As an evangelical couple fights adoption law, Native American Christians point to holistic answers.
Carol Bremer-Bennett loved her adoptive parents. And the Dutch Reformed family in Michigan was intentional about studying and celebrating her Navajo culture and history from the time they welcomed her into their family in 1969.
But when Bremer-Bennett grew up and moved to New Mexico and went to work at a school near the Navajo Nation, she learned she couldn’t become a Navajo citizen because of the adoption. She found relatives through genealogy websites and DNA tests and got a little documentation from the facilitation agency, Bethany Christian Services. But she wasn’t able to find her father to establish what clan she was from to complete her tribal enrollment.
“Then the loss really sinks in,” she told CT. “I didn’t have the language. I didn’t have the culture. I did not know my Navajo clans. I had no relatives. I just wept.”
In 1978—nine years after Bremer-Bennett’s adoption—Congress passed a law sharply restricting the separation of Native children from their families. The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) sought to address the long history of Native American children who were separated from their families and sent to boarding schools or to white Christian families, obliterating tribal cultures and connections. The ICWA prioritized placement with extended families, then with families in the Native child’s tribe, and then with a family in another tribe. Adoption by outsiders became a last resort.
The United States Supreme Court is currently weighing whether that law is constitutional. The court heard arguments in Brackeen v. Haaland in November and is expected to rule this summer.
The Brackeens are a white evangelical family who adopted a Navajo boy. They …
Write a comment: