Since Europeans arrived in North America, indigenous groups across the country have had to contend with the forced displacement, removal, and outright kidnapping and theft of their children.
Beginning in the late 1800s, Herbert Welsh and Henry Pancoast began founding boarding schools for indigenous children. Rather than allow the children to thrive in their own families and culture, the two thought it best that children be removed and placed in the schools to encourage assimilation into Protestant-American life in the 19th century.
The children were stripped of their own language, culture, and education, and they lost vital connections to their families and homes.
In 1879, Colonel Richard Henry Pratt decided that the schools weren't doing enough to completely assimilate indigenous children and took things a step further. He established the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania and served as its headmaster for 25 years. Pratt held the belief that the goal should be to "Kill the Indian, save the man."
The school's policies were harsh. Boys had their long hair cut, uniforms were imposed across the board, and children were given Anglicized "white" names to replace those they were given at birth. The food the children were served was different than what they were given at their homes, and they were forced to use a knife, fork, and spoon to eat.
Unsurprisingly, the students were taught history from an undoubtedly white European perspective. As the children aged, they became the main source for labor for both the schools and white families they eventually served. All the children were required to convert to Christianity.
Many indigenous parents opposed the schools completely, which often resulted in police being sent to reservations to physically take children away. Eventually, the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978, and the law finally allowed parents to refuse to let their children attend the schools.
Unfortunately, that law is being challenged these days by a whole new crop of white American families who seem intent on once again removing indigenous children from their homes.
As reported by The Guardian, Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle has been diving deep into a disturbing trend: lawyers and right-wing interest groups are currently working with average Americans to completely dismantle the Indian Child Welfare Act. Their goal appears to be making it easier for these white families to adopt indigenous kids.
Last year, a court ruled that parts of the Indian Child Welfare Act are unconstitutional. The case at hand, Brackeen v. Haaland, dates back to 2016, when a white family (Brackeen) became foster parents to a 10-month-old Navajo boy. The parental rights of both the mother (Navajo) and the father (Cherokee) were terminated.
Under the Indian Child Welfare Act, the Navajo nation should have been allowed to attempt to place the child with other family members. If there were none available, the next step would be to find members of either tribe who would raise the child, and then members of any Indian family. But that didn't happen, and the Brackeens adopted the boy.
The boy's parents eventually had another child, and the Brackeens attempted to adopt her, too. But this time the Navajo nation was ready, and it had family members who were more than happy to take in the little girl. The Brackeens filed suit, alleging racial discrimination.
The perspective of the adoptive parents appears to be that the Indian Child Welfare Act is racist because it seeks to make it more difficult for non-Indigenous families to adopt Indigenous children. But practically speaking, to many the situation reeks of age-old colonizer logic: brown children must be saved by white families.
As The Guardian points out, allegations of discrimination against white families are especially confusing since the majority of non-Indigenous families who have attempted to foster or adopt Indigenous children have been able to do so. As it stands, these days Indigenous children are four times as likely as white children to be taken from their families.
The children are often removed simply for "neglect," which anyone who has spent time in any part of the American foster care system can tell you is an intentionally broad term that is often weaponized against poor and disadvantaged families of color. Meanwhile, many foster parents receive quite a chunk of change from the state while taking care of children (in my personal experience, that was $1,600 a month for two children under 2 in the state of Tennessee — $1,600 that could have better served the children if sent to their parents so they could work toward recovery and getting their homes ready for their kids to return to).
The case has the potential to make it all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Brackeen family has the backing of quite a few conservative leaders and lawyers in the country.
