Earlier this year the New York Times reported on a case pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1978 The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed to stop what had previously been the large-scale practice of separating Indian children from their parents and placing them in non-Indian homes. The Court is now considering whether the ICWA allows for a Cherokee father of a child to challenge the adoption of a child by its non-Indian biological mother. The father in this case had previuosly renounced his parental rights and refused financial support to the child. The child was then raised by the adoptive parents in South Carolina until she was 27 months old, at which point the biological father then challenged the adoption. South Carolina state law does not allow a father to challenge adoption proceedings once he has surrendered parental rights (the current law in 30 states). How this fits into the law of the requirements of the current ICWA is now being examined by the Court. You can read about the story here and here.
The Ramsey County Law Library has recently added two books relevant to this subject. First, The Indian Child Welfare Act Handbook is a comprehensive source to assist lawyers and other professionals involved with the interests of Indian children. Case law addressing the correct application of the ICWA has burgeoned tremendously in recent years. Despite increasing discrepancies in court rulings, Congress has not amended or clarified the law despite several proposed bills to do so. Yet both federal and state laws and their application have changed the legal landscape in the areas of child welfare practices and child custody proceedings involving Indian children. The Handbook examines these developments and also incorporates over 500 court decisions released since the original was published in 1995.
Also, The Rights of Indians and Tribes has been the go-to resource for Federal Indian Law since it was first published in 1983. With its user-friendly question-and-answer format, the book addresses legal issues facing Indians and Indian tribes today, including tribal sovereignty, the federal trust responsibility, the regulation of non-Indians on reservations, Indian treaties, the Indian Civil Rights Act, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, and the ICWA. This book is a useful tool for tribal advocates, government officials, students, practitioners of Indian law, as well as the general public.
