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8 Indian children by private families.” Id., at 153.

This restarted a now-familiar nightmare for Indian families. The same assimilationist rhetoric previously invoked by the federal government persisted, “voiced this time by state and county officials.” L. George, Why the Need for the Indian Child Welfare Act?, 5 J. of Multicultural Social Work 165, 169 (1997). “ ‘If you want to solve the Indian problem you can do it in one generation,’ ” one official put it. Ibid. “ ‘You can take all of [the] children of school age and move them bodily out of the Indian country and transport them to some other part of the United States.’ ” Ibid. This would allow “ ‘civilized people’ ” to raise the children, instead of their families or their tribal communities. Ibid.

In this respect, “[t]he removal of Indian children by [S]tates ha[d] much in common with Indian boarding schools.” Fletcher & Singel 952. Through the 1960s and 1970s, Indian-child removal reached new heights. Surveys conducted in 1969 and 1974 showed that “approximately 25–35 per cent of all Indian children [were] separated from their families.” AAIA Report 1. Often, these removals whisked children not only out of their families but out of their communities. Some estimate that “more than 90 per cent of non-related adoptions of Indian children [were] made by non-Indian couples.” Id., at 2.

These family separations frequently lacked justification. According to one report, only about “1 per cent” of the separations studied involved alleged physical abuse. Ibid. The other 99 percent? “[V]ague grounds” such “as ‘neglect’ or ‘social deprivation.’ ” Ibid. These determinations, often “wholly inappropriate in the context of Indian family life,” came mainly from non-Indian social workers, many of whom were “ignorant of Indian cultural values and social norms.” Id., at 2–3. They routinely penalized Indian parents for conditions of “[p]overty, poor housing, lack of modern plumbing, and overcrowding.” Id., at 3. One 3-year-old Sioux child, for instance, was removed from her family on