Native American mothers whose children were separated from them – either through child removal for assimilation into residential boarding schools or through coerced adoption – experience the kind of grief no parent should ever feel. Yet theirs is a loss that is ongoing, with no sense of meaning or closure.
While some families have eventually been reunited, far too many languish in the child welfare system, where Native American children are overrepresented as a result of discrimination and racial bias, structural racism and increased exposure to poverty.