A Tribal Chief Testifies in Favor of the Indian Child Welfare Act (1977)

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous Indigenous children were taken from their tribes and adopted by settler families. In the 1960s, more than twenty-five percent of Indigenous children lived in non-Native institutions and homes. Many of these children suffered an irreversible separation from their families and from Native culture. In the 1970s, Indigenous scholars, legal advocates, and activists organized for greater recognition of tribal authority and cultural autonomy. The National Tribal Chairmen’s Association (NTCA) formed, bringing together representatives from 146 federally recognized tribes in order to represent the political interests of Indigenous people. Passing the Indian Child Welfare Act was one of their goals. When Congress’s Committee on Indian Affairs organized hearings to consider the Act, Indigenous activists and child welfare activists from across the United States testified in favor of the new law. This excerpt is taken from the testimony of Calvin Isaac, Tribal Chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and a member of the NTCA.

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL TRIBAL CHAIRMEN'S ASSOCIATION BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ON S. 1214. THE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT

August 4, 1977

If Indian communities continue to lose their children to the general society through adoptive and foster care placements at the alarming rates of the recent past, if Indian families continue to be disrespected and their parental capacities challenged by non-Indian social agencies as vigorously as they have in the past, then education, the tribe, Indian culture have little meaning or value for the future. This is why NTCA supports S. 1214, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1977. 

Our concern is the threat to traditional Indian culture which lies in the incredibly insensitive and oftentimes hostile removal of Indian children from their homes and their placement in non-Indian settings under color of state and federal authority. Individual child and parental rights are ignored, and tribal governments, which are legitimately interested in the welfare of their people, have little or no part in this shocking outflow of children. 

The problem exists both among reservation Indians and Indians living off the reservation in urban communities: an inordinately high percentage of our Indian children are separated from their natural parents and placed in foster homes, adoptive homes, or various kinds of institutions, including boarding schools. The rate of separation is much higher among Indians than in non-Indian communities. 

Last year Task Force Four of the Policy Review Commission reported Indian adoption and foster care placement statistics for 19 states. Of some 333,650 Indians in those states under the age of 21, 11,157, or at least one in every 30, were in adoptive homes. Another 6,700 were in foster care situations. Comparison of Indian adoption and foster placement rates with those of the non-Indian population for the same state invariably showed the Indian rate was higher, usually at least two to four times as high and sometimes 20 times higher. Where the statistics were available they showed that most of the adoptions and placements, sometimes 95 percent of them, were with non-Indian families. 

One of the most serious failings of the present system is that Indian children are removed from the custody of their natural parents by non tribal government authorities who have no basis for intelligently evaluating the cultural and social premises underlying Indian home life and childrearing. Many of the ·individuals who decide the fate of our children are at best ignorant of our cultural values, and at worst contemptful of the Indian way and convinced that removal, usually to a non-Indian household or institution, can only benefit an Indian child. Removal is generally accomplished without notice to or consultation with responsible tribal authorities.