Supreme Court will hear Indian Child Welfare Act Cases this Fall - What that means for Indian Countr

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

After a precedent-setting summer of rulings, this fall the U.S. Supreme Court will hear four cases that could overturn the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), and have bigger implications for tribal sovereignty and Native American communities.

In Brackeen v. Haaland, the plaintiffs include six foster parents, led by Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, who are non-Native, of Texas. They encountered complications when they sought to adopt Native children who had been in their care, because the ICWA prioritizes placing Native children who are up for adoption with Native families.

They state that the law is unconstitutional for a few reasons, including racial discrimination.

The Brackeens and another plaintiff’s adoptions succeeded, while a third child was placed with her grandmother, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. The Brackeens are also seeking to adopt the half-sister of the child who they have already adopted. The Navajo Nation supports placing the child with her Navajo maternal great-aunt, according to the Nation’s opposition brief.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-hear-indian-child-110010212.html

[madaboutharry]

1. Let us take a look.....

It seems very ok with a whole lot of people that a white Christian child only be placed with a white Christian family.

What am I missing here?

[Phoenix61]

2. Funny how that works, ain't it?

I had a friend in high-school who was full Native American and was adopted by a nice white Christian family. It didn’t go well. Granted that was many years ago but her family flatly ignored her dark skin. I have no idea what they were thinking. She met her bio mom at some point but she didn’t know the language, culture etc. so she didn’t fit their either.

[GusBob]

5. Its complicated and nuanced

I live and work on a Rez, going on 5 years now. I have seen this from all angles and could write a novels about it. Sometimes it works out best either way, sometimes not.

My current co-workers for instance both with complicated and difficult family relationships
One was raised by a non-native woman whom she credits for saving her life
The other a mother, a sister, a grandmother, and an auntie, whose extended family is just a living/walking train wreck. The minor kids are in and out of her household while the various abuses, co-dependency and legal issues consume all of their lives.

The tribe had a tremendous opportunity during COVID to get meth off the Rez during the lockdowns, but unfortunately COVID made all the abusive situations worse with folks being homebound and lockdowned. And the kids caught in the middle with schools being closed ( for quite a few native children school is a safe place from home life).

I am conflicted on this one, its difficult to say the least

[cbabe]

3. Entry point to destroy all native rights ie massive land grab

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/why-is-the-right-suddenly-interested-in-native-american-adoption-law

…

In the new season of the This Land podcast premiering this Monday, Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle shows how corporate lawyers and rightwing thinktanks like the Cato Institute have teamed up with non-Native families to not only dismantle the ICWA but the entire legal structure protecting Native rights. And so far, they’ve made small but important victories.

…

According to this upside-down logic, ICWA – monumental legislation consciously designed to undo genocidal, racist policy – is racist because it prevents mostly non-Indians from adopting Native children. The thinking is as old as the “civilizing” mission of colonialism – saving brown children from brown parents.

…

why are corporate law firms like Gibson Dunn – which has represented Walmart, Amazon, Chevron and Shell and is a former employer of the far-right Arkansas senator Tom Cotton – showing up at custody battles to square off with poor Native families and tribes? Are they really interested in the welfare of Native children?

It’s foolish to think Custer had the best interests of Native children in mind when he captured them at gunpoint to slaughter and imprison their parents or that the Indian boarding school system, which disappeared thousands of children and raped, tortured, and traumatized countless more, was about “education”.

Powerful conservative forces want to bring Brackeen v Haaland to the supreme court not just to overturn the ICWA but to gut Native tribes’ federal protections and rights. Like their counterparts the anti-critical race crusaders, anti-ICWA advocates use the language of “equality” to target Native nations. The collective tyranny of the tribe, the thinking goes, violates the rights of the individual.

It’s the libertarian spin on the genocidal logic of Richard Henry Pratt’s nineteenth century maxim to justify child removal: “Kill the Indian, save the man.” The “Indian” is the tribal consciousness; the collective rights of a nation and its sovereignty must be weakened or destroyed to gain access to its lands and resources.

Without the tribe, there is no Indian. When there is no Indian, there’s no one to claim the land.

White congressmen from western states used the same reasoning to terminate tribes in the 1950s, making the argument that the collective rights of tribes shouldn’t trump individual rights of US citizens. The results were catastrophic. The legal abolition of dozens of tribes led to the privatization of their lands for the benefit of white settlers and businesses.

…more…

[Celerity]

7. +10000000000000000

[ripcord]

4. There have been problems with the Tribe's placement

There have been some cases recently where the children were returned to families known to be abusive and were killed.

[Bayard]

6. I doubt the child's best interests are at stake much of the time

From the article:

A main force in the effort to overturn ICWA is the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based policy and litigation group that is anti-regulation, pro-gun, and opposed to “critical race theory.” Nagle says in the podcast that it has “led the charge” to void the law. The Goldwater Institute says ICWA endangers Native children and violates the rights of Native parents.

According to “This Land,” the Goldwater Institute received funding from the Bradley Foundation, one of the nation’s largest funders of far-right causes, to create a state-based alliance that would coordinate lawsuits to advance a conservative agenda. The institute used those funds in its efforts to work against ICWA.

Kastelic said that opponents of the ICWA have a larger political agenda about states’ rights and undermining tribal sovereignty.

“It’s not so hard to connect the dots here,” she said.

[Solly Mack]

8. K&R