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Rh in the Federal Government have no application to regulating the domestic child custody proceedings of U. S. citizens living within the jurisdiction of States.

I would go no further. But, as the majority notes, the Court’s precedents have repeatedly referred to a “plenary power” that Congress possesses over Indian affairs, as well as a general “trust” relationship with the Indians. I have searched in vain for any constitutional basis for such a plenary power, which appears to have been born of loose language and judicial ipse dixit. And, even taking the Court’s precedents as given, there is no reason to extend this “plenary power” to the situation before us today: regulating state-court child custody proceedings of U. S. citizens, who may never have even set foot on Indian lands, merely because the child involved happens to be an Indian.

State courts usually apply state law when resolving child custody issues. This would normally be true for most Indians, too. Today, Indians are citizens of the United States; the vast majority of them do not live on any reservation or Indian lands, but live (as most citizens) on lands that are wholly within a State’s jurisdiction. See ch. 233, 43 Stat. 253; Dept. of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, Profile: American Indian/Alaska Native (Feb. 24, 2023), https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=62 (87% live off Indian lands). Thus, one might expect that when a child custody issue regarding an Indian child arises in a state court, that court would apply the same laws that it would for any other citizen.

But ICWA displaces the normal state laws governing child custody when it comes to only one group of citizens: Indian children. ICWA defines “Indian child” capaciously: It includes not only children who are members of an Indian tribe, but also those children who are merely eligible for membership in a tribe and are the biological child of a tribal