S3 Episode 4: An Unbreakable Bond

Explicit content warning

05/04/18 • 32 min

In Springdale, London Lewis begins to experience Marshallese culture for the first time. He’s going to meet people he’s only read about in World War II textbooks. Hear a language he’s never heard except for on YouTube. Get a little closer to finding his birth family.

But we’re not just in Springdale for London. We’re also here to try and find out exactly what’s happening with Marshallese adoptions today. To speak with private adoption lawyers, adoptive families, and Marshallese birth mothers about the adoption process.

Adoptions are big business. As international adoptions have dropped off, there are still hundreds of thousands of adoptive parents vying for an increasingly small pool of healthy babies. Many of them are turning to this small community in Arkansas where private adoption lawyers and their Marshallese liaisons – or fixers – are household names for quickly matching them with Marshallese birth mothers.

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S3 Episode 3: Springdale

More migrants from the Marshall Islands now live in Springdale, Arkansas, than any other place in the world. It’s a surprising choice for them, moving en masse to a small Midwest town that is about as different from their island homeland as you can get. London Lewis was born in the Marshall Islands, but he doesn’t have the resources to make that trip any time soon. So if he’s going to have a chance of finding someone who knows his family, he has to start here.

In 1986, as part of a treaty between the U.S.and three Micronesian nations, Marshallese were given the right to travel to this country with little if any immigration restrictions. But nobody anticipated the wave of migration that would follow. Or that the treaty would contribute to an adoption explosion from the islands.

Now, the migration has taken root in this quiet corner of Arkansas — where local judges say as many as nine out of 10 adoptions are of Marshallese children.

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S3 Episode 5: Not by Accident

London Lewis’ biggest worry when he arrived in Springdale was how he would be received. Would other Marshallese people recognize him? Accept him?

It didn’t take long for him to form instant connections with people who want him to know that he not only belongs in the Marshallese community but he is needed in the Marshallese community.

But acceptance and belonging are not the same thing. London is just at the beginning of a long and complicated journey to figure out where he fits into the Marshallese diaspora.

And Springdale is about to get him a lot closer to solving one of the biggest questions about his past.