Court strikes blow to Native American tribal and parental rights
newsdepo.com
There’s a long, horrific history of government intrusion into Native American families, of breaking them up and sending children to non-native families and off-reservation boarding schools. These children endured abuse and forced assimilation. There’sCourt strikes blow to Native American tribal and parental rights
There’s a long, horrific history of government intrusion into Native American families, of breaking them up and sending children to non-native families and off-reservation boarding schools. These children endured abuse and forced assimilation. There’s no way to measure the damage inflicted by governments on individuals, communities, and cultures, in part because of inadequate records. Some children disappeared. Their bodies have yet to be found. Yet today’s children still lack meaningful protections against family separation. Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, in 1978, in recognition of how devastating, and wrong, these practices were. The object of the ICWA: keeping Native American families together. To that end, the act made it more difficult to separate Native American children from their families. It also, critically, expanded the authority of tribes, as well as Native parents, to block efforts to remove children, terminate parental rights, and make placements with non-Native families. But 40 years later, even before many of these protections were realized, a court has struck down the legislation altogether. The ICWA mandated that Native American children “shall be placed in the least restrictive setting which most approximates a family” and “within reasonable proximity to his or her home.” It also established a hierarchy of adoptive placement preferences for children: (i) a member of the Indian child’s extended family; (ii) a foster home licensed, approved, or specified by the Indian child’s tribe; (iii) an Indian foster home licensed or approved by an authorized non-Indian licensing authority; or (iv) an institution for children approved by an Indian tribe or operated by an Indian organization which has a program suitable to meet the Indian child’s needs. How effective was it? Only somewhat. Local and state governments are still violating the ICWA with impunity. Read more