Giving Compass Take:

• This Brookings post examines a recent court ruling in Texas that might jeopardize protections for Native American children when it comes to family separation policies that the U.S. stopped 40 years ago.

• The urge to action here is simply not to reverse course on a discriminatory practice — and a reminder of the damage that child removal can have on a community.

Read more about the history of child separation among Native populations.


Each time new details emerge about the U.S. government’s family separation policy at the border, I find myself compelled to remind people that the horrific removal of children from their homes by U.S. government officials is not, in fact, a new phenomenon. Until the Civil War, the states and federal government enforced laws which allowed children to be sold during the slavery era. In more recent times, well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) state officials, religious organizations and adoption agencies removed American Indian children from their homes and families on tribal reservations. As recently as a generation ago, at least one-third of American Indian children were removed from their households.

It is difficult to overstate the amount of disruption and harm that this scale of child removal can have on a community or a family. These removals often became permanent over time, causing deep and wide-spread wounds. As Nicole Adams from Partnership for Native Children says, “Every Native family has suffered some deep intergenerational trauma from pre-ICWA days. We have lost loved ones.”

Read the full article about the separation of American Indians' children and families by Randall Akee at Brookings.