A generation removed : the fostering and adoption of indigenous children in the postwar world

Book

A generation removed : the fostering and adoption of indigenous children in the postwar world / Margaret D. Jacobs.

Jacobs, Margaret D., 1963- (author.).

Summary:

"On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case Adoptive Couple vs. Baby Girl, which pitted adoptive parents Matt and Melanie Capobianco against baby Veronica's biological father, Dusten Brown, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Veronica's biological mother had relinquished her for adoption to the Capobiancos without Brown's consent. Although Brown regained custody of his daughter using the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Capobiancos, rejecting the purpose of the ICWA and ignoring the long history of removing Indigenous children from their families. In A Generation Removed, a powerful blend of history and family stories, award-winning historian Margaret D. Jacobs examines how government authorities in the post-World War II era removed thousands of American Indian children from their families and placed them in non-Indian foster or adoptive families. By the late 1960s an estimated 25 to 35 percent of Indian children had been separated from their families. Jacobs also reveals the global dimensions of the phenomenon: These practices undermined Indigenous families and their communities in Canada and Australia as well. Jacobs recounts both the trauma and resilience of Indigenous families as they struggled to reclaim the care of their children, leading to the ICWA in the United States and to national investigations, landmark apologies, and redress in Australia and Canada."-- Provided by publisher.

"Examination of the post-WWII international phenomenon of governments legally taking indigenous children away from their primary families and placing them with adoptive parents in the U.S., Canada, and Australia"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

ISBN: 9780803255364
ISBN: 0803255365
Physical Description: xxxv, 360 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Publisher: Lincoln ; University of Nebraska Press, [2014]
Copyright: ©2014

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references (pages 327-342) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:: Part 1 Taking Care of American Indian Children -- Modern Indian Life 3 -- Chapter 1 The Bureaucracy of Caring for Indian Children 5 -- Dana's Story 33 -- Chapter 2 Caring about Indian Children in a Liberal Age 37 -- Part 2 The Indian Child Welfare Crisis in Indian Country -- John's Staff 67 -- Chapter 3 Losing Children 69 -- Meeting Steven Unger 95 -- Chapter 4 Reclaiming Care 97 -- Interviewing Bert Hirsch and Evelyn Blanchard 125 -- Chapter 5 The Campaign for the Indian Child Welfare Act 127 -- Part 3 The Indian Child Welfare Crisis in a Global Context -- Tracking Down the Doucette Family 165 -- Chapter 6 The Indigenous Child Welfare Crisis in Canada 169 -- Meeting Aunty Di 211 -- Chapter 7 The Indigenous Child Welfare Crisis in Australia and Transnational Activism 213 -- Finding Russell Moore 251 -- Chapter 8 Historical Reckoning with Indigenous Child Removal in Settler Colonial Nations 253.