U.S (NATIVE ORGANIZERS ALLIANCE ACTION FUND): We’re preparing for a potentially devastating SUPREME COURT decision.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friend, 

 

Next month, the Supreme Court will decide on a case challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) -- a law that has been known as the “gold standard” of child welfare policies in the U.S. for 40 years.

Before ICWA, state welfare and private adoption agencies separated our Native children from their families, taking away about a third of Native children to place in non-Native homes.

ICWA is critical to ensuring that Tribal and Native communities are given the opportunity to keep our children within our communities. All children need a sense of stability that comes from community continuity. For Native children, being taken from extended family or Native communities interrupts an ongoing sense of cultural identity. Given the extremist right-wing leanings of this Supreme Court, it’s likely the Court will weaken or even destroy protections for Native children, which violates our sovereignty.

We’re preparing for a potentially devastating Supreme Court decision by urging every state in the country to codify ICWA protections into state law now. 12 states have already taken action and we are helping to build off that momentum. Recently, we sent more than 8,000 letters to governors across the country urging them to codify ICWA into law in their states.

Donate today to power our campaign to ensure Native children are kept with their families or with their Tribes. This is critical to Native children’s cultural identities and to the future of Indigenous sovereignty.

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ICWA has addressed centuries of genocidal attempts to destroy our cultures and languages, which included forced sterilization, forced family separation, and abusive boarding schools. Overturning this law would be an assault on Tribal sovereignty -- our constitutional right to self governance.

That’s why we’re mobilizing, working alongside Native and child welfare advocates in our shared struggle for Indigenous rights.

Already, our work and the work of allies has won state level protections in these 12 states : California, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Now, we’re doubling down in organizing for action in Congress and across the country to codify these protections in every state.

Rush a donation today, ahead of next month’s Supreme Court decision. With ICWA under attack in the federal courts, we must ensure it is protected and strengthened in states across the country.

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Hawwih (thank you), 

 

Judith Le Blanc (Caddo)
Executive Director.

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