How the Government Keeps 'Indian' Children From Loving Homes
The broken foster system for Native American kids is finally up for Supreme Court scrutiny.
The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would hear a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 44-year-old federal law governing child welfare, foster care, and adoption for children who qualify as "Indian." The case—which resulted in more than 300 pages of conflicting opinions in the lower court—began when a Native couple in Texas was unable to care for their child and agreed to have him adopted by a white family named the Brackeens. That triggered a legal showdown involving controversial aspects of the law: the ICWA treats "Indian children" differently than black, Asian, Hispanic, and other minority children, and it flouts longstanding principles of federalism by commanding state officials to enforce federal mandates.
To understand these controversies, consider the rules governing the termination of parental rights. Under the laws of every state, child welfare officers can sever an abusive parent's rights if there's "clear and convincing" evidence that the child is at risk. But the ICWA says that in cases involving "Indian children," state officers must instead prove that risk "beyond a reasonable doubt" with the testimony of expert witnesses. That's a stricter standard than applies even in criminal law, where expert witnesses aren't required. By demanding more evidence of harm, the ICWA effectively requires that "Indian children" be more abused than kids of other races before officials can rescue them. And because termination of rights is usually necessary before a child can be adopted, this higher standard means it's easier to put someone on death row than to find an adoptive home for an "Indian child."
That phrase is in quotation marks because the ICWA defines "Indian child" not only as children who are tribal members but also as children who are eligible for membership and whose biological parent is a member. That means a child with no cultural connection to a tribe can still be deemed "Indian" based exclusively on her biological ancestry—whereas a child who is fully acculturated to a tribe might not be, solely due to the blood in her veins.
In Morton v. Mancari (1974), the Supreme Court said laws treating tribal members differently from non-members don't violate constitutional rules against race-based legislation, because tribal membership is a political, not racial, category. But the ICWA applies based on ancestry, not membership; it even applies to kids who never become tribal members. That means it's a racial, not political, distinction.
Also, the ICWA does not apply on reservations—it only governs states. And it does so in perverse ways. Consider, for example, its "active efforts" rule. Every state's laws provide that if the government takes a child from a dangerous home, it must make "reasonable efforts" to assist the family and return the child. That means providing the parents with social services to help them improve their situation. But this is not required in cases involving "aggravated circumstances," such as sexual molestation—which makes sense: it would be wrong to send kids back to situations where officials know they will only be harmed again.
Yet the ICWA requires just that. It requires "active efforts," not "reasonable" efforts, and this is not excused by "aggravated circumstances." This means "Indian children" must be returned, time and again, to homes child protection officers know are abusive. The results have often proved fatal.
In 2014, for example, a newborn named Antonio Renova was taken from his abusive parents and placed in foster care with a family that gave him a safe and loving home for four years. Had he been from Japan or Kenya, they could have adopted him. But Antony was of Crow heritage, so his case was governed by the ICWA. When his foster parents sought to adopt him, a tribal court ordered him returned to his birth parents instead; months later, they beat him to death.
Oklahoma officials knew that 5-year-old Declan Stewart was being abused by his mother's boyfriend. If he had been Australian or Mexican, they could have rescued him—but because he was Cherokee, the ICWA's "active efforts" requirement forced them to return him to the home, where in 2007 he was raped and murdered.
Even where the outcomes of the ICWA's rules are less extreme, it inflicts horrendous harm on children. In the headline-grabbing "Lexi" case, a 6-year-old California girl, whose last full-blooded Choctaw ancestor was her great-great-great-great-grandfather, wept as she was snatched from the arms of the foster family who had cared for her for four years. She was sent to live with non-relatives in Utah—a fate that would have been illegal, had she been white.
In 2016, a tribal court near Phoenix ordered that a 5-year-old Ohio boy be taken from the foster family with whom he had lived for nearly his whole life and sent to live with strangers on the reservation instead—despite the fact that he had never even been to Arizona. Fortunately, a state court blocked that outcome. But in a separate case now pending before the Alaska Supreme Court, a tribal court ordered another 5-year-old boy to be taken from the foster family he lived with for four years and sent to New Mexico instead—even though the child is from a different tribe than the one that issued the order. His blood relatives in Alaska haven't heard from him since.
Seizing a child from the only family he has ever known inflicts shocking psychological damage, but regulations recently adopted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs forbid judges from considering such trauma when presiding over an "Indian child's" future.
Obviously, state child services systems also have many problems, and for the state to intervene in family relationships—particularly to take kids away from parents—is an extreme step, one that should be reserved for truly drastic situations. Indeed, the ICWA was supposedly adopted to redress the injuries that had been inflicted on Native families by overzealous state agencies that targeted Native parents out of a program of forced assimilation with white society. But the ICWA fails to resolve that problem: rather than improving care for at-risk kids, it worsens it by denying Native children the legal guarantees against abuse that kids of other races enjoy. Rather than ensuring that "Indian children" don't need foster care or adoption, it simply makes it harder for kids to obtain these protections when needed.
In fact, by applying the "active efforts" rule in intra-family disputes, the ICWA even deprives Native parents of the right to protect their own children from harm. In a 2016 Washington case, for example, a tribal mother sought to terminate the rights of her abusive ex-husband, a non-Native violent criminal, so that her new husband, a tribal member, could adopt her son. But the court ruled that she was nevertheless required to satisfy the "reasonable doubt" rule. In other words, the ICWA did not prevent the breakup of this Native family; it prevented the formation of this Native family for the benefit of an unfit, non-Native father. In a 2017 Arizona case, a tribal father sought to terminate the rights of his ex-wife due to her alcoholism and neglect, but state courts ruled that he was required to make "active efforts" to reunite her with the children. In other words, federal law forced him to put his children in the care of the person he considered incapable.
Regarding constitutionality, the Supreme Court has made it clear that while Congress can override state laws, it cannot compel states to implement federal laws. The ICWA, however, does just that—in fact, it's the only federal law that is enforced only by state officials. That's why a federal court struck down portions of the ICWA in the Brackeens' case last spring.
The Supreme Court has also held that the government may not deprive parents of their fundamental right to make choices about their children's safety. Yet, the ICWA lets tribal bureaucrats override the decisions of Native parents. In the Brackeen case, for instance, the biological parents agreed to have their child adopted by the Brackeens, who have been caring for the child for nearly his whole life. But the ICWA allowed tribal officials to veto the parents' decision and order the child sent to live with strangers on the Navajo reservation instead—a fate narrowly averted when a state court intervened. (Children such as "Lexi" have not been so lucky.)
What's more, the ICWA imposes racial limits on foster care and adoption, requiring that "Indian children" be placed with "Indian" adults—regardless of their tribe—instead of adults of other ethnicities. That means a Navajo child must be placed with a Cherokee or Seminole family instead of a white or black family, despite the immense cultural differences between these tribes. Simply put, the ICWA is based on the concept of "generic Indianness"—a racial classification imposed on indigenous Americans by white settlers centuries ago.
Perhaps the ICWA's most shocking feature is that it overrides the longstanding "best interests of the child" rule. That rule requires judges to evaluate each child's specific needs in his or her unique circumstances. But the ICWA imposes a one-size-fits-all presumption that every "Indian child" belongs with other "Indians." Texas and California courts have even concluded that there are two different "best interest" rules: one for white, black, Asian, or Hispanic kids, which prioritizes their individual needs—and a separate but equal one for "Indian" kids, which views their individual needs as less important than the desires of tribal governments.
The history of state and federal treatment of Native Americans is dismal, sometimes horrifying, and there's no doubt that the ICWA was passed with the good intention of preventing abusive practices such as forced assimilation. But by depriving children of the legal protections they need, based exclusively on their biological ancestry, the ICWA actually stands as the most recent example of policies Congress claims will "help the Indian," but really only make things worse. Native American kids are the most at-risk demographic group in the United States; they are more likely to suffer from abuse, neglect, alcoholism, drug abuse, gang membership, and suicide than any other demographic. The ICWA presents a major obstacle to efforts to protect them. It's time the Supreme Court vindicated their right to equal treatment.
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Under the laws of every state, child welfare officers can sever an abusive parent’s rights if there’s “clear and convincing” evidence that the child is at risk. But the ICWA says that in cases involving “Indian children,” state officers must instead prove that risk “beyond a reasonable doubt” with the testimony of expert witnesses. That’s a stricter standard than applies even in criminal law, where expert witnesses aren’t required.
Are you retarded?
You’re complaining that it takes MORE evidence before the State can steal someone’s children.
Right now, White and Black and Asian, and Hispanic kids can be whisked off if some woke asshole gets their nose out of joint, but a ‘native’ American kid can’t be snatched without some proof.
This is a libertarian site?
To answer your last question, no.
Reasonable doubt has always been the hurdle needed to be met. The tribes shouldn’t get special treatment, as they are now American Citizens. They fought for years to be recognized as American Citizens and now that they’ve accomplished it, I believe in 1973, they want special treatment? Kids are dying, I can attest to that from my own experience, working and living on reservations. And for every one kid who dies, another ten are being subjected to rampant sexual, physical and emotional abuse and rampant neglect because of the special rules. This benefits no one. It does tie many of them into a spiral of drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity and rampant STDs on the reservation, single parent households, low education outcomes, joblessness, generational welfare and subjecting their kids to the same abuse and neglect that they experienced.
The tribal courts are corrupt and not trying to help the kids, but trying to whitewash the tribal image to outsiders, the tribal councils are so corrupt that they make Chicago look like a church choir, and generally they are ran by a few powerful families that run them like organized crime, and run off any council members who try to reform anything, sometimes using force to achieve it. The local and state law enforcement is often hindered from prosecution because of tribal treaties and agreements, and even when they do succeed in getting an arrest and conviction, the tribe often retaliates by revoking cross deputation agreements. Tribal police are hampered by the courts and council, and often are tacitly forbidden from going after the worst criminals, because they are related to someone on the council.
One case that happened a week after we moved to this town says it all. The guy was a well known pedophile who had been arrested multiple times, caught red handed, but never convicted. The tribal police were warned not to arrest him any longer because his uncle was on the council. Nothing was done until he kidnapped a three year old boy and raped him, murdered him and dumped his body in a gym bag behind a popular store. Because it was a homicide, the feds finally stepped in (the federal government is in charge of felony cases on the reservation but rarely have the time, resources or political will to pursue cases). As it was, they allowed the perpetrator to plea out to a manslaughter charge, with most of his sentence suspended. He’s back on the reservation five years later. And because the family of the kid has threatened retribution, the tribal police now have to protect him.
So, there is nothing libertarian about these special rules, unless you think libertarianism requires special rules for certain classes, and rules so restrictive that they allow criminals caught red handed to continue to commit their crimes without hindrance.
Pissed me off too. The state should always be held to the highest standards when it comes to meddling with lives.
However … there’s always a however … reading the rest of TFA makes me think it’s more poor wording than statist thinking. The ICWA has many many real problems, all exacerbated by the stricter proof required to bypass its stupidity. I think that sentence could be better worded:
That’s because Sandefur isn’t writing about cases of sex-confused children and the parents who make them that way.
So we’re just going to ignore the abuses against Indian people and the sovereignty treaties in order to reframe the demands of Indian activists as somehow a problem caused by racism today? Fuck that noise.
Maybe it’s just the one sided framing as if Indian families weren’t torn apart for no reason at govt say so, hence the heightened scrutiny. Or maybe it’s the dismissal of sovereignty whenever it suits the activist. At least the US Army was honest and forthright in their genocide.
The article already addressed your complaint. The rule does not apply to members of the tribe, it applies based on ancestors. It means a tribe neither you or your kids are a part of has more say over what happens to your kid than you do.
I grew up on a reservation and have kept close ties to the Amerindians community throughout my adult life. Abuse, alcoholism, neglect, pedophilia is rampant on the reservation. I have stories that will make your stomach churn. The number of women and children who go missing, often found dead years later, is appalling. The media would have you believe that it’s white perpetrators doing it, but in fact the majority are Native men. Growing up it was not at all unusual for over half of my Native classmates, as young as elementary kids, to not know who was going to be available to take care of them that night, where they were going to sleep and if they even where going to get to eat. They would wander from house to house knocking on doors in tribal housing begging for a place to stay until someone agreed to let them stay. If they were lucky it was a good Samaritan. To many times it wasn’t. Too often it was predators who agreed in exchange for sexual favors. The kids took it as just how it was. My mother worked for the school and she told stories about trying to contact parents for school matters, and the kids having no idea where Mom was, and many not even certain who their father was. It was nothing for a kid to say “I haven’t seen my mom in four days, she went out drinking Friday, she’ll show up sooner or later, when her money runs out”.
A close friend of the family is a social worker, worked for the tribe for years. She is 3/4 Amerindian, much more than most tribal members. She left the reservation and had vowed never to go back. She is proud of her heritage but was frustrated by a corrupt tribal court that didn’t punish anyone and refused to think of what was best for the kids. She took kids out of houses that were full of drug paraphernalia, dirty diapers and garbage scattered throughout, parents who were missing or traded their kids as sexual objects for drugs. All of it well documented. The tribal courts would order mandated drug rehab and parenting classes, and then send the kids back, rather or not the parents followed through. My other friend is a drug and alcohol abuse counselor for the same tribe. They often worked together. The parents showed up less than 50% of the time, but were never punished. My first friend finally chose to leave the reservation because her and her kids lives were threatened when she took the wrong families kids were away, and tribal cops refused to protect her and the county sheriff couldn’t do anything because the tribe had revoked it’s cross deputation agreement after the sheriff’s office arrested someone from one of the powerful families. Caught him red handed, but it didn’t matter.
My second friend has ran for tribal council multiple times, but her family is currently not in favor among the tribe, because they want to cut per died checks from the casino to invest it into tribal projects like schools, medical center satellites, elderly care etc. Things that the tribe promised the money from the casino was going to be spent on. And for many years, the tribal council was dominated by younger people who had left the reservation to get education and returned hoping to reform the corruption. They built first rate medical clinic in the largest town, bought office space to relocate tribal government to a more centralized location, invested in tribal transportation to get elderly and impoverished the medical and social care they needed but couldn’t get to on their own. But the same corrupt council members eventually won back by promising to increase per diem checks.
Luckily, the agreement that built the casino specified a certain percentage of the profits had to be spent on tribal welfare and health projects, so the programs that were initiated continued to have support, but other planned projects were thwarted. The tribal shuttle now spends over half it’s mileage transporting people to the casino, some to work, but even more to gamble. It also transports non-tribal customers from two neighboring cities. Getting scheduled for elderly and other groups, transportation to medical and other appointments, the whole purpose of the shuttle, is growing increasingly more difficult as the shuttle is instead being used to transport customers to the casino.
It would be one thing if the per diem checks were actually helping members, but most spend the money within a week of getting it and are right back on tribal and state and federal welfare programs. They’re eating government cheese, but driving brand new escalades, wearing $300 sneakers. And it isn’t just the tribe I grew up with. The two tribes that have a reservation that encompasses most of my county has similar, but even worse problems. My best friend is 1/4 Sioux, his mom was registered on the reservation. He isn’t, and doesn’t claim it. He instead claims his father’s Norwegian and Danish heritage. He worked for the NRCS at the tribal office for decades, only took the job so he could transfer back home to help his father on his ranch, which is off the reservation. Another former co-worker taught for thirty years middle school English at a school on the reservation. Their stories make the stuff I grew up with pale in comparison. And whenever anyone tries to reform it, the tribes yell tribal sovereignty, whites stole our kids back in the day, whites forced sterilizations on us, etc. And so it never gets fixed, and most give up even trying.
My mom taught on the Navajo reservation and has very similar stories. Most parents have no interest at all in the education of their children. Having never been off the reservation, some of these kids have never seen a real tree or a body of water. They can’t discriminate between science and superstition. Nothing they see on TV can be associated with their reality.
And if you do leave the reservation, sometimes even for another reservation, you are labeled an apple and usually ostracized from all family and friends you grew up with.
My SIL worked as a family nurse practitioner on an Indian reservation in WA, as part of a HHS program. They financed her education, and she worked in an “underserved” community. The stories she would tell about child abuse were horrific. After a couple of years, she opted to quit and go work in a public health clinic in the hood because it was so awful, and she was powerless to do anything about it.
Until you said “Sioux” this could have been New Mexico.
I grew up on the Coeur d’Alene reservation in north Idaho, a beautiful spot where the Palouse meets the foothills of the Bitterroot range of the Rockies. I now live in Northeast Montana about four miles from the Ft Peck Sioux-Assiniboine Reservation. The names change but the stories don’t.
Just in case anyone is wondering, this is what anti-racism looks like in practice.
Skin color is the most important thing.
RTFA. Ancient tribal affiliation is what matters, NOT skin color.
Ancient tribal affiliation, don’t make me fucking laugh souyuppie (not sure of the spelling but quite aware of the insult, it means ignorant white person in Nez Perce and it’s what the Nez Perce and other inland northwest tribes call whites that buy into the whole tribal traditions mythology). They only claim that tribal traditions as a smoke screen for whites who they label useful idiots. They could care less, most of them, for their tribal heritage and traditions they only pretend to care when it benefits them. Hell, most of them couldn’t tell you the difference between a Coeur d’Alene and a Blackfoot except to tell you they were enemies. Most of the younger people especially, adopt the inner city black culture and laugh at the elders who try to teach them their tribal heritage. They also use it as an excuse for not obeying the law. See my post about kids not knowing where they were going to sleep or eat after school. They praise this for white anthropologists as an example of tribal culture of kids belonging to the village, instead of what it really is, a sign of the rampant abuse, neglect, drug and alcohol abuse and lack of stable families. And the knowingly do this. If you are affiliated with the tribe, grew up with them, worked with them, they will straight out tell you it’s all for show and they laugh at the anthropologists and whites who buy it and believe it.
Ancient tribal affiliation is what matters, NOT skin color.
Oh, right, good. Tribal Nationalism, I’ve not heard a civil libertarian around these parts tackle either one of those issues without sounding utterly stupid in the last… what time is it now?
But the ICWA applies based on ancestry, not membership; it even applies to kids who never become tribal members. That means it’s a racial, not political, distinction.
That’s bullshit. I’m an American, my parents are American, I inherited that from them. It’s entirely a political distinction because I could renounce that, even if I can’t regard any racial traits I inherited. The fact that it’s passed down doesn’t mean it’s not a political distinction.
There’s a reason we may be classifying these children differently-there are technically sovereignties that exists in the US within our borders. We’ve written rules that allow for them to have some of the benefits of US citizenship, such as access to CPS, but they need to reach stronger thresholds because there’s a different state interest involved. This isn’t racism, it’s a unique political situation born out of complicated circumstances.
Perhaps the ICWA’s most shocking feature is that it overrides the longstanding “best interests of the child” rule.
Fuck that shit! That rule is the reason family court is a cesspool. Judges have almost unlimited authority to make arbitrary decisions based on their own preferences because they have “the best interests” of the child, up to and including barring children from seeing their unvaccinated parents. Judges have been able to exclude visiting privileges based on disliking the politics of parents because they think it’s best interest that the child is brought up “right.” Indian tribes should be extremely grateful they don’t have that kind of capricious rule governing how they can interact with their children.
Read all of my posts above, and see if you feel the same way. Indians have been American citizens since 1973. Special rules are bullshit and doesn’t protect them but makes things far worse. The fact is these special rules costs everyone because we end up paying for the outcome, and the ones who pay the most are the kids. Rape, neglect and all forms of abuse are rampant on the reservation because of rules like this.
You think the inner city ghettos are bad, spend some time on the rez. Not only do they have all the problems of the ghetto, but because of being sovereign, they are untouchable except by the feds, who refuse to step in until someone commits such a terrible crime that it makes the media or a white commits a crime against a tribal member.
When I was a kid, a tribal council member was driving drunk, three times the limit, in an unregistered truck, he had no license, was a paraplegic but his vehicle wasn’t modified for paraplegic, he had to use two sticks to operate the pedals, it was a standard, and I am not sure how he managed to shift and steer at the same time. He killed a white family, who weren’t even from the reservation. Plowed into their mini-van at 30 miles over the speed limit, killing the mom, three kids the oldest five, and the youngest 6 months. Because he was tribal he got a suspended sentence of one count of vehicular manslaughter, and is still on the council 40 years later. And still driving.
the ones who pay the most are the kids. Rape, neglect and all forms of abuse are rampant on the reservation
When you rape your own family members, it is called incest.
It’s not just family members, some trade their kids for drugs. Other times the kids aren’t even sure where their parents are and end up trading sex for a place to stay, and I mean young kids in elementary school.
I don’t doubt that there’s a lot of shitty outcomes. What I do have a problem are the claims in the article that our entire process is racist, when it’s ignoring a whole historical framework that has created the situation.
Ultimately, many would see a qualify of life increase if we abolished all the reservations and forced the entire Native American population to assimilate. But that’s not exactly a liberty interest-if they want their shitty lifestyles that create tons of substance abuse and poor health outcomes, it’s none of my business. They deserve to have their own cultural space to do what they want to do. We just need to stop subsidizing it because giving people money with no strings attached creates its own type of problems.
It’s none of your business until you stop and think that almost all of their programs are federally funded, that many tribes are receiving treaty payments, until you realize that the entire treaty system is a giant con. That most of the original treaties expired at the end of the 20th century, but the some tribes declared “war” on the US government and so all the treaties were reinstated. The entire system is built on the fact that the tribal leadership knows they can play the oppressed people’s card and get away with anything they want and you should look at the amount of federal funds that get sunk into reservations, beyond just the Treaty obligations. They get first shot at almost every federal grant and they know how to game the system.
Also, it doesn’t impact you? Try high gas and oil prices. Keystone? Dakota Pipeline and Standing Rock? The tribes both had agreed to a contract, had signed it even, to have the pipelines cross their land. Then they reneged and started demanding more money. They threw out the contract, and could get away with it because they were sovereign people. So the pipeline companies decided to reroute the pipelines around the reservations. The tribes began to protest the pipelines, supposedly over “mother earth” got a bunch of climate change and greenies to protest as well, and the whole thing was about them losing the contracts because they got greedy and decided not to honor their original contracts.
The giant billboards on I-40 are kind of a giveaway that it’s an issue.
By demanding more evidence of harm, the ICWA effectively requires that “Indian children” be more abused than kids of other races before officials can rescue them.
By the way, this was a Social Justice initiative. Just so you know what you’re criticizing.
The only way to fix social justice is with more social justice.
There are a thousand ways to look at all of this, but essentially what was going on with the native populations was the idea that they’d get more due process, and more stringent process to remove children from the home– for the explicit purpose of keeping native children within native communities.
You could look at this another way: It’s easy to remove black children from their parents, it requires much less due process and a much lower standard. Basically, some hack from CPS merely needs to make an allegation and *wham* children removed from the home. Which policy is the racist one?
The former, because blacks kids and white kids and Asian kids and Hispanic kids get removed under the same rules.
See above. After being given the full deuce of Reason’s ideology about Tribalism and Nationalism, I feel pretty confident in ‘nope’ing out of any article with the word ‘Indian’ in the title.
Many of us who grew up on the rez or adjacent of them are well aware of the whole bullshit my heritage argument, but whenever we speak about our experiences, we get labeled racist. We teach our kids not to date tribal members, not because of racism, but because of the shit show that tribal laws, tribal courts and tribal councils are. I wish I didn’t have to teach my kids that. I am proud to have grown up on the reservation. I am proud to have numerous native friends that I’ve kept in touch with my whole life. But it isn’t getting any better, in fact it’s getting worse. The rez was a shit show when I was growing up, but it is even more of one now. And the tribe I grew up with is better than most. But I won’t live on a reservation ever again. It’s four miles to the reservation from my door step, but we only travel there for business. Luckily, for the most part, most of their crime is directed against other tribal members and whites who have chosen to associate with the tribe, they leave everyone else alone for the most part, even those who live on the reservation, other than petty harassment, such as cutting and destroying fences and driving across private fields and pastures, and some petty theft. But then again most whites avoid the towns on the reservation, especially the parts owned by the tribe, after dark.
Another personal experience I have, my wife’s good friend, who is white, has three kids by a registered tribal member. When they divorced he signed over custody, wants basically nothing to do with them, and only claims them for tribal registration and benefits purposes. She has been in court every year since they divorced fighting to keep her kids, because his family has decided to sue her every year to get custody. She actively works to prove she is raising her kids to be cognitive of their tribal heritage, she travels once a week to tribal parents meetings, where she is the only white person and endures rampant racism, she has them enrolled in a school on the reservation, despite us having a better school, just four blocks from where she lives, she travels daily to take them to school and take them to after school programs put on by the tribe. It isn’t enough, she gets accused of trying to make them white if she at all teaches them about her family and heritage. She works multiple jobs, a lot of times just to pay her legal bills. It’s a constant battle. She herself was adopted out of an abusive and negligent family and is trying her hardest to make sure her kids don’t end up in another (she filed for divorce because her husband and his family abused her). State custody laws don’t apply because the kids are registered members of the tribe. It doesn’t matter that she has documentation of the abuse she suffered at the families hands. It’s a constant battle for her and her family.
Another friend of mine, who grew up on the reservation, and is married to a tribal member, is currently fighting the tribe to get custody of his grandkids. His daughter is in prison for drug possession, she was caught with her boyfriends stash. He was charged with nothing, she had the book thrown at her, because she wasn’t in good standing with the tribe while he was related to a council member. They’ve been fighting for three years to get custody away from him and his family, and have documentation of abuse and neglect.
It’s so bad that parents on the reservation and communities adjacent tell our kids not to date tribal members, even parents who are native but not registered. It isn’t out of racism, but because of laws like this and inheritance laws. Almost all of us know someone who has gone through something similar.
A friend of mine his wife works to help place children in foster care. She can’t get foster parents to agree to take native kids because of this law. They instead end up in group homes. Me and my wife have long wanted to adopt and have been recommended that the easiest way is to go the foster route, but we really are hesitant to go this route, in our community because of these laws. Even my very progressive minister says she completely understands why. We have said after my oldest graduates and we get our house built on our ranch we will look into it, but we have agreed that we don’t care about the child’s ethnicity except we don’t want a native child, simply because of these laws. I’ve had to many friends even legally adopt kids who are native, and raise them from babies only to have them ripped away by the tribe and put into a family, often ones they aren’t related too, years later. We don’t want to go through that and we don’t want to put a kid through that trauma. These aren’t isolated cases, these are routine occurrences.
If half of what soldiermedic76 says is true, what a scandal, or rather, what a scandal it *ought* to be.
It’s true, and I have other stories. One of the county commissioners last election was going house to house campaigning, he represents part of the county on the reservation. One house he knocked on, the Dad opened up, at least it may have been the Dad, ten yo and five yo kids playing in the living room, Dad was half dressed, porn playing in the living room with sound all the way up on a big screen TV in front of the kids.
I could tell the story about working with the tribe to institute a 4-H program that they got a federal grant for. They were supposed to turn in reports to our office every month, with activities and treasury statements, to maintain state charters. They only ever turned in reports annually, when the feds overseeing the grants required confirmation they were state certified. They never came to any country 4-H meetings, never made it to county fair, and from what we could determine from their reports, they never held any meetings, and only had one activity, a hot dog barbecue. Never did figure out where the money went, and never got a list of club members. Only showed up to one 4-H council meeting in three years, before the University agreed to decertify their charter for non-compliance.
I’m also in the American Legion, and we often do funeral details with their post. Supposedly it’s a big post, but the same four guys show up, and they can’t hold their own funeral detail because of lack of participation. They got a grant to buy a bunch of AR-15s for rifle detail but no one knows what happened to them, they have to borrow our M-1s to do funeral details.
I asked the tribal legion member who leads the group about the rifles, and he replied resignedly “someone got a bunch of free rifles out of that deal, probably in someone’s garage now”.
A lot of them don’t like it, but they have learned to accept it. They won’t talk about it to outsiders, unless they trust you. My mother was told by a tribal member back home, after she said something racist about white “Don’t worry Linda we don’t consider your family white, you are part of the tribe”. We’ve never been officially adopted by the tribe, though it happens more often than you think, but we’ve been told plenty of times we’ve unofficially been adopted by the tribe and are considered part of the tribe.
I’ve even hunted with them, and helped fill a tribal member’s tribal elk permit. I’ve stayed at their houses, ate with them, been to the funerals and weddings and baptisms. I’ve fished with them and camped with them. Worked farms growing up alongside them, worked at the Casino alongside them, as have my mom, and both my brothers. I’ve even danced besides them once or twice, and I don’t dance, when they’ve held traditional dancing. I’ve drank with them, got into fist fights with them, then had them help me up and pat my back after the fight. I’ve love them and despair for them. But I don’t pity them. And I don’t want to save them, only they can save themselves. I respect a lot of them, and despise some of them. I know some of their myths (actually better than some of them). Many of them are close enough to be family, and some of them are actual blood family. I played football, basketball and baseball with them. Some of them were even my coaches growing up. I’ve served proudly beside them. We played war together as kids. Sledded together. Built forts. Had snowball fights. Chased girls together as teens. They helped make me the man I am today.
Heartbreaking to read that this is still an issue in the 21st Century. On a lighter note, I’ll strongly recommend the 2019 published novel “This Tender Land” by William Kent Kruger. Set in 1932 Minnesota, where 4 “vagabond” youths escaped from an Indian school, it is written with the joyful innocence and levity of a Twain-esque adventure against the backdrop of Depression-era cultural and economic hardships. You won’t be disappointed.
Sometimes I wish that all laws be replaced by a single one: Don’t be a jerk.