ICWA – Page 27 – Turtle Talk

“Babies don’t get born and run down to the citizenship office and file a petition,” said Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University. When his own child was born, he and his partner took a year to register him as a tribal member, in part because he was eligible for more than one tribal nation. “To say that somehow this kid hasn’t been enrolled yet and therefore doesn’t have a political relationship is really quite disingenuous.”

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Reflecting on the rhetoric used by ICWA opponents like Sandefur, Nicole Adams, a spokesperson for Partnership for Native Children, pointed to the institutions that pushed for the use of boarding schools and adoption for decades before ICWA’s passage. “They were led by very well-intentioned Christian coalitions purporting that Indian children needed to be saved, and they were just the ones to do it. If you look at the rhetoric being put out by some of ICWA’s most staunch opponents, it is eerily and frighteningly similar.”

AFCARS Comments Due June 18

June 10, 2019Kate Fort

Here are the previous posts on the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.

These comments are to tell the federal government (AGAIN) to start collecting basic data on state ICWA cases. While we would like the original rule to stand (and say so in the model tribal comments), there is also an opportunity to request very specific data elements that are less complicated or confusing than the ones currently offered.

If you would like information on this issue or model tribal comments, please email Jack Trope (information handouts), Delia Sharpe (model comments), or me (both/either). If you are a law professor interested in signing on to excellent comments, email Seth Davis at Berkeley.

jtrope@casey.org

delia.sharpe@caltribalfamilies.org

fort@law.msu.edu

sdavis@law.berkeley.edu

NYT on ICWA and the Brackeen Case

June 5, 2019ilpc

Here

Transfer to Tribal Court Case from Colorado [ICWA]

June 3, 2019Kate Fort

Here is a case that continues to demonstrate the importance of ensuring a state ICWA law allows transfer of cases post-termination. Navajo Nation intervened and appealed the decision to deny transfer (and to move the children back to the former, non-ICWA compliant foster home, who opposed the transfer to tribal court).

Additional important issues in this case including the appealability of a final order, standing of former foster parents (they had none), and post-termination transfer to tribal court.

We acknowledge that ICWA only addresses a request to
transfer jurisdiction during foster care placement and termination of parental rights proceedings. 25 U.S.C. § 1911(b). It does not mention such a request during preadoptive or adoptive placement proceedings. See id. Even so, the Children’s Code, as it existed at the time the juvenile court denied transfer, permits a juvenile court to consider transfer of jurisdiction to a tribal court “[i]n any of the cases identified in subsection (1) of this section involving an Indian child.” § 19-1-126(1), (4)(a). The cases identified in subsection (1) include “pre-adoptive and adoption proceedings.” § 19-1-126(1).

Active Efforts and Transfer to Tribal Court Case out of Maine [ICWA]

May 31, 2019Kate Fort

Here.

This is a difficult case, but the opinion does a nice job of outlining how a state and Tribe can work together in a state court ICWA case to provide active efforts when reunification with the father would be essentially impossible (based on the facts provided). The Court also correctly identifies legal standards involved with the father’s attempt to transfer the case to tribal court.

American Indian Children and the Law: Cases and Materials out this Summer

May 31, 2019Kate Fort

The casebook that had to be rewritten twice in the past four years is finally being published. It should be available in a few weeks, along with a teacher’s manual. If you are interested in a review copy, let me know or request a review copy here. I posted the Table of Contents today.

2018 Annual ICWA Case Law Update

May 30, 2019May 30, 2019Kate Fort

Here you go!

SCOTUS Denies Cert in Four Indian Law Matters (Miccosukee + Jim, ICWA, and Comanche)

May 30, 2019Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is Tuesday’s order list.

The materials in the Miccosukee petitions are here.

The page on the ICWA case is here.

The Comanche materials are here.

Supreme Court Denies Cert in Carter v. Washburn (Sweeney) [ICWA Class Action]

May 28, 2019Kate Fort

Here is the order. Here is the case page.

This should be the end of this litigation (the original 2015 “Goldwater case”), as the Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded the case below to have it dismissed as moot.