Fraught with disaster, violence, and oppression, the relationship between the European colonizer and the aboriginal First Nations of North America was and still is a parade of injustices and outrages. Not the least of these outrages is what was done to Native children, who were routinely taken away from their parents and raised in residential schools or adopted into non-Native families, away from their cultures and traditions. It took society a long time to wake up and realize these were terrible ideas, summed up neatly by the story in which Lois Lane runs off with somebody's papoose.


Fair warning, this comic book is from 1971. It's filled with terminology that today is regarded as archaic, inaccurate, and in some cases borderline racist. I will venture to say Pretendian Lois Lane here decked out in buckskins and headband was probably raising some eyebrows even back then.


Nope, it's not what happens when a scammer from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar impersonates your departed Aunt Hattie and runs up a lot of bills in her name. Instead it involves dynamite and I'm gonna say Navajo? Yaqui? Maricopa? peoples.


Always breaking the hardest-hitting news, Lois Lane braves the squalor and poverty of the White People Ghetto of Metropolis to find the 'Mother Of The Year.' How dare you show up in your extremely ordinary outfit, says the other lady in her extremely ordinary outfit?


Oh man, Lois is getting mom-shamed. Mom-shamed HARD. Have a BABY already, you LOSER!!


Look Lois, either get back to work, or marry Clark Kent. Those are your only two options!


Science has proven that when that baby alarm clock inside every woman starts ringing, well, it's baby time. Get out of her way, this woman needs a baby!! Any old baby will do!


Pueblo! That's the tribe we saw there about to blow up the dam on the splash page. And if they're expected to perform for these sullen, cranky crackers, I don't blame them for cancelling!

Yeah, I can say 'cracker.' The term is traditional among my peoples, the ancient Waffle House band of the "Hee Haw" tribe.


This rain dance is cancelled by order of Johnny Lone Eagle, and all requests for refunds should be directed towards Rain Dance Gawker Tours, Incorporated.


Look out, it's a fistfight between construction workers and Pueblo ceremonial performers, all because Americans died in Vietnam, or something. Can't guys just get into fistfights without dragging a lot of historical baggage into it?


Her baby must learn to expect hurt from the white man! And also from neglectful mothers.


Using his super breath, Superman slaps the Pueblos with their own feathers and the construction workers with their own hard hats. I mean, fair's fair.


"oh, you want a story, Miss Lane? Here's a breaking news story, this season the Bills are playing like they're extinct!"


"The white man pollutes our rivers and streams, he burns down entire forests, he dumps garbage on the side of the road, and then hires some Italian guy to dress up like Tonto and guilt trip everybody about it!"


Now developers are going to dam up their river, like they've dammed up every other river in the Southwest so the Central Valley can grow more almonds, and it will take fifty years for them to realize this is a bad idea.


Everyone: Wow, this tribe is determined to go down in flames to protect their sacred land, even as members die fighting for the nation that oppresses them
Lois: Hey, there's a baby, look at that baby right there, you done with that baby, I can take that baby


So far the story has referenced scalping, rain dances, General Custer, and now smoke signals, covering nearly everything on their "Indian stereotype" checklist. Will they get around to "firewater"? Stay tuned!


"Me? Just lying here dying of a traumatic brain injury while the weight of a toddler makes breathing impossible, that's all. I'm fine."


Your choices today are to be beaten to death, to be blown to bits, or to fall hundreds of feet to the bottom of the canyon. Have fun!


But Superman arrives to save the day by the amazing feats of lifting an entire dam AND, faster than a speeding bullet, navigating the paperwork and red tape involved in the modification and relocation of a giant hydrological engineering project.


Thank goodness the millionaires can have their stupid fishing hole! Now maybe Superman can fly this dying woman to a hospital? No?


Okay Lois. You've been talking a lot of baby talk. Now it's time to walk the baby walk.


That baby belongs to Lois now, thanks to the "sacred dying words" clause in the state adoption laws!


Compared to the zany antics Lois usually gets up to, like being turned into a witch or a teenager, marrying Satan, going back in time, and going back in time to Krypton to kiss baby Superman, a little maternity leave must seem downright boring to the Daily Planet HR department.


1971 was right in the middle of campaigns in both the US and Canada that involved the authorities forcibly adopting Native children into white families, 20,000 in Canada alone, but Lurid Publisher Al Torm here only wants to focus on accusing Lois of some kind of moneymaking scheme involving babies. Obviously Al Torm has never had to buy a car seat, a Diaper Genie, or clothes they'll outgrow in ten minutes, or he'd know babies do not generate money. Quite the opposite, Al.


Lois and her unstoppable childrearing urges are now the center of protests both from Native American groups and maternal-minded feminists, and her only escape is speeding away to picnics!


Still driving a convertible, and not a minivan filled with lost pacifiers, stale Cheerios and used baby wipes? Maybe Lois isn't really that serious about motherhood.


For once it isn't Superman saving Lois from certain doom. And it isn't Aquaman either, wrong hair color. Who could this uniformed stranger be? My guess is it's Johnny Cloud, Navajo fighter ace from DC's "Our Army At War" comics and later "The Losers."


It's not Aquaman but Little Moon's father, who was mentioned prominently a few pages back! He spent months locked up in that POW camp forced to play Russian Roulette with Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken, but he escaped and now he's going to take Little Moon back to their people. Not that Little Moon really knows what's going on. I can see why Lois would want to hang onto this baby, who never cries, fusses, messes, or puts anything in his mouth he's not supposed to. Truly a miracle baby.


Lois wins Foster Mother Of The Year, just in time for some loudmouth heckler in the crowd to hassle her and her powerful maternal instincts. What kind of creep hollers at someone for being a foster mother? The next time *you* feel like shouting some racist invective, just remember that deep inside, all our internal organs and bodily fluids are, as Lois says, pretty much the same color. And that's the story of how Lois Lane stole a papoose. Now, let's check in on the letters pages and see what kind of response her adventures were getting back in the day.


Well, judging from this letters page, Lois Lane's comic was being read by a lot of guys who wanted Lois in miniskirts, and would also like a poster sized picture of backup feature The Thorn in her crime-fighting lingerie to decorate their "hooch" in Vietnam. Early 70s thirst trap, or crazed baby-snatcher? Lois Lane contains multitudes.

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