Lamanite Placement Program: ICWA – How & why it is at risk, and why protecting ICWA is in the best interest of all life.

How & why ICWA is at risk

​The Indian Child Welfare Act is being argued in the Supreme Court as this Court overturns Indigenous sovereignty, reproductive rights, voting rights, Miranda rights, & EPA protections. This ICWA fight is borrowing the anti-communist, settler-logics used in Mormon-enacted Tribal Termination legislation & ICWA-exemption: shift the focus from Tribal / collective rights to colonial / individual rights. 

The Brackeens–white, Christian adoptive parents of a Diné child–are suing to overturn ICWA by claiming reverse racism. They, along with theirs & the states of Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, & Indiana, are arguing that ICWA places Indigenous people in a special class, which they believe is racist. But Indigenous Peoples aren’t legally a race in this case, but Nations. 

ICWA grants Indigenous nations jurisdiction over their People & lands as somewhat sovereign Nations. Indigeneity, as I understand it, is learned, cultural, political, & passed down. Which is why genocidal Europeans attack Indigenous children through enslavement, boarding schools, foster placement, adoption, & other forms of assimilation. If settlers can disrupt the Indigenization of children born to Indigenous persons by removing them from their Peoples, cultures, & lands, settlers can effectively eliminate Indigenous Nations as they detribalize the individuals, often under the banner of good intentions. 

Thus, ICWA protects Indigenous Nations’ rights to self-determination, not necessarily the rights of individual Indigenous persons. It is this seeming infringement that the Brackeens’ extremely powerful litigation team are exploiting. Brackeens & their lawyers at Gibson Dunn argue that ICWA is bad for individual Indigenous children as it does not take into account the wants of each child.

“It is no accident that the plaintiffs are represented (pro bono) by Gibson Dunn, lawyers who also represent … fossil fuel conglomerates Energy Transfer Partners & Enbridge, responsible for the Dakota Access & Line 3 pipelines,” said Chase Iron Eyes. 

“What happened at Standing Rock worried the oil industry,” Rebecca Nagle reported in This Land.

​“Indigenous resistance cost the Dakota Access Pipeline $7.5 billion. Industry leaders, including lobbying groups that represent Gibson Dunn clients, have talked openly about why these Indigenous-led protests need to be stopped.”

Like Mormon Sen. Watkins’s Tribal Termination policy, the destruction of Indigenous sovereignty, even under the banner of protecting individual rights, serves to open land up not just for settlement, but also minerals & resources. The idea was that Indigenous Peoples weren’t capitalizing on their resources & Indigenous control of reservations was blocking settler access to those resources. 

Already this year, the Supreme Court has chipped away at Indigenous sovereignty in which Kavanaugh, a known sexual predator, wrote in the OK v. Castro-Huerta case: “Indian country is part of the State, not separate from the State.” This ruling may directly impact the upcoming Supreme Court hearing of Haaland v. Brackeen, which, given the recent series of Supreme Court rulings, may call ICWA unconstitutional & deliver another genocidal blow to tribal sovereignty. ​

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Why protecting ICWA is in the best interest of all life

“To those of you invested in anti-pipeline movements, know that this fight is no different from those we’ve undertaken at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access pipeline or in Minnesota against Line 3,” Iron Eyes said. “It’s the same enemy using a different tactic.”

How often are the policies & practices established under the banner of “protecting children'' used to harm children? From “Don’t say gay” laws that harm queer children, to anti-trans laws that require children to have their genitals examined at school, to anti-abortion legislation that harms children born to parents who don’t want them, to anti-race & anti-sex education in schools that harms all children––these all show that calls to “protect children” are really calls to “protect white-Christian-settler dominance.” 

Protecting children is a concern of every culture. Culture is always learned. But the question is what cultures–collective agreements that sometimes act as individual restraints–do we want to preserve? 

Do we want to preserve a culture that uses genocide, land-theft, land-destruction for profit which causes climate collapse & biological annihilation in the sixth extinction? Or cultures that have been shown to protect 80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity on about 25% of its land as only 5% of the population? 

Indigenous peoples globally, have developed relationships to the ecosystems of their lands. These relationships & the knowledges, technologies, & sciences created from them were established over generations place-based experience. This is shown in the relationship between geographic densities of language diversity & biodiversity. 
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In places where biodiversity is abundant, diverse Indigenous languages are as well.In places where Indigenous languages are disappearing, biodiversity is as well. Indigenous languages are archives of place-based knowledge based on generations of experience tending their lands. This is why I work to be an unsettler & accomplice to Indigenous struggles for sovereignty globally. This is why I support ICWA & more holistically, LANDBACK. The end of settler-colonialism & the futurity of Indigenous Peoples is essential to all of our futures. 

To help Lakota Law fight to protect ICWA, sign this petition telling President Biden & the Department of Justice to defend ICWA, Secretary Haaland, & tribal sovereignty with every available means. Learn what local Indigenous-led organizations are doing in your area & how you can support them. Contribute to local Indigenous-run MMIW2S orgs, an issue deeply connected to genocide and the settler’s imagined ownership of Indigenous persons. If you are a settler, please do so with the humility of a long-term uninvited & often trauma-inducing guest that we are.

While also remembering James Baldwin’s words: 
“I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, & I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a (person) & a citizen of this country & you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.”


To read the full length essay with sources see “Mormonism and Indigenous Assimilation” ​