The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) came about because the federal government and states had a long history of treating Native American* parents as unfit just by their being Indian. As recently as the 1970s, mothers knew to hide their children when strange white sedans appeared on the reservation because social workers would scoop up children and quickly arrange for them to be adopted by white families, often in the Midwest or further east.
During Congressional hearings held in the 1970s, Congress recognized between 25 and 30 percent of Native American children were being removed from their homes by states, and 80 percent of those children were being sent to live outside their communities with non-Indian families. Today, while we have seen a decrease in these rates, a study published by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges found that many states are still placing Indian children into foster care at a disproportionately high rate, sometimes as much as 12 times their population rate.
[For more of this story, written by Shanna Knight, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...rican-children/26756]
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