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Page Number: 52.0

10 

HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

abuse in foster and adoptive homes than their white coun-
terparts.   A. Landers,  S. Danes, A. Campbell, & S. White 
Hawk, Abuse After Abuse:  The Recurrent Maltreatment of 
American  Indian  Children  in  Foster  Care  and  Adoption, 
111 Child Abuse & Neglect 104805, p. 9 (2021).

All that often translated into long-lasting adverse health 
and emotional effects.  See M. Yellow Horse Brave Heart, 
The  Historical  Trauma  Response  Among  Natives  and  Its 
Relationship with Substance Abuse:  A Lakota Illustration, 
35 J. of Psychoactive Drugs 1, 7–13 (2003); U. Running Bear
et al., The Impact of Individual and Parental American In-
dian  Boarding  School  Attendance  on  Chronic  Physical
Health of Northern Plains Tribes, 42 Family & Community 
Health 1, 3–7 (2019).  As one study warned:  “[E]fforts to
make Indian children ‘white,’ ” by removing them from their
Tribes, “can destroy them.”  AAIA Report 9. 

C 
Eventually, Congress could ignore the problem no longer.
In 1978, it responded with the Indian Child Welfare Act.  92 
Stat. 3096.  The statute’s findings show that Congress was
acutely aware of the scope of the crisis.  “[A]n alarmingly
high  percentage  of  Indian  families,”  Congress  observed, 
were being “broken up by the removal, often unwarranted,
of their children from them by nontribal [state] public and
private agencies.”  25 U. S. C. §1901(4).  And “an alarmingly 
high  percentage  of  such  children”  were  “placed  in  non- 
Indian foster and adoptive homes and institutions.”  Ibid. 
Removal at that scale threatened the “continued existence 
and integrity of Indian [T]ribes.”  §1901(3).

The statute Congress settled upon contains various pro-
visions aimed at addressing this crisis.  At bottom, though,
the  law’s  operation  is  simple.    It  installs  substantive  and 
procedural  guardrails  against  the  unjustified  termination 
of  parental  rights  and  removal  of  Indian  children  from 
tribal life.