Doing What's Best For The Tribe Summary

Running head: ANALYSIS OF THE DOING WHAT'S BEST FOR THE TRIBE 1

Analysis of the Doing What's Best for the Tribe
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Analysis of the Doing What's Best for the Tribe

"Doing What's Best for the Tribe" is an article written by Marcia Zug about a young girl whose life was destroyed by those who overlooked the laws and procedure place by the systems in matters of adoption of native children. The full author names is Marcia A. Yablon-Zug , a professor of law. She has published many articles covering American Indian Law, Immigration Law and Policy and family law. Her work focuses on the intersection of immigration law and family law. On this article, she makes it clear

that people should be ready to face the consequences of their actions provided a due procedure was not followed on adoption of native children.
As she implies in the story of Veronica, a young girl who was given to adoption by her mother without due procedure being followed. Zug agrees with the decision of the South Carolina Supreme Court to revoke the toddler adoption to Capobiancos and ordered the child to be return to her biological father, Dusten Brown. In this article, she also acknowledges the suffering of the Melanie and Matt Capobianco "I'll always remember her crying when we had to—we had to walk out of that office and leave her there," says Malinei Capobianco as she watched Veronica being reunited with her father.
In her articles, Zug tries to explain the extent which people will go, even though knowing they are wrong tries to justify themselves.

She writes the path at which the Capobiancos were willing to take to get the baby back. The couples when ahead and share their pictures with smiling toddler on national media like CNN and papers like Weekly Standard for the articles be printed, only to gunner national supports. She also dissects the idea how the articles were rebuking the law Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) which superseded the South Carolina law that supports the termination of one's parental rights due to lack of involvement and financial support before and after the child's

birth.
To expound further, she brought in the history of Native Americans and how their families in regards to unprocedural adoptions. She says that beginning 1969 United States perpetrated the forceful removal of children from natives families and taking them in boarding schools. In these boarding schools, the young generation was given Europeans names, prohibited to see their families and they could not practice their own culture or religion. She adds that, even though these schools were close down, it was replaced by an equally devastating policy of nonnative adoption, which saw between 1958 and 1967, the act was used to remove thousands of Native American children from their homes and to place them in non-native homes. To curb this congress recognized the struggle of the natives and drafted the legislation to extend to both involuntary removal and voluntary placement of the American Indian children outside of American Indian families.
Zug uses the context of Choctaw v.

Holyfield case to argue that ICWA law was meant to protect the tribesmen and their interest as a society at large, not as an individual. In this context, Holyfield tries to adopt the unborn twins of a Choctaw mother who lived in a reservation by moving her out o to give birth so that the adoption could not be implicated by ICWA law. This idea fails despite the mother's many efforts to avoid tribal jurisdiction and have the final say in her children's adoptive placement. The court however held that the foster decision remains in the hands of the tribe and when further to expound that tribe's right to its children and an American Indian child's right to grow up American Indian outweighed individual tribal members' rights to place their children for adoption outside the

tribe.
She argues that whenever there is an adoption process of Native American child going on, the tribe must be informed and ICWA procedure followed to the latter. She adds that whenever these children are available for adoption, preference should be first be given to child extended family, followed by other members of child's tribe and finally the other Native American families. According to her for a non-native adoption to occur all the preference must have been exhausted, and this was not in the case of Veronica predicament. She says if the procedure was followed to the letter, the incident could not have happened. Therefore her adoption was a clear violation of IWCA law and the Capobianco ought to have followed the procedure hence their pain was self-inflicting.
Also according to her, the actions of Capobiancos is understandable as parents but the idea to petition the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress to amend ICW is disastrous to the Indian tribe. Their action to argue that in case a child has not been part of the Native Indian community should not be protected by ICWA. This idea ignores the factual information that the act was passed not to preserve specific American Indian families but to protect the tribe's interest in the adoption of American Indian children as well. She also applauded the states although at first they had bought the idea, but eventually they recognize that without ICWA, the future of American Indian tribes is imperiled.
In her conclusion, she says that even though the pain surrounding Veronica adoption is understandable, the adoption should have bot occur in the first place. She makes it crystal clear that if the requirements of IWCA was followed then Veronica could have been reunited with her father when she was an infant rather than later. According to her ICWA is not some obscure loophole that should be closed but rather a pivotal piece of American Indian legislation that cannot be ignored without traumatic consequences.

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