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Dwayne Stenstrom

Dwayne is an enrolled member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and serves as a counselor for the Student Support Services Department at Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. In his 17 years at the University he has provided counseling to Native American as well as non-Native students on a daily basis. Dwayne holds an Associate's Degree in Human Services, a Bachelor's Degree in Mental Health and a Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice from Sinte Gleska University.

Dwayne has taught Survey of Drug & Alcohol classes, General Psychology classes, Ethics classes, American History classes (from the Native perspective) and Helping Relations classes for students preparing to enter the medical fields. At a National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) meeting and at several Adult Vocational Education national meetings he has presented the complex issues of retention of Native American students in mainstream institutions of higher learning as well as the powerful negative impact on individuals, families, tribes and communities when Native American children are placed in foster care cut off from their own culture.

Dwayne can speak to any cultural issue however, his area of research is the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). His presentations to Native and non-Native audiences about the broad ramifications of the removal of Indian children from their families to be placed in non-Native homes takes the form of an historical overview of the past and how it reaches far into the future. He uses details from his years of counseling as well as his own personal experience to provide specific documentation of the effect of removal.

Born November 25, 1959, Dwayne was removed from the care of his mother in 1968 and placed in a foster home where he resided until 1978 with no communication with his biological family. In 1980 he was reunited with his mother for the first time since removal. Six months later she passed way. At her funeral he met two of his brothers (Vietnam veterans) and two of his sisters that he had never met. Dwayne met his oldest sister for the first time in 2000.

Dwayne's mission is to build awareness of the complex issues and resultant turmoil of the issue of removal of Native children from their families, an issue which continues and which results in crisis not only for the individual but for communities at large. He lives in the Ring Thunder Community of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. He has four children and three grandchildren. His hobby is woodcarving.