Maine’s `Lost Bird’ to rejoin Navajo flock> Woman’s link to Arizona tribe changes her life

PALMYRA — Yvette Melanson’s search for her family, her culture and her heritage has ended in the hogans of a Navajo reservation in the deserts of Arizona — far removed from her past in the arms of a rich New York couple and in rural Maine.

Melanson, 43, was adopted by a wealthy, Jewish, New York couple in 1955, and raised as an only child. She discovered four months ago that she was actually a Navajo Indian — stolen from her family along with a twin brother and sold on the black market to the highest bidder.

Since first telling her story to the Bangor Daily News in April, Melanson’s life has changed dramatically. She has been reunited with her family in Arizona. She will be featured in an episode of the television news show “20/20,” to be aired this fall. She also has hired a literary agent to deal with hundreds of offers for the book and screenplay rights to her story.

But most importantly, she said, “I’ve come home,” referring to the re-establishment of her Navajo culture. Melanson said that as soon as proper arrangements can be made, she will leave Maine permanently for Arizona, to pick up the strands of reservation life that were cut 43 years ago.

In May, the Navajo nation flew Melanson, her husband, Dick, and their two daughters to the Tulana Lake Navajo reservation in Arizona. There, Melanson was reunited with her medicine-man father, Yazzi, and nine brothers and sisters she didn’t know existed before this spring.

Slipping into American Indian life was “natural,” said Melanson. “My family and I were strangers, but at the same time were not strangers. It was like I had always known them.” The elders conducted a welcoming ceremony and showered the Palmyra family with gifts upon their arrival.

“If I was not sure before, I was after watching and observing her fitting in with her family,” said Dick Melanson. He is also looking forward to life on the reservation. “They accepted me right from the beginning, even though I’m white, because I am her husband. They are wonderful, kind, caring people.”

Melanson said leaving her newfound family after just two weeks was the hardest thing she has ever done. “But I keep happy knowing I will return,” she said.

Melanson always knew she was adopted but never dreamed she was a American Indian until she booted up her computer last March and conducted a search of the adoption network. A few hundred computer hours and telephone calls later, Melanson was talking to her sister Lora Chee, who filled her in on her background. Chee and her relatives also had been searching for the lost babies.

Melanson, born Minnibob Monrow, and her twin brother, Bob Minni, were taken from her mother at the Arizona reservation by a nurse and never returned. The nurse told Melanson’s mother that the children were sick and had to be hospitalized. The children were sold to Melanson’s adoptive parents, a wealthy New York couple who could not have children of their own. Chee was able to trace the babies to Utah and then Florida, where she lost track of them both.

Melanson, meanwhile, was on the opposite side of the country, reversing the process. She traced herself back to Florida and then Utah but could go no further back.

Thousands of American Indian children were taken from their families in the 1940s and 1950s, said Melanson, and given to white families. Sometimes social workers believed the adoptions were in the best interest of the children and sometimes, as in Melanson’s case, money was the primary reason.

Many Indian families, on and off America’s 300 reservations, have lost a child to the white adoption market, said Melanson. In Melanson’s Navajo family, her aunt and brother-in-law both had babies taken from them.

These children are called “Lost Birds.” They are named for a Sioux baby that survived the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 only to be sold to a military general who paraded her around the country as a curiosity in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. In 1991, the woman’s bones were unearthed in California and returned for burial in South Dakota. The tribe didn’t know her real name so they called her Zintkala Nuni, or Lost Bird, symbolizing that the ties to her culture had been cut.

Melanson’s attempted return to her Navajo roots has had one major stumbling block. She said clerks at the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Phoenix said no record of her birth or her brother’s birth can be found. “The records have been purged,” said Melanson, who has a photocopy of her brother’s certificate but not her own.

“I’m caught between two societies and fitting into neither,” she said. Although she has numerous other papers, including adoption papers, to prove that she is Minnibob Monrow, the U.S. government will accept only the original birth certificate.

“Without this certificate, I am not considered Navajo by the census,” she said. “It hurts to know that when I found my heritage, I legally can’t have it. To the Navajo people, I’m Navajo. To the U.S. government, I’m white. I’m walking a center line, being pulled in both directions.”

She said she recently learned that DNA testing is not recognized by the government as an acceptable means of official identification, either. “They will let convicted murderers and rapists out of prison based on DNA evidence but they won’t accept it as proof of who I am,” she said.

The Navajo nation has hired a full-time investigator to look into Melanson’s paperwork to try to regain her American Indian status. She said she will still be allowed to live on the reservation, but her status will be listed as “white people who are granted permission.”

Melanson recently formed Missing Native American Children, a nonprofit group, that will assist other Lost Birds like herself. “Without the Navajo nation, I wouldn’t have been reunited with my family. Now I would like to help others like me,” she said. Melanson and her sisters are creating jewelry that will be sold to benefit MNAC.