Earlier this year, the United States Supreme Court granted review of four cases[1] that challenge the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a federal law intended to address the incredibly high rate of removal – and subsequent adoption – of Native children from their families by state agencies.[2] A ruling invalidating ICWA would have significant impacts on state and county child welfare practices, particularly if it would weaken protections and services for Native children domiciles outside the reservation.[3]
Despite this uncertainty, what is not at stake is the inherent right of tribal governments to support child and family welfare within their own communities.[4] Many tribes are animating their laws and community services with traditional values that honor child and community well-being.[5] The fullest expression of this authority is a responsive tribal child welfare system oriented to supporting families and children through culturally attuned tribal codes and courts, broad social services sensitive to a family’s diverse needs, and community infrastructure to maintain family safety and stability, such as housing and child care.[6] Tribal governance and investment in families and children not only improves social outcomes, it also increases economic stability and, in turn, community well-being.[7]
Aligning governance and culture
Well before Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, tribal leaders demanded federal action to halt the abusive practices and tragic consequences of removing Native children from their families.[8] When Congress finally acted, it vowed to safeguard Native children from further injury and strengthen the legal authority of tribes in child welfare matters.[9] Finding that “there is no resource that is more vital to the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes than their children,”[10] Congress unequivocally affirmed the critical role of tribes in preserving Native families.
Enacted during the self-determination era of federal Indian law, ICWA represented a seminal shift in federal Indian law and policy.[11] Tribal self-determination is based on the premise that tribal leaders and members are in the best position to understand the needs and priorities of their communities, and thus advances tribal governance and reservation control over policy and economic decisions. In ICWA, Congress imported the mandates of self-determination while affirming the inherent responsibility of tribes as parens patriae[12] in child welfare matters.
These are not lofty policy aspirations. ICWA explicitly defines the exclusive jurisdiction of tribes over child welfare matters arising on tribal reservations or when the child is a ward of the tribal court, as well as concurrent jurisdiction for actions arising outside the reservation.[13] In addition, tribes must be notified by county or state child protection agencies of proceedings involving Native children, including children eligible to be tribal citizens. If out-of-home care is necessary, the state court is required to prefer placing the child with extended family members, other Native families, and tribally approved foster homes.[14]
Many tribes have established comprehensive child welfare laws and courts.[15]Among the more promising models are tribal child welfare systems that are informed by community trauma and embrace broad the responsibility for healing and well-being well beyond basic social services. These systems involve partnerships with state and local governments to enhance cultural understanding and more compassionate interactions, and weave together community supports and preventative services to foster safety and stability. The goal of these adaptive systems is to shift capacity and resources to respond appropriately to children and families in need of care and create pathways for family preservation.
As important as tribal child welfare systems are in Native communities, they are highly influential in state court proceedings and child protection services. Because ICWA requires that states defer to tribal child welfare codes and practices, tribal codes have the power to directly impact state action and outcomes for Native families and children. Thus, there is a real social justice imperative for tribes to address child welfare concerns through the fullest expression and practice of sovereignty both on and off-reservation.
Adaptive Tribal Child Welfare Systems
Pillar 1: Tribal Laws and Codes
Across Indian Country, tribes are creating unique child welfare systems tailored to their culture and community values. These systems comprise many public and private sector actors working together to address child maltreatment (abuse and neglect) and strengthen families. Child welfare systems are adaptive and multi-layered, driven by the family’s needs (day care and health care) and social-economic changes (employment and housing).
In Indian Country, the primary responsibility for child welfare lies with the tribal government. In some cases, the Bureau of Indian Affairs provides child welfare services to the Native community.[16] Tribal laws define the government’s responsibilities to protect children who are at risk of maltreatment and guide tribal court decisions concerning interventions, removal, reunification, and ultimately permanent legal and relational connectedness. Tribal customary law is often recognized to help resolve internal conflicts or to approach an issue in a more traditional way, such as using customary adoptions to preserve family relationships rather than permanently severing parent rights.[17]
The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe recently established a Family Healing Wellness Court called Noojimo’wiigamig Inaawanidiwag, which means Healing Journey in Ojibwe. Recognizing its responsibility over child and family welfare, the Band intends for its laws and court to help safeguard its “culture, language, rights and way of life, as well as promoting a future of prosperity for Band Members and future generations….” In fulfilling this mission, the Band directs the Court to:
provide intensive services and more frequent court intervention to facilitate the reunification of Band families and to prevent the breakup of such families;
improve the safety and well-being of children whose families are affected by substance abuse, trauma, and mental health conditions;
prevent the prenatal exposure of infants to alcohol and controlled substances;
expedite family reunification and reduce the lengths of children’s out-of-home placements;
strengthen families’ indigenous cultural, traditional, and community ties;
reduce recidivism rates of substance abuse and promote recovery; and
develop future healthy generations of Band members by promoting health and wellness for participants, their families, and Band communities.[18]
The authority of the Mille Lacs Band’s Family Healing Wellness Court is augmented by the support of a multidisciplinary team that serves families involved with the child protection system in both a collaborative and cultural way. Similarly, two other Minnesota tribes, the White Earth Nation and Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, have incorporated traditional healing knowledge and cultural practices into their child protection systems. With a more intimate knowledge of their community, these tribes offer alternative resources to assess and meet a family’s needs with a robust array of preventative services and pathways to connect families with what they need (for example, services to address poverty and poverty-related problems, and support for chemical dependency or mental health issues).
On a larger scale, a research collaboration between the Native Nations Institute at The University of Arizona and the National Indian Child Welfare Association, examined over one hundred tribal child welfare codes[19] to determine the array of authority over child welfare matters. The study analyzed eight core aspects of tribal child welfare policies: culture, jurisdiction, tribal-state relationships, child abuse reporting, paternity, foster care, termination of parental rights (TPR), and adoption. Among the important lessons learned from this review, cultural values appear to be most impactful. For example, many tribal codes set a higher burden of proof to remove a child from their home and disallow termination of parental rights, favoring instead customary adoption. Placement preferences favor grandparents and extended family. The study validated the central tenet of self-determination: the most important and effective approach to supporting families and safeguarding children is through tribal governance.
pillar 2: Tribal Child and Family Programs
Against the backdrop of tribal codes and courts, tribal child welfare systems provide an array of community-based services and partner with families directly to meet their particular needs. These services and supports include family preservation services, foster care, mental health care, and substance abuse treatment, employment assistance, and housing and financial assistance. The family-community approach also identifies alternative pathways to better support families if an intervention is necessary. For example, close partnerships with schools, public safety, and social workers could leverage capacity to provide concrete support to a family and alleviate a referral to the child protection office. These practices emphasize relationships and connections and expand responsibility for children and family well-being to the whole community.[20]
Another example from Minnesota illustrates the possibilities of adopting the whole community-guided/family-centered approach to tribal child welfare systems. In May 2020, the Red Lake Nation celebrated the opening of a new building with hopes that it will inspire a new era of community well-being. The Nation’s redesigned child and family services program has been renamed to Ombimindwaa Gidinawemaaganinaadog, which means Uplifting our Relatives, and will be housed in the newly constructed Intergenerational Services Building.
Rooted in Anishinaabe language, culture, and traditions, the new program addresses intergenerational trauma and healing through family and community relationships. It offers a traditional approach to fostering wellness and connectedness, such as referring to clients as “relatives.” While most people on the reservation are in fact related, the reference to one another as relatives also fosters a deeper personal connection. Similarly, foster parents are known as “relative care community service providers,” a title that emphasizes family relationships. Another important change is re-framing child protection case management as “reunification services.” Negative terminology often pathologizes child welfare matters and risks exacerbating pre-existing trauma. Using Native words is an expression of tribal sovereignty and conveys the traditional aspiration of healthy and bonded families.
These are not mere cosmetic changes. Buildings and structures and revamped programs represent direct tribal investments in families and children. They also signify meaningful cultural transformations around family relationships. The underpinning of these tribal child welfare systems is the knowledge that preserving families is a vital pathway to healing and repairing the community as a whole from the persistent effects of historical trauma, which surface in the extreme over-representation of Native people in the child welfare system,[21] the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and chronic health disparities. Another leading public-health approach to resolving trauma was designed by the Center for American Indian Health, which promotes home care, parenting skills, and cultural strengths. In healing from historical trauma, community members also recover their identity and their health.
pillar 3: Tribal Community Supports
The third pillar of the child welfare system is community supports. These are the buildings and infrastructure that complement the other two pillars, tribal laws and social services. The relationship between physical space and overall health is well known. In Native communities, for example, social challenges often associated with poor housing conditions are extensive and exacerbate both health problems and child welfare.[22]
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the worst consequences of these conditions. Native Americans have suffered the most severe health and economic consequences of any major population group[23] during the pandemic, with the highest infection rates and a mortality rate 2.5 times that of non-Hispanic whites.[24] The public health emergency soon exposed another crisis: acute overcrowding and inferior housing conditions across Indian Country, which aggravated Covid conditions and created an imminent health threat to households.[25] A less obvious, but extremely worrisome outcome of the pandemic is that Native youth have suffered the highest rate of caregiver loss of any population group, more than 4.5 times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic white children.[26]
Several Native nations are creating unique community supports around housing to reduce child removals and keep families intact—supports that also provide protections against losses such as those suffered during the pandemic. In the Pacific Northwest, the Lummi Tribe designed Sche’lang’en Village, a co-housing community with the mission of preserving and protecting “Native families by providing an opportunity for families to make transformational life changes.”[27] The word “sche’lang’en” means “way of life” in Lummi, and it represents both the Tribe’s essential philosophy and its intentions for residents of the Village to be sheltered and protected.
The Tribe located the housing development in the center of the reservation – the heart of the community – and within walking distance of health care and social services. Clustered with elder housing and counselors-in-residence, Sche’lang’en Village is comprised of 45 multi- and single-story houses that have become home to 34 families and more than 100 children. The houses are built in pods, with front doors and back porches facing other houses to encourage neighborly interaction and connected to an outdoor community space for more socialization opportunities.
On the Great Plains, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe is building a multi-generational housing community designed around traditional values of health and well-being. The Tribe’s express goals were to ensure that every family will be able to live in safe, sanitary, and affordable housing in a community with a central social and cultural gathering place.[28] Moreover, the project had to be community-led. Untethered from their initial reluctance – never had they been asked to be the architect of their own space – they eagerly imagined a place for their relatives, young and old, bounding with opportunities for future generations.
The Tribe listened carefully and went even further, insisting on upgraded materials to ensure tribal members received quality, energy-efficient homes and amenities such as dishwashers and microwaves, washer-dryer units, garages, and Internet service. Previously, these features of quality and convenience have not been synonymous with housing in Indian Country. The power of this community collaboration cannot be overstated. By making significant investments in its people, the Tribe instilled a profound sense of respect and dignity in its community – qualities rarely considered in the appalling legacy of reservation housing development, housing which often serves today as yet another persistent and visible reminder of historical trauma.
Conclusion
In 1978, as it considered the Indian Child Welfare Act, Congress and the country learned about the grave disruption to Native communities from the excessive and unnecessary removal of Native children from their families and culture. Despite ICWA’s jurisdictional mandates and procedural safeguards, Native children continue to be removed from their homes at alarming rates and vulnerable families remain at risk of displacement. Even more, ICWA’s mainstay protections are again being challenged in the US Supreme Court.
The imperative to act is as urgent as ever. What is needed is more tribal impact in child welfare systems both within and outside reservation communities. Many tribes have recognized the urgency of these challenges. They have created child welfare systems animated by cultural values of health and wellness that weave traditional practices and innovative child protection laws together with community supports designed to honor the dignity of each person and family.
These collective contributions offer insight, wisdom, and pragmatic ideas with the potential to transform tribal child welfare practices, and in doing so, ensure the preservation and well-being of Native children, families, and communities.
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About PATRICE
Of Standing Rock Lakota descent, Patrice H. Kunesh is the founder of Peȟíŋ Haha Consulting, a social enterprise committed to fostering social and human capital and pursuing economic equity in Native communities. Previously, Patrice established and led the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and has held appointments as the Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development at the US Department of Agriculture and as the Deputy Solicitor for Indian Affairs at the US Department of the Interior. In addition, she served as in-house counsel to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe and on the faculty at the University of South Dakota School of Law. Patrice began her legal career at the Native American Rights Fund and recently returned to NARF as the major gifts officer.
This essay was commissioned by the National Native Children’s Trauma Center with support from Casey Family Programs, a national operating foundation dedicated to improving the lives of America’s most vulnerable children. The findings and conclusions presented are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Casey Family Programs.
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[1] In Haaland v. Brackeen (consolidated for one hour of oral argument with Cherokee Nation v. Brackeen, Texas v. Haaland, and Brackeen v. Haaland), the Supreme Court will review a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that invalidated portions of the Indian Child Welfare Act. The consolidated case will be argued in the fall of 2022, with a decision to follow next year.
[2] In the 1970s, between 25-35% of all Native children were removed from their families, and a prominent study found that 85% of removed Native children were placed with non-Native adoptive families. In a 1974 hearing on the proposed ICWA, Congress heard testimony that some state social workers viewed Indian reservations as categorically unacceptable places to raise children and removed children without due process. Matthew L. Fletcher, Federal Indian Law 422 (citing Indian Child Welfare Program: Hearings Before the S. Sub. Comm. on Indian Affs., 93rd Cong., 2d Sess., 19-20 (1974). See also Patrice H. Kunesh, The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978: Protecting Essential Tribal Interests, 60 U. Colo. L. Rev. 131 (1988); Borders Beyond Borders: Protecting Essential Tribal Relations Off Reservation Under the Indian Child Welfare Act, 15 N. Eng. L. Rev. (2007). The federal government itself was complicit in these efforts, funding the “Indian Adoption Project” (IAP) in the 1950s. Along with the Child Welfare League of America, the IAP’s overt goal was to remove Native children in western states and place them for adoption by white families in eastern states. The Adoption History Project, University of Oregon (2012). Adoption History: Indian Adoption Project (uoregon.edu)
[3] Supporters of ICWA maintain that the law is based on the political government-to-government relationship between tribes and the federal government and sets the gold standard for culturally appropriate services in child welfare matters. See also, “Indian Child Welfare Act principles: The gold standard of child welfare practices.” Casey Family Programs (2019). Opponents contend that ICWA interferes with states’ rights and is impermissibly based on race. Their two main constitutional arguments are that ICWA violates the 10th Amendment of the Constitution because it “commandeers” – imposes duties on – the states, and that ICWA is an impermissible race-based law that contravenes the Equal Protection clause.
[4] In general, Native American tribes have inherent authority over their internal affairs to the same extent as state and federal governments. This arises from their pre-existing status as independent sovereigns. Tribes exercise this authority through their own form of government, laws, and judicial systems. The ICWA confirms this authority in its jurisdictional provisions: mandating that the tribe has jurisdiction exclusive as to any state over any child custody proceeding involving a Native child who resides or is domiciled within the reservation of such tribe, except where such jurisdiction is otherwise vested in the state by existing federal law (such as Public Law 280). 25 U.S.C. 1911(a).
[5] Among the many diverse Native cultures throughout the United States, there are widely shared beliefs and practices that children are a responsibility of both the family and the community. See Tribal Best Practices for Family Engagement Toolkit, National Indian Child Welfare Association (2018). Contemporary Native families and communities also continue to value kinship care, where extended family members and relatives share responsibility for child-rearing, along with their parents. This cultural practice is confirmed in the demographic data, which show that “single-race Native Americans are the group most likely … to live in multigenerational and crowded households. In these “grandfamilies,” Native grandparents were most likely to be responsible for raising their grandchildren (51.1% of all Native kinship-care families). Understanding these worldviews is the foundation of culturally responsive child welfare practice and policy. Patrice H. Kunesh, “How Are the Children? Addressing Covid Mortality in Native Families by Investing in Child Well-Being,” (Missoula, MT: National Native Children’s Trauma Center, (Jan. 2022). How Are the Children? — National Native Children's Trauma Center (nnctc.org).
[6] Despite the considerable strengths of thriving Native communities, some families continue to struggle, and they may become entangled in state, county, or tribal child welfare systems. These challenges often are rooted in the legacy of unresolved historical trauma. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, Josephine Chase, Jennifer Elkins, & Deborah B. Altschul, “Historical Trauma Among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: Concepts, Research, and Clinical Considerations,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 43 (4), 282–290 (2011). See also Patrice H. Kunesh, “What We Inherit & What We Send Forth: How Tribes Can Improve Community Well-Being Through Trauma-Informed and Asset-Based Care,” (Missoula, MT: National Native Children’s Trauma Center, (Sept. 2021); John Red Horse, Cecilia Martinez, Pricilla Day, “Family preservation: Concepts in American Indian communities,” National Indian Child Welfare Association and Casey Family Programs (2001) (pdf on file with author).
[7] An abundance of research has established that tribal self-governance produces the best policy outcomes: when tribes make their own decisions about what development approaches to take, they consistently out-perform external decision makers on matters as diverse as governmental form, natural resource management, economic development, health care and social service provision. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Research also has well-established that investments in young children through an array of social welfare policies yield “the biggest bang for the buck.” Clea Simon, “Social spending on kids yields biggest bang for the buck.” The Harvard Gazette (July 24, 2019). Rob Gruenwald, “The promise of early childhood development in Indian Country,” Center for Indian Country Development, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (Nov. 17, 2017). The promise of early childhood development in Indian Country | Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (minneapolisfed.org)
[8] Long before the ICWA shed light on this crisis, the federal government sanctioned the removal of Native children from their families based on policies aimed at forcibly assimilating them, particularly through boarding schools. For over one hundred years, from 1869 to the late 1970s, under the authority of the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the federal government supported the removal of hundreds of thousands of Native children from their homes and enrollment at federally funded boarding schools. Children as young as three years old were removed from their families and sent to schools located far away from their families. The first was the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, founded by Richard Henry Pratt on a former military installation in Pennsylvania. Pratt’s motto, “Kill the Indian, and save the man,” foretold the horrific violence and abuse children would suffer in these institutions. Children were punished for speaking their Native languages and conformity to school rules was strictly enforced, from dress to manners to curriculum. Girls were taught domestic skills while boys were trained for industrial jobs. Carlisle became the model for 357 other government operated schools. In 1900, 20,000 Native children were in boarding schools. Twenty-five years later, 60,000 Native children, representing nearly 83% of all Native children, were attending boarding schools, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Thousands of these children never returned home. When the last school was closed in 1978, generations of survivors carried deep emotional scars from their boarding school traumas.
In addition, the Indian Adoption Project (IAP) further operationalized the federal government’s policy of forced removal of Native children from their families, communities, and cultures. The nonprofit Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs, carried out the IAP between 1958 to 1967. In 2001, Shay Bilchik, the CWLA President and CEO, formally apologized for the organization’s participation in the widespread removal of Native children from their homes. K. Balcom, “The Logic of Exchange: The Indian Child Welfare League of America, the Adoption Resource Exchange Movement and the Indian Adoption Project, 1958-1967. Adoption & Culture, 1(1), 5-67 (2007).
Despite ICWA’s intentions and procedural interventions, serious disparities continue to occur. Native children in foster care are represented at nearly two times the level of white children, according to a 2007 report by the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA). For example, according to statistics from the South Dakota Department of Social Services, a Native child is 11 times more likely to be placed in foster care than a white child. In South Dakota, Natives comprise less than 9% of state’s population, but 52% of the kids in South Dakota’s foster care system are Native. See Patrice H. Kunesh, “A Call for an Assessment of the Welfare of Indian Children in South Dakota,” 52 South Dakota Law Review (2007).
[9] 25 U.S.C. § 1901(3) – (5).
[10] 25 U.S.C. §1901.
[11] After the termination policies of the 1950s and the 1960s era of civil rights, Congress endorsed a suite of sweeping new policies to encourage tribal self-government, including the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDEAA) of 1975, the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1976, and the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The ISDEAA fundamentally changed how the U.S. engages with Indian Country, empowering tribes to exercise their sovereignty and control their own affairs. In this new era of self-determination, government agencies must contract with Native nations to provide services for their citizens such as health care, education, and housing, which previously were exclusively provided, and controlled, by the federal government. In the words of tribal leader W. Ron Allen, Chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, “We took charge of our own destinies. We are now capable of meeting our communities’ needs more effectively than any other government. We know our people and are sensitive to their cultural traditions and realities. Our people take comfort in knowing that their governments—not the state or federal government—are making decisions on their behalf.”
[12] Under the legal doctrine of parens patriae, the government has the inherent authority, both the power and the duty, to protect people who are legally unable to act on their behalf. In the area of minor children, the government and its courts have the duty to intervene to protect the best interests of families in need of services and children whose welfare may be at risk. Congress recognized tribes’ status as parens patriae in ICWA’s jurisdictional mandates and procedural responsibilities to act on behalf of Native children. See Cami Fraser, Protecting Native Americans: The Tribe as Parens Patriae, Michigan Journal of Race and Law Vol. 5 (2000). See generally, Oglala
Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik, 993 F.3d 1017 (8th Cir. 2014) (discussing standing of Oglala Sioux Tribe to pursue ICWA claims on behalf of tribal members to maintain tribe's integrity and to promote ICWA's goal of maintaining the security and stability of Indian families); United States v. Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska, 254 F.3d 728, 734 (8th Cir. 2001) (under parens patriae doctrine, tribe acts on behalf of all of its members).
[13] ICWA’s jurisdictional mandates are set out in 25 U.S.C. §1911. See A Practical Guide to the Indian Child Welfare Act, National Indian Law Library (2011).
[14] 25 U.S.C. §1915.
[15] The study examined 109 tribal child welfare laws, of which over half were enacted after 2000. For a general summary of these tribal laws, see “Tribal Child Welfare Codes as Sovereignty in Action: A Guide for Tribal Leaders” [Conference Edition]. Rachel Rose, Adrian T. Smith, Mary Beth Jager, Miriam Jorgensen, and Stephen Cornell. 2016. Paper presented at the 2016 National Indian Child Welfare Association Annual Meeting, St. Paul, MN, April 4-6, 2016. National Indian Child Welfare Association, Portland, OR; Native Nations Institute, Tucson, AZ.
[16] The Bureau of Indian Affairs at the US Department of Interior is responsible for implementing regulations under ICWA and supporting tribal self-governance in child welfare and family services. State child welfare systems similarly are supported by federal funding and policy initiatives. The Children’s Bureau within the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families holds the responsibility for implementing federal child and family legislation. https://www.childwelfare.gov.
[17] Customary adoption is the main focus of a recent report issued by the California Tribal Families Coalition, formed by a consortium of tribal leaders following an extensive review of the state’s compliance with ICWA and its implementation of Cal-ICWA. “Tribal Customary Adoption (TCA) and the Resource Family Approval (RFA) Process: Challenges and Opportunities,” California Tribal Families Coalition, (Dec. 2020). The review found that California “is at the epicenter of ICWA,” with “some of the most divisive and controversial cases.” While the state is at the “cutting edge of innovation and reform,” the report finds that the California child welfare process is still missing important context about tribal customs and opportunities to collaborate with tribes around ICWA compliance. 2020.12.13-TCA-RFA-Report-KAC-draft-2-3.pdf (caltribalfamilies.org)
[18] In Chapter 4 of the Judicial Branch, establishing the Family Healing Wellness Court as a voluntary program, the Mille Lacs Band sets out several findings and goals around family preservation and strengthening the Band’s traditions:
(a) The Band Assembly hereby finds that the purpose of this chapter is to bring together healing resources, cultural resources, and drug treatment by using a team approach to achieve the healing of the individual, the preservation and reunification of Band families, and the strengthening of Band communities.
(b) The Band Assembly hereby finds that 24 MLBS § 2003 states that Zhawenimaa, to keep the people together as one, is the way of life of the Non-Removable Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. The Band’s goal is to restore the circle of peace and harmony by helping those that come before the Court of Central Jurisdiction so that they may experience a good life and the Band will continue to survive.
(c) The Band Assembly hereby finds that Band children and families impacted by substance abuse and mental health disorders are better served by a cooperative process grounded in Band culture and traditional teachings as an alternative to the usual court process.
[19] Tribal Child Welfare Codes as Sovereignty in Action, n. 5.
[20] Wendy Haight, Cary Waubanascum, David Glesener, Priscilla Day, Brenda Bussey, and Karen Nichols, “The Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies: Systems change through relational Anishinaabe worldview,” Children and Youth Services Review 119 (2020).
[21] The recent changes to the Red Lake Nation’s human services program, as with the changes in other Minnesota tribes mentioned above, are necessary responses to the exigency of the over-representation of Native children in the Minnesota foster care system. “Nationally, Indigenous children are 1.6 times more likely to be subjects of alleged maltreatment reports than white children. In Minnesota, Indigenous children are 5.4 times more likely than white children to be subjects of … Child Protection Services. … Furthermore, the number of Indigenous children in out-of-home care has increased …[and] Indigenous children in Minnesota have the highest rates of re-entry into out-of-home placement within 12 months following family reunification.” Haight et al. (2020)
[22] Haight et al., referencing a 2010 Canadian study indicating that “poverty and poor housing significantly account for over-representation of Indigenous families with children in out-of-home care.”
[23] Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, Nicolás E. Barceló, Randall Akee, and Stephanie Russo Carroll, “American Indian Reservations and COVID-19: Correlates of Early Infection Rates in the Pandemic,” Journal of Public Health Management and Practice 26, vol. 4 (2020): 371–77. https://journals.lww.com/jphmp/toc/2020/07000
[24] Randall Akee and Sarah Reber, “American Indians and Alaska Natives are dying of COVID-19 at shocking rates” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2021).
[25] Rodriguez-Lonebear et al. 2020. There is no doubt that poverty and poor housing harm health. According to the National Congress of American Indians, substandard housing makes up 40% of on-reservation housing, compared to 6% of housing outside of Indian Country. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the largest housing programs serving Indian Country, has found that:
the overcrowding and physical housing problems of American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations and in other tribal areas remain strikingly more severe than those of other Americans. Particular circumstances of tribal areas—remoteness, lack of infrastructure, and complex legal and other constraints related to land ownership—make it extremely difficult to improve housing conditions in those areas.
Nancy Pindus, G. Thomas Kingsley, Jennifer Biess, Diane Levy, Jasmine Simington & Christopher Hayes, U.S. Dep’t Hous. & Urb. Dev., Housing Needs of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Tribal Areas: A Report from the Assessment of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Housing Needs (Jan. 2017). https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/HNAIHousing Needs.pdf
[26] Kunesh, 2022. How Are the Children? — National Native Children's Trauma Center (nnctc.org).
[27] Elizabeth Amon, “A Village Apart: Lummi Nation Creates a Unique Community to Support Families.” The Imprint, Youth & Family News (July 21, 2021). https://imprintnews.org/family/a-village-apart/57033
[28] Patrice H Kunesh, “The Significance of Belonging for Indigenous Peoples: The Power of Place and People—Creating a Vision for Community in Indian Country through Self-Governance and Self-Determination,” Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law 30, no. 1 (2021): 23–46. Vogel’s mission is to create an affordable housing community called Badger Park, a 160-acre subdivision nestled in rolling grassland plains in Eagle Butte. Vogel’s plans include 160 rental units, an elderly community, a 20-unit apartment complex, 35–45 home ownership, and space for community and economic development. The entire park will create 265 family units, housing a total of 1,000–1,500 people. The site also anticipates more park areas and a business center. Achieving their goals requires Vogel and her team to weave together many housing programs and constantly scout new funding opportunities.
