Indian Child Welfare Act History

Indian Child Welfare Act- Introduction

During the time of the American colonies, the European colonists separated the various Native American children from their families for reasons such as selling the children into slavery, forcing the children to adopt a certain religion, and adopting the children into Euro-American families. Throughout the nineteenth century (1800s), this trend of separating Native American children from their families continued in different forms such as forcing these children to attend boarding schools. This trend continued throughout the first half of the twentieth century (1900s) as Americans began to feel that the Native American children were not being raised in the proper environments with ideals that were deemed to be in accordance with “white middle-class values.” The counterargument that Native Americans and their supporters presented to the federal and state governments, at various levels, was the principle that Native Americans had the right to govern themselves (their sovereignty, also known as a right to self-determination), and this right included the governing of intra-tribal relations. In other words, Native American tribes had the right to determine their own relationships, how those relationships worked, and how they were conducted. This included, they argued, the right to determine how to raise their own children. Many of the tribal supporters also argued that placing the Native American children with non-Native American families would be no different than what the European colonist did two centuries earlier and would have the same effect as destroying their culture.

Destroying their Culture

Native Americans argued that removing their children from their families would destroy their culture in different ways. One argument was that it would destroy the culture because the parents would no longer be able to pass down their Native American heritage to the next generation. Another argument was presented by American Academy of Child Psychiatry was that Native American children were removed from the reservation and placed in non-Native American homes would be subject to an ethnic identity crisis and a “pervasive sense of abandonment.” The final argument that was later presented to the United States Senate was from the Chairwoman of the Puyallup Tribe of the State of Washington. She argued that “the alienations of Indian children can become a serious mental health problem. If you lose your children, you are dead; you are never going to get rehabilitated or you are never going to get well. If there were problems, once the children are gone, the whole family unit is not ever going to get well.” This statement, made to the United States Senate on August 4, 1977, was the final argument that convinced the United States Senate that removing Native American children from their families would begin to destroy the Native American family and the tribe’s way of life.

Reasons for Removing Indian Children

Instilling Middle-class Values

Despite these arguments, there were many Americans who felt that it was important to instill American values, or what some Native Americans called “white middle-class values,” into the Native American children. Many of these ideals were values the Native Americans did not endorse. One example of these ideals was the idea of encouraging children to work through the economic “ceiling” and to achieve as much as they could in this life. In essence, the idea that every child needs to learn to earn as much income and societal status as they can in order to provide for themselves. This was in stark contrast to the Native American ideal that taught of the importance of making sure that nobody fell below the economic “floor” and that all were able to live a certain minimum standard. In other words, it was the responsibility of everyone to make sure that everyone else’s needs were met. Other ideals included what many Americans considered to be the basic necessities that a large number of Native Americans were missing. These basic necessities included such things like electricity, running hot and cold water, toilets, telephones, adequate health care, and adequate space (many homes have three or four generations living in a two bedroom home). In fact, according to a US Census Bureau statistic, as recently as 1990, 20 percent of all Native American households on Indian reservations were completely without indoor plumbing. During the 1950s and 1960s, this idea that Native American families did not have indoor plumbing added to the justification of state government agencies to declare Native American families as unfit to raise their children because they could not raise them in a healthy environment. Indeed, there have been recent studies conducted that justify this point of view. One recent study shows how a lack of indoor plumbing has increased the risk of Native Americans contracting various health related illnesses.

Racial Boundaries

Another argument in favor of removing Native American children from their families was that it broke down racial boundaries. The idea was to place children of different ethnicities with Caucasian families, including Native American children. Ideally, this form of interracial adoption teaches both the family and the child that the color of a person’s skin does not matter in this world, thus making interracial adoption a good solution to the problem of racism in this world. In her book, Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption, author Dr. Barbara Melosh makes this argument and applauds the Indian Adoption Project that sought to place Native American children with Caucasian families. According to her research, about seven hundred Native American children were placed with Caucasian families through the Indian Adoption Project from 1958 to 1967. Dr. Melosh further validates her argument by pointing out that the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is supposed to represent the best interests of the Native American tribes all across the United States, worked in a collaborative effort with the Child Welfare League of America to create the Indian Adoption Project. The question of whether or not the Bureau of Indian affairs truly represents the best interests of all of the Native American tribes in the US is another argument for another article. The important question now is whether or not the lack of common ground in these issues gives the states the right, or even the obligation, to remove these children from their native environment amongst their own people and place them into strange environments alongside strange people. Throughout the 1970s, the federal government tried to provide an answer for that question in the form of self-determination.

Right of Self-determination

During the 1970s, the federal government began to emphasize that Native American tribes had the right of self-determination, meaning they had the right to control what was happening within their own tribes. President Nixon, in his address to congress on July 8, 1970, showed strong support for the right of Native Americans tribes to govern themselves through self-determination. In the decade that followed, studies that were conducted by the 93rd, 94th, and 95th Congresses of the United States concluded that the right of Native American tribes, parents, and children to self-determination was being violated by the Indian Adoption Project. Then in 1975, the Maryland Court of Appeals, in the case of Wakefield vs. Little Light, upheld a landmark United States Supreme Court decision from the 1959 case of Williams vs. Lee, wherein the Supreme Court decided that “the internal affairs of the Indians remained exclusively within the jurisdiction of whatever tribal government existed.” These court decisions reaffirmed that Native American tribes had the right to determine for themselves what was going to happen within their own tribes, especially through the established authority of tribal courts. Three years after the court case began in Maryland, the United States Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

Passage of the Act

The passage of the act ushered in a new era for Native American tribes; no longer would their children be taken away from the tribes without their consent. Instead, Native Americans, for the first time in the history of Native American and United States relations, would have a legally binding authority over who would be raising Native American children. With this increased authority, Native American tribes now have the ability to ensure that their children will remain a part of the tribe. This allows parents to pass down their own heritage, thus helping to ensure that the Native American way of life will continue into the future.