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What is a Lost Bird????
Native American history is filled
with many difficulties and problems that have caused native people to lose their culture and identity. In the late 1940's
and early 1950's it was thought by the Child Welfare Association and agreed upon by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that in the
best interest of the children, they should be taken from their families and placed in non-Native homes; in order that they
become more readily adapted to life in the new American culture. The concern was not because the parents were not fit,
it was because they were Indians. Taken from their home many of these children would learn to live in the normal
world and never miss what they never had. Unfortunately, that was not true.
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It was wrongly thought that this action would
aid these children to become better and more adjusted members of the society. Now of course we know this to be wrong and actually
more harmful to the children who were lost. Even today many of those who were adopted know little of nothing of their
traditional values and many choose to believe the original stories that their new adopted parents told them.
The original Lost Bird was an infant found at the
first Battle of Wounded Knee, when she was found by a calvary officier underneath the dead body of her mother in 1891. The
child was taken by the officier and raised in his home to only discover as an adult that she had been lost to her family.
She lived a life filled with abuse, racism, and lonliness never finding her way home. In the years since her death her
family has tried to take her home, where she belongs.
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