The ICWA and the Death Panel

In mid June of this year, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling rejecting a challenge to the constitutionality of a federal law called the Indian Child Welfare Act. The ICWA mandates that tribal nations are given a say when the state removes an indigenous child from their birth parents and it mandates that preference should be given to placing those children with Native families. Now I'm sure as Eleanor will explain much more eloquently than I can, part of the challenge to this law actually came from the way that this layers on top of the existing family policing system. And many people have been celebrating this as a huge unequivocal win and it is a victory. It's actually a little bit more complicated than