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Anchor: Antonia Gonzales
Native advocates are defending the Indian Child Welfare Act, intended to keep Native children with Native families, as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear challenges to the decades-old law this fall.
Eric Galatas spoke to an advocate in Nebraska who says the Indian Child Welfare Act is still needed today.
The ACLU of Nebraska has joined a national brief filed in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the 1978 law passed by Congress aiming to stop harmful assimilation practices separating Native American children from their families and tribes.
Misty Flowers with the Nebraska Indian Child Welfare Coalition says the Indian Child Welfare Act is still very much needed, in part to help kids maintain their cultural identities.
“We see a lot of times that those that don’t have a strong cultural identity have higher rates of substance abuse, mental-health issues, suicide rates. And it’s kind of all connected with those assimilation policies and historical trauma.”
The ACLU is urging the high court to uphold the constitutionality of the Act, which requires state courts to help keep Native families together.
Before its passage, some 35% of Native children were being removed from their homes, from intact families, with 85% placed in non-Native homes.
A U.S. appeals court invalidated portions of the act, in a Texas adoption case, for imposing duties on states.
The brief also calls on the Supreme Court to uphold the centuries-long legal precedent of tribal sovereignty, including tribes’ right to preserve their unique cultural identities, raise their own children and govern themselves.
The Indian Child Welfare Act also establishes preferences for placing adopted Native children in Native homes. Flowers, quoting her social worker mother, says Native children will always find their way home.
“It’s like an innate human need to have that connection with your family and your tribe, especially when you look different than other people that are around you.”
Yellowstone National Park is hosting a range of Indigenous events for its 150th anniversary.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Taylar Stagner has more on the historic collaboration between tribal nations and the park.
Yellowstone Revealed August 23-28 was planned for and by Indigenous people.
The week will include guided tours of Indigenously significant areas in the park as well as art and live musical performances.
Franchesca Pine-Rodriguez is with Mountain Time Arts in Bozeman, MT.
She says the 150th anniversary is a celebration, but the Indigenous nations of the land have another relationship with the park’s birthday.
“It’s a reminder of being removed from an area that we traditionally inhabited. So that is something that we are not celebrating. But when we think about everything that our people have been through, and, you know, it’s just a miracle that we are still here.”
Pine-Rodriguez hopes to continue the relationship with the park in furthering the discussion on Indigenous input in management and conservation.
Yellowstone National Park says there are 27 Indigenous tribes who have historical and contemporary ties to the land.
The first tipi village in the park in 150 years is part of the festivities.
Three Michigan tribes have donated proceeds from a missing and murdered Indigenous people march to two domestic violence relief shelters.
This year, the Michigan Potawatomi Tribes joined together to honor missing and murdered Native women and girls during an event in Grand Rapids.
They recently donated 100% of funds raised (more than $4,000) from the sale of masks and t-shirts from the event to tribal domestic violence shelters in the area.
It’s part of efforts to help address violence in tribal communities.
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