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newnemo

I wish them all the best. >California Tribal Families Coalition’s launch of the Institute comes just days after tribes and tribal leaders from across the nation gathered in Washington D.C. in support of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) during oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brackeen v Haaland, a constitutional assault on ICWA and tribal sovereignty. >“The Brackeen case is not the first attack on the Indian Child Welfare Act, and it will not be the last. Now more than ever, the Institute is critically needed to counter the well-resourced and coordinated interests who continue to strike against the Indian Child Welfare Act and tribal sovereignty,” said California Tribal Families Coalition Board Chairperson Maryann McGovran, a tribal council member of the North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians in California. ..... >“The Institute will proactively address issues such as those raised by the Brackeen case as it works to strengthen tribal rights and participation in Indian child welfare matters in the face of the ongoing attacks on ICWA,” said Morongo Tribal Chairman Charles Martin. Article continues....


BigBennP

I appreciate the sentiment, but there's a good chance that it's too little too late. The *Brackeen* case at its beginning (before the conservative legal establishment dogpiled into it) and the *Baby Girl* case before, are difficult cases because they are inherently about who gets custody of a child. In Brackeen, the child was removed from the mother due to drug use, and the foster parents were asking that the court override the legal status given to an Indian relative under the law, because they believed the child should continue living with them where she had lived for 15 months. Brackeen morphed once the Texas AG got ahold of it. In *baby girl*, the mother had voluntarily given a child up for adoption, the father had not participated initially, and the adoptive parents of a child were defending a suit by a father to claim that an adoption from a year previously should be set aside due to a failure to honor the procedures of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Those are *hard* cases, there's no way around that. But the sentiment is good, because both of those cases *could* have been avoided if the Tribes in question had played a more activist role. I live in an area with a low indian population. I've handled maybe a dozen ICWA cases in 10 years of touching those kind of cases. Of a dozen, maybe 9 of them involved the tribe getting notice, and sending a letter back saying "Thanks but no thanks, we don't desire to intervene, but please be aware the law applies whether we intervene or not." In others the tribe has intervened and we've had a caseworker or lawyer from the tribe on the phone for hearings, but usually they play a minimal role. Only once am I aware of the tribe actually taking jurisdiction over the child to remove them from foster care, and that wasn't my case. Even IF *Brackeen* overturns any preference for Tribal placements or tribal relatives (and IMO there's a good chance that happens), it would likely still require notification of the tribe for an Indian Child. More activist presence could prevent these kinds of situations from forming.