There has been much bad-mouthing of Indian country in the last week about the failure of some tribes to comply with child support requirements. Indianz’ first headline today is “Getting child support from Indian men almost ‘impossible.’”
California, more likely than not, is an outlier (assuming these reports are true). Federal law, 28 U.S.C. § 1738B (Child Support Orders Act), requires tribes and states to give full faith and credit to child support orders. But perhaps the problem in California is a lack of tribal courts — relatively few tribes there utilize a tribal judicial system.
Michigan tribes comply. One tribe in Michigan recently reported that it has disbursed over $1.5 million to state courts in accordance with the child support law. Another tribe (the Grand Traverse Band) requires per capita gaming payments to be used to satisfy child support obligations first (18 GTB Code § 1609), a fairly typical provision for gaming tribes with RAOs. My suspicion is that the vast majority of tribes around the country comply — there are perhaps as many as 300 tribes with a functioning court system out there.
California tribes should get on board. These news items make all of Indian country look bad.
Turtle Talk 
I am glad to see that you posted this comment and I agree with you completely. The articles that were posted did make Indian Country as a whole look bad. The Ho-Chunk Nation has been using per capita payments to make child support payments through the tribal court system for well over a decade. By passing the Claims Against Per Capita Ordinance the Ho-Chunk Nation has made a pledge to insure that the children of Ho-Chunk parents get the support that they are entitled to.
This has been a problem I’ve seen personally here in New Mexico. Certain tribes refuse to comply with state orders for child support. My ex-wife has been trying to get the state to serve papers on the father of her last child and the tribe her child’s father belongs to refuses to help. The state says she might have to refile in tribal court if the tribe doesn’t help the process.
This also happen to my cousin when she tried to get child support for her daughter. The father lived on one of the reservation in south of Phoenix,AZ and the state even though she had a order for child support that the father’s tribe wasn’t going to enforce the state order.
In both cases the state felt like there was nothing they could do to enforce an order. They are both still trying to get money for their children and the tribe refuse to so far enforce the order if it doesn’t come from their courts.
As a former State of Michigan employee in DHS. I can tell you that several Michigan Tribal Courts required a parent, who had a Michigan court order for child support, to file paper work with the tribal court to get the order recognized or child support would not be withheld from per cap payments or paychecks. So there may be full faith and credit but it happens at the expense of the parent who has already gone through one legal system.