Inside the Native American Foster Care Crisis Tearing Families Apart

Elisia Manuel remembers when she and her husband Tecumseh received their first foster child. “We had to go buy the boy some clothes,” she told me. “We had to get him everything, because he came with nothing. The agency even had to lend us a car seat to bring him home.” Elisia, who comes from the Mescalero Apache and Yaqui tribes, and Tecumseh, an Akimel O’odham from the Gila River Indian Community located just south of Phoenix, were thrilled to get a Native child to care for—even if it meant completely outfitting the little boy, purchasing a heavy-duty washer, and finding other supplies.

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