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10 abuse in foster and adoptive homes than their white counterparts. A. Landers, S. Danes, A. Campbell, & S. White Hawk, Abuse After Abuse: The Recurrent Maltreatment of American Indian Children in Foster Care and Adoption, 111 Child Abuse & Neglect 104805, p. 9 (2021).

All that often translated into long-lasting adverse health and emotional effects. See M. Yellow Horse Brave Heart, The Historical Trauma Response Among Natives and Its Relationship with Substance Abuse: A Lakota Illustration, 35 J. of Psychoactive Drugs 1, 7–13 (2003); U. Running Bear et al., The Impact of Individual and Parental American Indian Boarding School Attendance on Chronic Physical Health of Northern Plains Tribes, 42 Family & Community Health 1, 3–7 (2019). As one study warned: “[E]fforts to make Indian children ‘white,’ ” by removing them from their Tribes, “can destroy them.” AAIA Report 9.

Eventually, Congress could ignore the problem no longer. In 1978, it responded with the Indian Child Welfare Act. 92 Stat. 3096. The statute’s findings show that Congress was acutely aware of the scope of the crisis. “[A]n alarmingly high percentage of Indian families,” Congress observed, were being “broken up by the removal, often unwarranted, of their children from them by nontribal [state] public and private agencies.” 25 U. S. C. §1901(4). And “an alarmingly high percentage of such children” were “placed in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes and institutions.” Ibid. Removal at that scale threatened the “continued existence and integrity of Indian [T]ribes.” §1901(3).

The statute Congress settled upon contains various provisions aimed at addressing this crisis. At bottom, though, the law’s operation is simple. It installs substantive and procedural guardrails against the unjustified termination of parental rights and removal of Indian children from tribal life.