A video leaks of a politician talking about adopting a Native child, leading to outrage from the child’s biological family and members of her tribe.
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** THE WEEKLY REVEAL
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Saturday, August 24, 2024
Hello! In this issue:
* A Utah politician adopts a Native child. The case quickly becomes complicated and controversial.
* What’s changed since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit and what hasn’t.
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** THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
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** A Baby Adopted, A Family Divided
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Reveal illustration; Charles Deluvio/Unsplash; Dukas/Universal/Getty
In 2017, David Leavitt drove to the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana to adopt a baby girl. A few years later, during an interview with a documentary filmmaker, Leavitt, a wealthy Utah politician, told a startling story about how he went about getting physical custody of that child.
He describes going to the tribe’s president and offering to use his connections to broker an international sale of the tribe’s buffalo. At the same time, he was asking the president for his blessing to adopt the child.
That video eventually leaked to a local TV station, and the adoption became the subject of a federal investigation into bribery. To others, the adoption story seemed to run afoul of a federal law meant to protect Native children from being removed from their tribes’ care in favor of non-Native families.
This week on Reveal, reporters Andrew Becker and Bernice Yeung dig into the story of this complicated and controversial adoption, how it circumvented the mission of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and why some of the baby’s Native family and tribe were left feeling that a child was taken from them.
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** A Quote to Remember
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“It's going to take a long time for most folks to have that kind of confidence that (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is the premier public health agency of the world. I think it's probably going to take years of repair work to do that.”
Epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera hosted our three-part series The COVID Tracking Project. Last week ([link removed]) , she spoke with Reveal host Al Letson about her 2023 interview with the CDC’s director at the time—and what’s changed since.
Listen: Revisit our whole series, The COVID Tracking Project ([link removed]) , starting with part 1. ([link removed])
** In Case You Missed It
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🎧 The Churn ([link removed])
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🎧 The COVID Tracking Project ([link removed])
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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Kate Howard and edited by Nikki Frick. If you enjoyed this issue, forward it to a friend ([link removed]) . Have some thoughts? Drop us a line (mailto:
[email protected]) with feedback or ideas!
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