Susan Harness: Heritage Speaker
Indigenous author, keynote speaker, and transracial adoption advocate Susan Harness helps audiences understand identity, belonging, and Native child welfare through powerful storytelling and lived experience.
Quick Facts:
- Author of award-winning memoir Bitterroot
- Member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes
- TEDx speaker on transracial adoption and identity
- Expert on Indigenous child welfare and adoption policy
- Formats:
Keynote Speaker, Author, and Indigenous Advocate
- Audiences:
Educational institutions, nonprofits, policymakers, social service organizations, and audiences exploring identity, adoption, diversity, and Indigenous issues.
- Outcomes:
- Understand the historical impact of Indigenous child welfare policies
- Foster empathy and awareness around transracial adoption experiences
- Strengthen conversations around identity, belonging, and cultural preservation
- Travels from: Fort Collins, CO
- **Fee range: On Request
Keynote Topics
Possible Topics
- American Indian Transracial Adoption
- Lifescapes and Landmines of American Indian transracial adoption: A Personal Narrative
- Bourdieu and Child Placement: Why the Indian Adoption Project didn’t pan out.
- Historical Trauma and Child Adoption: What happens when the fabric rips?
Talent Short Bio
Susan Harness is an acclaimed Indigenous author, keynote speaker, and advocate whose work explores identity, transracial adoption, and Native child welfare through the lens of lived experience. A member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Susan is the author of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, winner of the High Plains Book Award for Indigenous Writer and Creative Nonfiction.
Her speaking and research focus on the lasting impact of American Indian transracial adoption policies and the historical systems that disrupted Native families and communities. Drawing from both personal experience and decades of research, Susan offers audiences a deeply human perspective on identity, belonging, culture, and resilience.
Susan has spoken on the topic of transracial adoption since 1993 and has presented academically since 2006 as a keynote speaker, lecturer, panelist, and writer. Her work has been featured on TEDxMileHigh and in major media outlets including Colorado Public Radio, Le Monde, HuffPost, and KALW San Francisco.
Read Full Bio
Susan Harness is the author of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption and High Plains Book Award winner in the categories of Indigenous Writer and Creative Nonfiction.
A member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, her interest in transracial adoption in general, and American Indian transracial adoption specifically, extends well beyond the academic. She has recently appeared on the TEDxMileHigh stage (Adopting a Child of a Different Race? Let’s Talk…), and interviewed by Ryan Warner of Colorado Public Radio, Corine Lesnes of Le Monde, Isaac Himmelman of HuffPost, and Rose Aguilar of KALW- San Francisco, as well as many others.
The issue of American Indian transracial adoption is beginning to receive a lot of scholarly attention, specifically from the perspective of the adoptee. Susan has been speaking on this topic since 1993. Academically, she has been presenting this information since 2006, as a panelist, a presenter, a lecturer, a keynote speaker and as a writer.
Most recently, Susan Harness worked with the Denver Indian Child Welfare Field Office of the Casey Family Foundation informing the people whose jobs determine then determining American Indian child welfare practices of the importance of Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.
Using her research and her personal story, Susan Harness will discuss the historical policies that have most affected American Indian families, their purpose to undermine Native society and culture, specifically the removal of American Indian children for placement into non-Native families.
Susan Harness’s experience as a keynote speaker, invited conference speaker and panelist for dozens of organizations has raised awareness in the need for transracial adoption reform.
Born in Montana to a family living on the Flathead Indian Reservation, she became a transracial adoptee at the age of two when she was removed from her home by a social worker because of “neglect.” Bitterroot: A Memoir of Transracial Adoption (Released October 1, 2018 from University of Nebraska Press), is a sweeping examination of her life that explores the uneasy intersection of race, history and the brutal government American Indian policies that affect the lives of her and her families.
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