Thread by @PepePierce

The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments about #ICWA tomorrow. This is a thread about trans-racial adoption, Indigenous futures, and the intergenerational effects of US assimilation policies. 1/

My father was adopted by a white family as a newborn in 1952. We knew nothing about his biological kin. He never wanted to know about them. He never asked. He never wanted to open that wound. 2/

I am the biological son of my father. And even though I was not the one adopted out, every time someone asked me, where are you from? What is your ethnicity? What are you? I had no answers. I had no way of knowing how to approach those questions. 3/

I remember people asking my white mother, "who is this boy?" As if there were no way we could be related. Such encounters have an impact on a young person. I had so many questions. So many unresolved "issues". 4/

Adoption is not just about the person who was adopted. It creates intergenerational ripples, wounds that grow and fester. Adoption is a technique of settler colonial dispossession, like the theft of land and the theft of knowledge. Adoption is the theft of Indigenous futures. 5/

In 2005 we went through the process of opening my father's sealed adoption records. We had to convince him. He did not want to do it. He had to see a judge. He had to complete a psychological evaluation. He had to open those wounds. We all did. 6/

And when the records finally came back, we realized that his mother, my grandmother, was Native American. What does one do with that knowledge, that change in identity? How does one deal with that? 7/

And then we managed to find out that she was still alive, my grandmother, Ada. We found her. And we called. And she answered. And we all cried. 8/

We found her and we were able to meet in person in 2006. And my father, brother, and I were able to enroll in the Cherokee Nation (Ada was Cherokee). What does one do with this knowledge? This feeling of evisceration that is at the same time, hope? 9/

I remember feeling like an impostor, for years. For a decade. I still do. I remember feeling like adoption was meant to destroy my father, to destroy me, to take him from himself. To take us from our own futures. 10/

So, the next time you hear someone say that adoption is about love, is about the best interests of the child. Especially in the case of Indigenous children. Tell them it is bullshit. Tell them to read the Senate testimony calling for the passage of ICWA in the 1970s. 11/

Tell them that in some states in the 60s and 70s up to a third of all Indigenous children were removed from their families. Tell them the United States did this intentionally, specifically, so that Indigenous children would not grow up to be Indigenous adults. 12/

Tell them that if ICWA is overturned, white Americans will hoard Indigenous children like dolls. Like bread. Tell them white Americans want to feel good about stealing our land, so they steal our children. Tell them settler love is not enough. 13/

Tell them that Indigenous people are a political class, not a racial one. And that we have rights that are based on our sovereignty as Peoples. Not on what the United States classifies as "race". And that those fundamental rights depend on our being able to keep our children. 14/

Tell them, if you want, that they can reach out to me, and I'll tell them, too. Tell them the United States wants to eliminate Indigenous people and that ICWA is one of the few ways we have of preventing the theft of our own children, our futures, our communities. 15/

Tell them that it is not about the welfare of Indigenous children, but about white millionaires who want to dismantle Indian law. And that ICWA is just the vehicle. Tell them all this. Tell them. Tell them again. /end