Congress considers a bill that would clarify laws regarding the placement of American Indian children.

By Rebecca A. Clay

Imagine being lined up in a row with your siblings while someone shopping for children inspected all of you.

That actually happened to Dolores Subia BigFoot, PhD, a member of the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma, when she was growing up in a poor Indian community in the 1950s. She remembers standing with her seven siblings while a white couple strolled up and down the line, finally stopping at BigFoot?s sister.

Urging BigFoot?s mother to give her daughter up, the couple painted a picture of the clothes, education and love they would lavish on the child. BigFoot?s mother refused.

Many mothers didn?t. And many children were removed from their homes involuntarily, either sent to boarding schools as part of assimilationist efforts or removed by child protective services because of poverty or the mistaken belief that children being cared for by relatives had been abandoned. By the late 1970s, an estimated 25 percent to 35 percent of American Indian children were being removed from their homes.

?The Indian family was under assault,? said BigFoot, now director of Project Making Medicine at the University of Oklahoma?s Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. ?The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 was designed to stop that.?

?Some in the Native American community argue that children are psychologically messed up when they grow up in families that aren?t native. But you really need to weigh that against how many problems kids have when they don?t have a stable home.?

U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce

(R-Ohio)

Today ICWA itself is under attack. An attempt to stem the flow of Indian children from native communities, the law gives tribes the right to be involved in decisions regarding the placement of Indian children and gives precedence to placement in Indian families. Leading the charge against ICWA is U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio), an adoption advocate who plans to ntroduce legislation that would reduce the law?s scope.

To counter what advocates see as an attempt to reduce tribal authority, Sens. John McCain

(R-Ariz.), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) introduced a bill last April designed to strengthen the law by adding enforcement measures and clarifying rules regarding tribe?s intervention rights.

Citing a half-dozen horror stories, Pryce argues that tribes are unjustly interfering in adoptions of children who have no significant tribal affiliation. In the case that originally prompted her interest, a couple in her district adopted twins whose parents swore they weren?t members of any tribe. Six months later, the parents decided they wanted the infants back and claimed that the twins were in fact covered by ICWA because one of their great-great-great-grandparents was an Indian. The case has been in litigation for three years.

?Some in the Native American community argue that children are psychologically messed up when they grow up in families that aren?t native,? said Pryce. ?But you really need to weigh that against how many problems kids have when they don?t have a stable home or family to call their own for years and years.?

ICWA?s proponents argue that children wouldn?t have to be removed from adoptive homes if the courts had abided by the law when making the original placement decisions.

?Private adoption attorneys weren?t abiding by the act, which is a mild way of putting it,? said Art Martinez, PhD, a member of the Chumash Tribe and a clinical psychologist at the Washoe Family Trauma Healing Center in Gardnerville, Nev. ?There weren?t any repercussions for going around the law?no teeth.?

That?s just the problem the McCain amendment is designed to solve. The proposal would add severe sanctions to ensure compliance with the law. The proposal would also give security to adoptive parents by putting strict time limits on families? and tribes? ability to intervene.

With the Clinton administration trying to boost adoption rates with its Adoption 2002 campaign, activists stress that ICWA remains a bulwark against a return to the days of wholesale removal of Indian children from their homes.

?Our nation?s history of taking Indian children out of Indian homes is shameful,? said Brian Smedley, PhD, director of public interest policy at APA.

?We will support the Indian community?s efforts to retain authority over the placement of Indian children.?

Rebecca A. Clay is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.