One quarter of all Indian children were removed from their families and placed in non-Indian adoptive and foster homes or orphanages, as part of the Indian Adoption Projects….. One study found that in sixteen states in 1969, 85 percent of the Indian children were placed in non-Indian homes. Where are these children now?

“TWO WORLDS: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects” is an important contribution to American Indian history.  Trace Hentz located other Native adult survivors of adoption and asked them to write a narrative. The adoptees share their unique experience of living in Two Worlds, surviving assimilation via adoption, opening sealed adoption records, and in most cases, a reunion with their tribal relatives.  Indigenous identity and historical trauma takes on a whole new meaning in this adoption anthology.

This anthology covers the history of Indian child removals in North America, the adoption projects, their impact on Indian Country and how it impacts the adoptee and their families.

Since 2004, Hentz (formerly DeMeyer) was writing her historical biography “One Small Sacrifice.”  She was contacted by many adoptees after stories were published about her work.  More adoptees were found after “One Small Sacrifice” had its own Facebook page and the blog on American Indian Adoptees started in 2009.

Two Worlds is the first book to expose in first-person detail the adoption practices that have been going on for years under the guise of caring for destitute Indigenous children.  Every reader will be intrigued since very little is known or published on this history.