Facing the Future: The Indian Child Welfare Act at 30

The text (from ICT):

‘Facing the Future: The Indian Child Welfare Act at 30’ edited by Matthew L.M. Fletcher, Wenona T. Singel, and Kathryn E. Fort

Through the generations, the attempted annihilation of Native families and tribal communities left legacies of survival and resistance, but some of the most persistent practices of colonialism linger, as this book reminds us.

Several of the authors cited in this collection of 12 essays take the U.S. sharply to task for the cultural damage left in the wake of generations of Native children removed from their homes and placed with non-Native people or institutions up to the present day.

“The long history of injustices against indigenous peoples of the Americas is well documented,” notes Professor Lorie M. Graham, Suffolk University Law School. “For purposes of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the relevant historical point would be what one scholar has referred to as the ‘Native American holocaust of the nineteenth century'” when Indian children were removed I from their homes.

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