ICWA and the social welfare of native americans

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The abuse of children of any kind is unacceptable, regardless of one’s culture. When looking at the Native American culture, the indigenous people of this land we have come to call America, there has been a debate spanning decades in terms of what should be done to keep an abused child who has to be taken away from the birth parents, within their own culture (the Native American culture). In 1978, the United States Congress and the President of the United States at the time, Jimmy Carter, enacted a law known as the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in attempts to avoid the separation of Native children from their family, let alone, their own culture (Fletcher, 2009). How exactly does the Indian Child Welfare Act, ICWA, keep Native children taken away from their birth parents within either their family or the Native culture itself? When considering the Indian Child Welfare Act, a social worker, or other official can ultimately terminate parental rights. To do this, they must make their argument for termination by presenting a burden of proof. The Indian Child Welfare Act states that children cannot simply be removed because someone else is able to raise the child or because the parents have been deemed “unfit to parent.” Rather, evidence must be provided that the child is put in a dangerous situation if they remain in the home given the present issues being investigated by said officials. According to the Department of Health and Human Services Screening and Assessment for Family Engagement, Retention, and Recovery, if a social worker or the agency in charge of the investigation wants to terminate parental rights, there are two ways of doing so: clear and convincing, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Through clear and con... ... middle of paper ... ...partnership between Native Americans and Whites in order to better carry out the way ICWA was meant to be carried out; however, that is a two ended street that requires the cooperation of both cultures. If we want to decrease the social welfare crisis’s that face Native Americans, if we want to reduce the number of Native Americans in foster care, then it starts with working together. In the end, the environment the child is raised in determines their future. If they are raised in an abusive, substance/alcoholic environment, chances are alarmingly high that they will face the same problems later on in life. The same can be said in the opposite though that if we continue to take Native American children out of their culture and placing them with White families and not following ICWA, we are essentially killing off a raise in a non-genocidal way.

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