is I can remember talking with another woman who was a tribal member.

And I had a really hard time admitting how ashamed I was at being Indian for a good portion of my life, because you're made to feel ashamed. But I thought it was because I was living in white society. And so I had, I had come clean with her. And I just said, God, I was so ashamed of being Indian when I was growing up.

She said. So was I. So are we all.

Based on your experience, that makes total sense to me. Now I'm, it's popping into my head that story you told where you went to a therapist and she was like, I want to get you proud of being American Indian, stick with me and I'll make you proud.

And I was just like, I appreciate the, the enthusiasm she had  but again, it's the wrong, it's the wrong note, you know what I mean? She's hitting the wrong note there because it's like, we need to acknowledge The shame  that you have experienced in society and that, or that has been caused by your experiences and like this is not something that resonates with you.

 This sense of feeling proud of it. And it's, it's of course terribly sad that you would feel that way, but, but it doesn't change the reality. It doesn't change the reality and you know,  am I ashamed anymore? No. I, I'm not, and which is why I speak out a lot now, but believe me, my voice now is a lot different than it was 20 years ago.

Yeah. Not just you, it's everybody I interview has in one way or another gone through some sort of shame and sort of secret. Secret, you know, hidden shames and pain that they have like come through, evolved through, written about, speak about now. You go from one end of the spectrum to the other, and it's such a beautiful thing, such a, such an amazing thing.

That's why I like to, to, Talk about where you where you start what the journey was where you are now, and it's not like it's a perfect ending like you said Self confidence is something you're just gonna always struggle with it's not something that goes away but you're at a place where you speak about it where you share where you try to connect you try like you talked about In your book you went to the tribal council you tried to You know, make some improvements in this situation, welcome adoptees back, let, let them feel accepted, these sorts of things.

You're, you're out there and you're trying to connect and make a difference. And that's so important. I try.  

 It's been a journey, and it's been a hard journey. And  I send out my best thoughts to anybody who's trying to figure out what this journey is about and the effects it has had. And I ask adoptive parents to keep their minds open to the fact that their child has very specific wants and needs in figuring out who they are.

And it doesn't have anything to do with them a lot of times. And they're not necessarily going to talk about it, right?  Oh, no.  Maybe, yeah, maybe that, absolutely the opposite of that. It's going to be all internal. It's going to be all internal because, you know, all those messages we receive.

One of those messages that is just overwhelming is we should be grateful. We should be grateful that our family wanted us. We should be grateful. And I mean, it's just like, not to say that I'm not grateful because there are a lot of things that I've been grateful for, but as I'm trying to work through the issues and my questions, It's okay to ask those questions, and it doesn't have anything to do with gratefulness or ingratefulness. It's okay to ask questions. Right, but the message you're, the message you're receiving, obviously, is that it does, that it is a threat to that, that it means you're not grateful, but I, I totally agree with you. I totally, I'm tracking what you're saying.

It's like, it doesn't have anything to do with that. It doesn't take away from the gratefulness. It's completely separate. Right. It's just, I still have these issues, I still have these questions, and to not be able to talk about them at all, that is not helping, you know, just because you're afraid of appearing ungrateful.

And I think, you know, America, that's the other piece of the culture that we don't want to acknowledge, and we are an either or culture. You are either this or you are that. Things are either right or they are wrong. People are either. You know, good or they are bad and it is not a,  either and  No, it's not No, and no and not and so to to take a look at that from that From that harsh perspective.

I hope people do that because I think it'll uncover a lot of A lot of the deep lying issues that, that we're trying to deal with in adoption and, and beyond. Yep. Yep. Well, thank you so much. I mean, I really appreciate you being here. I appreciate your time. You've been willing to talk about all of these things.

I think it's really important and I really enjoyed reading your book, Bitterroot. I just appreciate you being here so much. Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Beth. I, I appreciate your interest in, in trying to figure out what we're trying to figure out. .