Here. Our post on the bill is here.
An excerpt:
Minnesota American Indian tribes and their allies in the state Legislature are seeking to plug a gap in child custody laws opened by a state Supreme Court decision last year.
The court’s decision derailed the common practice of giving tribal courts a role during pre-adoption and adoption for off-reservation American Indian kids.
Until the late 1970s, American Indian children across the country were adopted outside their communities at very high rates. The practice had a devastating effect on tribes, as generations of youth were cut loose from their cultural identities.
“People thought they understood that children would fare better if they were raised in white middle class homes,” said Andrew Small, a lawyer and former tribal judge in the state. “When you remove a child from their home, that begins a process that sometimes is impossible to stop… a child is going to be lost to the tribe.”
In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was designed to allow tribes a say in child custody and adoption proceedings. Since then, Minnesota state courts dealing with custody of an American Indian child off the reservation have been able to transfer jurisdiction to tribal court, even in the later part of the proceedings, which are called adoptive or pre-adoptive stages.
But a Minnesota Supreme Court decision late last year found a gap in the Indian Child Welfare Act. The court decided that neither federal nor Minnesota statute explicitly allowed state courts, when dealing with an American Indian child living away from a reservation, to transfer jurisdiction during the later portion of custody proceedings.
Turtle Talk 