Baby Given to Couple by Navajo Court

SAN FRANCISCO —  A Navajo tribal court in Arizona on Wednesday awarded a white San Jose couple permanent guardianship of a baby girl born to a single Navajo woman last year, ending a turbulent custody struggle that made nationwide headlines.

“I feel like we’re finally going to be a normal family again,” Cheryl Pitts said by telephone from Tuba City, Ariz.

She and her husband, Rick, had anxiously awaited the decision of Judge Manuel Watchman of the Navajo Tribal Children’s Court on their request for permanent guardianship of 13-month-old Allyssa Kristian Keetso.

Pregnant and Single

The girl’s natural mother, Patricia Keetso, was pregnant and single when she contacted the Pittses through a newspaper ad. She has lived with the couple since two months before Allyssa was born July 20, 1987, and the couple helped her through labor. The couple paid her $200 a month before the birth, and all of her medical costs.

The Pittses were in the process of adopting Allyssa through California courts when the Navajo tribe intervened, asserting the tribe’s right as a sovereign entity to jurisdiction over its members. The tribe cited the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which gives tribal courts exclusive jurisdiction over Indian adoption cases. Tribal officials said adoption by the Pitts family would sever the child’s link with her heritage.

In April, tribal officials took the baby from the Pittses for four days before the court granted them temporary guardianship and ordered liberal visitation rights to the natural mother and other members of the child’s extended tribal family.

Efforts Supported

Both Patricia Keetso and her mother, Susie, supported the Pittses’ attempts at adoption.

According to the Pittses’ attorney, Michael C. Nelson, there is little difference between the judge’s permanent guardianship order and an adoption, except that in an adoption “the visitation rights of the mother would be severed.”

“It will be a permanent guardianship; it will be irrevocable, and Allyssa is enrolled as a member of the great Navajo nation, and will remain under their jurisdiction until her 18th birthday,” Pitts said. “A permanent guardianship isn’t that different than the open adoption we originally planned.”

To Visit Reservation

Pitts added that he and his wife plan to take Allyssa to visit the Navajo reservation and to her grandparents there as often as possible.