#Lexi will remain with her Utah Family #ICWA

Summer and Rusty Page listen to their attorney, Lori Alvino McGill, after an appeals court hearing in downtown Los Angeles in June. They've pledged to take their fight to the state Supreme Court. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

• ICWA: Lexi to Remain with Utah Family

  Indian Country Today Media Network

  On March 21, foster parents Summer and Russell Page ignited a worldwide firestorm of publicity when they initially refused to turn Lexi over to her ...
  More: Foster parents lose appeal fight - Daily Mail

  Foster Parents Lose Appeals Fight for American Indian Girl - ABC News

  Full Coverage 

  • 
    Appeals Court: 'Lexi' to Stay with Her Family Members

    SCVNEWS.com

    The foster child, who was found in 2011 to come under the Indian Child Welfare Act, was removed in March from the Saugus home of her unrelated ...

   
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  Los Angeles Times
  
  

For 15 Minutes Of Fame, Pages using #BabyAlexandria

By Trace Hentz, American Indian Adoptees Blog Editor

Turtle Talk has posted the latest developments in the #BabyAlexandria (Lexie) case out of California. I have my own concerns.
The daily media circus is being manipulated and slanted, as we would expect from the same players who participated in the Baby Veronica case.
The Pages (Lexie's foster parents) are deliberately playing out their case in front of television cameras, a glaring manipulation of media and the public, seeking their 15 minutes of fame. These people seem oblivious to how racist it is to use a child, demean her blood quantum, just to elicit and gain sympathy for themselves.
Remember her foster family filed appeals three times, delaying Alexandria's rights to be with her own family and siblings. Now Lexie is home, and safe.

"Finally, the use of the media in this case to inflame opinion, spread false information about the situation, publicize a child’s name and face, and to try to dismantle ICWA itself [again] is deplorable," Kate Fort said in her Turtle Talk post (see below).

Choctaw Nation’s statement.
The following statement reflects the Choctaw Nation's position on the case of Lexi.

We appreciate the concern for Lexi and want to assure everyone she is in a safe, loving home with her relatives and her biological sisters.
The Choctaw Nation has advocated for Lexi to live with her family since 2011. These relatives have been a part of Lexi’s life for almost five years. They are not strangers. They have maintained a relationship with her, visiting her in California, making regular SKYPE calls, and Lexi has also been on extended visits to Utah.

The family has been waiting for five years for all of them to be together.

Foster care is a much-needed temporary service provided for children until the child can be returned to the care of his or her family. Placement with family is the gold-standard of any child-custody case, not just a case involving tribal children. The Pages were always aware of this goal.

Many steps have been taken by the Choctaw Nation to ensure the best placement of Lexi.  An independent clinical psychologist was brought in to gauge her ability to transition from the foster home to her relatives.  The California court appointed a marriage and family therapist to perform a child custody evaluation to assess the mental health and parenting practices of both parties. The experts along with Lexi’s long-time individual therapists, her social worker and her attorney, all agree it is in her best interest to be with her relatives. The foster family understood this.  All children, not just Native children, do better with caring relatives.

The case was decided in the California court system three separate times, with three different trial court judges ruling in favor of Lexi’s relatives in Utah.  We, as a tribe, are required to follow federal law.  The foster family filed appeals three times to keep Lexi, delaying the reuniting of Lexi with her relatives.

Lexi’s safety and wellbeing are the Choctaw Nation’s paramount concern.

Her family will provide her a safe, stable and nurturing home to grow up with her sisters and to have contact with her extensive extended family.
Please respect the privacy of Lexi and her family.


NICWA’s statement

###

Turtle Talk will continue to add statements from other groups as we receive them. And, because it’s what we do, we’ve created a page with all of the publicly available primary source documents in this case. You can find that here. (see below)

The foster parents’ attorney has issued a statement claiming she will use this case to appeal ICWA up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. We’ve heard this before, and there are very few legal routes left for them to do that, but we still expect they will try them all.

Meanwhile, this case is not just about Indian Country.  The role of foster care in this country is clear–to provide a temporary, loving home for a child while her family receives services to so the child can go home safely.  It is also provides time for the state to search for other -relative- homes for the child.  This is a best practice regardless of whether the child is Native or not. It’s actually state law in California. Ann.Cal.Welf. & Inst.Code § 361.3.  In fact, it’s the law in a lot of states.  That’s because relative preference in placement is also required by the federal government for states to receive Title IV-E funding. 25 U.S.C. 671(a)(19). Preventing a child from living with her siblings and relatives –family she knows, and who have spent considerable time planning this transition– contrary to court order is not the role of foster parents.

Finally, the use of the media in this case to inflame opinion, spread false information about the situation, publicize a child’s name and face, and to try to dismantle ICWA itself [again] is deplorable. The type of comments that NICWA, the California Children’s Law Center, Choctaw Nation and other individuals are receiving, particularly on social media, should disturb us all. Those taking the brunt of this deserve our full support and thanks.

In re Alexandria P.

A note on using a child’s name for this page–that is the name of the only reported appellate case in this situation. It’s the citation we all have to use.
Docket from the California Court of Appeals for the In re Alexandria P. appellate decision.
Turtle Talk post on the case.
Docket from the California Supreme Court denying review.
Unpublished decision after lower court keeps placement order with family.
Docket from the unpublished decision.
Docket from March Petition for Writ of Supersedeas
Statement from NICWA
Turtle Talk post
Follow up Statement from NICWA
Statement from Choctaw Nation

More questions than answers #Alexandria #ICWA

ICWA Placement Preference Decision Out of California Involving Choctaw Tribe (Turtle Talk)

Here.
This is a re-occurring and incredibly frustrating ICWA fact pattern–if the ICWA compliant placement is out of state, or far away from the parents, and the goal is reunification, it makes sense for the tribe and state to allow for a non-compliant ICWA placement near the parents. What happens, however, when reunification fails? As in this case, a court is often unwilling to remove the child from the home she has been in for anywhere from one to three years. Honest, actual, concurrent permanency planning could help with this, but while that is a best practice, it does not seem to be happening with any regularity at the state.

Concluding that the ICWA’s adoptive placement preferences do apply to this case, we then review the trial court’s order finding that the P.s failed to produce clear and convincing evidence of good cause to depart from those placement preferences. We determine that the court applied the correct burden of proof by requiring the P.s to prove by clear and convincing evidence that there was good cause to deviate from section 1915’s placement preferences. However, the court erroneously required the P.s to prove a certainty that Alexandria would suffer harm if moved, and failed to consider Alexandria’s best interests or her bond with the P.s in determining good cause.
***
We recognize that a final decision regarding Alexandria’s adoptive placement will be further delayed as a result of our determination of the merits of this appeal. That delay is warranted by the need to insure that the correct legal standard is utilized in deciding whether good cause has been shown that it is in the best interest of Alexandria to depart from the ICWA’s placement preferences.

As also often happens, the parties start arguing about the very constitutionality of ICWA, making this case a “not as bad as it could have been” case–the court didn’t find ICWA is unconstitutional, nor does Adoptive Couple apply (as the de facto parents argued) to this fact pattern. And yet, the trial court decision placing the child with her extended family is still overturned based on the child’s best interest standard. Getting courts to acknowledge that the best interests of a child ought to include the child’s whole life, not just the one transition in front of the court at that moment, is both vital and seemingly impossible.

For the (depressing) record, here is Evelyn Blanchard writing the same thing in 1977 in The Destruction of American Indian Families, ed. Steven Unger (Association of American Indian Affairs 1977).

TODAY:  NICWA’s statement:

We are disturbed by this weekend’s flurry of negative media attention regarding the attempted reunification of a child with her family in Utah. In this contentious custody case, there have never been any surprises as far as what the law required. The foster family was well aware years ago this girl is an Indian child, whose case is subject to the requirements of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), and who has relatives who were willing to raise her if reunification with her father was unsuccessful.

In fact, the only surprising turn of events is the lengths the foster family has gone to, under the advice of an attorney with a long history of trying to overturn ICWA, to drag out litigation as long as possible, creating instability for the child in question. That the foster family now argues bonding and attachment should supersede all else despite testimony of those closest to her case, seems like a long-term, calculated legal strategy based on the simple fact that the law was always clear, they understood it, but just chose not to abide by it.

The purpose of foster care is to provide temporary care for children while families get services and support to reunite with their children, not to fast-track the creation of new families when there is extended family available who want to care for the child. The temporary nature of these relationships is also the reason we view those who serve as foster parents as selfless and nurturing individuals. Reunification and placement with extended family whenever possible is best practice for all children, not just Native American children.

We call on the media to provide balanced reporting and to ask vital questions regarding these facts before inflaming the public and subjecting the privacy and future well-being of a little girl to national debate.

Previous coverage of the appeal of this case is here.

As always, we remain concerned with the lack of privacy for a child who doesn’t get to make decisions about her identity being put forward into the press. In perhaps no surprise to anyone, this case involves repeat players from the Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl case.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/video/indian-child-welfare-act-separates-062934936.html

BABY Alexandria: The new Baby Veronica?

EXCELLENT BOOK ON ICWA

ICWA Placement Preference Decision Out of California Involving Choctaw Tribe

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Kate Fort TURTLE TALK

 

Here.

This is a re-occurring and incredibly frustrating ICWA fact pattern – if the ICWA compliant placement is out of state, or far away from the parents, and the goal is reunification, it makes sense for the tribe and state to allow for a non-compliant ICWA placement near the parents. What happens, however, when reunification fails? As in this case, a court is often unwilling to remove the child from the home she has been in for anywhere from one to three years. Honest, actual, concurrent permanency planning could help with this, but while that is a best practice, it does not seem to be happening with any regularity at the state (California).

Concluding that the ICWA’s adoptive placement preferences do apply to this case, we then review the trial court’s order finding that the P.s failed to produce clear and convincing evidence of good cause to depart from those placement preferences. We determine that the court applied the correct burden of proof by requiring the P.s to prove by clear and convincing evidence that there was good cause to deviate from section 1915’s placement preferences. However, the court erroneously required the P.s to prove a certainty that Alexandria would suffer harm if moved, and failed to consider Alexandria’s best interests or her bond with the P.s in determining good cause.
***
We recognize that a final decision regarding Alexandria’s adoptive placement will be further delayed as a result of our determination of the merits of this appeal. That delay is warranted by the need to insure that the correct legal standard is utilized in deciding whether good cause has been shown that it is in the best interest of Alexandria to depart from the ICWA’s placement preferences.

As also often happens, the parties start arguing about the very constitutionality of ICWA, making this case a “not as bad as it could have been” case – the court didn’t find ICWA is unconstitutional, nor does Adoptive Couple apply (as the de facto parents argued) to this fact pattern. And yet, the trial court decision placing the child with her extended family is still overturned based on the child’s best interest standard. Getting courts to acknowledge that the best interests of a child ought to include the child’s whole life, not just the one transition in front of the court at that moment, is both vital and seemingly impossible.

(Happy to post redacted briefs if we receive any)

===============

Speaking of ICWA placement preferences, Here are the reports submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, the International Indian Treaty Council, and the National Indian Child Welfare Association:

Alternative Report A: Indigenous Children and the Legacy and Current Impacts of the Boarding School Policies in the United States and the Lack of Redress, Restitution and Restoration by the United States to Address these Impacts or to Acknowledge Responsibility for Them
Alternative Report B: The Continued Removal of Indigenous Children from Their Families and Communities and its Impact on The Right to Culture

EARLIER COVERAGE HERE