Kendra Mylnechuk-Potter and Brooke Pepion-Swayney speak at the Indigenous People’s Day Event on Oct. 10. Sophia Nunn // Wavelength
By: Tim Donahue
Last month, Kendra Mylnechuk-Potter and Brooke Pepion-Swayney came to Whatcom Community College during an Indigenous People’s Day event to do interviews and attend a screening of their 2020 documentary “Daughter of a Lost Bird.” In the film, Mylnechuk-Potter takes the audience along in her journey to reconnect with the indigenous family that she was adopted away from at a very young age.
Throughout the interview they discussed themes of identity, community, and the balance that it took to honor the love she had for her adoptive family, while establishing a new identity by reintegrating herself with the Lummi Nation community that she was born into.
“Daughter of a Lost Bird” aired on PBS on Nov. 9, the same day the Supreme Court adjourned to hear the case of Brackeen v. Haalland, a dangerous hearing that has the potential to overturn the 1978 establishment of The Indigenous Child Welfare Act.
The Indigenous Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, is a piece of legislation meant to give those of the same tribe priority when it comes to the adoption of Native American children, like Mylnechuk-Potter. ICWA was established as a means to protect the cultural traditions of tribes by safeguarding against the systematic deterioration that came in the 1950s and ‘60s when about one-fourth of all indigenous children were adopted out of their tribe. Mylnechuk-Potter and Pepion-Swayney referred to this as “the lost bird generation,” the name that inspired the title of their film.
Backed by oil companies that have long been at odds with the conservation of Native American land, the case of Brackeen v. Haaland comes down to the question of whether or not it is constitutional to protect against the creation of more “Lost Birds” by implementing ICWA as a federal safeguard for indigenous communities. Chad and Jennifer Brackeen — a white couple who claim that their adoption of a Native American boy was made more complicated on the basis of their race thanks to ICWA — are suing on the grounds that these complications go against their constitutional rights according to the fifth and tenth amendments.
While the Brackeen family claims that ICWA is unconstitutional because it gives adoption priority for reasons based on race, all it takes is one look at “Daughter of a Lost Bird” to realize that this tribal priority is based on so much more than the simple question of the parent’s race. Mylnechuk-Potter was adopted into a loving white family, and while they raised her as their own, she still went out in search of the indigenous identity that she’d been starved of. As pleasant as her adopted upbringing may have been, Mylnechuk-Potter inevitably came to feel like many lost birds; that she was missing a part of herself by remaining blind to the culture she was born into.
A new generation of indigenous children would be in danger if ICWA was struck down, and — according to Mylnechuk-Potter — if history repeats itself, it will be used as a way to sever tribal bonds by diluting the passing-down of culture and integrating indigenous children into a world that conforms to whatever their white parents are most comfortable with. That’s where the loss of tribal identity comes in.
According to the Lakota People’s Law Project, ICWA could be the first domino to fall in an oil-company fueled attack on Native American sovereignty. Many of the attorney’s working on this case have strong ties to Enbridge and TC Energy: Two major fossil-fuel corporations that have tried attacking tribal rights in the past. By overturning ICWA, this Supreme Court would be setting a precedent of imposition when it comes to tribal affairs. The floodgates will open if they aren’t stopped, and these fossil-fuel companies will be encouraged to further their attack on the indigenous population in the name of pipeline establishment, fuel production, and profits that inflate while indigenous identities and culture are cast to the side.
For more information and lots of resources pertaining to ICWA, visit here.