Story here.
Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services is looking into a Tulsa adoption agency.
Heritage Family Services and its director Mike Nomura are contracted with the state to administer a report that’s done for every case where a child is adopted across state lines.
The chairman of the board for Heritage Family Services is the attorney who represented Matt and Melanie Capobianco as they fought for custody of Veronica Brown.
Not Native children specific, but an issue we’ve been talking about internally for some time. It’s a nice piece by Sarah Alverez with an interview with Vivek Sankaran.
Here.
Moss has not seen her grandsons since they were removed from her care and placed with another relative in a different city. She blames the system, and she knows the system blames her. This deep mistrust is common in child welfare cases, says Vivek Sankaran, a lawyer and a law professor who runs a child welfare legal clinic in Detroit.
“You’re not going to change the child welfare system until you have parents and relatives viewed as partners in this process with the child welfare agency,” he said.
Sankaran has said for years that what could make these care givers more equal partners is a good lawyer working on behalf of the parents and relatives. All the lawyer jokes we’ve ever heard might make that suggestion seem counter intuitive.
But judges, sections of the Michigan State bar, and parents have long said more lawyers are needed. Without them, Sankaran says it’s hard to know if the decisions being made, serious decisions about whether to separate a family or not, are the right ones.
Here.
[¶46] The ICWA director of the Round Valley Indian Tribes explained the father’s relationship with the tribe:
[The father] and his children are eligible for enrollment with the Round Valley Indian Tribes.
When the children were removed from the care of the parents [the father] was not an enrolled member with the Round Valley Indian Tribes, ICWA did not apply.
[The father] is still not an enrolled member with the Round Valley Indian Tribes, ICWA does not apply.
. . . .
This is the parent(s) responsibility to apply for enrollment with the Round Valley Indian Tribes during open enrollment.
Designed to find white families for Indian kids:
Here.
It is clear from the record that the trial court had information, however slight, “suggesting that [a] child, a parent of [a] child, or members of a parent’s family are tribal members,” which was one of the five situations the Supreme Court listed as “sufficient to trigger tribal notice.” In re Morris, 491 Mich at 108 n 18. Specifically, respondent’s attorney informed the court that “there might be some [Indian ancestry] on the grandmother’s side.” Because it is for the tribes to determine a child’s eligibility for membership, In re Fried, 266 Mich App 535, 540; 702 NW2d 192 (2005), the trial court clearly erred when it found that the possibility of Indian heritage in a great-grandmother of one or more of the minor children was too remote to justify the notice required by the ICWA and MCL 712B.9(1).
Here, from NICWA, NCAI, NARF, and AAIA:
The undersigned American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) organizations request that the Civil
Rights Division of the Department of Justice commences a prompt investigation into the unlawful treatment of
AI/AN children in the private adoption and public child welfare systems throughout the United States.***
Yet, despite all the protections provided by ICWA, each year thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties,
uncles, and child advocates reach out to the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) desperate for
help. Their rights under ICWA and the Constitution continue to be violated by state child welfare and private
adoption systems. NICWA frequently hears stories of adoption agencies ignoring the tribal membership of
children, of state attorneys failing to provide notice to a tribe when a child is taken into custody, of child
welfare workers sometimes knowingly placing children outside ICWA’s placement preferences, and of judges
denying tribal representatives a presence in the court room. NICWA also often hears stories of Guardians ad
Litem scoffing at the importance of Native culture, state workers demeaning AI/AN parents and traditional
ways of parenting, and attorneys using professional networks to encourage other attorneys to purposefully
circumvent the “ridiculous” or “unnecessary” adoption requirements of ICWA.
Here.
Here, respondent-father indicated to the referee that his great-grandmother was a member of the “Blackfoot” tribe. Although petitioner argues that there is no such tribe as “Blackfoot,” the BIA’s list of federally recognized Indian tribes includes “the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana.” See http://www.ncsl.org/research/state-tribal-institute/list-of- federal-and-state-recognized-tribes.aspx (last visited December 30, 2013). Respondent-father points out that the name “Blackfoot” was used by the federal government in the Treaty with the Blackfeet of 1855, which recognized the existence of a Blackfoot Tribe and Blackfoot Nation. See Treaty with the Blackfeet, 11 Stat 657 (October 17, 1855). Thus, mindful of our Supreme Court’s statement that “[i]f there must be error in determining whether tribal notice is required, let it be on the side of caution[,]” Morris, 491 Mich at 108, we hold that respondent-father provided sufficient indicia of Indian heritage to the trial court to require tribal notice. If the identity of the tribe is uncertain, 25 USC § 1912(a) allows notice to be given to the Secretary of the Interior. Here, the record does not indicate that any notice was given.
***
We therefore conditionally reverse the trial court’s termination of respondent-father’s parental rights, and remand to the trial court for resolution of the notice issue. On remand, the trial court shall ensure that notice is properly made to the appropriate entities. If the children are not Indian children or the properly noticed tribes or government entities do not respond within the allotted time, the trial court’s termination of respondent-father’s parental rights is reinstated. If, however, the trial court concludes that the ICWA does apply to the proceedings, the trial court’s termination of respondent-father’s parental rights to his four children must be vacated and proceedings begun anew in compliance with the procedural and substantive requirements of the ICWA.
More than the usual troubling CA notice cases, that is. Particularly the part about not having to do *any* notice, regardless of the court’s confusion about the history and location of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe.
Here.
The social worker reported Audrey said her father, Luis H., has some Yaqui Indian heritage, but she had not spoken with him and did not have sufficient information to fill out the form. When the social worker telephoned Luis, he said his mother was born in Sonora, Mexico,and mother’s father was Yaqui. He said he did not know if any family member was registered with a tribe, but reported no family member practiced any tribal customs.
***
At the contested jurisdictional/dispositional hearing on July 30, Audrey again indicated her only potential Indian heritage was from the Yaqui Tribe in Mexico. County Counsel said as a precautionary measure the Agency would provide ICWA notice to the Yaqui Tribe in the United States and, on August 1, it sent notice to the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in Arizona. The court, however, found ICWA notice was not required because there was no reason to believe Mason is an Indian child in that Audrey had indicated her only potential Indian heritage is through the Mexican Yaqui Tribe, and the Mexican Yaqui Tribe is not a federally recognized tribe governed by ICWA.
Here.
[¶15] B.B. argues that because custody has already been determined in the tribal court, the tribe has continuing and exclusive jurisdiction over paternity and support.
[¶16] We specifically held in Kelly, 2009 ND 20, ¶ 22, 759 N.W.2d 721, that custody can be bifurcated from other proceedings in marriage. “Thus, even if the district court determines that the reservation is the child’s home state and that the tribal court therefore has jurisdiction over child custody, the district court retains concurrent jurisdiction over the remaining incidents of the marriage and may choose to exercise that jurisdiction . . . .” Id. Although B.B. and A.T.H. never married, the bifurcation principle of Kelly nevertheless applies in this case because multiple parties and jurisdictions are involved and each has an interest in the outcome of the proceedings. We conclude that under Kelly, the paternity and support claims brought against B.B. in state court can be bifurcated from the custody action brought in Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Court.
[¶17] Recognizing that paternity and support claims are divisible from custody determinations, and in view of the factual similarities between this case and Doe, we conclude the state court has subject matter jurisdiction in this case.
Here.
Via Jody Porter (@cbcreporter)
Turtle Talk 
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