Notes from America with Kai Wright

Allison Herrera, the Indigenous affairs reporter at KOSU, returns to the show to introduce us to Hodalee and Jamie Sewell, who are in the process of adopting their great niece– a baby girl. She’s a Cherokee Nation citizen, so that meant her social workers had to follow guidelines set out by the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Allison walks us through Sewell's adoption journey and what happens when ICWA works the way it’s supposed to. 

Later in the show, Claudette Grinnell-Davis, professor of social work at the University of Oklahoma, joins Kai to explain what makes ICWA the gold standard in family law. ICWA was enacted after a congressional investigation found that more than a third of all Native children were removed from their families and placed with non-Native families or institutions without any ties to their tribes. While the federal Indian boarding school program had been phased out in the 1960s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs ran the Indian Adoption program and encouraged white families to adopt Native children. Congress finally acted in 1978 and passed ICWA, which recently survived a high stakes Supreme Court challenge. 

Check out Allison Herrera’s reporting on the Indian Child Welfare Act:

'Today our heads are not bowed:' U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Indian Child Welfare Act

Oklahoma tribal leaders, advocates and Biden administration react to SCOTUS decision on ICWA

The Indian Child Welfare Act has been in place for nearly 45 years. Why is it being questioned now?

Companion Listening:

Indian Boarding Schools Are Not Ancient History (5/8/2023)

From 1819 and 1969, the U.S. removed thousands of Native children from their homes and tried to strip them of their culture. What would a reparations program for this history look like?

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“Notes from America” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. Tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on notesfromamerica.org or on WNYC’s YouTube channel.