Tribe Seeks Woman’s Arrest in Custody Fight : Courts: Aleuts request the return of a Cypress teen’s baby given up for adoption in Canada.

Alaska’s Aleut Indian tribe has asked a judge to order the arrest of an Aleut woman from Cypress if she refuses to let a tribal family raise her baby.

In court documents made public Monday the Akhiok Tribal Council asks Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert J. Polis to declare that Jodi Argleben 18, violated the law when she fled the country with 5-month-old Rebecca and gave the infant to a Canadian couple for adoption.

Contending that Rebecca is “clearly at substantial risk of suffering serious emotional damage,” the tribal council asked Polis to order Argleben to return the baby to Orange County so the infant’s future can be decided.

The Akhiok Tribal Council, which governs the Aleut community in a small town on Kodiak Island, contends that a 1978 law gives it the right to see that Argleben’s daughter is placed with an Aleut family if Argleben chooses to give the child up for adoption. The law was designed to preserve Indian families and customs.

Argleben, who was raised by a non-Indian family, has resisted the tribe’s effort, arguing that she should have the right to decide who will adopt her child. She gave the baby to a couple in Vancouver, British Columbia, and went into hiding.

In a petition filed Friday, the Akhiok Tribal Council asked Polis to order Argleben to reveal the baby’s whereabouts, and to revoke her consent to any adoption that infringes on the tribe’s rights to the child. The tribe asked Polis to order Argleben’s arrest if she refuses.

Argleben’s adoptive mother, Judy Argleben, said in an interview that the family believes the adoption is “completely legal” based on the advice of several lawyers, whom she would not name. Her daughter did not receive money for the baby, even to cover travel expenses, Mrs. Argleben said.

Jodi Argleben is preparing documents to explain her actions to courts in Canada, where the baby’s adoption is pending, and in Orange County, her mother said.

Mrs. Argleben said the Canadian couple heard about her daughter’s custody battle and had an intermediary call her to express interest in adopting the baby. The two Argleben women talked with the couple by telephone and then traveled to Canada in late September to meet them, Mrs. Argleben said.

“They’re a wonderful couple,” she said. “As soon as they saw the baby they were emotional about it. They fell in love with her. They couldn’t wait to hold her and they cuddled her. That’s what really turned Jodi on: She wanted someone who’d love the baby right away.”

It was tough for her daughter to sign the adoption papers, Mrs. Argleben said. “Everyone was crying,” she said of the scene in a Canadian lawyer’s office. “(The couple) sympathized with her, and yet they were very happy to have the baby.

“Jodi looks on it as a gift of love. It’s not that she didn’t want to keep and raise her baby, but she knew she wasn’t ready to be the kind of mother she needed to be.”

At the Canadian couple’s suggestion, Jodi wrote a letter to Rebecca and enclosed a picture of herself so her daughter would know who her mother was, Argleben said. The couple promised to give them to Rebecca when she grows up.