Ohio State Podcast Examines the Fight to Save ICWA

Sandy White Hawk was just 18 months old when she was removed from her Sicangu Lakota family on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A white couple adopted her that year, in 1955. White Hawk spent her childhood separated from her family, her culture and her heritage - a trauma that still impacts her to this day.

Now, White Hawk is fighting to defend the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a law meant to protect Native American children from being removed from their tribes and sent into adoption or foster care systems. The law is being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court this fall to determine whether it is constitutional.

ICWA was passed in 1978 in response to the hundreds of thousands of Native children who were separated from their families by state child welfare and private adoption agencies. More than 80 percent of these Native children were placed in homes outside their families and tribal communities, even when fit and willing relatives were available, according to the National Indian Child Welfare Association.

https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/ohio-state-podcast-examines-the-fight-to-save-icwa