Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #ICWA
Most recents (16)
For the last month I have woken up, gone outside, basked in sunlight, made some coffee, drank it, grit my teeth and started up my phone to see if SCOTUS had ruled on Haaland v. Brackeen yet, kickstarting a new GOP movement to steal Native children & undermine tribal sovereignty.
The Brackeens were White grandparents who wanted to adopt their Native grandchild after their white parent was killed and their Native parent had a drug problem. The case tugs at the heartstrings. If that's all you knew, you'd be inclined to think they were in the right.
But under the rules of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (#ICWA), courts must place Native children first with Native family members, or lacking that, other tribal members, or lacking that, RELATED tribes (such as a Creek kid going to a Seminole home, both Muscogean tribes).
#BREAKING: We are overcome with joy that the Supreme Court has upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which is widely regarded as the gold standard of child welfare.
To fully understand the implications of this decision, we are conducting a thorough legal review and will provide in-depth analysis this afternoon.
One thing is certain: #ICWA is crucial for the safety and well-being of Native children and families and the future of Native peoples and Tribal Nations. The positive impact of today’s decision will be felt across generations.
The U.S. Supreme Court also has issued the long-awaited decision in Haaland v. Brackeen. #ICWA #DefendICWA #ProtectICWA
supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf…
supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf…
The Haaland v. Brackeen has been one of the most closely watched Indian law cases in recent history. At stake is the Indian Child Welfare Act, the gold standard in child welfare law and the law that recognizes that tribes have a say in the futures of their children. #ICWA
The decision in Haaland v. Brackeen is noticeably complex. The entire document, including the syllabus, opinion, concurring opinions and dissent totals 133 pages. #ICWA #DefendICWA #ProtectICWA
During the #SCOTUS oral argument in #Brackeen several Justices seemed to think #ICWA takes Native children from foster parents they attached to & that’s bad.
So here’s a list of every time the foster parents in this case moved a foster kid or fought for a kid to be moved:
So here’s a list of every time the foster parents in this case moved a foster kid or fought for a kid to be moved:
We’ll start with the Brackeens.
The first child they ever fostered was not an ICWA case bc the kid was not Native. After 5 months, they asked CPS to take the child back bc the 3 yr old was “difficult” and “suffocating”.
The first child they ever fostered was not an ICWA case bc the kid was not Native. After 5 months, they asked CPS to take the child back bc the 3 yr old was “difficult” and “suffocating”.
In 2019, when the Brackeens fought for and got custody of YRJ the child was a year old. She had been raised the first year of her life by a different Texas foster family, who was willing to adopt her. At the time they got custody, she was not being raised by the Brackeens.
Disturbing but unsurprising to hear members of the SCOTUS in the #ICWA case arguing that Indigenous peoples were violent and therefore couldn't care for our children. Let's unpack this idea - a thread 🧵
The myth that Indigenous people were *more* violent that other people has been around for a long time. It was used as a justification for imperialism and colonialism by Europeans.
There was violence and conflict between Indigenous nations in the past, but there were also peace treaties, confederacies, and other systems in place to maintain peace.
As an Indigenous attorney from the global South, I choose to wake up in the “iron cold” of Federal Indian Law and fight for basic human rights to apply to Indigenous Peoples. Even so, it’s crushing to hear #Brackeen as #GibsonDunn attempts to erode #ICWA and #TribalSovereignty.🧵
I’ve litigated #ICWA cases with @BenRundallEsq in AZ, and even in a state with 22 federally recognized Tribes, it was abundantly clear that courts aren’t competent to respect protections meant to remedy the historical wrongs of taking Indigenous children away from their families.
🚨Good Morning!! Pre-Argument 🧵 3 of 3 explaining the constitutional challenges to #ICWA that #SCOTUS will hear today in Haaland v. #Brackeen: Anti-Commandeering. 1/7
This challenge is about state’s power. The idea, from the structure of the Constitution and the 10th Amendment, is that Congress has limited power, & can’t interfere with powers that belong to States. 2/7
Congress can pass laws preempting (trumping) state law, but they can’t make state officials do stuff to enforce federal law. Congress can make it illegal to buy certain kinds of firearms, for example, but they can’t force state officials to run background checks. 3/7
🚨Good Morning!! Pre-Argument 🧵 2 of 3 explaining the constitutional challenges to #ICWA that #SCOTUS will hear today in Haaland v. #Brackeen: Article 1/Congressional Power. 1/16
Congress can only pass a law if the Constitution gives them the authority to pass that type of law. Congress must "have the power" to pass a law, or else the whole law is unconstitutional, & so are all the other laws of that type. 2/16
So it matters a ton what types of laws the Constitution says Congress can pass. In #Brackeen, whether Congress can pass a law that aims to keep Indian children with their families, communities, & culture. 3/16
🚨Good Morning!! Pre-Argument 🧵 1 of 3 explaining the constitutional challenges to #ICWA that #SCOTUS will hear today in Haaland v. #Brackeen: The Equal Protection Clause (EPC). 1/14
The EPC of the 14th Amendment (w/ Due Process Clause of 5th) guarantee equal protection of the law, no matter who you are. #SCOTUS interprets this not to prohibit laws that treat categories of people differently but says laws are disfavored if they target disfavored groups. 2/14
The more disfavored the group, the more scrutiny we apply to the law. Or that's how it started. Now we look at certain kinds of classes of categorizing people as more suspect--like racial classifications--even when they target the majority group. 3/14
My friend @ojdunford gives a little preview here of today’s arguments in the case challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act fedsoc.org/commentary/fed… #ICWA
I am heavily RTing #ICWA-related info right now because I need all my non-Native followers to understand that the Supreme Court is considering whether to overturn what is literally a genocide-prevention law.
This is actually about genocide in the strictest legal sense, as defined by the UN genocide convention that the US ratified in 1988.
The forcible transfer of children from one group to another is genocide, period. ICWA is designed to prevent it.
The forcible transfer of children from one group to another is genocide, period. ICWA is designed to prevent it.
If this case is not on your radar as another sign that creeping fascism is no longer creeping, it should be.
Anyway, read the RTs.
Anyway, read the RTs.
The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments about #ICWA tomorrow. This is a thread about trans-racial adoption, Indigenous futures, and the intergenerational effects of US assimilation policies. 1/
My father was adopted by a white family as a newborn in 1952. We knew nothing about his biological kin. He never wanted to know about them. He never asked. He never wanted to open that wound. 2/
I am the biological son of my father. And even though I was not the one adopted out, every time someone asked me, where are you from? What is your ethnicity? What are you? I had no answers. I had no way of knowing how to approach those questions. 3/
Keeping Native children with Native families, in Native homes, and in Native communities is our absolute and inherent right as sovereign peoples/nations!
When we tell you settler colonialism is an ongoing process that still harms, displaces, dispossesses, and erases Natives while promoting Indigenous genocide, you only need to look at the attack on ICWA and how our children have been used as a means of dismantling our sovereignty!
Asserting that the settler state recognizes and honors our rights to our children and for them to remain in community with our peoples is not an exercise in discrimination but instead an exercise in political, cultural, and inherent sovereignty!
The idea that a basic right you hold could disappear overnight is unfathomable. Many in shock now. But for Native people, especially for Native women, it has been our reality that court cases and policies take and take, as that is the way of settler colonialism. #RoeVWade
Native women held power prior to colonization within in their tribal nations, it was settler colonialism that stole that away. The women’s rights movement lifted ideas from Native women, because our bodies, minds, and spirits were always ours.
Native women’s knowledge of plants ensured they had a choice of when and if they wanted to have a baby. Divorce was easy as putting their husbands possession’s outside the door. Settler colonial heteropatriarchy is foreign to these lands.
President of the @NCAI1944, Fawn Sharp at the #SOIN2020 State of Indian Nations.
Sharp has addressed #VAWA, #ICWA and more ...
"#MMIW is ravaging our communities and families"
Sharp has addressed #VAWA, #ICWA and more ...
"#MMIW is ravaging our communities and families"
@NCAI1944 President of the @NCAI1944, Fawn Sharp at the #SOIN2020
"Tribes are doing amazing things ..." Sharp says Its time for the federal government to step up and meet its obligations.
Watch here - newsmaven.io/indiancountryt…
"Tribes are doing amazing things ..." Sharp says Its time for the federal government to step up and meet its obligations.
Watch here - newsmaven.io/indiancountryt…
@NCAI1944 Congresswoman @RepDebHaaland, Laguna Pueblo, is delivering the #SOIN2020 congressional response.
Watch here - newsmaven.io/indiancountryt…
Watch here - newsmaven.io/indiancountryt…
This is one of the most uniformed pieces I've read. 1 Columbus wasn't a brave explorer. He was a guy who thought Earth was shaped like a pear with a nipple on top. The reason no one would fund him was they knew the size and shape of Earth and wo land a super ocean was uncrossable
2 he never even sat foot on our mainland, and he was almost 500 years after Lief Erickson and his sister Freydis (often left out even though she's a bad bitch). He apparently wasn't smart enough to bring someone familiar enough with the Indies to realize this wasn't it.
He and his crew raped women and children and sold girls as young as 9 into sex slavery (per his own journal). It was so bad native women killed their own children then themselves when they heard the Spanish were coming.
