Imaginary passports or the wealth of obligations: seeking the limits of adoption into indigenous societies

Abstract

Adoption into an Indigenous society can be thick with obligations and relations if the adoptee understands they are entering into a legal order that organizes and regulates their new kinship relations. Implicit within these kinship orders are limits to what inclusion into an Indigenous society provides. Conversely, adoption can be used as a thin line of extraction, aiming at social capital within Indigenous communities. Adoptions void of an understanding of the legal order they should be accountable to, may be used in a way that circumvents obligations towards Indigenous stories, knowledge systems, and law, and to continue to prop up the modes of extraction of Indigenous cultural knowledge. A turn towards Indigenous laws and legal orders provide an accountability against those who may use adoption into an Indigenous society as a means for extractive, unreciprocated, personal gain.