Native American kids in California’s foster care system are incessantly positioned in non-relative, non-native houses. Though the U.S. Supreme Court docket upheld the 1978 Indian Baby Welfare Act, guaranteeing youngster welfare businesses examine ancestry, contested circumstances nonetheless emerge. This story explores the long-standing points and the continuing battle to guard Native foster care rights in California. Learn the complete story.
Video Transcript
Over half of Native American youth in California’s foster care system find yourself in non-relative and non-Native households, a quantity that has remained comparatively regular prior to now decade, in line with state information analyzed by researchers at UC Berkeley. For over a century, California and different states compelled Native American youth into boarding faculties and positioned them right into a foster system that always left them with none ties to their communities.
The problem of kid custody in Native People has lengthy been a degree of painful historical past in the US. In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court docket upheld the 1978 Indian Baby Welfare Act, which regulates the removing and out-of-home placement of Native kids. The California Supreme Court docket bolstered these guidelines in a brand new determination, stressing that youngster welfare businesses should examine whether or not kids have Native American ancestry earlier than inserting them in foster care.
Nonetheless, contested circumstances proceed to seem frequently earlier than California courts, the place state protections are stronger than federal legislation. The Los Angeles Division of Youngsters and Household Providers, in 2019, accused two kids’s mother and father of substance abuse and home violence, finally getting their custody terminated in courtroom. Their mom has not indicated in courtroom paperwork that she is Native American, however she appealed the choice on the grounds that officers didn’t full a correct inquiry into her kids’s heritage.
Two dissenting justices blasted the bulk for taking an strategy that needlessly condemns these kids and others like them to extra uncertainty, extra instability, and extra trauma. The kids on the middle of the case are actually of their grandparents’ custody.
Native People have lengthy argued that they’ve a mandatory stake in guaranteeing the well-being of Native youth and that social employees should make good religion makes an attempt to inquire about ancestry.
For CalMatters, I am Shaanth Nanguneri.
