Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) Of 1978

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A lot can be said about the 500 years of struggle and despair brought on Native Americans especially during the early 1870s through the late 1930s when the United States government declared to instruct various assimilation policies as a fixation to “Indian problems”. Due to the strong concerns of the children’s wellbeing and the failing patrilineal state system to recognize traditional Indian culture, the federal government ratified the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978. Today, the state of this law situates the protection and promotion of Indian children to remain within Indian country as well as has been a great benefactor in American Indian court cases involving Indian children. The ICWA was established due to the “disproportionately …show more content…

Granted by United States Congress, the American Indian people had complete “control of decisions involving Indian children” (Josephy). The 1978 law incorporates the larger issue of Indian sovereignty. Sovereignty is more than just the control of land, mineral rights, or hunting and fishing rights, it overall consists the aspect of social, political and tribal life. “It includes the right to one’s children, as well as jurisdictional control over decisions affecting children’s lives” (Holt). The Indian Child Welfare Act oversees the “order of preference for adoption priority descended from a member of the child’s extended family, an enrolled member of the tribe, Indian families not of the same tribe and finally, non-Indian adoptive parents” (Holt). These preferences for adoption referred those who were to be adopted as well as those in foster care. “These priorities dramatically reversed the federal and state policy that had led to the loss of thousands of Indian children from their tribal communities” …show more content…

For having the State of California to involved in this case was that both the foster parents were not allowing the child’s relatives to visit the child and not having to keep an ongoing relationship with the child’s siblings. Disappointed, the foster parents Summer and Russell Page had to give up their child to social services and soon after began a five-year battle with the court system. “The Choctaw Nation is pleased that the California District Court of Appeals has upheld the lower court’s decision to place Lexi with her extended family and sisters in Utah,” the tribe said in a statement released Friday night. “This has been the tribe’s objective under the Indian Child Welfare Act for more than three years. However, the trial court’s prior orders were repeatedly appealed and delayed by the foster family who knew the expected outcome under the law

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