wiisagi-maiingan:
The ICWA is not a hypothetical. So many Native people have lost aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings to the foster system. So many people Native people are disconnected from their cultures and tribes because their parents or grandparents were stolen from their families. So many Native people, even under the ICWA, were removed from their families and placed into foster care.
So many children today, right now, are being removed from their families, tribes, and cultures.
All it takes is one generation to kill a community, to kill a culture. We’ve lived through this before. We’re still living through this now. We know firsthand what it means to lose our children and we know what will happen to us, to our families and our tribes and our cultures and our bonds with each other, if the removal of indigenous children from their families becomes the law of the land again.
The entire case being brought against ICWA rests on the argument that tribes are not nations, but racial categories.
Even if this wasn’t “just” important to prevent genocide, i.e., destroying over 500 tribal nations by stealing their children right out of their homes on the flimsiest pretext, or “just” important because of the absurdly high rate of abuse for Native kids placed in white homes, the argument they’re making is being backed by major interests in oil and mineral extraction,
because what they want is to take away Native nations’ sovereign status by declaring them to be a racial/ethnic category instead of nations with whom the U.S. has a treaty/diplomatic relationship.
But also, even if somehow THAT wasn’t the case, if ICWA is overturned but by some miracle our bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court judges issue a ruling that dismantles ICWA while not explicitly declaring Native people to be a racial/ethnic category (instead of, again, sovereign nations, which is what they ARE), I return your attention to the above. This will hurt so, so, so many kids and families. Native kids are incredibly likely to be neglected and abused in non-Native families. Even kids who aren’t abused still suffer severe emotional and psychological tolls because they’re separated from their relatives and their culture.