Reznet

Lend Us Your Mom

By Jason Salter

The ABC television show "Wife Swap" is on the hunt for its next family, and this time they're looking for a Native American one.

Putting a Native American family on the show is "something that we've never done before," said Michelle Silva, a casting producer for RDF Media, the production company responsible for creating "Wife Swap."

"Wife Swap" is a reality television show that challenges two families with very different values to swap mothers for two weeks. The mother must live by her new family's rules for the first week, and in the second week she makes rules for her new family to follow.

"Wife Swap" is a hit for ABC and has been the network's most-watched show in its time period in the last four years, according to the program's Web site.
Silva said families belonging to other ethnic groups have taken part in the show but the right Native family hasn't been found yet.

"We don't cast for race," Silva said in a telephone interview from New York. "A good family is a good family."

Since the show is reality television, Silva said, producers ultimately look for families with strong philosophies and great personalities. For example, a family with a strong work philosophy carries that into the new family and maintains it with the new mother, she said.

Families interested in being part of the show should have two parents and at least one child between the ages of 6 and 18 living at home. The show only selects families from the continental United States.

Silva also said researchers for the show have asked whether the family should be traditional Native Americans. It doesn't matter, she said.

"We're not looking for a stereotypical perfect family," Silva said. "An interesting family with an interesting story can come from anywhere."

Jasa Santos, Salish, is studying journalism at the University of Montana in Missoula. She is a graduate of the Freedom Forum's 2005 American Indian Journalism Institute. Last summer Santos interned as a reporter at the Billings (Mont.) Gazette under the Freedom Forum's
Chips Quinn Scholars Program.

Jason wrote his first computer program in 6th grade, designed and built a computer before finishing high school, and then went to MIT to become... a molecular biologist. The move from computers to molecular biology makes sense when you think about DNA as "programming code" and recombinant DNA technology as the means to reprogram organisms.

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