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8 

HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

Indian children by private families.”  Id., at 153. 

This restarted a now-familiar nightmare for Indian fam-
ilies.  The same assimilationist rhetoric previously invoked 
by  the  federal  government  persisted,  “voiced  this  time  by
state and county officials.”  L. George, Why the Need for the
Indian Child Welfare Act?, 5 J. of Multicultural Social Work 
165, 169 (1997).  “ ‘If you want to solve the Indian problem 
you can do it in one generation,’ ” one official put it.  Ibid. 
“ ‘You can take all of [the] children of school age and move 
them bodily out of the Indian country and transport them
to some other part of the United States.’ ”  Ibid.  This would 
allow  “ ‘civilized  people’ ”  to  raise  the  children,  instead  of 
their families or their tribal communities.  Ibid. 

In  this  respect,  “[t]he  removal  of  Indian  children  by
[S]tates  ha[d]  much  in  common  with  Indian  boarding 
schools.”  Fletcher  &  Singel  952.  Through  the  1960s  and 
1970s, Indian-child removal reached new heights.  Surveys 
conducted  in  1969  and  1974  showed  that  “approximately
25–35 per cent of all Indian children [were] separated from
their  families.”  AAIA  Report  1.    Often,  these  removals 
whisked  children  not  only  out  of  their  families  but  out  of
their communities.  Some estimate that “more than 90 per 
cent  of  non-related  adoptions  of  Indian  children  [were]
made by non-Indian couples.”  Id., at 2. 

These family separations frequently lacked justification. 
According to one report, only about “1 per cent” of the sepa-
rations studied involved alleged physical abuse.  Ibid.  The 
other  99  percent?  “[V]ague  grounds”  such  “as  ‘neglect’  or
‘social  deprivation.’ ”    Ibid.   These  determinations,  often 
“wholly inappropriate in the context of Indian family life,” 
came  mainly  from  non-Indian  social  workers,  many  of 
whom were “ignorant of Indian cultural values and social 
norms.”  Id., at 2–3.  They routinely penalized Indian par-
ents for conditions of “[p]overty, poor housing, lack of mod-
ern plumbing, and overcrowding.” Id., at 3.  One 3-year-old
Sioux child, for instance, was removed from her family on