Asking For A Friend‘s Land Acknowledgment
The setting of Asking For a Friend spans many miles. Leah, Tierra, and Kurt embark on a road trip that brings them through the native land of the Kiikaapoi, Peoria, Bodéwadmiakiwen, Myaamia, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Shawandasse Tula, Osage, Tsalaguwetiyi, and S’atsoyaha people. You can learn more about these groups of Native people by clicking on their names listed previously. The Cast and Creative Team of Asking For a Friend acknowledges that we all reside on stolen land, and strive to educate ourselves about the native people that inhabited our localities as well as honor them through our art. We encourage our viewers to educate themselves on the Native people who were forcefully removed from your area by visiting native-land.ca
An Adoption Vocabulary List for Asking For A Friend
Asking For A Friend is a new play by Anaya Green which follows Leah, an adopted young black woman who is learning about her cultural heritage. Throughout the play, there are many references to different scenarios of adoption which will be explained in this blog post, as well as terms that refer to the racial aspect of Leah’s scenario, such as “Transracial Adoption”. We wanted to provide some insight on different adoption processes so that you can greater understand the context surrounding Leah’s situation when watching the play. Research for this post was completed and written by a member of our dramaturgy team, Regan Lavin.
Independent Adoption
An independent adoption is one in which the adoptive family tries to adopt through an intermediary such as a lawyer, physician, or other facilitator rather than through a licensed adoption agency. This is legal in most, but not all, states. When going through independent adoption, there is often no counseling for the birth parents and the infants are not usually eligible for financial assistance for any special needs that may not have been noticeable at birth. The adopted child would usually be placed with the adoptive family directly from the hospital. In independent adoption, the adoptive family will interact with the birth family or their lawyer. The birth family must provide written consent for the adoption that must be approved by a court.
Adopting Through Identification
This acts as a sort of combination between independent adoptions and agency adoptions. The adoptive family will find a birth family that wants to put their child up for adoption and both parties will go to an agency to control the rest of the process. This will often include a home study, questions, and interviews. The advantage of this over doing just an agency adoption is that the adoptive parents do not have to go through a long waiting list. Adoptive parents also have greater control over choosing the child they adopt while receiving counseling and classes that an agency provides.
Facilitated/Unlicensed Agency Adoption
Adoptive placements by facilitators—any person who links the adoptive family and birth family, usually for a fee—and unlicensed agencies offer the least amount of supervision and oversight. Said facilitators may or may not be regulated in their state and have different amounts of expertise in adoption practice. Families who work with facilitators often have little recourse if the plan does not work out as they had hoped. These types are controversial because the intermediary is unlicensed. This style, combined with independent adoption/adopting through identification, is most similar to what occurs in Asking for a Friend.
Closed Adoption
In a closed adoption, no identifying information is shared between the two families. The adoptive family will receive information about the child and birth family before the child is placed. After the adoption is finalized, records are sealed. Depending on local and state law and the paperwork signed, these records may be available to the adoptee when they turn 18.
Open Adoption
An open adoption allows for some association between the birth parents, adoptive parents, and child. This ranges from letters, phone calls, contact through an intermediary such as an attorney, or open communication between the actual parties. Often when older children are adopted, the process is partially open since the adoptees may already know identifying information about their birth family, or may want to stay in touch with siblings who have been placed in a separate family.
Transracial/Interracial Adoption
Transracial or Interracial adoption is when the adoptive parents of the adopted child. A child’s race certainly does not change a family bond, but it will have an impact on their life. People of different races can have different physical and health needs; one common example (that is seen in Asking For A Friend) is hair care for African American children.
History of Racism and Erasure through Transracial Adoption
The earliest example of domestic transracial adoption is the Indian Adoption Project (IAP, 1958-1967), which was a project conducted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA). This was an attempt at removing indigenous children from their reservations in order to assimilate them into mainstream society.
By the 1960s, groups in the United States and Canada started other programs to find adoptive families for orphaned Black children. The National Association of Black Social Workers argued that this was a form of racial and cultural genocide and passed a resolution that called for the end of transracial adoption in 1972. Indigenous peoples opposed the IAP in a similar manner, leading to its dissolution through the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).
For more resources on transracial adoption, please visit embracerace.org. Asking For A Friend is also fundraising for EmbraceRace throughout the course of our run, and we would appreciate any contributions you could give to help them fulfill their mission of creating educational resources on the issues of race. You can donate here.
We hope that this post provided some insight into adoption processes, and we hope you steam Asking For A Friend live Thursday 12/10 at 6pm PST, or view our continual stream from 12/12-12/13. Get the streaming link here!
Resources:
Adoption Center, “Types of Adoptions.”
Adoption.com, “Resources for Transracial Adoptive Parents.”
ChildWelfare.gov, “Adoption Options: Where Do I Start?”
Considering Adoption, “Types of Adoption.”
Embrace Families, “The 5 Types of US Adoption.”
FindLaw, “The Different Types of Adoption.”
FindLaw, “Using an Adoption Agency.”
Justia, “Types of Adoption.”
Justia, “Who May Adopt.”
Lee, Richard M. “The Transracial Adoption Paradox: History, Research, and Counseling
Implications of Cultural Socialization,”
Pages.uoregon.edu “Indian Adoption Project”