Native Children Belong in Native Homes

Hey yo! Matika here! Welcome back! This week we are really excited to share the second episode of our live series from Santa Monica College. This is a really special series and especially because it features music by KP from Black Belt Eagle Scalp. Yeah, it was so cool! They were there with us live the whole time, um, providing the the interludes and the before and after. It just changed the entire tone of the day. It was amazing! Good vibes! Oh yeah! Hi, it's Adrienne! So in our last episode we talked with Sterling Harjo and Ryan Regcorn and that show is up on the interwebs for your listening pleasure. Especially if you're looking for a good laugh, we can barely hold it together the whole time. And then this week we're sharing our conversation with Brooke Peppie on Swainey and Kendra Potter about their documentary "Daughter of a Lost Bird". This film is about Kendra's journey of being a native adoptee and reconnecting with her Lummi family and community. We also talk about the Indian Child Welfare Act or Iqwa and the importance of keeping native children in native families. We're so happy to be sharing this with you and we hope you enjoy! And before we start the episode, I want to mention a quick plug for the books, my book, Project 562, changing the way we see Native America is now available for pre-order. The official launch date is April 25th so if you would consider pre-ordering that would make a huge difference in the life of the book and also Adrienne's book, Notable Native People is also out on shelves now. You can find it wherever you buy books. Woo Bugs! Woo Bugs! Woo Bugs! Sorry! Okay, ready? Yes. Okay. Today we have a really special episode for you. We're talking with Brookster aka Brook Swainey. We met at a bar in Brooklyn. My favorite bar, Ben Bay, under the Brooklyn Bridge. So fun! And I invited Brookover for Fribrad and she came and all the way to bed and that's how we be together. I'm not turning down Fribrad. I ain't eat that. We also have Kendra joining us Hi Kendra. Hi. So Brook was actually the producer for season one of All My Relations. So she came out to Tacoma Art Museum with us way back in. What was that 2018? Yeah 2018. Like 2018. So 21 when we were 25. So she was what made the magic happen for that first season but she is also an incredible amazing documentary filmmaker. So Brook Swainey is an enrolled citizen of the Black Feet Nation and a bit of root salish descendant of the Confederated Salish and Cootney tribes. She works to tell contemporary Native stories and her first feature documentary, Daughter of a Lost Bird, was screened last night at the AMR Film Festival and has also been at 30 Film Festivals. Brook was received the award for the best emerging director at the Woodstock Film Festival and won the Groundbreaker Award at the Cleveland Film Festival. The film was the closing night film at the Human Rights Festival as well as the Native Cinema Showcase at the National Museum of the American Indian and DC and is currently being broadcast on PBS on the show America Re-framed. Yeah. So welcome Brook. Thank you for having me. Wow Brookster. I'm really working on my NPR voice. Kendra Melchentic Potter is a citizen of the Lummi Nation and is a theater artist teaching artist director and producer. She's also a yoga teacher. So you know if we want to do some asanas after this. She's also a doula if you know you wanted to help you deliver your baby and a mother. Kendra is the producer and protagonist of Daughter of a Lost Bird which we all watched last night and you know Kendra's also like a fabulous actress so if you want a castor. You can hire me. Kendra welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. I'm very excited. So the topic of our show today is we're going to talk a little bit with Kendra and Brook about Kendra's journey of being a native adoptee and being raised by a non-native family and her journey of reconnecting to her nation to her community which was told through the documentary that she produced with Brook. So today we're going to talk a little bit about Kendra's journey about what it means to make a film documenting that process and then focus a little bit about the Supreme Court cases that are happening right now with the Indian Child Welfare Act. For the audience can you just talk to us a little bit about this journey that you've been on? Sure. So for those of you who don't you know know about the story Daughter of a Lost Bird really is a character driven documentary that I wanted to make to humanize what often gets you know kind of shoved into these realms of statistics and numbers and you know this depersonalization of our narratives and at the time that I met Kendra you know she was really grappling with you know where she came from and as her friend I just wanted to help her like I just wanted to help her find out like what community she was from and at the time we thought she might have been from Alaska and I was like I want to go up there let's go up to Alaska I'd love to visit let's do it it can't be that hard to figure out where you're from you know like it's really naively kind of jumping in head first but when we really and earnestly started talking about making a film and you know Kendra sometimes says it's me I feel like it's maybe a little bit hurt but really Kendra thinks it's me that was like no let's make a film about this yeah but at the time like there weren't really any other films about this adoption experience of you know native people either in Canada or in the United States I mean Alonnes Obamsoin did this amazing documentary called Richard Cardinal Diary of a May T child and really tragic like heart moving experience but that was specifically about this foster care situation which you know I don't want to conflate you know those stories because you know they are different but there are there are some commonalities there but when we started talking about making the film there there weren't any other films and now you know because we're slow like two other films got finished before we were slow you were following the journey yes we're following the journey yeah and then our yeah ten ten years now yeah but yeah if you're interested in watching these other films which I recommend they're Don Land and Blood Memory but anyway you know we we didn't have the mystery of where Kendra came from because she knew right you want to talk a little bit about that about where I came from yeah yeah you knew what tribe you were from like that wasn't a question right right well yeah when you started filming right is that true yeah no no we so the first thing that we shot was also I say that Brooke wanted to make the documentary and and then we decided to make it when I was eight months pregnant with my first child and so a lot of the impetus to go on this journey for me was for that baby was so that my child would know a lot more than I knew and at that point I think we still I still thought that I was probably a Alaska native but after she was born in like five or five months after she was born we found out that I was Lummy and that my birth mother was in fact open to meeting and so that was like then from that point forward we did have that information but we had like had a couple of shoots before that happened so we knew we knew my tribe we knew the birth mother we knew that the birth mother was also adopted we knew that she was also adopted out and raised by a white family and then a few months after that I called her for the first time and and then we were like off to the races because she's amazing and was very also very generous incredibly generous with her story and I think that's something that's like ancestral and her like hereditary really with your family on you know that that side of your family you know your grandfather was this very open you know cultural leader that would go out and share stories and be kind of this public figure and in a way I see both you and April kind of following in that footsteps of sharing your story and sharing your experience and April is kinders but for the other month yes yes yeah can I just say that in the film when you were eight months pregnant and um you broke you say like this would be the first time that you would meet your your blood relatives while you were carrying that baby I just felt this like incredible like twinge inside of me of what that must feel like for you to to be having that experience to be growing your first blood relative and then to go on this like very scary and vulnerable journey very publicly is very brave Kendra. I have relatives that have been adopted out that under similar circumstances and I after watching your film and crying for like 30 minutes afterwards. I really had to like think if I was doing the work in my own life of being a good relative to those those cousins that I that have been wanting to reconnect with our family and haven't known how and I think of a lot of us because of the statistics like you talked about Brooke because of how many of our children were adopted out you know like we all in tribal communities have the work to do around this around this reconnection. Yeah and and I mean I'm not surprised that you have that experience I have multiple adoptees and it you know adopted out or adopted in stories just within my own family and then and then on top of that you know I think as native people we're all dealing with some sort of grappling of our identity because of assimilation you know because of the systemic removal of of our ourselves from our ways of knowing and ways of you know living in the world so I think we can all identify a little bit with what you know Kendra is going through you know we all kind of like search for our identity in our in our lives and that's really what I wanted to kind of tap into is that is really that you know how do we how do we see ourselves and how do we find belonging absolutely and I think for folks who are listening and folks in the audience who don't know the context of what we're even talking about so in the 1950s there was something called the Indian adoption project which the purpose of that project was to take native children out of native homes adopt them into white families for the purposes of assimilation those were the stated goals and that was a continuation of these policies and practices that had been happening for generations to indigenous folks with the history of the government run boarding schools where the policies at those schools was to kill the Indian and save the man that idea was to eradicate the culture from these native children and therefore they'd assimilate into mainstream white society and no longer be the Indian problem and so during that period of time and obviously these folks can speak more to that too but I think the statistics are something like 25 to 35% of native homes had one or more children removed or in the system so over a quarter of native homes had native children removed or put into foster care and I believe it's like 85% of those children were adopted into non-native homes and so in 1978 so 1978 there was something called the Indian Child Welfare Act that was passed and that was a policy designed to stop this process and to ensure that native children stayed in native homes in native communities in native families and what that law says is that the well well I mean the the stated goal of the law is to keep native kids tied to their tribes because you know a lot what a lot of people don't understand but probably what of a lot of our audience and you podcast listeners know is that native people are not an ethnic minority we are a political minority we have our own citizenship you know with our own nations and it's really preserving that government to government sovereign relationship and that was also kind of like a motivation behind the film was to you know underscore that you know we as native people have a right to stay tied to our tribe and that doesn't matter if you then become adopted by a white family you should still have and you lawfully ought to and you know through all of our treaties you know with the United States we have the right to maintain that dual citizenship or whatever you want to call it so so this is something that's like fundamentally a part of the law the law also is like trying to preserve that cultural identity by keeping you know native kids tied with their families and you know it goes into those kinship systems of being adopted by your grandparents or you know a great auntie or a great uncle or you know whoever it is or cousins or whatever that were we're still a part of these families even though there are heartbreaking moments where children can't be raised by their biological parents but there is that community that is there to support the native child and the other thing about iqwa the Indian Child Welfare Act that is important is that you know a lot of people who work in the social welfare system believe that it's the gold standard and and it's just because of that idea of keeping children in kinship it doesn't matter if it's you know native kids or not cross all adoptions and fostering they really you know see that that idea of kinship and staying in community is being important i mean you can look up more of the statistics but the national Indian Child Welfare Association has done a lot of research around what happens when kids are removed and it's you know it's not good stuff it's low self-esteem it's addiction problems you know it's like all of these poor you know what they like to call poor outcomes but it's really like that ripping a part of of identity that is so tragic and shouldn't happen it should be preserved and i definitely want to come back to iqwa and what's happening in the Supreme Court but i just wanted to like give the the context for those folks who didn't even know like where this story is coming from and Kendra your family didn't even fall under iqwa because both your mother and you did not have the have a tribal affiliation at the time of adoption correct yeah yeah it's a very public learning curve that i've been on but as i've been learning more and more i've realized that there have to be so many more people like me because of the Indian adoption project so many people from my generation fell under the clack under the cracks because our parents were not they were eligible but they were not tribal citizens and so the act only applies to children who have who are who are citizens of their or have the right to be citizens of their nation so because my birth mother was adopted out of community into a white family and did not have paperwork um saying that she was lummy there was no tribe for her to identify when she put me up for adoption also interestingly and i don't know the exact number but statistically adopted children have a higher percentage of giving their children up for adoption as well so unfortunately it was a very successful strategy that we are up against in this movement towards trying to reclaim identity because it worked unfortunately pretty darn well and to extreme detriment yeah so Kendra tell us a little about the process you know from 10 years of filming to where we're at now uh yeah so when my daughter was five months old i got a letter from the adoption agency saying we have updated health information for you and please call us at your earliest convenience then i called thinking you know it could be the worst like maybe they were calling to say that my birth parents were dad maybe they were calling to be like your destined to get like 19 types of cancer like i didn't know what the conversation was but i called and they it was like some her new hereditary information that was also manageable and in that conversation found out that my birth mother was lummy and open to meeting me so then we had this i am like i come by it honestly but i'm terrible at paperwork like exceptionally terrible at paperwork as is April so the process was very long and slow for this reason with the closed adoptions you have to at least the way that my adoption worked she had to fill out paperwork saying she was open to meet me and then i also had to fill out this paperwork but legally the agency couldn't say she wants to meet you would you like to meet her they had to wait for us independently to reach out to the agency and say we would like i would like to meet her if she ever wants to meet me so that was like how many people i mean it's it's it's a big scary thing to say because you're opening yourself up to the potential for rejection right and i didn't want to put myself in a situation where up to that point first of all paperwork's hard secondly paperwork is hard thank you paperwork is very hard it's so hard to check boxes and sign in and there's an envelope and it's damn maybe i have to go get it started i can't i can't do it um i have birthday cards from like five years ago that are written beautiful messages damn just sitting sitting anyways um so i had to so i had to like fill out the super hard paperwork and And then the risk of putting that out there and having her say, no, or not wanting to interrupt her life. If, you know, I didn't know the circumstances around my adoption. I didn't know if it was a terrible experience for her. I didn't know what the circumstances around conception were. I didn't know if I was, you know, the result of a rape or something really painful. So I didn't want to intrude. And also, there was, she was a child. She was, I mean, she was 17. So I wanted to be deeply respectful of her experience and I was also terrified of rejection. So I wrote her this letter that was very slow, but I worked on it every day. Like I had, it was like an open app in my phone, in my notes. And every day I lived in New York at the time and on the subway, I would just like rewrite and rewrite and edit and think about like at this point, I was, you know, I'm a mother and was thinking like, what if I knew nothing? What is the stuff that I would want to know, but also because I don't know anything about her life, what, what might be too much information, you know? Can I ask you Kendra what was in the letter? Yeah, totally. I mean, it was really, I was like trying to stay vague and also give clues to character. And so I think I listed, there was one paragraph that was like every natural body of water I had swam in. And of course, so Kendra, right? So I was like, yeah, so I was like, I've been in the Pacific, the Atlantic. I've been in the Caribbean, I've been in this water, I love swimming in rivers, not a big lake person, but I'll do it. Because yeah, so I talked about that. I said, really all I want to do, like the big thing is thank you, thank you for my life. And you know, she could have, she could have made a different choice with the pregnancy. And so I'm, you know, super glad to be here. And I said, I don't, I have an excellent mom. I'm not, I don't need a mom, but I would love to have a relationship at whatever capacity feels appropriate for you. And of course I have questions, but I don't demand answers. You know, I tried to be very like what April's language is that she holds me with an open poem. And it's like the best to not feel like there's the like normal obligatory parent child relationship doesn't apply to us in a way that I feel such gratitude for because it makes it really easy to love her exactly how she is and feel loved by her exactly how I am. It's like the, I'm the luckiest person. So that was in the letter. Then it took her because paperwork is hard. It took her six months to write back to me. And that letter was so big. It was so, it was so big. And she, she said when I was born, she said it was a really easy good birth and that she and I had had a conversation while she was pregnant. She had said like, okay, this is going to be easy and you're going to come out fast and it's not going to hurt too bad. And she was like, and you did and it hurt, but it was fast. And she said that she had read somewhere during her pregnancy that that breastfeeding was good for the baby. So even though I was born and they took me away right away, which is at the time, I don't know how it is now, but at the time when you were giving a baby up for adoption, the idea would be that it was like too painful to see the baby. So they would like take me out of the room to the nursery and she was like, and I just got up and waddled down the hallway and got you and brought you back and I breastfed you for three days. And every time I'd fall asleep, they would take me away, take the baby away and she would go back and get me and bring me back and nurse me. And I, I mean, also I'm a birthdula. So I was like, what? I had, I got a colondron. She gave me breast milk. And it was so, I mean, just that act of, I mean, the act of like carrying a child to term, knowing that she was not in a good state too. And she wasn't. And we're both very clear that me growing up, not in her home was the right thing, but the generosity of heart that she had to put herself through whatever that was was really profound. And then it took us, I feel like it was like another six months or so before we met. I had a cousin, an adoptive cousin was getting married in Washington and I was like, oh, I'm going to be like two hours from Portland. So I live in Montana, but we were going to be close to Portland where she lived. And so we decided to meet and we see that, you see that in the documentary the first time we met, which I'm so grateful. April loves us. There was a say, who gets to do this? Who gets to do this? She, and there was a phone call too. I called her a few months after I got that first letter. Then we met. So who gets to do this is like, who gets to have this recorded moment of one of the most impactful moments in her life that she can go back and revisit and be able to feel that moment again. And there's, you know, for those of you who haven't seen the film, they embrace when they foresee each other. And you hear this, these heartbeats. And the heartbeats is actually Kendra's Lava-Liar microphone picking up. Yeah, people always think that it was like a sound design, but it wasn't. It was like, it's their heartbeats. We should have left the crinkling in of the love sound, but it's really powerful. It's really powerful. The heartbeating faster and faster. Yeah. And then swallowing, a freaking Doppler listening to a baby and then it gets faster and then it gets slower. And you can kind of hear like, my heart obviously. And then you can hear her heart and then our hearts like sink. It was a really special moment. I can't believe that's real. - I don't know. - I've seen a film three times. And I 100% thought that that was like a sound design. - No, it was not designed. - No, it was just real. - It was just real. - A realistic. - So this is real. - It's real. - It's what happens when you hug someone guys. You hug someone and your heart sync up. But you have to hold each other for a long time. - It's gotta be a long hug. - It's gotta be a Kendra April Tai Pug. - But. - The kind of hugs I'm not comfortable with. (laughing) - It's gonna be like, "You're hearted with my heart, okay?" Just on a regular Tuesday. (laughing) - We're not gonna co-regulate with Mattica. - It's popping from the side. (laughing) - Maybe we can link up splines then. (laughing) - Yeah, hopefully our splines will be caught on the level here. - Yeah. (laughing) - I do feel though like one of the unique experiences of this story was that she, because she is also an adoptee, she had met, she reunited with her birth parents when she was 34 years old. So she uniquely understood what I was going through because she had also done it. And when I met her, I was 34, which is also like, "Wow, that's neat." So when I asked her in her first phone call, I told her, "I'm making this documentary, my friend and I are shooting this stock." And you absolutely are not obligated to be a part of it, but I do wanna let you know that I will definitely be talking about my feelings about us and about our conversation. And she was like, "Oh my God, yes, no, please." But put me on speaker right now if you're recording. Like, "I'm in, I'm in, whatever you want." And I said, "Really?" And then when we were planning to meet, I said, "I will have cameras, they don't have to film us. They can, you know, we can do like a post meeting interview or something if we want." And she was like, "No, bring camp." I would give anything to have footage of the first time I met my father and be able to look back. And I look back at the photos of that day regularly. So by all means, please document as much as you want. And I feel like that was such a gift for this film. And I really feel like her contribution to the story is really where a lot of the impact. - Well, it's the layers of, you know, these generational stories too. From a filmmaking standpoint when she came, we were like, "Oh, she's gonna be another protagonist." Like, she's the protagonist. But, you know, it's still Kendra's story. - It's like a two, it's a two person. - It's a two-hander. - But yeah. - And then we went to Lummy. And we went for Stomach. - Which for those of you who don't know is this big water festival, celebrating the return of warriors. And it's pretty awesome. Gonna get to see a lot of news. A lot of people would have had it. - I would call it a festival. - You think a festival, you think of like, there is a carnival, don't you? - There is a carnival. (laughing) - But I also was reflecting, when you said that in that letter, you wrote about the bodies of water you've been in. Like, just the fact that you, as a person who grew up without any knowledge of what it meant to be Lummy, still had in you, like, Lummy are water people. That is where you come from. And that you felt of all the things you could write to your birth mother, that that was something you could do. important to include. It's just like, like I don't even know how to process that. Like that's so beautiful. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. I have several friends who are adopted. My brother, my adoptive brother was also adopted and is in reunion with his family. He is not native and he reunited first and when they met, it was like, I was watching him and his birth mother talking and it was like, you like pizza? Oh my god, I like pizza. Like you're constantly looking for similarities. You're constantly looking for something to hold onto and that's a very common thing when we meet a relative that we did not know. But the stuff that April and I have found in common that feels like deep, you know, aside from like our loathing of paperwork. But yeah, the water and she talked about when she met or when she got her letter from Chattiscaitom from her grandfather, her father, her father, my grandfather. And it started with, I hope this talking paper finds you well and he talked about the water also and the first the day that she met him. He like took her out to the bay and was like, when the tide goes out our table is set and it comes in and our table is cleared and talking about the way that the bay is a part of who we are. And she and I are both like, yeah, independently have found that water is the place where we go to like clean it off and clear the heads. And to this day whenever whenever I go back to let me, it's like, I don't feel like I've landed until my bare feet are in that water. Well thanks Kendra, that's really beautiful. We're going to take a short break when we come back, we're going to talk about Iqwa. We're going to talk a little bit about where we're at now and then we're going to wrap it up. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] KB, do you want to introduce yourself in that song? I was going to play another song but I decided to play this one because it has water in it and I wrote it about the Skajit River which is just you know a part of the Coastalist territory homelands. My name is KP and this is my band project Black Belt Eagle Scout. I feel very honored to be here amongst such strong women and so to be here is really special to me. Yeah we're relatives so yeah. And that song is called On the River. I wrote it about the Skajit River and the feeling of wanting to be home on the water. We're all going to cry. I was like I know what song I'm going to play. Thank you KB. Hey let me stop crying. Thank you so much Kendra for sharing so much of your story and Brooke for being witness to the story and I think before we end our episode I want to make sure that we do bring it back to the conversations around Iqua that are happening right now. So the United States Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in Brachene versus Holland which is a combination of four different challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act. And we as a group are filmmakers and native people and scholars and writers and photographers but we are not experts in the legal arena and there is an amazing podcast that we want to like plug that is not ours. That is this land by Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle and her second season of the podcasts follows these cases and lays all of the legal background, all the stories of the cases. So we really encourage those folks listening and the audience to listen to that season because we can't do justice in the next like 10 minutes of the background of the case. It's so good. It's so good. It's so well reported. You gotta listen to it. I mean it's 10 episodes. It's fully dedicated to this court case and you meet so many people that are active in the court case and it's wild. It's a wild story and it's really well told so everybody go listen to it. But basically at the Supreme Court right now is these cases are trying to overturn Iqua. They're basically making the argument that native tribes are racial groups that we are not political entities and that the law constitutes racial discrimination against non-native families that would like to adopt native children. And Brachena's a family. Yeah I mean we can tell them. It's really quickly is a family that wants to keep a child that's with the we're alone too. The weirdest part is that they were already allowed to so as far like and this was part of the arguments that if you listen to the Supreme Court oral arguments of the case on November 9th that the case was already decided. So procedurally why is that case still even there and the reason why is because they have huge huge powers behind them you know they have the state of Texas they have like which is also a state that doesn't really have a lot of native representation in Texas as part of the fifth district. And so you know you can get into a lot of that but it's really like digging into states rights which as we know you know from history and the civil rights is really about racism right ultimately and then and then and then it's supported by the oil and gas industries. So you know it's not it's not about kids it's about taking land. Yeah it's a summit up. It's about eroding tribal sovereignty because if tribes are considered to be racial groups and not political entities then tribal sovereignty is doesn't exist like why why would sovereignty exist if we're just a racial group. And so there's a lot of folks in Indian countries see this case as being the first step in eroding everything that tribal sovereignty stands on. And so without getting into the like specifics of the legal arguments and things like I read the transcripts of the oral arguments and they are like it's just so hard to read. Yeah. So I listen to it. So hard. Like the amount of like deeply held stereotypes that the Supreme Court justices have about like the that native homes are like lacking like bringing up stereotypes of like savage natives on the planes fighting each other before contact like just horrible things. But the underlying idea is that like somehow one like native homes are lacking and that children should be raised in homes that are like quote unquote better in some way. And then also this argument that what if a child and I can't remember which justice said it but like what if a child doesn't want to be considered Indian. Like what if they don't want to be like considered Indian under the law and that line I just fixated on of like what do you mean if a child doesn't want to be considered Indian. And so I think I would love to hear like kind of from the personal perspective of like why do native children need to stay in native homes like what does it mean for you Kendra like growing up disconnected thinking about how what is the importance what would have been different you know. Something that that was really I was like glued on November 9th to the oral arguments and and was like self-care self-care you know. So I was like on a sheepskin like all snuggled up in my best pajamas and like six beverages in front of me listening and and trying to stay calm and only periodically like yelling at my laptop. But what was fascinating to me and challenging is that I feel like my own steep learning curve journey of being raised white, identifying white, you know, nine years ago to this point where I'm like on a podcast called All My Relations and what that trajectory has been and understanding the amount of patience and the burden that it has been on my friends and on my friends and loved ones to patiently inform me, wait for me to get there, hold me when I figured it out and then inform me some more, like give me more information and the amount of ignorance that I had that was not my fault but was there, right? And then listening to the Supreme Court and the way that these justices were asking questions and thinking, gosh, this is, I mean, they just, they fundamentally don't understand and on one hand that is obviously designed to be this way and they are experts in US constitutional law and therefore not experts in native identity and in native ways of being, indigenous ways of being and so it's important to me because in my learning curve, my children know more than I do already, like all the way already. My daughter has never not been native. And the way that that manifests in her showing up in the world is huge, it's huge and it's like I have little jokes about how the first, she loves communicating and emojis, she texts me and emojis from my husband's phone and before she could spell, she would text like a little emoji of a little girl, heart and an emoji of an adult woman and she was always more brown than me. She's like you're still figuring it out, mom. But like I know, I know that I'm brown, I know that I'm native. So in my own like identity confusion, I still have come to a place where I understand that I want my children to grow up in a native family and I feel like that's kind of, you know, not that I feel like I should be sitting at the Supreme Court arguing but I do feel like that's really the thing is like look I am an example of assimilation as policies, I am a perfect example of it. I was white, I thought and did not understand the value of what I did not have, I did not have a comprehension of what was missing and had said to one of our producers on the film at one point that I felt like my native friends looked at me like a three-legged dog sometimes and I was like but why does it matter? Like I know how to get around, I'm getting around fine, I might be missing this native identity element but I'm functioning fine and the more I have learned, the more I have realized what that limb is and and that it's really not just a limb, it's like a heartbeat. So I feel very strongly that while I don't begrudge my adoption, I don't begrudge the way my parents raised me, I do feel deeply that the circle has the circle of my children knowing their ancestral land learning what we can teach them and recognizing that it's not going to stop with them, you know, I'm enrolled but because of blood quantum, my children will both are both descendants and when I came home with my card, when I finally enrolled and I showed my enrollment card to my kids, she like got so excited and my son gave me this huge hug and they were like you did it, mama, you finally did it and then she was like when do I get mine and I was like baby I'm so sorry you're you're a descendant, you're not going to you're not going to enroll because we have a 20 you know unless maybe the rules will change maybe you know maybe the tribal changed their minds and you know what she said because she's the the child of a doula and she knows things and she was like so you're telling me okay so I just have to go get some sperm from a lummy man and I was like oh episode why I'm fine she was like if I get some sperm from a lummy man then my kids can be lummy and I was like yeah yeah and my son was like I'll have some sperm but I was like okay like not you not you buddy but but this this um you know my children understand more than I do and and they're still not going to have as much as they could have but that's why I think that Iqua is important I think native children should be raised in native families 100 because because of so many reasons so many days let's just talk about before we wrap up uh let's just talk a little bit about how people can be in support of Iqua and what they can do right now in their own lives to advocate in meaningful ways and yeah yeah well I mean despite the fact that you know the Supreme Court justices are off and they're like you know wood paneled offices noodling around about you know our futures like come my genie come my genie and like typing and I don't know like sipping their coffee and I don't know I don't know what they do I don't know what they're doing that's what they're doing around their robes you know like they're like wrinkly robes um no they're just spending their time ironing their robes yeah that's all they're doing so what what can we do what we can do is um you know there's this protect Iqua campaign that is kind of a joint effort of the National Indian Child Welfare Association along with the Native American Rights Fund and I think I believe like illuminated maybe is also involved uh but you can sign a petition there to continue to support you know and show your support of the law that the law of the land should remain the law of the land um so I encourage you to go to protect Iqua on Instagram and I think you can also google it they have a website I believe um so that's one one way you can reach out to you know your uh like in the worst case scenario that Iqua is overturned there is still states rights to go back to states rights and you can go to your California state or Washington state or you know whatever state you might be in and demand that there's still continued support for the state Iqua now Montana where we live actually does not have a state Iqua um and it should um because we have a very high native population and I just have to say shame on Senator Daines or Republican Senator who is on the Senate Committee of Indian Affairs and did not sign on to the emicus brief in support of the law so I think you know that's a big that's a big alarm bell to our native communities for our next election to see you know really where he lies as far as native issues so I'm just gonna go public with that about my feelings about Senator Daines in New Mexico and Utah uh Utah just passed like yesterday or two days ago have um sample laws of how a state can uh make a state level Iqua um so there's models for other states to follow if they want to make sure that at the state level this remains the law of the land new mexico and Utah and I don't know if there are other states have done that as well so there's still hope for protecting native children in adoption even if the Supreme Court overturns the Indian Child Law for Act and I'm gonna be hopeful yeah I mean I I listening to the oral arguments I feel like they're I don't know it's a feels like a real toss up yeah yeah unfortunately yeah and it feels like um my I mean my gut is saying I my hope is that it's not gonna be fully overturned but I think they're gonna poke some holes in it and that'll be a bummer yeah and with that I'm gonna say thank you so much for being a guest on all my relations podcasts we're really happy to have you here uh we'll continue to follow your work and support your documentary which you can watch on PBS right now on america reframed so I encourage all of you to watch daughter of a lost bird so join us in thanking our amazing guest Kendra and Brooke all thank you guys thank you so much thank you well that's all we have for you today folks join us again next week for more live episodes [BLANK_AUDIO] E. E. Guitzi, O. C. Mahansa raised to Brooke and Kendra for joining us for this important conversation. Thanks, Gals. I love you so much. Huge thank yous to Santa Monica College and everyone there who made this possible. Thank you to the AMR team Jonathan Stein, Max Levin, Teo Shons, Lindsey Hightower, and Charlie Savage. Major shout out to KP of Black Belt Eagle Scout for being our live music for the event and to Sierra Sona for our original episode artwork. If you want to support the podcast remember you can sign up to be a patron on Patreon which we appreciate so much and really is what makes this possible. Or if you want you can write us a review on iTunes and we appreciate that as well. So thank you and we'll be back soon. Yeah, we'll hit us up on the gram y'all. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] of my relations.