Local resident recounts adoption from Navajo Tribe, reconnecting with roots
BY SHEILA HARRIS sheilaharrisads@gmail.com
“Sometimes I feel like a fake Indian,” said Margie Sterling, of rural Exeter.
A member of the Navajo Nation, Margie was adopted by a caucasian couple in June of 1958, just shy of her 5th birthday. She believes she is one of the first children who was allowed to be adopted from the tribe.
“Navajoland,” the nation’s reservation, encompasses over 27,000 square miles of land across portions of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. With over 400,000 tribal members, the Navajo Nation is the largest of 574 federally-recognized indigenous tribes in the U.S., achieving that status in 2020, after surpassing the membership of the Cherokee Nation.
At 70, Margie still has difficulty believing the story of her adoption, one she learned of only 20 years ago.
She remembers, as a child, how excited she was when making the trip from a foster home in Albuquerque, N.M., to the Stones Prairie community, west of Purdy, to live with her adoptive parents, Edgar “Red” and Virginia Sterling. The Sterlings did not disappoint.
Virginia and her mother had a room prepared, one decked in pink-and-white gingham, with furniture painted a pearly pink: a fairy-tale world for 4-year-old Margie.
When the Sterlings discovered they were unable to have children of their own, they began checking into the possibility of adoption in early 1957. Because Virginia’s father was of Native American descent, she set her heart on adopting a Navajo girl, and wrote a letter of inquiry about the possibility to the Navaho (or “Navajo”) Mission in St. Michaels, Ariz.
KEEP READING: https://www.cassville-democrat.com/2025/03/26/one-little-indian-girl-two-mothers-two-worlds/
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| Margie Sterling, back left, stands with her daughter, Theresa Schafer, in Sterling’s prized five-generation photo. At front left is Sterling’s birth mother, Margaret Lopez, seated next to Sterling’s granddaughter, Jamie Lynn Stokes, who is holding Sterling’s great-granddaughter, Maddison. Contributed photo |
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