The American Indian Adoption Project

     As part of Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum's Second Sunday Speaker Series, author Trace DeMeyer spoke February 13 about the Indian Adoption Project, and its lasting effects.  Trace is the author of One Small Sacrifice, in which she relates her own experiences as a Native American child who was adopted by a non-native family.
     The Indian Adoption Project operated from 1958 through 1967 under the administration of the Child Welfare League and funded by a federal contract from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Children's Bureau.  During its brief existence the Project oversaw the adoption of 395 Native American Children from 16 western states by white families in Illinois, Indiana, New York, Massachusetts, Missouri, and other states in the East and Midwest.  Fourteen children were placed with Southern white families, and one child was adopted by a family in Puerto Rico.
     This project was the first national effort to arrange for the adoption of an entire child population across cultural and racial lines.  It was seen as an example of an enlightened adoption practice that would help the nation overcome the racial prejudices that had formerly discouraged the adoption of Native American children.
     When the Indian Adoption Project ended in 1967, the Adoption Resource Exchange of North America (ARENA) continued its work.  ARENA arranged for the placement of native children with white adoptive parents into the early 1970s.
     The practice of inter-racial adoptions began to be challenged by Native Americans in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  From the Native American perspective, the Indian Adoption Project and ARENA were yet further examples of a long line of genocidal government policies to which Native Americans had been subjected for hundred of years, designed to tear apart or destroy native communities and cultures.

     Spurred by these concerns, Native American rights advocates worked hard for the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act.  The Act was finally passed in 1978.  It made it the adoption of Native American children by non-native families extremely difficult.

     In June 2001, Child Welfare League Executive Director Shay Bilchik formally apologized for the Indian Adoption Project at a meeting of the National Indian Child Welfare Association. He put the Child Welfare League of America on record in support of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
     “No matter how well intentioned and how squarely in the mainstream this was at the time,” he said, “it was wrong; it was hurtful; and it reflected a kind of bias that surfaces feelings of shame.”

Changes and Renovations in the Northeast Woodlands Gallery

We have been taking advantage of the fact that it is winter and the Museum is closed to the public to do some repainting and to rearrange some exhibits.

Volunteers Linda Hartman and Chris Bullock, along with Trustee Lynn Clark, are working on organizing our extensive collection of baskets to make sure they can be exhibited in a manner that is as culturally and historically correct.  Our apologies if the name of anyone who has also been working on this project was omitted.

This picture shows some baskets waiting for their new cases to be assembled and painted.







Linda Hartman's sheetrock repair skills have been invaluable in this project.
The project will be completed and the exhibits will be ready for the public when the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum reopens on May 1, 2011.

Winter at the Museum

The Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum is closed to the public January through April, except for special programs, and the staff works reduced hours.

Although our hours are reduced, we have had to arrange our schedules so someone is here every day, mainly to see if our water pipes have frozen.

It is probably stating the obvious to say that this has been a cold, snowy winter.  Nighttime temperatures here in Warner, NH have been in the single numbers or lower, and our daytime highs have rarely been above 32º.  In other words, we've had just the right conditions for frozen pipes.

The offices of the museum are in an addition that was built within the last six or seven years.  This addition is attached to the southwest end of the museum, and where the two structures meet there is a cold air leak that has been defying our attempts to plug it.  It also is the reason our pipes have frozen several times since Jan. 1.

As I write this, a space heater is running full blast, pumping heat into the wall where the frozen pipe is located.  A hole has been cut in the sheet rock to allow the heat to reach the pipe, which has been wrapped with insulation.  The cavity the pipe runs through has been sealed and insulated, yet Old Man Winter still finds a way to blast our water supply with his icy breath.

We have a contractor lined up to fill the wall between the main building and the office with blown-in insulation.  He's a good man and has every intention of doing the job as soon as he can.  He is also a busy man, plowing snow and working on construction projects, among other things.  As long as we continue to get our weekly foot of snow, the insulation job will have to wait.

When I got to work this morning I found that no water would run from the faucet in our kitchen sink.  That faucet in the sink is wide open now.  I wait, hoping that at any time I will hear the welcome sound of water gushing into the sink.

But wait - I just heard the snow sliding off the museum roof!   The icicles along the eaves seem to be a bit smaller today.  Maybe winter does not have the upper hand, after all.

Post script:  The water began running at 1:00 p.m., accompanied by loud cheers.