NPR Investigates: Foster children finding their way home

Thursday, October 27, 2011  

"Dwayne Stenstrom is a professor of American history. His office is lined with towers of obscure books and poetry on the walls. There's even a copy of the Declaration of Independence in a binder.

He teaches this document like many other professors, beginning with, "We hold these truths to be self evident." But he stops on another phrase — "the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages."

"What [is] significant to me," Stenstrom says, "is the impact that it has on a lot of our Native American kids when it still regards Indians as merciless Indian savages."

Stenstrom teaches at Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He grew up in a white foster care home, married his wife 31 years ago and raised six children. He's as passionate about history as he is his community.

Most social services departments would look at him and say he's a success story."

Get the Story:
Native Survivors Of Foster Care Return Home (NPR 10/27)

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NPR Investigates: Indian children being taken from tribes (10/26)