Abolition, Settler Colonialism, and the Persistent Threat of Indian Child Welfare

Abstract

Family separation is a defining feature of the U.S. government’s policy to forcibly assimilate and dismantle American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) tribal nations. The historical record catalogues the violence of this separation in several ways, including the mass displacement of Native children into boarding schools throughout the 19th century and the widespread adoption of Native children into non-Native homes in the 20th century. This legacy eventually prompted the passage of landmark legislation known as the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA). ICWA introduced federal protections against the unnecessary removal of Native children and affirmed the role of the tribe as an important partner in child welfare proceedings. To what extent has the federal government honored the commitments of ICWA and reversed the trajectory of Native family separation since 1978? What can be done to reduce the threat of the current child welfare system on the well-being of Native families?
 In this Article, we use administrative and historical data to statistically evaluate the magnitude of change in AIAN family separation since the passage of ICWA and locate the institutional pathways that funnel AIAN families into the child welfare system. We find that, despite long-standing treaty responsibilities to support the health and well-being of tribal nations, AIAN children remain at incredibly high risk of family separation. In particular, we find that the frequency of AIAN children’s placement into foster care has remained relatively stable since the passage of ICWA and that the post-investigation removal decision by child welfare agencies is a key mechanism of inequality in family separation. We situate these findings within theories about settler colonialism and Indigenous dispossession to illustrate that the continuous removal of Native children from their homes is not an anomaly. Instead, we argue that the very intent of a white supremacist settler-state is to dismantle Native communities. Based upon these findings, we argue that the child welfare system in its entirety must be abolished in order to stop the routine surveillance and separation of Native and nonWhite children from their families by the state. We suggest that ICWA has provided, and will continue to provide, a necessary intervention to protect Native families so long as this intrusive system remains. We conclude by envisioning an abolitionist approach that immediately redirects social and financial resources into the hands of Native families and works cooperatively with tribal nations to promote Indigenous communities of care.

The Racial Origins of Foster Home Care

“…Minority calls for community control came to a head in the 1970s, with matching becoming a primary means of redressing harmful child welfare practices. But scholars have found that policies that support the placement of minority children in foster families of the same race or community do not stem the tide of family separation (Beardall and Edwards, 2021). This does not suggest that community control is unimportant to racial justice in child welfare, but that without state efforts to remedy economic and social inequalities in minority communities, the crisis of family separation will persist.…”

State Categories, Bureaucracies of Displacement, and Possibilities from the Margins

“…Taking children away from their parents in the context of slavery, boarding schools, the war on crack cocaine, the child welfare system, mass incarceration, and the camps for separated immigrant families at the southern U.S. border today are all connected politically; they are the products of state projects to control populations through fear. 7 Such separations attest to a history of state terror based on racism and unleashed on communities of color likely to be ensnared in state institutions (Briggs 2021; Roberts 2022; Rocha Beardall and Edwards 2021). Through normative assumptions about families that deem the socially vulnerable ineligible to live with their parents and children, these groups endure the weight of administrative regulations and bear the brunt of state power through the pain of family separations.…”

American Indian and Alaska Native overexposure to foster care and family surveillance in the US: A quantitative overview of contemporary system contact

“…The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed in 1978, in an effort to curtail the harms caused by the mass removal of AIAN children from their communities through the child the child welfare system and assert tribal jurisdiction over AIAN family life (Limb & Brown, 2008;Rocha Beardall & Edwards, 2021). ICWA has four main provisions: notification of the tribe when an Indian child is taken into foster care, active efforts to keep Indigenous families intact, qualified expert testimony prior to termination of parental rights and out-of-home placement, and tribal preference of an Indian child's foster care placement, usually with another Native family (Crofoot & Harris, 2012; J.R. Williams et al, 2015).…”

“…ICWA provides tribal governments critical tools to exercise tribal sovereignty in US family courts and provides a critical framework for protecting Native families and respecting tribal sovereignty (Pevar, 2012;Jacobs, 2014). Despite these protections, family separation continues to jeopardize and threaten the autonomy and wellbeing of Native families, and as a result, the very existence of tribal communities (Rocha Beardall & Edwards, 2021).…”