The Logic of Exchange: The Child Welfare League of America, The Adoption Resource Exchange Movement and the Indian Adoption Project, 1958–1967

Abstract

The Logic of Exchange: The Child Welfare League of America, The Adoption Resource Exchange Movement and the Indian Adoption Project, 195819671 By Karen Balcom Between 1958 and 1967, die Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), a research and standard-setting umbrella organization for child-serving social agencies, contracted with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to run an experimental program to promote extra- tribal adoptions for Native American children. The Director of the Indian Adoption Project (IAP), Arnold Lyslo, described the program as an effort "to stimulate on a nation-wide basis the adoption of homeless American Indian children by Caucasian families" ("Appeal" 12).2 By 1967, IAP had coordinated placements for 395 Native American children, almost all with nonnative families (See Table One). In 1968, the IAP was folded into the broader Adoption Resource Exchange of North America (ARENA), a CWLA-coordinated effort to match hard-to-place children (including Native American children) from across the United States and Canada with adoptive parents willing and able to provide permanent families for them. By 1977, almost eight hundred Native children had been placed through IAP and ARENA. IAP and ARENA also had a planned demonstration effect and helped stimulate adoptive placements for thousands of additional Native children in the same period. Indeed, IAP staff reported that by 1967 they had referred more than five thousand families interested in adopting Native children to adoption agencies across the United States (Lyslo, "Background" 33). From the early 1970s, the CWLA placed increasing emphasis on finding homes for Native children "within the Indian culture," but the vast majority of Native children placed through IAP/ ARENA between 1957 and 1977 were placed with non-Native (mosdy Caucasian) families with no ties to Native communities and cultural systems (CWLA, Fales, "Statement" 2). In the words of David Fanshel, author of a 1972 study of the early post-adoption years of LAP families, these placements left children to 5 Adoption . - . "Working Together to Strengthen Supports for Indian Children and Families: A National Perspective." 24 Apr. 2001. 14 Jun. 2006. . Blanchard, Evelyn. "The Question of Best Interest." The Destruction of American Indian Families. Ed. Steve Unger. New York: Association on American Indian Affairs, 1977: 57-60. Bloom, Murray Teigh. "ARE - The Best News in Adoptions." Together (1961): 45-46. Briggs, Laura. "Communities Resisting Interracial Adoption: The Indian Child Welfare Act and the NABSW Statement of 1972." Adoption and Culture Conference. Tampa, Florida. Nov. 2005. - . "Mother, Child, Race, Nation: The Visual Iconography of Rescue and the Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption." Gender and History 15.2 (2003): 179-200. Buck, Pearl S. "The Children Waiting: The Shocking Scandal of Adoption." Women's Home Companion (Mar. 1954): 33, 129-32. Castenada, Claudia. "Incorporating the Transnational Adoptee." Imagining Adoption: Essays on Literature and Culture . Ed. Marianne Novy. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2004: 277-300. Child Welfare League of America (CWLA). A Study of Adoption Practice, Vol. III: Adoption of Children with Spedai Needs. New York: Child Welfare League of America, 1957. 61 Adoption . Herman, Ellen. "The Difference Religion Makes: Justine Wise Polier and Religious Matching in Twentieth Century Child Adoption." Religion and Culture 10.1 (2000): 157-98. - . "The Paradoxical Rationalization of Modern Adoption." Journal of Sodai History 36.2 (2002): 339-85. Hunt, Roberta. Obstacles to Interstate Adoption. New York: Child Welfare League of America, 1972. Jasquith, Esther. "An Adoption Exchange Under Private Auspices." Child Welfare (May 1962): 217-19. Johnson, Troy, ed. The Indian Child Welfare Act, the Next Ten Years: Indian Homes for Indian Children. Los Angeles: American Indian Studies Center, University of California, 1990. - . "The State and the American Indian: Who Gets the Child?" Wica^o SaReview'4.' (1999): 197-214. Kirk, H. David. "A Frontier in Adoption: Placing Minority Group Children (1957)." Exploring Adoptive Family Ufe: The Collected Adoption Papers of H. David Kirk. Ed. B. J. Tansey. Brentwood Bay, BC: Ben-Simon, 1988: 58-66. Kreisher, Kristen. "Coming Home: The Lingering Effects of the Indian Adoption Project." Children's Voice (Mar. 2002). 16 July 2006. . 62 Bakom, "Logic" Kunzel, Regina. Fallen Women , Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalhation of Sodai Work, 1890-1940 . New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. Louise Wise...