A lawsuit in Washington state and the Indian Child Welfare Act case before the U.S. Supreme Court are part of a coordinated campaign that experts say represents the most serious challenge to tribal sovereignty in decades. via Underscorenews
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When Congress passed ICWA in 1978, studies showed that state child welfare agencies and private adoption companies were taking between 25% and 35% of Native kids from their families. And 85% of those children were placed with non-Indigenous families. Despite their happy ending, the Brackeens are the lead plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit claiming the act is based on a racial preference that unfairly prioritizes Indigenous families as adoptive parents.
In January 2022, McGill filed the Maverick lawsuit, as well. He did not respond to requests for an interview. “What racial group in the United States has its own land?” she asked. “Its own water rights and environmental regulations? Its own police force, its own elections, its own government?” The Shoalwater Tribe is fighting for survival on several fronts. Its reservation is a tiny piece of land. The single square acre set aside by the U.S. government in 1866 is big enough to house the tribal headquarters and not much else. Rising sea levels caused by climate change have eaten into that territory as the ocean has slurped up houses on what used to be forested land above high tide.
“Gaming income funds basically everything,” Kerns said. “Without it, we’d have to cut our programs by about 70%.”Belinda Fletcher welcomes a community member to the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe’s low-cost lunch program.
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