Word: tribalized
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...nine- month-old girl named Allyssa is a classic clash of cultures. The mother, Patricia Keetso, 21, is an unwed Navajo Indian who would like her daughter to be adopted by Rick and Cheryl Pitts of San Jose, who have been caring for the baby since birth. But tribal officials, fearing that the flow of Indian foster children to non-Indian homes threatens their survival as a people, are seeking to rear the baby on their Arizona reservation. The emotional case has become a symbol of tribal resistance to the baby drain...
...together through San Jose lawyers who arrange adoptions. She lived at the couple's home for three months before giving birth last July. But in April, Navajo officials, who refer to the child as Baby K., convinced a California judge that any decision about custody should rest with the tribal courts. At a hearing last week, a tribal judge in Tuba City returned Allyssa temporarily to the Pittses, but a final decision is still pending...
...reservation. Keetso and the Pittses charge that Navajo officials violated an understanding that Allyssa would be placed solely in the care of her maternal grandmother until the hearing. Instead, they say, the child was left in the home of a stranger, where she was neglected and quickly fell ill. Tribal authorities deny that such an understanding existed and contend that the baby's illness was due to a change of formula...
...battle over Allyssa is in part a legacy of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law that has been invoked in thousands of custody disputes. It empowers tribal courts to make custody and foster-care decisions in most cases involving American Indian children. A large proportion of such youngsters are in the care of adoptive or foster parents, a situation that results partly | from a high incidence of teenage pregnancy, parental alcoholism and out-of- wedlock births on the impoverished reservations. Before the 1978 law, it was common for state courts and child-welfare agencies to place Indian...
...example: "the reading of the sports section is a tribal rite of passage for men, indicating that they, too, will take their place among the armchair major leaguers and couch/potato homerun hitters." Being a boy who has no interest in sports, I found the tone of the piece simplistic and sexist in its generalizations about...