Navajo Court to Rule : Girl in Custody Battle Arrives at Reservation

A 9-month-old Navajo Indian girl caught in a custody tug-of-war was reported to have arrived on the Navajo reservation with her grandmother on Friday.

The girl’s natural mother, Patricia Keetso, 21, said in a telephone interview from Flagstaff, Ariz., that she had been informed by her father that the girl had arrived at the Navajo Division of Social Welfare in Tuba City, Ariz., Friday morning. The baby was accompanied by her maternal grandmother and a representative of the Navajo Division of Social Welfare.

However, Violet Lui, staff attorney for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice, refused to confirm the child’s whereabouts other than to say that she is somewhere on the reservation.

‘Appropriate Agency’

Patricia Keetso said her father hoped to bring his wife Susie and the infant, Allyssa Kristian Keetso, from Tuba City to the family home in Tonalea, Ariz., late Friday. Lui, however, said the child will be placed with “an appropriate agency” on the reservation until a custody hearing is held in tribal court Wednesday in Tuba City.

Friday’s developments were the latest in a stormy adoption case that has lined up the child’s natural mother and would-be adoptive parents, Rick and Cheryl Pitts of San Jose, against Navajo tribal authorities.

The Pittses, with the blessing of Patricia Keetso, had begun California adoption proceedings for Allyssa, who has lived with them since she was born. Those proceedings were halted Monday after a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge ruled that under the terms of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, a Navajo tribal court must decide who will have custody of the child.

On Thursday, the Pittses handed Allyssa over to her grandmother and Navajo Social Welfare Division representatives at San Jose International Airport. Cheryl Pitts, Patricia Keetso and Cheryl’s mother-in-law all boarded the same flight to Phoenix as the Navajo party. According to the Pittses, the parties had agreed that they would all transfer to another plane in Phoenix and fly on to Flagstaff together.

Left Plane in Phoenix

But when the plane arrived in Phoenix, the Navajo group climbed into a waiting van and drove off, prompting protests by the Pittses.

Lui, however, said the Navajo group left the airport only after the Pitts party began pushing and shouting after they exited the plane.

Patricia Keetso spent most of her childhood living off the reservation with white, Mormon foster families in Lancaster, Calif., through the Mormon Church’s Indian Student Placement Service.

Some have speculated that a long-simmering dispute between the Navajo tribe and the Mormon Church over such programs may help to explain the tribe’s interest in intervening in the adoption.