ICWA – Page 29 – Turtle Talk

Some notes.

It’s a federal requirement to inquire about a child’s tribal citizenship regardless of state law. There are eight states with comprehensive state ICWA laws (the article is missing California and Wisconsin), and that doesn’t count states that have incorporated the regulations into law (Louisiana) or have other elements of ICWA in their laws.

I know the lawyer he is referring to–s/he did not drive 300 miles for every hearing, but when no one would call the tribe back or answer the phone for a hearing s/he sure did.

ICWA is a remedial statute designed to change state practice, not tribal.

It might be worth mentioning that Michigan has twelve federally recognized tribes, and while the total population of Native children might be small, we are still putting Native children in foster care at disproportionate rates–that said, it’s difficult to tell given the issues with our data collection.

And finally, if you are wondering what ICWA/MIFPA inquiry looks like in Wayne County, here is a colloquy from an unpublished case four years ago:

The Court: All right, the petition is authorized. The children have been
placed with relatives. What else? I guess— is that it? Did anyone ever ask
is there any . . . American Indian heritage in this family? American Indian
heritage?
Ms. Safran (attorney for respondent [parent]): Do you have any Indian heritage in your family?
The Court: Cherokee, Chippewa.
Ms. Safran: There might be some grand— on the grandmother’s side,
what was it? Some time— some type; attenuated.
Ms. Trott (attorney for petitioner [state]): Ms. Topp was told no at the
other—
Ms. Safran: Well, we didn’t have all the parties.
Ms. Topp (case worker): I talked to [respondent], as well, in the police station[,] and I was told no.
Ms. Safran: She doesn’t think—
The Court: You don’t have any kind— are you sure it’s American, or, any
idea what we’re talking about? I mean, what kind of Indian? Cherokees,
Chippewa? I mean, there’s a whole bunch.
Unidentified speaker: I don’t— I don’t know; I can ask.
The Court: And . . . what relative? Grandma? Great-grandma?
Ms. Safran: Your Honor, can we get a date because . . . they want me in
[Judge] Slavens[’ courtroom] and I can’t believe it.
The Court: You’ve got to wait just one second. All right, you can investigate and see. That’s pretty distant; great-grandma is pretty far back. So, I’m
not gonna demand that we send notice.
Ms. Trott: This is on the paternal side? Or maternal? Of which father?
The Court: On the mother’s side or father? It better be a maternal because
right now— all right. You have the right to have this heard by a referee as
to all the children . . . or by a judge with or without a jury, and, of course,
continued right to an attorney at all hearings. We’re setting this for trial?
Ms. Trott: Yes.

In re Harrell, No. 316067, 2014 WL 465718, at *6-7 (Mich. Ct. App. Feb. 4, 2014)

Fletcher: “Indian Children and the Fifth Amendment”

April 17, 2019Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Forthcoming in the Montana Law Review’s Browning Symposium issue, available at SSRN here.

An excerpt:

Many of my first memories revolve around my grandmother Laura Mamagona’s apartment in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She shared the apartment with my uncle Crockett, who was a college student. Her apartment was the upstairs room of an old house on the side of a hill on College Street. My memories are mostly of domestic activities. Cooking. Sweeping. Sitting around. Playing with trains. Leafing through Crockett’s Sports Illustrated magazine collection. Laura worked the night shift at the veteran’s hospital across from Riverside Park. Early on weekday mornings, June, my mother, would drop me off at Laura’s place in her VW bug, the first car I remember. I had my own crib at Laura’s, one I can remember escaping pretty easily. Often, Laura would sleep most of the morning while I puttered around the house. Sometimes, Crockett would be there. Family lore tells that once, June dropped me off earlier than usual and Laura had worked a little late, so I was probably there alone for a short while. I heard the story so often growing up that I can seemingly remember that day, too. This was in the mid-1970s, before Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Recently, my wife Wenona Singel discovered documents about Laura’s childhood home life in the National Archives in Chicago. Wenona was there to research family boarding school histories. Laura’s name as a young woman, Laura Stevens, was listed alongside several of her brothers and sisters as former students at Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School. They were all born with the Pokagon surname, but Laura’s dad, Peter Stevens, changed their names, thinking it would help the family blend in with white America. Laura never attended the boarding school, and instead spent those years in quarantine in a hospital in Kalamazoo. We think she tested positive for tuberculosis at the boarding school intake and was diverted to quarantine. While Laura was there in the hospital during several of her early teen years, her biological mother walked on. Laura had younger brothers and sisters in her family home in Allegan County, Michigan. So, Peter—who was single then—drove to Kalamazoo and took Laura home. As a young woman, but the oldest sibling left in the house, Laura was forced to replace her mom. The archive documents contain reports by social workers who visited the house, we think, on somewhat random occasions. They were spot checks, of sorts, by the State of Michigan, to see how this Indian family with no mother in the home was coming along. The social workers detailed every aspect of the Stevens’ home in the reports. They noted how many Bibles were in the house and where they were placed. They noted how many portraits of Jesus Christ there were and the location each was hung. They reported Laura’s younger siblings were all dressed for company and quietly studying. They focused especially on teenaged Laura. There she was, sweeping the kitchen. There she was, cooking dinner. There she was, folding clothes. The social workers were impressed. Well, they were barely impressed. Laura was, after all, still an Indian. Reading the reports, one can’t help but think that young Laura Stevens was the only thing stopping the State from taking Peter Stevens’s kids away from him. Imagine if she had been out shopping on the day of the spot visit. The little Stevens kids would have been home alone, dishes in the sink and dirty clothes on the floor. Laura might have come home from shopping, and then later Peter from work, to find a home stripped of its children. However, this never came to be. Perhaps out of sheer luck, Laura was always home when the social workers showed up.

And:

The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution is a truly fateful provision for Indian people. On occasion, Wenona and I teach at the Pre-Law Summer Institute (PLSI) for American Indians. It’s an eight week program that serves a little bit like a summer boot camp for Indian people who are planning to matriculate to law schools in the fall. Wenona teaches Property and I teach Indian Law. Compared with the regular law school survey-the-field course in Federal Indian Law, the short class I teach at PLSI is even more truncated. I can only assign a cross-section of the “greatest hits” of Indian law Supreme Court decisions because I don’t have time to conduct a full survey. I also try to assign cases where tribal interests prevailed. It turns out tribal interests and Indian people prevail more than not when the Fifth Amendment is in play. However, there are cases where tribal interests painfully and dramatically suffer under the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fifth Amendment.

Transfer to Tribal Court [ICWA] Decision out of New York

April 8, 2019April 8, 2019Kate Fort

Opinion here

The child’s attorney opposed the transfer, and the appellate court supported the decision of the Family Court to transfer to the tribe.

Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Fleming Cert Petition

April 3, 2019Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here:

cert petition

Questions presented:

1. Whether the Eighth Circuit erred in holding, in conflict with decisions of this Court and three other courts of appeals, that the possibility of filing a separate mandamus action was in and of itself “sufficient” to provide an “adequate opportunity” requiring Younger abstention, where plaintiffs had no opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of the preliminary hearing procedure in the course of the state’s abuse and neglect proceedings?
2. Whether the court of appeals erred in holding, in conflict with three courts of appeals, that the “extraordinary circumstances” exception to Younger abstention applies only to flagrantly and patently unconstitutional statutes, but not to flagrantly and patently unconstitutional policies, and in concluding that separating children from their parents for sixty days with no notice or opportunity to be heard inflicted no irreparable harm?

Lower court materials here.

Qualified Expert Witness Case from Alaska [ICWA]

March 25, 2019March 27, 2019Kate Fort

Eva H. v. State of Alaska

This is a case worth reading in its entirety for the discussion of the qualifications of the QEW but also the discussion of the testimony supporting the casual connection between the parents’ behavior and the removal of the children.

This QEW had been a Guardian ad Litem in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta region for a number of years, however:

She agreed that she had no formal education in psychology, mental health, chemical dependency, substance abuse, social work, or therapy, and she did not recall having read any scholarly literature in these areas. She acknowledged that she was unable to “diagnose mental health issues,” though she testified she could recognize them based on her experience as an attorney and a GAL. But she further admitted that she did not use “any documents or models, like professional references, in order to make those conclusions”; she relied solely on her experience as an attorney and a GAL.

Then, she

did not address causation, as framed in the regulation, by testifying about how Keith and Eva’s conduct was likely to cause “serious emotional or physical damage to” the two boys. She drew no connections between specific conduct
and the likelihood of specific harm. We have held in the past that expert testimony need not directly address every aspect of this element of a termination decision; trial courts are allowed to consider “reasonable inferences from the expert testimony, coupled with lay witness testimony and documentary evidence from the record.” But when expert testimony is required in order to support termination in ICWA cases, trial courts may rely on reasonable inferences only from the testimony of witnesses who are qualified to testify on the subject.

ICWA Op-Ed in the WaPo and Editorial in the Austin American Statesman

March 21, 2019March 21, 2019ilpc

Wapo: Native children benefit from knowing their heritage. Why attack a system that helps them?

Austin American Statesman: Paxton should stop playing politics with adoptive families

Brackeen Oral Argument Audio

March 14, 2019Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

Briefs and materials here.

Alaska Supreme Court on Active Efforts [ICWA]

February 26, 2019Kate Fort

Here.

I very nearly made an inadvertent broken record pun here, but seriously, I do talk about making a clean record a lot. OCS didn’t even manage to document state law requirements in this case. And in the continuing theme of this afternoon’s ICWA cases–the requirements of ICWA stand regardless of whether the agency finds the parents cooperative or not.

Like the superior court, we are underwhelmed by the quality of OCS’s testimony. We agree with the court’s observation that OCS “made a rather lackadaisical effort” and “put on a skeletal case about [its] required active efforts.” The superior court was rightly concerned to doubt OCS’s demonstration of active efforts. We acknowledge that the superior court concluded that OCS met its burden due in large part to “the consideration the Court is to give to the parents’ demonstration of an unwillingness to change or participate in rehabilitative efforts.” While this principle remains valid, the parents’ lack of effort does not excuse OCS’s failure to make and demonstrate its efforts. Even considering the parents’ lack of participation, there is simply insufficient evidence in the record to show that OCS made active efforts. It was legal error for the superior court to conclude by clear and convincing evidence that OCS made active efforts to reunify the family.

***
A related but distinct problem is OCS’s failure to document its active efforts in detail in the record. While documentation is related to OCS’s duty to make active efforts, documenting those efforts is a separate responsibility. The act of documentation is not itself an “active effort”; rather, it is a mechanism for OCS and the court to ensure that active efforts have been made. Documentation is required by ICWA and is critical to compliance with ICWA’s purpose and key protections. The CINA statute also requires OCS to document its provision of family reunification support services. But such documentation is woefully missing here.

Montana Supreme Court on Reason to Know [ICWA]

February 26, 2019Kate Fort

Here.

And a long excerpt:

Contrary to the Department’s assertion and the apparent corresponding view of the District Court, the “reason to know” standard does not necessarily require an evidentiary showing, and certainly not by the parents, that a child or parent may be eligible for tribal membership. See 25 U.S.C. § 1912(a); 25 C.F.R. §§ 23.107-08. Nor does ICWA require that an assertion of potential tribal eligibility be certain. Gerardo, 14 Cal. Rptr. 3d at 802; Kahlen, 285 Cal. Rptr. at 511. See also 25 C.F.R. §§ 23.107(a), (c), -108(a). Any more stringent construction as suggested by the State would defeat ICWA’s manifest purpose and command. Certainly, a “reason to know” is a low standard, but not an unlimited one. In re Jeremiah G., 92 Cal. Rptr. 3d 203, 207-08 (Cal. App. 2009); In re Z.H., 740 N.W.2d 648, 653-54 (Iowa App. 2007). A “reason to know” requires something more than a bare, vague, or equivocal assertion of possible Indian ancestry without reference to any identified Indian ancestors with a reasonably suspected tribal connection. See Jeremiah G., 92 Cal. Rptr. 3d at 207-08; Z.H., 740 N.W.2d at 653-54. Pursuant to 25 C.F.R. § 23.107(c)(1), Mother’s asserted belief that she may be eligible for enrollment in the Crow Tribe was minimally sufficient to constitute a reason to know that the children were Indian children under the circumstances of this case.

¶22 We are further troubled by the Department’s apparent view that it has no affirmative duty to make further inquiry or provide tribal notice and inquiry when parents are not cooperative. Lack of parental cooperation is immaterial, is not a basis for equitable waiver or estoppel, and does not otherwise relieve state agencies and courts of the duty to comply with ICWA requirements. Kahlen 285 Cal. Rptr. at 512. ICWA vests Indian children and related Indian tribes with a federal right, independent of but on par with the right of Indian and related Indian tribes with a federal right, independent of but on par with the right of Indian parents, to specified tribal notice and eligibility determinations regardless of the conduct or disregard of the parents. Miss. Band of Choctaw Indians, 490 U.S. at 49-53, 109 S. Ct. at 1609-11; Kahlen, 285 Cal. Rptr. at 512. The practical difficulty or inability of a state agency to identify the correct tribe or substantiate an assertion of requisite Indian ancestry does not relieve the agency of its duty to comply with ICWA requirements. See Kahlen, 285 Cal. Rptr. at 512.