Sandy White Hawk’s story of adoption is not of saving an orphan, but of creating one. At 18-months, she was removed from her Sicangu Lakota relatives and taken to live with missionaries, a traumatic experience she later found to be part of a federally-funded assimilative movement that targeted American Indian children. As Sandy defies bureaucratic genocide and works to bring home members of this stolen generation, a buzz begins to form around Mark Fiddler, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians who put heritage on trial as lead attorney in the 2013 Supreme Court case Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl. Mark argued against the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) – a law passed in 1978 to fortify tribes and halt the systematic displacements of Sandy’s generation. The Court’s controversial decision to bypass the Act in favor of a white adoptive couple was seen as a win for the “adoption industry,” outraging Indigenous child welfare advocates and resurfacing generations of trauma throughout Indian Country.

In this battle over blood quantum and “best interests,” Mark leads the charge to strike the ICWA from the books as Sandy organizes the first Welcome Home Ceremony for adopted and fostered relatives in Rosebud Sioux Tribe — the community from which she was removed over 60 years ago.

For more information about the film, visit www.bloodmemorydoc.com. Producer Megan Whitmer’s bio – and those of others associated with the film – can be found here.

Travel directions to Pendle Hill. Click to view the flyer.