Center Promotes Understanding (community)`

Mary Puthoff was born on the Rosebud Lakota Reservation in South Dakota and raised by a family in the Black Hills after being adopted at age 5. „One-third of Indians, nationally, haven‚t been raised by birth families,‰ Puthoff told the LivermorePatch. She‚s referring to the Indian Adoption Project, which lasted from 1958 through 1967, and placed 395 Native American children from 16 western states with white families in Illinois, Indiana, New York, Massachusetts, Missouri, and other states in the east and Midwest.

Native activists were against the project and fought for the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was passed in 1978 and made it difficult for non-Native families to adopt Native children.

To keep culture alive for Native children, Puthoff now runs the Livermore American Indian Center in Livermore, California.

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