Future of Native sovereignty and children at stake
By Laural Ballew (Ses Yehomia/tsi kuts bat soot) / For The Herald
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is regarded by experts in the field as the “gold standard” in child welfare best practice, creating much-needed reform on practices that routinely separated Native children from their families in the past. And it is still critically important today given the continued overrepresentation of Native children in the child welfare system caused by systemic and intergenerational trauma and neglect, as well as structural bias.
But ICWA faces a new, pressing challenge as the U.S. Supreme Court recently heard from opponents who argue that the law is racist and unconstitutional because it creates a different set of rules for Native children. This is an intentional misunderstanding of tribal sovereignty, and an attempt to use ICWA as a backdoor to ultimately undermine the rights of tribes in areas like land rights, natural resources and gaming.
When a Native child is put up for adoption, ICWA prioritizes placing that child first with relatives, then other members of the child’s tribe, and then other Native families. These placement preferences, the non-Native foster parents claim in Haaland v. Brackeen, give them “fourth-tier status.” Citing the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the plaintiffs claim that ICWA violates their constitutional rights by discriminating against them due to their racial group.
Precedents supporting the ICWA date back to the early days of our republic. The ICWA draws classifications based on connections to tribal groups, not on race, and under the Constitution, those tribal groups are separate sovereign nations. Today, tribal groups have their own police forces, courts, elections, governments and lands. What racial group can say they have the same thing in the United States?
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-future-of-native-sovereignty-and-children-at-stake/
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