Exploring Identity After American-Indian Transracial Adoption

Susan Devan Harness is the author of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, a memoir describing her experience as a transracial adoptee removed from her American Indian home and adopted by a white family in Montana. Susan is also the author of Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption: After the Indian Adoption Project. She is a High Plains Book Award winner in the categories of “Indigenous Writer” and “Creative Nonfiction” and is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Susan received her B.A. in anthropology from the University of Montana and her M.A. in cultural anthropology and M.A. in creative nonfiction from Colorado State University.  She is still very much involved in the issue of American-Indian transracial adoption and continues to write and speak nationally and internationally about the topic and about American-Indian assimilation policies and practices.