Indigenous Leaders Elated by Supreme Court Ruling on Adoptions
Maryanna Harstad was stunned and then elated when she heard that the Supreme Court had upheld a law on Thursday aimed at keeping Native American adoptees with their tribes and traditions.
Adopted herself by a white family nearly two decades before the law was passed in 1978, she was worried about the effect that overturning it could have had on Native children.
“You always feel that you’re kind of this impersonator,” Ms. Harstad, 63, an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of the Minnesota Ojibwe and a descendant of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana, said about learning about her culture later in life. She knew very little about her heritage until she majored in American Indian Studies in college, and has since met her biological family and volunteered extensively with many Indigenous groups in Minneapolis.
She is now a program director for Gichitwaa Kateri, a Native American Roman Catholic Church in Minneapolis.
Source: The New York Times
