Indian Child Welfare Act

Indian Child Welfare Act

Long title	An Act to establish standards for the placement of Indian children in foster or adoptive homes, to prevent the break-up of Indian families, and for other purposes.
Acronyms (colloquial)	ICWA
Enacted by	the 95th United States Congress
Effective	November 8, 1978
Citations
Public law	95-608
Statutes at Large	92 Stat. 3069
Codification
Titles amended	25 U.S.C.: Indians 43 U.S.C.: Public Lands
U.S.C. sections created	25 U.S.C. ch. 21 § 1901 et seq.
U.S.C. sections amended	43 U.S.C. ch. 33 §§ 1602, 1606
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as www.congress.gov/bill/95th-congress/senate-bill/1214 by James Abourezk (D-SD) on April 1, 1977 Committee consideration by Senate Indian Affairs, House Interior and Insular Affairs Passed the Senate on November 4, 1977 (Passed) Passed the House on October 14, 1978 (Passed, in lieu of www.congress.gov/bill/95th-congress/house-bill/12533) with amendment Senate agreed to House amendment on October 14, 1978 (Agreed) Signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on November 8, 1978
United States Supreme Court cases
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) ((Pub.L. 95–608, 92 Stat. 3069, enacted November 8, 1978), codified at 25 U.S.C. §§ 1901–1963.) is a Federal law that governs jurisdiction over the removal of Native American (Indian) children from their families.

ICWA gives tribal governments a strong voice concerning child custody proceedings that involve Indian children, by allocating tribes exclusive jurisdiction over the case when the child resides on, or is domiciled on, the reservation, or when the child is a ward of the tribe; and concurrent, but presumptive, jurisdiction over non-reservation Native Americans’ foster care placement proceedings.

ICWA was enacted in 1978 because of the disproportionately high rate of removal of Indian children from their traditional homes and essentially from Indian culture as a whole. Before enactment, as many as 25 to 35 percent of all Indian children were being removed from their Indian homes and placed in non-Indian homes, with presumably an absence of Indian culture. In some cases, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) paid the states to remove Indian children and to place them with non-Indian families and religious groups. Testimony in the House Committee for Interior and Insular Affairs showed that in some cases, the per capita rate of Indian children in foster care was nearly 16 times higher than the rate for non-Indians. If Indian children had continued to be removed from Indian homes at this rate, tribal survival would be threatened. It also damaged the emotional lives of many children, as adults having been through the process testified. Congress recognized this, and stated that the interests of tribal stability were as important as the best interests of the child. One of the factors in this judgment was that, because of the differences in culture, what was in the best interest of a non-Indian child was not necessarily what was in the best interest of an Indian child, especially as they have traditionally larger extended families and tribal relationships in their culture.

...
Wikipedia