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This Chapter concentrates on two very different novels by Native American authors, Linda Hogan's Solar Storms (1995) and Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer (1996). The Indian Adoption Project (IAP 1950–1967) promoted the transracial fostering and adoption of Native American children especially by white American, middle-class couples. This usually not only entailed a break from tribal values and traditions, but also either hampered the children's formation of their Indian identity or led to its erasure. Solar Storms and Indian Killer delve into the problems of their young protagonists, who suffer from the consequences of the IAP. Hogan's protagonist, Angel, was sent away to a series of white foster homes as a young child, but returns to her ancestral lands at the age of 17. The protagonist of Indian Killer, John, was adopted as a newborn baby, and lives alone as a young man in Seattle. I discuss the diverse identity processes of the two protagonists by drawing on critical race studies. My reading of the novels pays attention to the intersecting identity categories of race, gender, and class. Hogan's novel also invites an ecofeminist approach. Focusing on the colonization of Native Americans as the primary form of their historical oppression, I argue that, in spite of their different political aims, the novels link the individual adoption trauma of their protagonists to various forms of intergenerational traumas. These traumas were collectively experienced by Native Americans at different periods, and are ultimately connected to the traumas of colonialism and colonization.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59942-7_4

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