Native abuse inquiry deadline looms as documents mount

The Truth and Reconciliation commission into Indian residential school abuse faces a deadline to wrap up, while historical documents pile up.

Blair Gable Photo

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is looking through documents stored at the Library and Archives Canada Preservation Centre in Gatineau, Que. Christopher Smith, collection management clerk, works in an area containing documents being examined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

By: Donovan Vincent News reporter SOURCE

The race is on for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission probing abuse in Indian residential schools to comb through mountains of historical government records in search of documents pertaining to this painful chapter in Canada’s history.

For the past four years, the commission has been holding public hearings across the country during which survivors have told riveting personal stories about mistreatment in residential schools.

Those hearings have wrapped up and by June 2015 the commission must write a report that includes recommendations for preventing a similar tragedy in the future.

Kimberly Murray, a lawyer and executive director for the commission, says there’s not enough time left.

“There’s no way we’ll be able to go through and collect every document,’’ says Murray, a Mohawk from the Kanesatake reserve.

A major piece of the commission’s work is pulling together all the witness statements, documents and research on residential schools and putting the massive haul in a new National Research Centre to be located in Manitoba.

The document search is a sleuthing job not unlike one Sherlock Holmes would undertake.

Already the federal government has, under duress and court order, provided 4.2 million documents to the commission.

But recently, Ottawa issued an RFP to hire a firm that will pore through an additional estimated 60,000 boxes stored in vaults in five Library and Archives Canada locations across the country.

Not every box will contain documents germane to the commission and that’s the tricky part. The job requires painstaking sifting to flag the relevant records.

While there hasn’t been an eyeball on every one of the 4.2 million documents already provided, important ones involving incidents like the deaths of students in residential schools have been looked at and reviewed, Murray said.

“We have key topics that we’re writing about. Every Health Canada record we’ve looked at. Every hospital record we have we’ve looked at,’’ she says.

Researchers follow a trail, like following breadcrumbs. When they come across documents with dialogue pertaining to a subject the commission is writing about, that dialogue is traced back through other records. Often these dialogues happened between federal departments — the RCMP, for example, talking to Health Canada.

The residential schools intersected with many government agencies, including National Defence.

“We’ve seen photographs of the Department of National Defence taking (residential school) children to hospitals,’’ Murray said. “Some children were also temporarily housed in military barracks.’’

Murray pointed out that aside from 33 federal departments in Canada, including Aboriginal Affairs, the commission is also waiting for documents from churches that ran the residential schools.

“Many Catholic entities have not produced their documents to us yet,’’ Murray said.

Canada’s residential schools for aboriginal people began in the 1870s and the last one closed in 1996. There were more than 130 of these government-funded schools across the country that were set up to eradicate parental involvement in aboriginal children’s cultural, intellectual and educational development.

Residents suffered horrible sexual and physical abuse. More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were placed in the schools. An estimated 80,000 former students are still living today.

The $60-million, five-year commission was formed as part of a settlement agreement.

There’s been finger pointing at Ottawa over the fact the remaining time is too short to sort through all the relevant records.

When asked about that complaint, Andrea Richer, a spokeswoman for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Minister Bernard Valcourt, pointed out the federal government helped the commission get a one-year extension to complete its mandate.

“Our government remains committed to achieving a fair and lasting resolution to the legacy of Indian Residential Schools,’’ Richer said in a statement.

Gordon Williams, 73, a former residential school student and member of the commission’s survivor committee that advises the inquiry, said survivors like him did their part by telling their stories to the commission.

“A lot of people were very emotional about what happened,’’ he said referring to the testimonials the commission heard.

Now it’s time for the documents and records to speak, said Williams, who attended the Birtle Indian Residential School, west of Winnipeg, from 1957 to 1961.

Murray says although the commission’s mandate wraps up next year, the story won’t end there.

“When we’re done, we’re not walking away without making sure that the legal obligation to produce those records continues past the commission, and those records be given to the National Research Centre,’’ Murray said.

Wisconsin Passes Law To Stop The 'Re-Homing' Of Adopted Children

Wisconsin Passes Law To Stop The 'Re-Homing' Of Adopted Children

Wisconsin has adopted a law to limit private custody transfers ofchildren, the first law of its kind in the United States, responding to a Reuters investigation that exposed the dangers of the unregulated
practice.Reuters reported in September that parents were transferring custody of their unwanted adopted children to strangers met on the Internet, often with no government oversight and sometimes
illegally. No state or federal laws specifically prohibit the practice, which is known as "re-homing." And state laws that restrict the advertising and custody transfers of children are often confusing, and rarely spell out criminal sanctions.

In the absence of government safeguards, boys and girls have been placed in the care of abusers and others who escape scrutiny. In one case, a mother gave her nine-year-old adopted son to a pedophile in a motel parking lot in Wisconsin within hours of posting an advertisement for the child on a Yahoo group.

The Wisconsin law, signed Wednesday by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, makes it illegal for anyone not licensed by the state to advertise a child over age one for adoption or any other custody transfer, both in print and online. Parents who want to transfer custody of a child to someone other than a relative must seek permission from a judge. Violators face up to nine months in jail or up
to $10,000 in fines.

click on headline to read article

Manitoba poised to further open adoption records #60sScoop

By Staff  The Canadian Press

The Manitoba government appears set to further open adoption records to allow more people to find relatives and learn about their background.
Bob Pearson / Getty Images

WINNIPEG – The Manitoba government appears set to further open adoption records to allow more people to find relatives and learn about their background.
The province passed a law in 1999 to release identifying information about adoptees and their parents unless one of them specifically requested anonymity.
But the law was not retroactive, so people adopted prior to March 15, 1999, have had a tougher time finding information.
The province announced in 2009 that it was looking at making available adoption records as far back as 1925 to bring Manitoba in line with other provinces such as British Columbia.
The NDP government has served notice that it will present a bill to the legislature Wednesday (April 24) to open adoption and birth records, but government officials would not reveal details beforehand.
Roy Kading, who runs an adoptees rights group in Winnipeg, says thousands of people have been trying to find out about their birth families.
“They’re very, very frustrated,” Kading said Tuesday.
“They’ve been … looking for people for years and can’t get any information. By the time they do, too bad, the person they’re looking for has passed away.”
Kading said his non-profit group, Links Post-Legal Adoption Support, has helped reunite about 1,500 people over the years.
Just this week, the group helped two half-sisters find each other.
“One registered with us recently, and the half-sister had registered with us 10 years ago.”
One hurdle for the government has been concern for privacy. Under the pre-1999 system, parents who gave up their children for adoption were in effect promised privacy. Any identifying information was kept secret unless they specifically opted for it to be shared.
It’s been the other way around since 1999. Information has been made available unless there has been a specific request for privacy, formally called a disclosure veto.

SOURCE

Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission on Native Children Act

ACTION ALERT
Your Support Can Help Protect Native Children!

U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (Democratic/Nonpartisan League - North Dakota) introduced Senate Bill 1622, which would create the Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission on Native Children Act.  This act would require the president and Congress to appoint individuals who have significant experience and expertise in Indian affairs to the commission.  The commission would conduct a comprehensive study of federal, state, local and tribal programs that serve Native children.  This would include an evaluation of many issues such as the impact of concurrent jurisdiction on child welfare systems; barriers that Indian tribes and Native Hawaiians face in applying, reporting on and using existing public and private grant resources; barriers to inter-agency coordination on programs benefiting Native children; and many more issues. 

The commission would further be directed to use the results of the study and analyze existing federal data relating to Native children to develop plans and goals for federal policy; recommend improvements to programs that serve Native children; recommend improvements in data-collection regarding Native children; and identify models of successful federal, state and tribal programs in the areas studied. 

This bill will ensure Native children’s safety by bringing attention to the issues, creating dialogue, and introducing solutions to the problems in the child welfare system.  Sixteen co-sponsors have signed onto the bill since it was introduced in October 2013. This bill was assigned to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, which will consider it before possibly sending it on to the House or Senate as a whole.

Take action! Please voice your support by calling or writing your U.S. senators today and ask them to support the Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission on Native Children Act.  To find contact information for your senators, go to http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

To read the full text of the bill, track the bill or express support, go to https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1622. Also, click on the “TRACK THIS BILL” button to sign up for updates about when this bill is scheduled for debate, has a major action such as a vote, or gets a new co-sponsor, when a committee meeting is scheduled, when bill text becomes available or when a bill summary is written.

Evidence: what came after ARENA and the Indian Adoption Projects

RAINBOW PROJECT after ARENA [note the date is 1984 and the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978... Would this be a violation of federal law??]

READ HERE:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=5RgeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FWIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3240%2C9319399

The Pittsburgh Press - Aug 30, 1984

Alaska Supreme Court considers whether Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl applies to State-initiated child protection proceedings

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Wenona T. Singel on Turtle Talk

 

In June 2013, the Alaska Supreme Court held in Native Village of Tununak v. Dep’t of Health & Soc. Servs (Tununak I)
that ICWA implicitly mandates that good cause to deviate from ICWA’s
adoptive placement preferences must be proven by clear and convincing
evidence, rather than a mere preponderance of the evidence. That opinion
is here.

Four days later, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl.  The adoptive parents in Tununak I
asked the Alaska Supreme Court to revise its ruling in light of it,
based on their argument that ICWA’s placement preferences do not apply
in cases where no other party has formally sought to adopt the child.
This argument would extend the Baby Girl decision beyond the realm of voluntary private adoptions like the one at issue in Baby Girl
and apply it to state-initiated child protection proceedings involving
the removal of a Native child from her custodial parent by state
authorities.



The parties and the Native Village of Kotzebue, acting as amicus
curiae, filed the following supplemental briefs on the issue in November
2013:

Appellee State of Alaska’s is here:  Tununak – Supplemental Brief of Appellee State of Alaska

Appellees H.S. and K.S.’s (the adoptive couple) is here:  Tununak – Supplemental Brief of Appellees H.S. and K.S. – adoptive couple

Appellant Village of Tununak’s is here:  Tununak – Appellant Village of Tununak’s Supplemental Brief

Amicus Curiae Native Village of Kotzebue’s, prepared by NARF, is here:  Tununak – Brief of Amicus Curiae Native Village of Kotzebue

Oral argument before the Alaska Supreme Court was held on January 14, 2014, and can be viewed here.



2014011176-12.mp3

Weaving the Blanket of Peace

GCEF is offering sales of Grandmother's Message to the Lost Child that were taken to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women last month. The bookmarks can be purchased at "cost only" and in bulk. These bookmarks are beautiful and colorful yet at the same time serve a very powerful purpose. They can be casually handed with a smile to any child you suspect may be a victim of abuse such as trafficking. Our website address is included and through this they, an older sibling or anyone else can contact us. Purchase orders can be made on our website at www.gcefoundation.com and price will be based on number ordered + mailing. ♡♥♡♥♡♥ 
www.gcefoundation.com

Minnesota tribes adopt home visits

smudging with sage is our tradition

By Pioneer staff reports on Mar 27, 2014 SOURCE

BEMIDJI — A new program is being introduced to area tribes through the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH).

 

Family Spirit is an American Indian program designed by American Indians that has proven successful in other states to support new parents. The program includes tribal health staff, many of whom are American Indian themselves, who support young parents with 63 lessons to be taught from pregnancy up to the child’s third birthday.

American Indian babies die in the first year of life at twice the rate of white babies, according to the MDH. While infant mortality rates for all groups have declined, the disparity in rates has existed for more than 20 years.

Family Spirit is more flexible than other home visiting approaches and encourages home visitors to consider American Indian beliefs and cultural traditions when educating clients and asking them for information, according to Karla Decker Sorby, MDH tribal nurse consultant.

In mainstream home visiting programs, she said, it would not have been acceptable to use “smudging,” the burning of tobacco, cedar, sage or other materials during home visits. But the Family Spirit curriculum makes room for such traditions.

“It is a ceremony that is cleansing and healing and is often done when dealing with difficult issues or seeking good influences,” Decker Sorby said.

Minnesota tribes and organizations participating in the Family Spirit training include Red Lake, Leech Lake, Fond du Lac, Bois Forte, Grand Portage, Lower Sioux, Mille Lacs and Mewinzha Ondaadiziike Wiigamig.

Family Spirit is designed as a home visiting program, but the curriculum can be delivered in other venues as well, such as clinics, schools or in group settings.

Family Spirit also encourages a culturally sensitive style of conversation. For example, instead of starting by asking a mom whether she smokes or uses other substances, the training encourages the visitor to ask the client if she feels drugs and alcohol may negatively affect her community.

“Reservation members tend to have strong ties to their community,” Decker Sorby said in the release. “So starting the conversation by talking about the community is respectful and also opens the door for young moms to start talking about the problem of substance abuse in and outside of their families.”

Training sessions are underway and home visits are expected to begin this spring.

The program is flexible and participants can be enrolled at any point, from early pregnancy until the child’s third birthday, though the goal is to see families throughout that entire period.

The Family Spirit program is being offered by other tribes in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Washington. Researchers studying family spirit initiatives have found the program has increased parenting knowledge and involvement; decreased maternal depression; increased home safety; and decreased substance use in both pregnant and parenting women. It has been used around the nation with more than 2,500 Native American families.

Starting in 1995, Family Spirit was designed and rigorously evaluated by the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health in partnership with the Navajo, White Mountain and San Carlos Apache communities.

#ICWA means standing strong

Leland Morrill Kirk, Navajo adoptee with Ft Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler, NICWA Conference — at Hyatt Regency Pier Sixty-Six | Fort Lauderdale, FL. Leland and many other adoptees are presenting at this conference in Florida.

Associate Attorney General Tony West Delivers Remarks at the National Indian Child Welfare Association’s 32nd Annual Protecting Our Children Conference

~ Monday, April 14, 2014

Thank you, Theodore and Alex, for that kind introduction and for inviting me to join you today at this conference.  It is wonderful to be here with so many friends, colleagues, and supporters.  And it is an honor to share the stage this morning with two great partners, Assistant Secretary Washburn and Associate Commissioner Chang.
I would especially like to thank NICWA and its members for the work that you do -- day in and day out -- to strengthen Indian tribes, to support Indian families, and to protect Indian children in both state child-welfare and private-adoption systems throughout our nation.
And I think it's fitting that what brings us together this morning, this week -- from communities across this country -- is our commitment to children, particularly Native children.  I think it was the French philosopher Camus who wrote about this being a world in which children suffer, but maybe, through our actions, we can lessen the number of suffering children.
Indeed, what brings us to Ft. Lauderdale is that promise we make to all of our children: that their safety and well-being is our highest priority; that they are sacred beings, gifts from the Creator to be cherished, cared for, and protected.

It was that promise that, nearly forty years ago, led Congress to hold a series of hearings that lifted the curtain and shed light on abusive child-welfare practices that were separating Native children from their families at staggering rates; uprooting them from their tribes and their culture.  Roughly one of every three or four Indian children, according to data presented at those hearings, had been taken from their birth families and placed with adoptive families, in foster care, or in institutions that had little or no connection to the child's tribe.
And in the face of that overwhelming evidence, a bipartisan Congress acted and passed the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

And in the four decades since, as everyone here knows, ICWA has had a dramatic impact.  Families, tribes, social workers, and Indian foster and adoptive parents have invoked ICWA’s core protections to stem the most flagrant abuses.
Tribes no longer face the prospect that a quarter to a third of their children will simply disappear, shipped off to homes halfway across the country.  Today, in many places, tribes and states have developed productive working partnerships to implement ICWA – partnerships that ensure that Indian families and cultures are treated with the respect they deserve.
And while it is right for us to recognize the landmark achievement that is ICWA, we also know that there is much work left to do.  There is more work to do because, in some states, Native children are still removed from their families and tribes at disproportionately high rates. 
There's more work to do because nationwide Indian children are still two to three times as likely as non-Indian children to end up in foster care; in some states the numbers are even larger.
There's more work to do because every time an Indian child is removed in violation of ICWA, it can mean a loss of all connection with family, with tribe, with culture.  And with that loss, studies show, comes an increased risk for mental health challenges, homelessness in later life, and, tragically, suicide.
So, as far as we have come since ICWA became law in 1978, we have farther still to go.

You all know this is true from both professional and personal experience.  And I want you to know that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder share your commitment to improving the welfare of Indian children and are committed to working with you to help achieve that goal.

Although ICWA speaks primarily to the responsibilities and roles of the states and the tribes, we believe there’s a constructive part for the federal government to play.

That's why the White House has directed the Departments of the Interior, Health and Human Services, and Justice to engage in an unprecedented collaboration to help ensure that ICWA is properly implemented.  I believe we will hear more about this effort from Assistant Secretary of the Interior Washburn in a few minutes.

For our part at the Justice Department, our main ICWA contributions have focused on precedent-setting litigation that can affect ICWA's reach and force.  One of ICWA’s most important provisions is its recognition that Indian tribes, as sovereigns, have presumptive jurisdiction over Indian child-custody proceedings.  And over the years we have worked hard to help protect this tribal jurisdiction by participating in federal and state court litigation as an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court.”
In Alaska, for example, we’ve participated in a line of cases over the last 20 years to ensure that Alaska tribes have jurisdiction over child-custody disputes.  Starting with the landmark John v. Baker case, we’ve filed multiple amicus briefs in the Alaska and U.S. Supreme Courts, successfully arguing that even tribes that lack “Indian country” retain jurisdiction to address child-custody disputes.
Of course, we've not always prevailed.  Last June's U.S. Supreme Court decision in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, which narrowly interpreted ICWA and terminated the parental rights of a Cherokee father in connection with his daughter, was decided over our arguments in support of the father.
But even when we don't prevail, our legal arguments can have a major impact on the ultimate decision.  You'll recall that in Baby Girl, one of the arguments advanced by the adoptive couple was, essentially, that ICWA was unconstitutional -- that it "upset the federal-state balance," suggesting that Congress was prohibited from overriding state child-custody law when an Indian child was involved.

We countered that applying ICWA in that case raised no constitutional concerns, as Congress has plenary authority to protect Indian children from being improperly separated from Indian communities.  And on this point, we were successful:  even though we lost the ultimate issue and the High Court ruled against the Cherokee father, the Court did not rely on the adoptive couple's constitutional argument and did not rule that ICWA was unconstitutional.

Notwithstanding setbacks like the Baby Girl decision, we will continue to stand up for ICWA because, as we said in the Supreme Court, it's “a classic implementation of Congress’s plenary [trust] responsibility . . . for Indians.”  You see, for us, standing up for ICWA means standing strong for tribal sovereignty.  "Nothing could be more at the core of tribal self-determination and tribal survival,” we said during oral argument in the Baby Girl case, “than . . . [determining] tribal membership and . . .  [caring] about what happens to Indian children.”

READ MORE

#Baby Veronica #ICWA: Future Threats coming

Another book about this appalling history

The Adoption Crunch, the Christian Right, and the Challenge to Indian Sovereignty

By Kathryn Joyce

About Kathryn Joyce

Kathryn Joyce is the author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption and Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (Beacon Press 2009). Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, Slate, Mother Jones, the Atlantic, and many other publications.

Print PDF

While the demand for adoptable babies is increasing in the United States—driven in large part by evangelical Christians—the number of babies available for adoption is declining. Adoption agencies are now targeting tribal nations as a potential new source of babies to adopt, and forming alliances that threaten to undermine the sovereignty of Native American nations.

**This article appears in the Winter 2014 issue of The Public Eye magazine.**

On September 23, 2013, a child-custody battle that was nearly five years in the making came to its conclusion in Oklahoma when an Army veteran from the Cherokee Nation, Dusten Brown, handed over his daughter, Veronica, to Matt and Melanie Capobianco, a White couple from South Carolina who had raised her for the first two years of her life.¹

Brown gained custody of four-year-old Veronica in December 2011, after a South Carolina court ruled that the adoption process had violated federal Indian law. Brown’s attorneys also argued that Christina Maldonado—Brown’s ex-fiancé and Veronica’s biological mother, who is Latina—had deliberately concealed plans to let the Capobiancos adopt her.²  As the custody decision was reversed following a 2013 Supreme Court ruling,³ and Veronica was tucked into the Capobiancos’ car to return to South Carolina, the scene was broadcast across national and social media to two polarized camps. Brown’s supporters condemned the Capobiancos as baby-snatchers stealing an Indian child from her loving father, as tens of thousands of Native children had been systematically removed from their families in decades past. The Capobiancos’ supporters condemned Brown as a deadbeat dad who had given up his rights long ago and was hiding behind an obsolete law.

...In the 1950s and 1960s, boarding schools gave way to the Indian Adoption Project, which removed children from Native homes and placed them in foster care or adoptive homes. By the 1970s, an astonishing one-quarter to one-third of all Indian children in the United States had been taken away from their families, and 85-90 percent of them were placed in non-Indian families.  The generation came to be known as the “Lost Birds.”⁵⁵


“There were literally American Indian communities where there were no children,” said Terry Cross. As the broader Native American community realized what was happening and began to collect testimony for Congress, other stories emerged: of Native American women pressured into relinquishing babies for adoption just after birth while still under the effects of anesthesia, and of women waking up to find that their babies were gone and, sometimes, that they had themselves been sterilized.⁵⁶

 Read more→  HERE

The Money behind the Madness #Adoption

From Trace: If you think adoption is about children, well then I have an article for you:

Child “protection” is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12 billion a year on it. 

The money goes to tens of thousands of a) state employees, b) collateral professionals, such as lawyers, court personnel, court investigators, evaluators and guardians, judges, and c) DSS contracted vendors such as counselors, therapists, more “evaluators”, junk psychologists, residential facilities, foster parents, adoptive parents, MSPCC, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, etc. This (Massachusetts) newspaper is not big enough to list all of the people in this state who have a job, draw a paycheck, or make their profits off the kids in DSS custody. 

In this article I explain the financial infrastructure that provides the motivation for DSS to take people’s children – and not give them back. 

"If you prefer to actually be able to kick tires instead of just looking at pictures you could attend one of DSS’s quaint “Adoption Fairs,” where live children are put on display and you can walk around and browse. Like a flea market to sell kids. If one of them begs you to take him home you can always say, “Sorry. Just looking.” The incentives for government child snatching are so good that I’m surprised we don’t have government agents breaking down people’s doors and just shooting the parents in the heads and grabbing the kids. But then, if you need more apples you don’t chop down your apple trees...." 

http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/2000/5_May/mayds4.htm

Even though this article is older, it's the same old song-n-dance in 2014...Trace

Veronica's Birth Mother Drops Bid to Overturn ICWA in South Carolina

YouTube/Cynthia T.

Veronica with her dad Dusten Brown in Nowata, Oklahoma

Suzette Brewer

4/7/14

Indian Country Today Media Network has confirmed that the legal team for Christinna Maldonado, the birth mother of “Baby Veronica,” has quietly dropped its class action suit, which sought to overturn portions of the Indian Child Welfare Act, contending it is “race-based” legislation.

RELATED: Some Disturbing Facts About Baby Veronica's Birth Mother

The case, Maldonado et al v. Holder, in which the United States and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma were also named as defendants, had been filed last July during the height of the legal firestorm in which Matt and Melanie Capobianco of James Island, South Carolina, were seeking custody of a Cherokee child they had named Veronica.

The United States Supreme Court had ruled in June 2013 that Veronica’s biological father, Dusten Brown, could not sue under ICWA because he did not have “continued” custody of the girl. The case made headlines around the world, though the little girl was eventually returned to live with the adoptive couple in South Carolina in September of last year.

Maldonado had initially remained quiet during the legal proceedings, but eventually joined the class action suit which included a dozen other women in filing the litigation in federal court in South Carolina. Their suit sought to declare the “Indian preference” under section 1915 of ICWA “unconstitutional,” because it “violated their civil rights to choose fit, stable adoptive parents for their birth children,” according to one of their attorneys.

But on January 27, the plaintiffs in the case quietly filed a voluntary motion for dismissal with the court, putting an end to one of the longest, most expensive and emotional custody cases in U.S. History.

“We are pleased Ms. Maldonado and the unnamed plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the suit,” said Chrissi Nimmo, assistant attorney general for the Cherokee Nation. “We never believed the suit had any merit and we were prepared to actively defend the suit had we ever been served.”
In the meantime, the Cherokee Nation and the attorneys for the plaintiffs in Adoptive Couple continue to await the decision on the demand fees totaling over copy million in Nowata County Court in Oklahoma. Previously, they had publicized their work on behalf of the Capobiancos as “pro bono,” but sought compensation a week after the pre-schooler was returned to South Carolina. Their previous suit for fees in South Carolina totaled some $500,000, but was dropped late last year.

Since that time, the Oglala and Rosebud Sioux Tribes, along with another class action of parents in South Dakota, have sued the state in federal court over multiple violations of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

RELATED: South Dakota Tribes Charge State With ICWA Violations
Swept Away: South Dakota's Native Children Denied Due Process in Custody Cases
Swept Away, Part 2: Suing South Dakota to Protect Native Children

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/04/07/veronicas-birth-mother-drops-bid-overturn-icwa-south-carolina-154354