In Episode 98 of “Red Hoop Talk,” Jennifer sits down with Sandy White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), a nationally respected advocate whose life story has reshaped how the country understands adoption, foster care, and the long-term impacts of Native child removal. Taken from Rosebud at just 18 months old, Sandy grew up far from her relatives, culture, and sense of identity. Her adoptive home was marked by racial, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse — a reality she now speaks about openly to expose the cost of family separation on Native Nations.

Sandy’s early adulthood took her into the Navy, where she found belonging among Black servicemembers who understood the experience of being racialized and displaced. Sobriety, ceremony, and eventually returning home to Rosebud became turning points in her healing. That journey — from survival to reconnection — now fuels her life’s work.

As founder and director of the First Nations Repatriation Institute, Sandy has become one of the leading voices on adoptee and foster-care healing. She organizes Truth Healing Reconciliation forums, supports adoptees and birth relatives through community groups, and trains practitioners across the country on the realities behind Native child removal. Her research highlights the stark truth many adoptees carry: high rates of abuse, staggering mental-health impacts, and the lifelong ache of growing up without seeing one’s own face reflected back. As she says in the episode, “Love does not replace identity,” and “If it were truly in the best interest of the child, we would not be terminating parental rights.”

Sandy’s insights ground the conversation in sovereignty, responsibility, and the hard truth that adoption has become a multi-billion-dollar industry built on the ongoing removal of Native children. She discusses Indian Child Welfare Act as an act of Native Nation self-governance, the importance of returning children to their Nations, and the research she’s led showing high rates of abuse and suicide attempts among Native adoptees.

Listeners can learn more at WeAreComingHome.org, explore the documentary Blood Memory, or read her book A Return to the Heart. “Red Hoop Talk” continues to uplift the stories Native Peoples share about identity, truth, and healing — and supporting the Association on American Indian Affairs helps carry that work forward.