The Christian Groups Fighting Against the Indian Child Welfare Act

“I don’t really believe in historical trauma.”

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  Kiera Butler Mother Jones
  

  

  Mother Jones; Getty; Library of Congress

Editor’s note: This short piece accompanied “Forever Home” in the March+April 2023 print edition of Mother Jones. 

This spring, the US Supreme Court will hear a case that could decide the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the 1978 landmark law that strengthened tribes’ rights to keep Native children out of the foster care system. At the center of the current case are the Brackeens, a white Texas couple hoping to adopt a 4-year-old girl from a Navajo family. Devout Christians, the Brackeens have said that they felt called by God to adopt, telling the New York Times in 2019 that they considered adoption a way to “rectify our blessings.”

Christian groups have jumped to the Brackeens’ defense, arguing that ICWA discriminates against Native children by prioritizing potential caretakers’ Native heritage over their overall ability to provide for a child. Yet critics see that argument as merely the latest chapter in Christians’ long history of removing Native children from their communities to win more converts—a kind of a modern spin on the famous words of Richard H. Pratt, the Christian founder of the first residential school for Native children in the United States. “All the Indian there is in the race should be dead,” he wrote in 1892. “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare

Founded in 2004, this group advocates on behalf of non-Indian families who are trying to adopt children of Native descent. The group’s founder is Elizabeth Morris, author of a 2006 book called Dying in Indian Country, which she describes as “the true story of a father who realized reservation life and welfare policies were destroying his family.” In an amicus brief filed in 2021, an anti-ICWA group called the Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare wrote, “For nearly fifty years, ICWA has imposed race-based classifications on Indian children and their families—a clear violation of Equal Protection—and has caused horrendous individual suffering as a result.” CAICW’s public Facebook page, with 2,700 followers, regularly shares stories about what they see as the depravities of Native culture; a recent post cast doubt on recent finding of remains of Native children on the grounds of Canadian boarding schools despite abundant evidence that they are legitimate.

Nightlight Christian Adoptions

Since 1959, this evangelical adoption agency has advocated for adoption as an alternative to abortion and a boon to Christianity. Nightlight waded into an ICWA battle in 2013, when the agency facilitated the adoption of a Cherokee girl into a White Christian family. After a highly publicized custody battle between the adoptive parents and tribal leaders ensued, with evangelical activists staging rallies and circulating petitions to “Save Baby Veronica” from being removed from her Christian adoptive family. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in the adoptive parents’ favor. In a current brochure about its faith-based mission, Nightlight states, “Adoption is one of the most effective ways to make disciples of all nations.”

Allie Beth Stuckey and Naomi Schaefer Riley

Stuckey, a Christian influencer with 441,000 followers on Instagram, devoted a recent episode of her podcast, “Relatable,” to the Indian Child Welfare Act. Her guest was Naomi Schaefer Riley, a fellow of the libertarian think tank American Enterprise Institute and author of the and the 2016 book The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians. On Stuckey’s podcast, Riley argued that the US government’s history of abuse and exploitation of Native people is no longer relevant. “I don’t really believe in historical trauma,” she said. Instead, she blamed Natives’ poverty and suffering on modern moral failings. “Maybe it’s the substance abuse,” she said. “Maybe it’s the high crime rates. Maybe it has nothing to do with the fact that your grandfather was forced to go to a boarding school by the American government.” She claims that what “left-wing activists” really hope to achieve is “an Indian Child Welfare Act for Black children.”

That wasn’t Riley’s first appearance on Stuckey’s podcast; in an episode from last year called “CPS Has A Deadly Wokeness Problem” Riley discussed her most recent book, No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives, published in 2021. Riley held forth about her belief that law-and-order conservatives should think of child protective services as a branch of law enforcement. She told Stuckey, “We don’t think it’s a good idea as conservatives to abolish the police because we understand…the important role the police play in protecting our most vulnerable citizens, and we need to understand the important role that CPS plays in protecting children.” Stuckey urges her listeners to reject the notion that race and culture should play a role in custody decisions. “The world doesn’t care about children,” she says. Her listeners can help, she says, by “carrying on the legacy of Christianity.”

Interior Secretary Says Changes To Indian Child Welfare Act 'Close Loopholes'

By Emily Schwing •  NWNews.

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  On a visit to the the Spokane Indian Tribe Thursday U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said changes under the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, close some long-standing loopholes in the law.

  @SecretaryJewell / Twitter

A day after tribal leaders and governors in all 50 states received a letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell paid a visit to the Spokane Indian Tribe.
Jewell said Thursday, changes under the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, close some long-standing loopholes in the law.
During her visit, Jewell said a disproportionate number of tribal youth are being placed in the non-tribal foster care system “without any credible effort being made by the states to place those children in a family structure and a community structure that honors their heritage and their culture.”
The new rules require state courts to ask all participants at the beginning of custody proceedings about a child’s heritage. As well, only tribes can determine if a child is Indian.
A spokeswoman from the National Indian Child Welfare Association said no organizations or agencies at the state or federal level track the number of kids placed under ICWA. The group’s most recent estimates say one-third of the Northwest’s native population was under the age of 19.
High ranking government officials don’t come to Wellpinit, Washington, often. Jason Campbell, CEO of Sovereign Power, the Spokane Indian Tribe’s energy company, aid tribal leaders usually have to go to Washington, D.C., for this kind of conversation.
The Spokane Tribe is a sovereign nation and you could say Wellpinit is the capital. There’s a clinic, a public safety building and the cars even have their own black and green license plates.
Campbell was among leaders who offered Jewell a tour. They discussed many needs as an excited group of women gathered nearby.
“The Spokane Tribe is being recognized and it’s about time. We need this,” said Nancy Raymond, who has lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation her whole life.
Wellpinit resident Clarissa Thatcher added, “There’s a long list of stuff that can be improved on here.”
The tribe was selected to participate in a federal initiative meant to boost economic prosperity. Secretary Jewell said that effort will continue despite the outgoing Obama administration.
“That doesn’t matter,” Jewell said. “It’s the programs and the structure and the career staff that facilitates moving this forward.”
Two federal staff members will be dedicated to helping the tribe with long term projects.

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The Indian Child Welfare Act descends from a history of human rights abuses of Native Americans and subjugation of their culture, as the Christian Science Monitor's Bamzi Banchir explained in March:

The act was passed to amend historical practices that saw native American children taken from their families and communities and placed in boarding schools in an attempt to 'solve the Indian Problem' – native Americans were depicted as 'savage heathens' – by assimilating them into mainstream American society....

http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?trackingGroup=90962&siteSection=csmonitor_nws_non_sty_dynamic&videoId=28688128 


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AND from the Christian group who is seeking to destroy ICWA: [Christian Newswire 2016. All Rights Reserved. | 2020 Pennsylvania Ave. NW - Washington - DC - 20006 | 202-546-0054] Elizabeth Morris is Chair of the Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare and author of "Dying in Indian Country." CAICW, a ministry and advocacy, has assisted families judicially, educationally, and as a prayer resource since 2004.  
If you thought Elizabeth Morris is gone after the Baby V case, she's not. Look at this

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NARF statement about frivolous lawsuits: Since our founding 45 years ago, NARF has worked to protect the rights of Native children, families, and communities. We stand hand in hand with our allies against these recent attacks on ICWA and we will fight these meritless lawsuits. 

How much I have changed since the #CAICW story (Part 4)

protesting over the Baby Veronica case

By Trace A. DeMeyer

The story Christian Evangelical Groups involved in Federal IndianAdoption Policies was published in 2013, and blog readers are aware that Elizabeth Morris and her group CAICW were (and are) still lobbying to end the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), which is still disturbing to me and the thousands of Lost Birds who were adopted out in the last 100 years. We are called the Stolen Generations for a reason. Our Indian parents were harshly judged by non-Indians, then children were taken away to boarding schools and for adoptions.

What would happen if this was reversed and America suddenly decided that evangelicals are too radical so their children are taken? Wouldn’t that throw a twist in this debate and debacle? What if religious fervor, a savior complex and Christianity was judged in courtrooms and they were judged for not being good enough people to raise their own kids? Evangelical parents too fanatical about religion to raise their own child? What if anyone who is too religious was judged to be inadequate to raise a child?

This thinking throws a monkey wrench into the argument. I can imagine how easy it is for a non-Indian to say we don’t need ICWA protections. Many didn’t live through having their child taken. But Morris and others sure can believe and espouse they would be better parents than Indian parents.

Where did she get this notion? Morris was on the reservation and married to an Indian. Is she basing her belief that Christians are better than heathens? Is that what she thinks? Or is that Indians are too poor, too oppressed or depressed, or just plain savages?

Here was a comment from that article: cyanmanta

Allow me to explain what these people are really thinking: "We need to keep these children out of the hands of their heathen-devil redskin parents and save them through the grace of Jesus! We must steal their children from them in order to save their souls from eternal damnation for believing the false religion of the heathen devil red savage!" There, that's the only reason these people care about the children; not because they care about their actual welfare or living conditions, but because they want to wipe out the beliefs of the native people's of the US and turn them all into little obedient christians so they can use them to seize control of our government. Dominionism is hard at work trying to undermine secular democracy, make no mistake. 13 Sep 2013 4:31 PM

And this: Bill B. (alterego55)

We need to get Christian Dominionism out of our legal and political systems. It's been permeating it for so long that we've become desensitized to it.

The example case is a simple one. If the father is deemed unfit, then turn the children over to tribal authorities and let them determine the child's future.

This is a clear extension of the genocide of 30 million Indigenous Americans at the hands of Christians who wanted first their gold, then their land and then their heathen souls. Now that Indigenous Americans have no gold and have no land and Christians have converted as many adult heathens as they can, now they're after the adult heathens' children's souls. 13 Sep 2013 1:26 PM

And last: Kristine E. (KristineE)

I sure wouldn't want my daughter raised in an Evangelical home learning how to hate her Native American heritage along with other minority groups. 13 Sep 2013 12:46 PM

(to be continued)