Lengkeek says every single child was placed in a white foster home. He says if the state had its way, "we'd still be playing cowboys and Indians. I couldn't imagine what they tell these kids about where they come from and who they are. Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act in , recognizing that the future of Native American cultures hinged on tribes retaining their children.
It requires state agencies to exhaust every possible means of keeping Native American foster children within their own tribes. Surveys by the Association on American Indian Affairs report 25 to 35 percent of all Native American children are being separated from their families and placed in foster homes, adoptive homes or institutions. In , the commission issues a report with more than recommendations. After passing in the Senate, the House passes its version of the bill, H.
It establishes federal standards for removing Native American children from their families and outlines proper procedure in regards to Native American children in foster care. After a number of challenges to the new law, the Supreme Court of South Dakota determines ICWA is constitutiona l, saying interference in custody matters of tribal members threatens a tribe's right to self-governance. The report also finds the lack of funding fosters a negative climate of competition among tribes.
In Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield , the U. Supreme Court reaffirms the idea of tribal jurisdiction. The Supreme Court of South Dakota finds a state court may deny transferring a child custody case involving Native American children to a tribal court if there is "good cause" to deny the transfer. The Governor's Commission on the Indian Child Welfare Act releases a report pdf that cites an overall lack of funding. They find tribal courts do not have the funds to assume jurisdiction in a case that would provide foster care and other services for children.
The report recommends passing a state ICWA bill to enhance compliance. The report emphasizes the state's need for more funding and establishes the "Collaborative Circle," a formal group which increases dialogue and partnership between Native American tribes and the Department of Social Services. The legislation ensures that states successful in reducing their foster care caseloads do not lose federal funding.
This legislation aims to create an incentive for states like South Dakota to reduce the number of children in foster care. Virgena Wieseler, who runs a division of South Dakota's department of social services, says the department believes in the Indian Child Welfare Act and does its best to find relatives or tribal member placements for Indian children. If they can be returned to their parent or returned to a relative and be safe and that safety can be managed then that's our goal. Department Secretary Kim Malsam-Rysdon says they're dealing with abject poverty and substance abuse and have to do what's best for the kids, which sometimes means driving onto a reservation and taking a child.
Malsam-Rysdon cited two laws. One is a federal statute that only pertains to emergency situations. The other is a state law that allows the state to remove children in danger. But two South Dakota judges, two lawyers and a dozen tribal advocates told NPR that state law doesn't apply.
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Federal law says tribes are sovereign. The experts say a state official can't drive off with an Indian child from Crow Creek any more than a Crow Creek official could drive off with a child from Rapid City. Some tribes have agreements with the state, which allows social services to operate on their reservations.
Crow Creek, however, does not. But the state has never been challenged in court on this specific issue, so Howe was stuck in a strange — but common — legal limbo. Because she lives on a reservation, state courts don't apply to her. But especially on poor reservations like hers, tribal courts can be over-run, underfunded and operated only part time. Howe didn't know how to get a hearing. She didn't know any judges or lawyers. She certainly couldn't afford one.
And social services told her they couldn't tell her anything. Letters to the state and governor went unanswered. But even here in a place with few resources or computers, she thought there must be something she could do. And then she thought of one more person to call: Valandra's the tribe's Indian Child Welfare Act director. He's a federal employee, who is charged with making sure the law is being followed, namely that children removed by the state are placed with relatives or tribal members.
But when she called him, Howe says he told her: Dave Valandra works in a square, gray building for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Valandra's official job is to help members who live off the reservation with their cases in state court. Many can't afford South Dakota's public defenders. But Valandra can also help tribal members who are on the reservation.
NATIVE AMERICANS or AMERICAN INDIANS
He can push for a tribal court hearing. He doesn't do that very often, however, because he says he trusts the state to do what's best for native families. Tribal officials say they are not satisfied. They say he won't show up at their council meetings to answer their questions. Valandra says he doesn't need to appear because the Indian Child Welfare Act is being followed.
But state records show only 13 percent of native kids in foster care are placed in native homes.
Incentives And Cultural Bias Fuel Foster System
In fact, Valandra admits that not one of the children in his almost three dozen cases is placed with a Native American family. Asked if he's concerned these children may have been let down a bit, he seemed at a loss for words. Marcella Dion lives on the Crow Creek reservation and has been licensed as a foster care provider since , but the state has never sent her any children. Recently she took in her brother's granddaughter, Isabella. With Valandra a dead end, Janice Howe asked the social worker to move the children to a native home where they could participate in cultural activities such as going to sweats and sundance.
Social Service's Wieseler said they would like all native children to be in native homes. But she says they've only got a few and they don't have room. That comes as a surprise to Marcella Dion. She's a native foster home provider on the Crow Creek reservation and has lots of room.
In that year, hundreds of native children in South Dakota were placed in white foster homes. Officials on the Pine Ridge reservation, several hours away, also say they have 20 empty homes. The long process is there's no road from you to Indian people. That's the long process. Howe and her daughter waited months just to see the kids. She missed braiding their long hair. They follow Dakota tradition that you don't cut hair unless there's a death in the family. When they were finally granted a visit in December , Howe says she burst into tears.
Their hair was cut to their shoulders.
Native American ethnic and political diversity
The girls also looked thin and had holes in their socks, Howe says. They begged Howe and their mother to take them home. She recalls Rashauna telling her that she knew how to get to the river and said she was going to try to swim home. Grandma's going to get you back. I don't know how but grandma's going to get you back. When you start feeling bad pray or look outside because we're both looking at the same sky.
Finally, she takes readers to and Trafficking from Haiti and Africa, noting that adoption began with: Hearing about the starving children is… commonplace … but no one is told about the mothers and fathers left behind. How did the market become as adored as it is today? There was never an open debate or even a dialog between adults who had been adopted and the individuals who wished to curtail openness.
The burden of proof now rests with adult adoptees to prove they should have their records, rather than on the state to prove the records should remain closed.
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If leaders can manipulate adoption records, what is to prevent the closure of other types of information for their personal agenda? It is nothing short of discrimination against adopted citizens, because all others can access their original birth certificates without a court order. This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. There was some uncertainty, she says, among Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community authorities about whether James even qualified for enrollment in the tribe, which is a requirement for the Indian Child Welfare Act to go into effect.
The 20 federally recognized tribes in Arizona are sovereign governments, so they each have different methods of determining membership. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community requires a child be a direct descendent of an original tribe member with at least one-fourth Native blood. Even if the Indian Child Welfare Act applied to James, though, the caseworker assured Jennifer, she had already identified an aunt and uncle who were willing to take the boy. She just needed to conduct a background check to ensure he was heading to a safe environment.
Jennifer would only need to keep him a few weeks. But the mother refused.
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James weighed 8 pounds, 8 ounces. His hair was thick and dark. As he detoxed, he cried excessively, his little body shaking. His legs stuck out tight and stiff. The uncle had been convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The aunt had been caught driving drunk so many times she had to have an ignition interlock device installed on her car. This time, there was no hesitation. She had fallen in love. She started the process of becoming certified to adopt, and chose a new name for James: Her friends showered him with gifts: They were going to take jurisdiction of the case.
Jennifer felt nauseated all through the proceedings but managed to hold it together until she got in her car. Then she burst into tears. She called in sick to work and cried all the way to the day care center to pick up James.
It felt so unfair. Both are over 50, with silver streaks in their hair, and have a acre organic farm where they raise chickens and grow carrots, lettuce, pumpkins, and other vegetables in northern Arizona. They cuddled Christopher, who is one-quarter Navajo, through months of severe anxiety attacks until he was secure in knowing his new Mommy and Daddy, as he grew to call them, would be there for him in a way his birth mother had not been.
For the next four years, according to court records, the Navajo Nation searched for another family to adopt Christopher. While Steve and Kelly carted the growing boy back and forth to preschool and devised sneaky ways to get him to take his favorite Captain America costume off long enough so they could wash it, the tribe trotted out five different candidates.
Kelly flinched every time the phone rang, certain the authorities were coming to take Christopher away. The Goldwater Institute argues that overlooking attachment is wrong. Foster care, by definition, is temporary, says Sarah Kastelic, executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, a nonprofit that provides legal resources to tribal members.
What Dynar dismisses as blood, Kastelic champions as a rich, dwindling culture that warrants protection. Kelly and Steve tried, clumsily, to help Christopher connect with his roots. She stumbled over the pronunciation, though, and soon gave up. They took him to events put on by the Yavapai-Apache Nation instead.