“Raw, honest, and enlightening, Cekpa: A Memoir in Beaded Essays by Leah Altman is an emotionally charged collection of essays that transmutes childhood trauma and loss into enduring self-acceptance. Altman, whose birth father is from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, was adopted into a white family and raised outside of her culture. Her journey to reclaim her heritage offers a powerful testament to resilience and the healing power of cultural identity amidst the trauma of forced assimilation, showing that adoption can at best be mutual, and the adoptive parent needs acculturation in the child’s ways.” —Terra Trevor, author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir