US has fraught history with Native adoption. Enter the Supreme Court.
On a cool October morning, the sun shines down on a clearing in the piney woods of southeast Texas. Here, Tania Blackburn, after spending her childhood bouncing from foster home to foster home, is starting to build a life for herself.
The sun shone on Aurene Martin too when, driving to Capitol Hill, she found out she had a chance to adopt another son.
And sunlight pierced the hospital window the day Robyn Bradshaw became a grandmother.
In the world of child welfare, sunny days can be hard to find – something these three Native American women know all too well.
Finding homes for children whose parents are unable or unwilling to raise them is a heart-wrenching process, even when it goes smoothly. An overworked and under-resourced system only adds to the emotional strain, as courts, caseworkers, and families grapple with the question at the core of every child welfare case: What is the best interest of the child?
In cases concerning Native American children, that question is especially complicated.
For over 40 years, many of those cases have been subject to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Born from a tragic history, the law established minimum standards for removing an “Indian child” from their families and placing them in other homes.
The law has faced many legal challenges, but none quite like the one the U.S. Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday. As election results begin to trickle in across the country, the justices will hear oral arguments in a quartet of cases challenging ICWA on a variety of constitutional and doctrinal grounds.
The argument will likely continue the justices’ term-long discussion of the role of race in American society and law. The decision – expected next summer – is difficult to predict, but its consequences could extend far beyond ICWA. The case pits loving families against each other. It casts a federal and state power struggle against a backdrop of centuries of injustice. And it puts to the highest court in the land one of the toughest questions a judge can hear: With a vulnerable child in need of a family, what is in their best interests?
“Everyone wants children to
