Reveal News, in a collaborative report with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, has posted a report on the illegal adoption of Allisandra Fishinghawk, an enrolled member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana. In the report, Reveal News examines the adoption and its implications with regards to federal law, specifically the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).
ICWA was passed into law to prevent the raiding of Indian reservations for adoptions by non-Native families. The federal government passed ICWA to address the reality that a quarter to a third of Native children were being adopted out of their tribes into non-Native families.
As David Leavitt tells it, the Eastwood family, Chelom Leavitt’s family, talked about their foster daughter Mary Medicinetop. Mary Medicinetop is the mother of Tonah Fishinghawk, and the grandmother of Allisandra Fishinghawk. David Leavitt stated that the Eastwoods told him that the Tonah was having a tough time on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation with her daughter Allisandra.
As Leavitt told it to documentary filmmaker Amy Herdy, he showed up unannounced to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation with two purposes: an offer to assist the Northern Cheyenne with an effort to export buffalo to the Ukraine. The second purpose was the adoption of Allisandra Fishinghawk. As Reveal News points out, the tribal president had no authority to enter into a treaty with a foreign government without federal authorization, and the buffalo herd didn’t belong to him. Lawrence Jace Killsback, the president of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, did not have the authority to export buffalo or enter into an agreement with the Ukrainian government.
David Leavitt’s story made no sense, legally or otherwise.
Reveal News interviewed Mary Medicinetop, the grandmother of Allisandra Fishinghawk. Her father was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and she was sent to live with a white family in Washington at eight years of age, through the Indian Placement Program. Mary lived with Clyde and Karen Eastwood, and she had an ongoing relationship with the Eastwoods. Darwyn Fishinghawk, Mary’s son, said that he was dropped off with the Eastwood family by his mother along with his brother Justin and his sister Tonah.
The Eastwoods never adopted the Fishinghawk children.
Tonah had six children, and struggled with substance abuse. Tonah was living on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation with her toddler and the newborn Allisandra. Mary Medicinetop went to the Eastwoods, to talk to Karen Eastwood, Chelom Leavitt’s mother. Mary revealed that David Leavitt had made multiple trips to the reservation to visit Tonah, and when Tonah was arrested for an alcohol related offense, the tribe took custody of Allisandra.
David Leavitt then showed up to Mary Medicinetop’s residence to advocate for adopting Allisandra and two of Tonah’s other children. Reveal News posted the recorded conversation. In that conversation, David Leavitt claimed that the tribe recognized him as the uncle of Tonah Fishinghawk. Darwyn Fishinghawk argued that David Leavitt had not seen the Fishinghawks for years, and David Leavitt challenged him to take them on in a legal fight.
For Darwyn Fishinghawk, ICWA was created to ensure that Indian children had a connection with their culture. David Leavitt belligerently challenged Darwyn and his mother to take him on in a legal battle, which they did not do due to the lack of resources. Gary Valenzuela, Allisandra’s father, was also interviewed by Reveal News.
Gary and Tonah would have a fight that culminated in Tonah’s roommate shooting him in the face. Months afterwards, Tonah informed him that she’d had a child. DNA tests confirmed that Allisandra was Gary’s child. Gary Valenzuela paid child support through the state of Montana, and when Tonah informed him that she was giving up Allisandra for adoption to David Leavitt, he told her he would raise Allisandra.
Later, Gary Valenzuela received a document informing him that the Leavitts were seeking to terminate his parental rights. Gary Valenzuela was listed on Allisandra’s birth certificate as the father, which meant that the adoption should have proceeded under ICWA, and ICWA would have awarded priority to Gary Valenzuela. The judge in the Utah adoption ruled that Gary Valenzuela had abandoned his daughter, even though he had not as a matter of law. Gary had paid child support, and he had attempted to gain custody of his daughter.
ICWA established that tribes have exclusive jurisdiction over Native adoptions. The court in Utah had no jurisdiction. The only exception would be an Indian tribal court transferring jurisdiction to a state or federal court.
Reveal News covered the letter from Lawrence Jace Killsback to the Utah court in which Killsback stated that the Northern Cheyenne Tribe considered David Leavitt to be Allisandra’s grand uncle. Lawrence Jace Killsback had no statutory authority to intervene in the adoption, or to classify David Leavitt as Allisandra’s grand uncle. Killsback resigned as president, and pleaded guilty to embezzling funds from the tribe and the federal government.
Killsback claims he wasn’t paid for the letter or any part of the adoption, but he received a $500 donation from Leavitt to his presidential campaign. Reveal was able to interview David Leavitt, but he did not consent to being recorded.
Leavitt claimed he had followed every paragraph and subparagraph of ICWA, but the reality is that ICWA requires notice to the father.
Leavitt claimed that the opposition to his adoption of Allisandra Fishinghawk stemmed from a witch hunt related to the Hamblin case allegations. David Leavitt was accused of raping the Hamblin sisters, as well as trafficking at least one polygamist family’s male child to the Hamblin home in Spring City, where the boy was murdered.
Jesse Laslovich, US Attorney for the District of Montana, claimed that the US Attorneys had not identified any violations of federal law in the adoption of Allisandra Fishinghawk.
Tonah Fishinghawk appeared on the interview, claiming that she was attending school to become a substance abuse counselor. What she does not disclose is the fact that she is currently a fugitive, with an active arrest warrant, for violating her probation in a plea agreement for felony child endangerment and possession of methamphetamine and heroin. That plea agreement was negotiated with David Leavitt, the Utah County Attorney, who did not disclose to the court that he was in the process of adopting Tonah’s daughter.
According to Tonah, David Leavitt wanted to adopt all three of her daughters. Two were in Utah with her mother Mary Medicinetop. She stated that Leavitt provided her money for groceries and utility bills.
Tonah Fishinghawk claimed that when she asked her infant daughter if she wanted to be adopted by David Leavitt, her daughter started kicking her leg. Left unexplained is how Tonah Fishinghawk managed to purchase a gold-colored Cadillac in the aftermath of David Leavitt taking custody of Allisandra Fishinghawk. The fact that IRA has spoken to a member of Tonah’s family who claimed that her mother had bank records showing payments from Leavitt to Tonah contradicts the entire narrative put forth by Tonah Fishinghawk. It is also completely absent from the Reveal News report.
Conclusion
While Reveal covered the illegal adoption of Allisandra Fishinghawk, they did not examine the allegations of bribery beyond the exporting buffalo scheme. There was no examination of the alleged $30,000 payment to Jace Killsback from David Leavitt, just as there was no mention of the payments to Tonah Fishinghawk, or how Tonah manage to afford a Cadillac as an unemployed drug addict. Tonah’s arrest for felony child endangerment and possession and the plea agreement she received from David Leavitt as the Utah County Attorney are missing from the coverage. So is the fact that Tonah Fishinghawk violated that plea agreement, triggering an arrest warrant that is still active. Tonah’s later arrest and incarceration in Oklahoma for domestic violence is not mentioned, and neither is the booking sheet that showed she contacted David Leavitt while she was in jail in Oklahoma.
This is significant because Leavitt did not fulfill his obligation as a prosecutor and an officer of the court by filing for Tonah’s extradition to Utah to face culpability for violating the terms of her plea agreement and her probation.
It is yet another sanitized version of the reality around Tonah Fishinghawk’s criminal conduct, and David Leavitt’s acts with regards to Allisandra Fishinghawk’s adoption.
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