Indian Child Welfare Act, three interviews; part one
This interview appeared in Indian Country Today in 2012. It was part of a year-long project supported by the George Polk Center for Investigative Reporting. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle.... Diane Garreau, ICWA director, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe N ative parents face extraordinary hurdles in keeping their children, including cultural misunderstandings and legal barriers that are unimaginable to many non-Native people. In this second decade of the 21st century, American Indian children in states across the country are still taken from their families and placed in foster care or adoptive homes at a much higher rate than other kids—just as they were before the passage of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal statute intended to help keep Native families intact. In Alaska, Native children make up 20 percent of the child population but 51 percent of those a state agency has placed in foster care; Montana