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The wholesale separation of Indian children from their families is perhaps the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today.

Surveys of States with large Indian populations conducted by the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) in 1969 and again in 1974 indicate that approximately 25-35 percent of all Indian children are separated from their families and placed in foster homes, adoptive homes, or institutions. In some States the problem is getting worse: in Minnesota, one in every eight Indian children un 18 years of age is living in an adoptive home; and, in 1971-72, nearly one in every four Indian children under 1 year of age was adopted.

The disparity in placement rates for Indians and non-Indians is shocking. In Minnesota, Indian children are placed in foster care of in adoptive homes at a per capita rate five times greater than non-Indian children. In Montana, the ratio of Indian foster-care placement is at least 13 times greater. In South Dakota, 40 percent of all adoptions made by the State's Department of Public Welfare since 1967-68 are of Indian children, yet Indians make up only 7 percent of the juvenile population. The number of South Dakota Indian children living in foster homes is per capita, nearly 16 times greater than the non-Indian rate. In the State of Washington, the Indian adoption rate is 19 times greater and the foster care rate 10 times greater. In Wisconsin, the risk run by Indian children of being separated from their parents is nearly 1,600 percent greater than it is for non-Indian children. Just as Indian children are exposed to these great hazards, their parents are too.

The Federal boarding school and dormitory programs also contribute to the destruction of Indian family and community life. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), in its school census for 1971, indicates that 34,538 children live in its institutional facilities rather than at home. The represents more than 17 percent of the Indian school age population of federally-recognized reservations and 60 percent of the children enrolled in BIA schools. On the Navajo Reservation, about 20,000 children or 90 percent of of the BIA school population in grades K-12, live at boarding schools. A number of Indian children are also institutionalized in mission schools, training schools, etc.

In addition to the trauma of separation from their families, most Indian children in placement or in institutions have to cope with the problems of adjusting to a social and cultural environment much different than their own. In 16 states surveyed in 1969, approximately 85 percent of all Indian children in foster care were living in non-Indian homes. In Minnesota today, according to State figures, more than 90 percent of nonrelated adoptions of Indian children are made by non-Indian couples. Few States keep as careful or complete child welfare statistics as Minnesota does, but informal estimates by welfare officials elsewhere suggest that this rate is the norm. In most Federal and mission boarding schools, a majority of the personnel is non-Indian.

It is clear then that the Indian child welfare crisis is of massive proportions and that Indian families face vastly greater risks of involuntary separation that are typical of our society as a whole.

Standards
The Indian child welfare crisis will continue until the standards for defining mistreatment are revised. Very few Indian children are removed from their families on the grounds of physical abuse. One study of a North Dakota reservation showed that these grounds were advanced in only 1 percent of cases. Another study of a tribe in the Northwest showed the same incidence. The remaining 99 percent of the cases were argued on such vague grounds as "neglect" or "social deprivation" and on allegations of the emotional damage the children were subjected to by living with their parents. Indian communities are often shocked to learn that parents they regard as excellent caregivers have been judged unfit by non-Indian social workers.

In judging the fitness of a particular family, many social workers, ignorant of Indian cultural values and social norms, make decisions that are wholly inappropriate in the context of Indian family life and so they frequently discover neglect or abandonment where none exists.

For example, the dynamics of Indian extended families are largely misunderstood. An Indian child may have scores of, perhaps more than a hundred, relatives who are counted as close, responsible members of the family. Many social workers, untutored in the ways of Indian family life or assuming them to be socially irresponsible, consider leaving the child with persons outside the nuclear family as neglect and thus as grounds for terminating parental rights.

Because in some communities the social workers have, in a sense, become a part of the extended family, parents will sometimes turn to the welfare department for temporary care of their children, failing to realize that their action is perceived quite differently by non-Indians.

Indian child-rearing practices are also misinterpreted in evaluating a child's behavior and parental concern. It may appear that the child is running wild and that the parents do not care. What is labelled "permissiveness" may often, in fact, simply be a different but effective way of disciplining children. BIA boarding schools are full of children with such spurious "behavioral problems."

One of the grounds most frequently advanced for taking Indian children from their parents is the abuse of alcohol. However, this standard is applied unequally. In areas where rates of problem drinking among Indians and non-Indians are the same, it is rarely applied against non-Indian parents. Once again cultural biases frequently affect decisionmaking. The late Dr. Edward P. Dozier of Santa Clara Pueblo and other observers have argued that there are important cultural differences in the use of alcohol. Yet, by and large, non-Indian social workers draw conclusions about the meaning of acts or conduct in ignorance of these distinctions.

The courts tend to rely on the testimony of social workers who often lack the training and insights necessary to measure the emotional risk the child is running at home. In a number of cases, the AAIA has obtained evidence from competent psychiatrists who, after examining the defendants, have been able to contradict the allegations offered by the social workers. Rejecting the notion that poverty and cultural differences constitute social deprivation and psychological abuse, the Association argues that the State must prove that there is actual physical or emotional harm resulting from the acts of the parents.

The abusive actions of social workers would largely be nullified if more judges were themselves knowledgeable about Indian life and required a sharper definition of the standards of child abuse and neglect.

Discriminatory standards have made it virtually impossible for most Indian couples to qualify as foster or adoptive parents, since they are based on middle-class values. Recognizing that in some instances it is necessary to remove children from their homes, community leaders argue that there are Indian families within the tribe who could provide excellent care, although they are of modest means. While some progress is being made here and there, the figures cited above indicate that non-Indian parents continue to furnish almost all the foster and adoptive care for Indian children.

Due process
The decision to take Indian children from their natural homes is, in most cases, carried out without due process of law. For example, it is rare for either Indian children or their parents to be represented by counsel to or have the supporting testimony of expert witnesses.

Many cases do not go through and adjudicatory process at all, since the voluntary waiver of parental rights is a devise widely employed by social workers to gain custody of children. Because of the availability of the waivers and because a great number of Indian parents depend on welfare payments for survival, they are exposed to the sometimes coercive arguments of welfare departments. In a recent South Dakota entrapment case, an Indian parent in a time of trouble was persuaded to sign a waiver granting temporary custody to the State, only to find that this is now being advanced as evidence of neglect and grounds for the permanent termination of parental rights. It is an unfortunate fact of life for many Indian parents that the primary service agency to which they must turn for financial help also exercises police powers over their family life and is, most frequently, the agency that initiates custody proceedings.

The conflict between Indian and non-Indian social systems operates to defeat due process. The extended family provides an example. By sharing the responsibilities of child rearing, the extended family tends to strengthen the community's commitment to the child. At the same time, however, it diminishes the possibility that the nuclear family will be able to mobilize itself quickly enough when an outside agency acts to assume custody. Because it is not unusual for Indian children to spend considerable time away with other relatives, there is no immediate realization of what is happening--possibly not until the opportunity for due process has slipped away.

Economic incentives
In some instances, financial considerations contribute to the crisis. For example, agencies established to place children have an incentive to find children to place.

Indian community leaders charge that federally-subsidized foster care programs encourage some non-Indian families to start "baby farms" in order to supplement their meager farm income with foster care payments and to obtain extra hands for farmwork. The disparity between the ratio of Indian children in foster care versus the number of Indian children that are adopted seems to bear this out. For example, in Wyoming in 1969, Indians accounted for 70 percent of foster care placements but only 8 percent of adoptive placements. Foster care payments usually cease when a child is adopted.

In addition, there are economic disincentives. It will cost the Federal and State Governments a great deal of money to provide Indian communities with the means to remedy their situation. But over the long run, it will cost a great deal more money not to. At the very least, as a first step, we should find new and more effective ways to spend present funds.

Social conditions
Low-income, joblessness, poor health, substandard housing, and low educational attainment--these are the reasons most often cited for the disintegration of Indian family life. It is not that clear-cut. Not all impoverished societies, whether Indian or non-Indian, suffer from catastrophically high rates of family breakdown.

Cultural disorientation, a person's sense of powerlessness, his loss of self-esteem--these may be the most potent forces at work. They arise, in large measure, from our national attitudes as reflected in long-established Federal policy and from arbitrary acts of Government.

One of the effects of our national paternalism has been to so alienate some Indian parents from their society that they abandon their children at hospitals or to welfare departments rather than entrust them to the care of relatives in the extended family. Another expression of it is the involuntary, arbitrary, and unwarranted separation of families.

It has already been noted that the harsh living conditions in many Indian communities may prompt a welfare department to make unwarranted placements and that they make it difficult for Indian people to qualify as foster of adoptive parents. Additionally, because these conditions are often viewed as the primary cause of family breakdown and because generally there is no end to Indian poverty in sight, agencies of government often fail to recognize immediate, practical means to reduce the incidence of neglect or separation.

As surely as poverty imposes severe strains on the ability of families to function--sometimes the extra burden that is too much to bear--so too family breakdown contributes to the cycle of poverty.