Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, discusses her latest essay for Harper’s Magazine, which asks a simple yet provocative question: What makes a good mother? Murdoch, a childless white woman, speaks with web editor Violet Lucca about the process of affirming to the state her belief that her friend and the subject of her book Lissa Yellow Bird, a Native woman, would make a good foster parent. Murdoch and Lucca discuss the colonized notions that haunt not only foster care but also journalism, and how, for nonwhite women, surviving trauma can be viewed as a liability rather than resiliency.

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