INDIAN CHILD WELFARE PROGRAM


    HEARINGS
    BEFORE THE
    SUBCOMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
    OF THE
    COMMITTEE ON
    INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS
    UNITED STATES SENATE
    NINETY-NINTH CONGRESS
    SECOND SESSION

    ON

    PROBLEMS THAT AMERICAN INDIAN FAMILIES FACE IN
    RAISING THEIR CHILDREN AND HOW THESE PROBLEMS
    ARE AFFECTED BY FEDERAL ACTION OR INACTION

    APRIL 8 AND 9, 1974




      STATEMENT OF WILLIAM BYLER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ASSOCI-
      ATION OF AMERICAN INDIAN AFFAIRS; ACCOMPANIED BY BERT
      HIRSCH, STAFF ATTORNEY

      Mr. BYLER. Thank you, Senator Abourezk.

      My name is William Byler, executive director of the Association on
      American Indian Affairs, a nonprofit citizens' organization whose
      policy is set by a board of directors, a majority of whom are Indian.

      We have been hoping to have such a hearing as this for 6 or 7 years
      and we thank you for your initiative in bringing this about.

      I have a rather extended statement which I'd like to have included
      in the record.

      Senator ABOUREZK. That will be accepted for the record.

      Mr. BYLER. Thank you.

      The wholesale removal of Indian children from their homes, we
      believe, is perhaps the most tragic aspect of Indian life today. We
      would like to examine the extent of that tragedy, look at some of its
      causes and the impact that it has on Indian family and community
      life and make some recommendations for remedial action.

      Surveys of States with large Indian populations, as you point out,
      show that about 25 percent of all American Indian children are taken
      away from their families. In some States this is getting worse. For
      example, in Minnesota, presently, approximately 1 out of every
      8 Indian children is in an adoptive home, but as recently as 1971
      and 1972, 1 out of every 4 Indian children born that year was
      placed into adoption.

      The disparity in rates for Indian adoption and non-Indian adoption
      is truly shocking. I'd like to read some of the statistics. In Minnesota,
      Indian children are placed in foster or in adoptive homes at the rate
      of five times, or 500 percent greater than non-Indian children.

      In South Dakota, 40 percent of all adoptions made by the State's
      department of public welfare since 1968 are of Indian children, yet
      Indian children make up only 7 percent of the total population.

      The number of South Dakota Indian children living in foster homes
      is per capita nearly 1,600 percent greater than the rate of non-Indians.
      In the State of Washington, the Indian adoption rate is 19 times, or
      1,900 percent greater and the foster care rate is 1,000 percent greater
      than it is for non-Indian children.

      In Wisconsin, the risk of Indian children 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.


      4

      The Federal boarding school program also accounts for enormous
      numbers of Indian children who are not living in their natural homes.
      The Bureau of Indian Affairs census, the school census, for children
      enrolled in the schools in 1971 indicated that there were approximately
      35,000 Indian children living in boarding schools in grades kindergarten
      through 12.

      This represents more than 17 percent of the Indian school-age popu-
      lation of federally-recognized reservations and 60 percent of the chil-
      dren enrolled in BIA schools. In some tribes this hits particularly hard,
      for example the Navajo where between 80 and 90 percent of all
      Navajo children from grades kindergarten through 12 attend boarding
      schools. That amounts to, in the case of the Navajo, about 20,000
      children.

      It has been argued that the Navajo youngsters, 5, 6 and 7 years old
      go to boarding schools because there are no roads available. If so, let's
      build roads. But the same children that are not able to get to kinder-
      garten or first grade because there are no roads, travel roads to get to
      Head Start classes. Ninety percent of them are in Head Start classes.

      It is argued, in the case of boarding schools, that Navajo children
      don't have adequate food and clothing. Let's bring the food and the
      clothing to the children and not the children to the food and clothing.

      It is clear then that the Indian child welfare crisis is of massive
      proportions and affecting the people at a more severe rate than
      non-Indian people.

      How do we account for these appalling statistics? I think one of
      the factors is the standards that are used in judging whether or not
      a family is fit.

      A survey of a North Dakota tribe indicated that, of all the children
      that were removed from that tribe, only 1 percent were removed
      for physical abuse. About 99 percent were taken on the basis of such
      vague standards as deprivation, neglect, taken because their homes
      were thought to be too poverty stricken to support the children.

      The people who apply the standards very often lack the training,
      professional training, to judge accurately whether or not the children
      are, in fact, suffering emotional damage at home. They are not
      equipped sufficiently in the knowledge of Indian cultural values or
      social value,s, or norms, to know whether or not the behavior an Indian
      child or an Indian parent is exhibiting is, in fact, abnormal behavior in
      his own society.

      For example, they may consider the children to be running wild.
      They assume neglect. In many cases, it may simply be another perspec-
      tive on child-rearing, placing a great deal of responsibility on the child
      for his own behavior and, in fact:, an effective way of raising children.

      The use of alcohol is also advanced in the case of removing Indian
      children from their families. In some of the communities, as much as
      50 to 60 percent of the people have drinking problems. This is
      acknowledged by the tribes themselves, studied by the tribes them-
      selves and is of great concern to them. But that standard has not been
      applied as casually against non-Indian parents.

      Once again, cultural factors come in here. The interpretation of
      the abuse of alcohol by non-Indian social workers, those that are not
      familiar with the dynamics of Indian society, is often based on the
      assumption that the pattern of drinking of an Indian person reveals
      the same kind of personality disorders that it does in s non-Indian


      5

      person. There's been a good deal of evidence to show that the
      patterns, and what that says about the behavorial patterns and the
      abilities of Indian parents to raise their children are quite different
      than they are for non-Indians.

      The discriminatory standards applied against Indian parents and
      against their children in removing them from their homes are also
      applied against Indian families in their attempts to obtain Indian
      foster or adoptive children. Nationally, about 85 percent of Indian
      children are placed in either a white foster home or white adoptive
      homes.

      In Minnesota, 90 percent of the adopted Indian children are in
      non-Indian homes.

      I think one of the primary reasons for this extraordinary high rate
      of placing Indian children with non-Indian families rather than in
      Indian homes is that the standards are based upon middle-class
      values; the amount of floor space available in the home, plumbing;
      income levels. Most of the Indian families cannot meet these standards
      and the only people that can meet them are non-Indians.

      We believe that there are other factors -- such as the ability to grow
      up in the community where you have a number of relatives, where
      you're within your own culture -- which are more important than
      indoor plumbing.

      In addition to the failure of standards, we have a breakdown in due
      process. Few Indian parents, few Indian children are represented by
      counsel in custody cases. Removal of these children is so often the
      most casual kind of operation, with the Indian parents often not
      having any idea of what kind of legal recourse or administrative
      recourse is available to them.

      The employment of voluntary waivers by many social workers
      means that many child welfare cases do not go through any kind of a
      judicatory process at all. The Indian person has to come to a welfare
      agency for help; that welfare agency is in the position to coerce that
      family into surrendering the children through a voluntary waiver.

      The Indian family is also placed in jeopardy by the fact of going to
      a welfare department for help, just to get enough money to live on
      and money that they're entitled to under law. This exposes that
      family to the investigations of the welfare worker to see how that
      family conducts itself; and, welfare departments originate most of
      the complaints against Indian families and exercise a kind of police
      power. We think this is an inappropriate way of administering the
      laws.

      There are certain economic incentives for removing Indian children.
      Agencies that are established to place Indian children have a vested
      interest in finding Indian children to place. It's interesting to note
      that in many cases, the rate of non-Indian people applying for Indian
      children for foster care, or especially adoptive care, raises dramati-
      cally when there is an Indian claims settlement.

      It has been alleged by some tribal leaders that, especially in rural
      communities where non-Indian farm families may have a difficult
      time in making ends meet, some foster parents have an economic
      incentive, make a net gain by bringing Indian children into the family
      and using the foster care payments for general family support, and
      also have extra hands to help around the farm.


      6

      Finally, in the boarding school cases, there is a powerful economic
      interest. Not too long ago, in the Great Plains, s concerned Bureau
      of Indian Affairs welfare worker at rather a high level, thought it
      would be best to close down one of the boarding schools there, and,
      indeed, succeeded in reducing the enrollment of that school by 50
      percent. That had the support of the congressional delegation.

      During this process, however, the merchants began to complain
      and congressional intervention helped to halt the phasing out of the
      school and its full enrollment was restored. This, I believe, was in
      the 1950's. Its full enrollment was restored, and, indeed, it's operating
      today.

      Again, in the case of the attempted closing of the Intermountain
      School, there were severe protests by merchants in the community,
      despite the fact that the Navajo Tribe asked to have the school
      closed down. It is a place where s large number of Navajo children
      are boarded.

      I'd like to turn now to the impact that this has on Indian families.
      In a recent study, "A Long Way from Home" by Judith Kleinfeld
      she also observes that the boarding home program and regional high
      school program for Alaska Natives are "helping to destroy a genera-
      tion of village children."

      I'd like to read from some of her findings. She reports that the high
      school experience of these Alaska Native children led to school-
      related social and emotional problems in 76 percent of the students
      in the rural boarding home program, 74 percent of the students in
      the boarding school and 58 percent of the students in the urban
      boarding home program.

      She found that:

        The majority of the students studied either dropped out of school and received
        no further education or else transferred from school to school in a nomadic pattern
        that created other severe identity problems.

      She adds that the high school program created other costs:

        Identity confusion which contributed to the problems many students had in
        meeting the demands of adult life. Development of self-defeating styles of be-
        havior and attitudes. Grief of village parents, not only at their children's leaving
        home, but also at their children's personal disintegration away from home.

      The average program-operating costs of running this program was
      $5,000 per student. Surely, we must be able to find better ways to
      spend the money than this.

      The National Institute of Mental Health publication, "Suicide,
      Homicide, and Alcoholism Among American Indians," reports:

        The American Indian population has a suicide rate about twice the nations
        average. Some Indian reservations have suicide rates at least five or six times
        that of the Nation, especially among younger age groups. While the national
        rate has changed but little over the last three decades, there has been a notable
        increase in suicide among Indians, especially in the younger age groups.

      The report then singles out nine social characteristics of Indians
      most inclined to completed suicide. I think two of these are pertinent
      here: He has lived with a number of ineffective or inappropriate
      parental substitutes because of family disruption, and he has spent
      time in boarding schools and has been moved from one to another.

      In our efforts to make Indian children white, I think it's clear that
      we're destroying them. In attempting to remove Indian children from
      communities of poverty, I think we help to create the very conditions


      7

      of poverty. When we remove children from the home or disrupt
      family life -- with families as the basic economic, health care, and
      educational unit in human life -- when you break that up, you impede
      the ability of the child to grow, to learn, for himself, or herself, to
      become a good and responsible parent later.

      We have certain recommendations, in a general sense, that we
      would like to lay before you.

      Mr. Hirsch will present some more specific recommendations that
      we believe could be acted upon by Congress this year without any
      kind of significant question of committee jurisdictions, and we believe
      are uncontroversial.

      We offer the following summary recommendations. Congress should
      enact such laws, appropriate such moneys, and declare such policies
      as would:

        (1) Revise the standards governing Indian child welfare issues, to
        provide for a more rational and humane approach to questions of
        custody; and to encourage more adequate training of welfare officials;

        (2) Strengthen due process by extending to Indian children and their
        parents the right to counsel in custody cases and the services of expert
        witnesses, subjecting voluntary waivers to judicial review, and en-
        couraging officers of the court who consider Indian child-welfare cases
        to acquaint themselves with Indian cultural values and social norms;

        (3) Eliminate the economic incentives to perpetuating the crisis;

        (4) End coercive detribalization and assimilation of Indian families
        and communities and restore to Public Law 280 tribes their civil and
        criminal jurisdiction;

        (5) Provide Indian communities with the means to regulate child-
        welfare matters themselves;

        (6) Provide Indian communities with adequate means to overcome
        their economic, educational, and health handicaps;

        (7) Provide Indian families and foster or adoptive parents with
        adequate means to meet the needs of Indian children in their care;

        (8) Provide for oversight hearings with respect to child-welfare
        issues on a regular basis and for investigation of the extent of the
        problem by the General Accounting Once;

        (9) End the child-welfare crisis, both rural and urban, and the
        unwarranted intrusion of Government into Indian family life.

      The ultimate of responsibility, of course, must properly rest with the
      American Indian tribes and urban communities, the Indian people
      themselves. And where they learn the extent of the problem, where
      they get the information, and where they have even the most modest
      means to do something about it; they do something about it.

      For example, in the last 3 or 4 years, child placement off the reser-
      vation has virtually ceased at the Warm Spring Reservation, Lake
      Traverse Reservation, and the Blackfeet Reservation. Given the op-
      portunity to try to develop their own, more effective programs for
      working with families and children, I cite, for example, the programs
      at Devils Lake Sioux, the Eastern Band of Cherokee, the Winnebago
      of Nebraska, and the Wisconsin American Indian Child Welfare
      Service Agency.

      The training of Indian lawyers, teachers, judges, boarding school
      professionals, social workers, pediatricians, medical health pro-
      fessionals, and professional foster parents is also important.


      8

      Congress has already enacted new and important measures to
      assist Indian communities, including the Indian Education Act, the
      Indian Financing Act, the Indian Self-Determination and Education
      Reform Act, and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, and
      these have been acted upon or are under consideration by the Senate.

      We believe that it's time now for the Senate and the Congress as a
      whole to address itself to these issues. Measured in numbers, measured
      in terms of human suffering, and as a measure of the condition of our
      society and our Government, the child welfare crisis is appalling.

      We believe that the American people will support whatever actions
      are needed. For example, in one community in New York, 20,000
      citizens signed petitions asking for child welfare oversight hearings
      for American Indian people, and volunteers there raised the money
      and made it possible for a number of the witnesses that are appearing
      here today to come at all.

      This problem does not affect Indians alone. Indians, blacks,
      Chicanoes, and the poor are exposed to extraordinary risks; and if
      an Indian child, or one child at all is threatened with removal un-
      justly, then it threatens all children.

      I'd like to think of the words of John Wooden Legs who said,
      there's only one child and her name is children.

      Thank you, sir.

      Senator ABOUREZK. Thank you very much, Mr. Byler, for some
      excellent testimony. I just have a couple of questions before Mr.
      Hirsch makes his comments.

      Can you describe how removal of Indian children in adoption situa-
      tion is accomplished?

      Mr. BYLER. I can cite certain kinds of experiences that we have had.
      One case, not too long ago in North Dakota, Indian children were
      living with their grandparents. Their grandmother was off doing the
      shopping. The grandfather was 3 miles away with a bucket getting
      water. While they were away, the social worker happened by at that
      time and found the children scrapping. When grandfather returned,
      the children were gone, and I don't know whether, in that case, he was
      ever successful in finding where the children were. I think they were
      placed for adoption somewhere.

      When that happens, Indian parents or grandparents are told this is
      confidential information. We cannot disclose to you where your
      children are. This makes is seem impossible for them to even try to do
      anything about it.

      Senator ABOUREZK. You mean the children were taken from the
      home and the grandparents never were allowed to see them again or
      to try to fight the actions?

      Mr. BYLER. That is correct, and as far as they knew, they never
      received any notice that there were proceedings against them or
      against the parents.

      This is very often the case, there is no notice given, or if notice is
      given, it is in such a form that the people who get the notice don't
      understand it; It does not constitute a real notice.

      You'll hear testimony today, and tomorrow, from some of the
      Indian victims who will be able to describe much more pointedly the
      experiences that they have gone through.


      9

      Very often, children are taken simply by the welfare worker inter-
      vening when seeing a situation that she, personally, disapproves of
      out of her own value system, out of her own interpretation of behavior.

      For example, we defended one Indian teenager, a Sioux, who was
      living at a boarding school at Pine Ridge and decided she wanted to
      go to the Rosebud boarding school. She didn't like that and went back
      and tried to get back into the Pine Ridge boarding school. The social
      welfare worker intervened and tried to send her to a State training
      institution.

      Senator ABOUREZK. Just because she wanted to change schools?

      Mr. BYLER. That's right.

      Senator ABOUREZK. Are there any States in which the State welfare
      workers are given training in Indian values or Indian culture?

      Mr. BYLER. I don't know that they are given training in Indian
      values, Indian culture. I don't know of any that are. We can't believe
      that it is generally effective if it is given, because of the figures we see.

      There are Indian communities, or tribes or individual BIA social
      workers who do a fantastic job. There's one community, an Apache
      community, in New Mexico that had a large number of Indian
      children out of the reservation. A BIA welfare worker was appointed
      and those children were brought back in, those that had not been
      placed for adoption, and few children there are placed off the reserva-
      tion today. But then, there was a strong tribal input, a compas-
      sionate and concerned BIA welfare worker, and when you have that
      kind of combination, it works.

      Senator ABOUREZK. Would you recommend that as one alternative,
      that the BIA, or some other agency, supervise a program that would,
      at least, make social workers aware that perhaps Indian people do
      have different standards and different values of their own?

      Mr. BYLER. Yes. I would say, to train the welfare worker, to train
      the judges and to provide education for attorneys working in the
      community.

      More importantly, if, for example, under title I of S. 1017, Indian
      tribes contract for and operate the whole child welfare apparatus
      themselves, if they have tribal welfare committees that function to
      determine whether or not a child should even be recommended for
      removal and n tribal court passes on this or some tribal agency passes
      on this question, that's the answer.

      A part of the answer is not to orient non-Indian social workers,
      although that can be helpful and necessary, but to have far more
      Indian social workers.

      Senator ABOUREZK. Did I understand you to say during your
      testimony that as far as reasons for removal of Indian children from
      the families are concerned, that alcohol problems in a family was
      given in only 1 percent of the removal?

      Mr. BYLER. Physical abuse, the beating of a child, child battering,
      was cited in 1 percent of the cases. All the others were based upon
      somebody judging Indian behavior or the environment in the home.

      For example, there is often the case that a welfare worker will see
      a father, let's say, or a mother every weekend going to the local bar,
      and maybe spending the night in jail for public intoxication. That is
      assumed to be grounds for removal, but there is never any need for


      10

      proof, professionally demonstrated, that that mother or father's
      behavior is actually damaging the child. In fact, it could be argued in
      some cases that because the parent has enough problems in life and
      has found no better outlet for them, or for resolving the problems,
      getting drunk Friday night may be the best thing that can happen to
      him or his kids.

      Another kind of thing that can be advanced for taking children
      away from their families is immoral conduct, and yet there's never
      any evidence to demonstrate in this case or that case that the behavior
      of the parent is damaging that child. Immoral conduct is often judged
      by the wildest stretches of the imagination.

      For example, on one reservation more than 50 percent of the people
      live in common-law situations. These unions have lasted 5, 10, 15
      years. The people don't have enough money to afford divorces and
      they want a family life, so they live with a person for 5, 10, 15 years.
      Police will sometimes, then, make a sweep of a whole reservation and
      arrest the people that are living in illicit cohabitation. People living
      in illicit cohabitation are subject to having their kids taken away from
      them.

      Senator ABOUREZK. I wonder if this may not be a question better
      reserved for some of the professional psychologists that we have com-
      ing up, but I will ask you. You don't have to answer it if you cannot.
      If you know, what is the effect on the Indian family of this kind of
      removal?

      Mr. BYLER. I think they will, in fact, give documentation on that,
      but what we have observed is that by taking the child away from the
      parents, you remove the main incentive for those parents to fight
      to try to overcome the difficult circumstances they have.
      Taking children away does not cure alcoholism. It may aggravate
      alcoholism. Taking children away does not encourage somebody to
      take a job, but discourages him. He may see no point in having a
      job.

      Senator ABOUREZK. Thank you very much, Mr. Byler.
      Senator Bartlett.

      Senator BARTLETT. What role does the school play in this problem
      that you're citing?

      Mr. BYLER. The boarding school plays a great role because there
      are so many children taken there. Many children are sent to boarding
      schools, not for educational reasons. They are sent because their
      behavior or their family circumstance is judged in a nonadjudicatory
      process to warrant their placement in a BIA institution.

      Now, they may in fact have emotional problems and behavioral
      problems, but when they get to that institution, they don't have any
      treatment or any kind of care that will help them. The student-
      staff ratio, people who give direct care to Indian children in boarding
      schools is 100 to 1 or greater. If a child has emotional or behavioral
      problems, I think those kinds of statistics suggest he may be running
      a greater risk at a boarding school than at home. For those children
      who are very young, 10 and younger, there's absolutely no educational
      justification for boarding children.

      Senator BARTLETT. Is it your conviction that many of the Indian
      children do have particular, and special educational needs because
      of a different social system and that these needs are not being pro-
      gressed in the schools to a significant degree?

      Mr. BYLER. Yes. I think that's very important. I think Congress
      is addressing itself to those questions.

      Senator BARTLETT.If the school plays such a role as part of the
      system to help in taking children from their families, why would
      it be that the Indian parents would be so strongly in favor of the
      Indian boarding schools, or, at least, it appears to me that they are?

      Mr. BYLER. I think this is a changing thing.

      Originally, they were not in favor of boarding schools, and when
      the Government agents 70 years ago came to haul the children off, they
      were resisted, sometimes by force of arms. I think, over the years,
      there's been so many children placed in boarding schools, it has become
      in many communities, a normal way of life, the way of growing up.

      I think that the very fact, say as with the Navajo, that many
      Indian parents accept boarding schools is one of the most tragic
      aspects of the whole system. The tribal council today is opposed to
      the boarding schools, and I believe were the Indian parents informed
      of the emotional damage, the actual physical retardation that many
      of their children suffer in going to boarding schools, they would like-
      wise be against it.

      Even if 100 out of those 20,000 children that are boarded on Navajo
      wish to, they should have a right to go to a day school.

      Senator BARTLETT. I think that gets into my next question. What
      do you think is the proper role of Indian boarding schools in the
      educational system for Indians?

      Mr. BYLER. When the children are under the age of 9 or 10, I
      don't think they have a role. They should not exist.

      In the cases of acute emotional problems, the schools should be
      a kind of hospital or therapeutic situation; we believe that this
      would be a very rare instance, as it is with population as a whole.

      For children that are older, say in the high school years, the Klein-
      feld studies here have demonstrated that boarding schools fail to
      achieve their educational objective because the children drop out.
      In Alaska, for example, 50 to 75 percent of the children in these
      boarding situations dropped out of school. It helps disorganize their
      personality and is extremely costly.

      I think the screening process of sending the children to boarding
      schools should begin, at whatever age they are, to determine whether
      the child is being sent there for behavior or emotional disorders on
      some kind of bona fide basis and whether he will receive help; and
      second, if ho's being sent there for educational purposes, to make
      sure he's getting an educational opportunity that justifies placement.

      Senator BARTLETT. Could you answer the same question and break
      it down into two parts, one, fill in the educational needs and the
      other, filling in the emotional needs?

      In other words, what role do you see the boarding school play in
      order to help with the emotional needs of Indian children, and what
      role does it play in order to help the educational needs?

      Mr. BYLER. I think that the educational needs, when we're talking
      about children in the high school age, might be considered in the
      same way it is for the general population. There are boarding schools
      in the United States, a few, for a very small part of the population
      where children maybe exceptionally bright or have exceptionally
      poor educational opportunities at home or they come from such a
      remote community that it's difficult to have a fully equipped high


      12

      school. I don't think that the high schools in most Indian communities
      are used as effective educational resources but I do not believe that
      the Indian children who have graduated from boarding schools show
      any better educational achievements than those who graduate from
      most Indian day schools. In some communities there might not be
      enough students to justify building a chemistry or biology laboratory;
      if that is a good enough educational reason, then that would be the
      kind of condition, I think, that would justify the availability, not
      the forced placement, but making boarding school available as an
      option.

      In terms of filling the emotional needs of Indian high school students,
      those at boarding schools, I don't think it can work. It doesn't fill
      those needs, and in order to do it, as has been done in a model project
      on the Navajo Reservation, it's enormously expensive, and Congress
      has not seen fit to fund even this model from year to year.

      So, while, as Dr. Bergman will testify later in the hearing, dramatic
      results can be achieved, it is expensive.

      But, this, in itself is a remedial action, a substitute action to make
      up for the family and the community. So, there's no net gain in the
      emotional life of Indian children by putting them in boarding schools.

      Senator BARTLETT. Do you feel that the boarding school removes
      some of the parental responsibility in such a way that it creates a
      gap between the children and the parents, in which it makes the job
      of the parents more difficult and harder to achieve?

      Mr. BYLER. Yes; I think this is very much the case. In addition,
      I would say also we can really take the whole educational experience.
      Dr. Edward P. Dozier criticized Headstart programs for some Indian
      communities on the ground that an Indian child has such a short time
      in his life to learn how to behave in his own environment, to pick up
      the cultural and behavorial patterns of his parents. It was bad enough
      to start school at five or six because that bobtailed the opportunity the
      kids had to learn this. Now with Headstart in some communities, that
      age is down to 3 years, so these preschool experiences denied the
      children the opportunity to learn how to function properly in their
      own society.

      And it demoralizes the whole functioning of families when those
      children who grow up in a boarding school become parents them-
      selves and have not had the opportunity to observe normal child
      rearing.

      In some of the early poverty programs funded under OEO, Indian
      tribes asked for funds to train their teenagers to be parents because
      they didn't know what it was like because they had been away in
      boarding school.

      Senator BARTLETT. What should be the structure for facing up to
      the emotional needs of Indian children and also in meeting the edu-
      cational needs?

      Mr. BYLER. I believe that in terms of the educational needs, that
      would be contracting the Indian schools with tribes that wish to
      contract for those schools. Where the tribes have taken over those
      schools, and there are not many yet, the educational result has been
      dramatic.

      For example, in Florida the Miccosukees had never had a school at
      all, none of their children attended school until 1961, or 1962. They
      took over their school about 4 years ago and, 1 year after the tribe


      13

      itself had taken over the school, the comparative educational achieve-
      ments of the children improved by 50 percent.

      Dropout rates have dramatically been reduced in the Busby school
      on Northern Cheyenne, and the Rocky Boy school, both of those in
      Montana, since Indian tribes have taken them over.

      So, I do think that educational needs can be met more adequately
      by the Indian community controlling the schools themselves.

      In terms of the emotional needs, I think perhaps one of the most
      central things to the emotional life of the Indian family and the Indian
      child, is to remove from that family the threat that their children will
      be taken away from them. I think this is the most dangerous aspect.
      It has a far greater impact on Indian emotional life than any other
      single factor.

      I think that in societies throughout the United States, and Indian
      societies, not all impoverished children or families suffer this kind of
      family breakdown. Among the Miccosukees, children are not taken
      from their parents, nor among the Coushattas of Louisiana; it's
      unknown, the kind of breakdown that one sees in some Indian commu-
      nities. It's not because of Indian poverty. There are many societies in
      the world that are much more poverty stricken than the average
      American Indian community, but exhibit little or none of the family
      breakdown.

      I think it's a copout when people say it's poverty that's causing
      family breakdown. I think perhaps the chief thing is the detribalization
      and the deculturalization, Federal and State and local efforts to make
      Indians white. It hasn't worked and it will never work and one of the
      most vicious forms of trying to do this is to take their children. Those
      are the great emotional risks to Indian families.

      Senator BARTLETT. Thank you very much, that's fine testimony.

      Senator ABOUREZK. One more question, Mr. Byler. Since Health,
      Education, and Welfare supports foster home placements, have you
      received any encouragement at all from that agency with regard
      to revised criteria for grants that they make to States, which might
      eliminate some of the abuses that you cited in your testimony?

      Mr. BYLER. We have not. They may well be contemplating that,
      and I hope they would revise their standards.

      We would hope, under S. 1017, it would be possible for Indian
      tribes to gain those foster care moneys directly so they would not have
      to go through the State.

      Senator ABOUREZK. Most of the money that goes to the State and
      county welfare agency comes from HEW at this point. Do you think
      if they did revise their criteria for adoption in foster home placement
      and so on, with a lever that the money would be withheld if the regula-
      tions are not carried out, do you think that would be a beneficial
      thing?

      Mr. BYLER. Yes; a dramatic impact.

      Senator ABOUREZK. Mr. Byler, thank you again.


      [The prepared statement of Mr. Byler followed]