What We Have Learned and How We Can Do Better
Opening speech for the ISS Canada Conference, 18 September 2026
For intercountry adoptees, searching for origins is about much more than locating biological family. It can be a lifelong search for identity, truth, culture, belonging and connection. Yet many adoptees still face barriers accessing their own records, navigating search systems across countries, affording DNA or professional assistance, and finding appropriate support before and after reunion.
Drawing on my own lifelong search and almost three decades of work through ICAV, this talk explores what adoptees have taught us about searching for origins – including those of us who may never find biological family. It asks governments, adoption organisations and professionals to broaden how we define a successful search: not simply whether biological family is found, but whether adoptees are supported to access their history, exercise choice and agency, reconnect with culture and community, and ultimately better understand who we are.
Good morning everyone.
Thank you Sylvie and ISS Canada for inviting me to open this important conversation.
My name is Lynelle Long. I was born in Vietnam and adopted to Australia as a baby, and I am the founder of InterCountry Adoptee Voices, or ICAV. For almost three decades, ICAV has connected intercountry adoptees around the world through peer support, resources and advocacy.
Search for origins is a significant part of that work. It is also deeply personal to me. I have spent most of my adult life searching for who I am. My adoption was privately arranged in an era when there was little understanding of what we now recognise about the lifelong importance of identity, origins, culture and family connections. I grew up with very little information about where I came from. So for me, the questions became much bigger than Who are my parents? They became: Who am I? Who do I look like? Where do I belong? And is the story I have been given actually true?
For many intercountry adoptees, these ordinary pieces of identity are missing. That is why I think we need to broaden what we mean by search for origins.
It is not simply about finding another person. It is about understanding ourselves.
Through ICAV, I have heard hundreds of adoptees speak about search and reunion. There is no single experience. Some desperately want to search. Some do not. Some find wonderful relationships. Others find complicated realities. And some never find anyone.
I am one of those adoptees. I have searched for records, taken four DNA tests and used Vietnamese adoptee networks to try to find information about myself. So far, none of those pathways has led me to biological family. Now, in my mid-50s, I accept that I may never know my biological origins and I am at peace with that because I eventually learned something important: Finding biological family is one way of discovering who we are but it is not the only way.
My own search became broader. I returned to Vietnam numerous times and travelled throughout Asia. At home in Australia, I found ways to connect with my Asian identity. I play badminton with a largely Asian community, I married into a Chinese Australian family, and I connect with Asian culture, community and the wider diaspora. None of this can tell me who my biological mother is but collectively, it has helped me understand who I am.
So when we design search services, we need to support identity, culture and belonging even when biological family cannot be found. Finding kin should not be the only benchmark of success.
There are also barriers that governments and organisations can directly change. One of the biggest is access to our records. Around the world, adoptees still face lengthy waits and roadblocks accessing adoption, family history and immigration files held by governments, agencies and archives. Sometimes we do not even know who holds them. For an adoptee, our file is not simply an old administrative record. It contains our life. It may contain the only information we have about our mother, our birth, our original name or the circumstances of our separation. Making adoptees wait months or years for that information is not just administrative inconvenience. It is a barrier to identity. Governments and organisations can change this by preserving and digitising records, providing clear access pathways, reasonable processing times, translation support and better cooperation between birth and receiving countries. Adoptees should not have to become international detectives to understand our own histories.
At ICAV, one of the most important things we provide is connection. Peer networks help adoptees navigate the practical process of searching, but they also provide spaces where we can explore what it means not to know and support cannot stop when someone is found. Reunion can be wonderful, but it can also bring grief, language and cultural differences, expectations and sometimes rejection. You can search your whole life for your mother and finally find her, only to discover you cannot speak to each other without an interpreter.
So we often say:
Reunion is not the end of searching. It is often the beginning of another journey.
Technology has also created enormous opportunities. DNA, digital archives and social media have transformed searching but technology alone cannot provide emotional preparation, cultural connection or belonging. We need to combine it with ethical, culturally informed and adoptee-informed support.
Searching itself also needs safeguarding. This is why ICAV worked with CHIP to develop a Briefing Note on Safeguarding Searching, and why Elena Serrato & Dr Susan Branco developed the Search Investigator Code of Ethics, promoting consent, privacy, transparency and adoptee control over the process.
So what needs to change? Treat search for origins as part of the lifelong responsibility of intercountry adoption. Make records genuinely accessible. Address the financial inequality that means adoptees can spend thousands trying to discover basic information about themselves. Support cultural reconnection, homeland visits, language, peer networks and diaspora connection and design these services with adoptees.
I also want to gently raise something for organisations like ISS that have a long history in intercountry adoption. For adoptees, institutional history matters. If organisations historically involved in supporting intercountry adoption now provide search services, there can be an understandable question: Can I trust the same system that was part of my adoption to now help me uncover my origins?
That does not mean those organisations have no role but trust cannot simply be assumed. It needs to be built. I think there is an opportunity for the ISS network, and others, to reflect openly on their histories and consider whether acknowledgement and where appropriate, apology might help build a more trusted relationship with adoptees and original families. That is not about blaming the people doing this work today. It is about learning from the past and building something better and that is what gives me hope.
When I began searching decades ago, there were few adoptee networks and little recognition of our lifelong needs. Today we have DNA technology, global adoptee communities, adoptee-led organisations and much greater understanding. We cannot change the circumstances in which many of our adoptions occurred but we can change what happens next.
My own search has not given me the biological answers I spent much of my adult life looking for. It may never do so but through Vietnam, Asia, adoptee communities and the wider diaspora, I have built a sense of identity that does not depend entirely upon finding someone biologically related to me. I know who I am today.
So yes, search for origins should help adoptees find biological family wherever possible but it should also help us access our history, reconnect with culture and community, explore belonging and ultimately understand ourselves, even when the person we are searching for can never be found. For me, that is a better measure of success.
Thank you for listening and I wish you all a wonderful day together discussing this deeply important topic.
Resources
ICAVs global resources on Search / Reunion, including webinars and perspective papers
Adoption knowledge: a citizen-scientific use of FamilySearch to understand Peruvian adoption
Giving voice to young adopted women of Chinese origin: searching for origins and identity