The film "Blood Memory" makes its broadcast premiere on World Channel during National Native ... [+]
Adoption is often seen as a positive in our society, and it can be. There are many wonderful stories of parents and children who benefited from the practice.
Less visible, but equally important, are the stories that tell a different side of adoption. One in particular isn’t widely known in American culture, whether that stems from intentional ignorance or piecemeal knowledge of Indigenous history.
The documentary Blood Memory, making its broadcast premiere tonight on WORLD Channel, explores the history of and trauma stemming from America’s Indian Adoption Era. Children were removed from Native American families and adopted by white families or sent to boarding schools. They were not permitted to contact their birth families and lost contact with their tribes.
The film examines the continued impact on those children who were taken from their families during the era, which ran from 1940 to 1978. It also explores the ramifications of those policies on Indigenous families today.
“I want everyone to know that the United States government used adoption as a form of forced assimilation. People made money off of us,” says Sandy White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), who is profiled in the film.
White Hawk notes that adoption is often portrayed as something wonderful that provides love and stability. That wasn’t her experience, and she wants people to see that the practice can inflict pain.
“I want adoptees to know that they’re not alone when they grow up not knowing where they come from. We think of them, and the birth mothers, and we say prayers for everybody, that they find their way back home,” she says.
The film came together through one of those odd quirks of fate.
Director Drew Nicholas was approached by a woman in a coffee shop in Pittsburgh who had overheard him and his friends discussing their recent graduation from film school. She told them that she had a great subject for them.
She was a Native adoptee, and she knew most Americans didn’t know her story. She gave Nicholas White Hawk’s contact information, and he eventually traveled to a powwow to meet her.
The film mixes footage of White Hawk and her family with testimony from academic sources addressing the many disturbing legacies of the American policy.
It also shows the healing that takes place when adoptees participate in traditional ceremony and song that allow them to reconnect to their culture.
“Counselors always missed the mark of the core of my pain. They did not know what questions to ask me because adoption is a happy ending, especially for a rescued Brown child,” White Hawk says. “It wasn’t until I went to a ceremony and heard the healing songs that my soul spirit quieted. I felt nurtured.”
