Source: http://fl.bna.com/fl/19980714/f029316.htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 08:54:10+00:00

Document:
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Kern County. Jerold L. Turner, Judge.
Beth A. Melvin, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
B. C. Barmann, Sr., County Counsel, and Paul E. Blackhurst, Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Mishiola and Henry S. have four children, three of whom are the subjects of these proceedings: Henry, Jr. (born May 10, 1991); Andrew (born December 17, 1992); and Alicia (born March 7, 1994). Mishiola is three-eighths Paiute Indian and an enrolled member of the Paiute Tribe in Bishop, California. Henry S. is one-half Pima Indian and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community in Sacaton, Arizona. The children are not eligible for membership in their mother's tribe but are eligible for membership in their father's tribe, and were enrolled in 1995.
Mishiola appeals from an order terminating her parental rights with respect to her three children. (Welf. & Inst. Code,(1) � 366.26.) Each is an "Indian child" as defined by the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA or the Act). However, the trial court found that neither Mishiola nor the children's father, Henry S., had any significant relationship with the Indian community, and so refused to apply the ICWA to these proceedings in reliance upon a judicial interpretation of the Act recognizing what has become known as the "existing Indian family" doctrine. The validity of the doctrine has been the subject of considerable disagreement among the courts of this state and among the courts of other states. Some courts have embraced the doctrine; others have rejected it. As we shall explain in this opinion, we reject it.
These provisions apply to all child custody proceedings involving an Indian child. A "child custody proceeding" is defined to include any proceeding involving foster care placement, termination of parental rights, preadoptive placement, or adoptive placement. (25 U.S.C.A. � 1903(1).) An "Indian child" means "any unmarried person who is under age eighteen and is either (a) a member of an Indian tribe or (b) is eligible for membership in an Indian tribe and is the biological child of a member of an Indian tribe." (25 U.S.C.A. � 1903(4).) Henry, Jr., Andrew, and Alicia are, without dispute, "Indian children" involved in a "child custody proceeding."
Notwithstanding these statutory definitions, some courts have refused to apply the ICWA unless an Indian child is being removed from an "existing Indian family," meaning generally a family with a significant connection to the Indian community. These courts reason that Congress never intended the ICWA to apply in other situations where its application would do nothing to further the Act's underlying purpose of preserving Indian culture. The first case to adopt this reasoning was Matter of Adoption of Baby Boy L. (Kan. 1982) 643 P.2d 168, which involved the out-of-wedlock child of a non-Indian mother and an Indian father. The mother voluntarily relinquished the child at birth for adoption by a specific non-Indian couple, whereupon the father and his tribe invoked the ICWA in an effort to obtain custody of the child for himself or his extended family. The Kansas Supreme Court, while acknowledging that the ICWA would otherwise apply, found that its purposes would not have been served in this situation.
The courts which embrace the doctrine proceed, in part, on the basis that the United States Supreme Court has never directly addressed the issue. By that rationale, they discount the significance of Mississippi Choctaw Indian Band v. Holyfield, supra, 490 U.S. 30, the only Supreme Court case to address the ICWA in any context.(3) In fact, Mississippi Choctaw Indian Band v. Holyfield, supra, does not address the existing Indian family doctrine directly; however, in the opinion, the court gives significant insight into the Act and the court's feeling about the propriety, in general, of state interpretation of it.
In Mississippi Choctaw Indian Band v. Holyfield, supra, 490 U.S. 30, two unwed Indian parents who resided on the Choctaw reservation purposely traveled some distance away to give birth to twins and to place them for adoption by a non-Indian couple. The question then was whether the children were "domiciled" on the reservation such that the tribal court had exclusive jurisdiction over the custody proceedings, and more particularly whether federal or state law should be applied in making that determination. The court concluded "it [is] beyond dispute that Congress intended a uniform federal law of domicile for the ICWA." (Id. at p. 47, fn. omitted.) It gave two reasons for this conclusion.
"First, and most fundamentally, the purpose of the ICWA gives no reason to believe that Congress intended to rely on state law for the definition of a critical term; quite the contrary.� Indeed, the congressional findings that are a part of the statute demonstrate that Congress perceived the States and their courts as partly responsible for the problem it intended to correct. [Citation.] Under these circumstances, it is most improbable that Congress would have intended to leave the scope of the statute's key jurisdictional provision subject to definition by state courts as a matter of state law.
Crystal R. v. Superior Court, supra, 59 Cal.App.4th 703 involved the child of an Indian father who was frequently incarcerated, and a non-Indian mother who suffered from a drug problem. Consequently, the child spent several years as a dependent of the juvenile court in the care of her mother's aunt and uncle, who wished to adopt her. By the time the child was six years old, the matter had reached a section 366.26 hearing, where the trial court determined the ICWA's heightened standards should apply. The child, and the aunt and uncle, then filed a petition for writ of mandate. The Court of Appeal granted the petition and directed the lower court to conduct a hearing of the sort described in Bridget R. to determine if the father had any significant ties to the Indian community. (59 Cal.App.4th at p. 724.) In reaching this result, the court sought to strike a balance between the shifting interests of the child, the parents, and the tribe.
Mishiola's involvement with the local Indian community declined in 1993 when she developed transportation problems, but resumed in 1995, about the same time Henry, Sr., also began to participate in Indian activities. Although an enrolled member of the Pima Tribe since age 10, Henry, Sr., had little contact with tribal affairs while growing up and took no particular interest in his Indian heritage before he met Mishiola. Until 1995 he worked as a truck driver and was often away from home, but since then he has attended yearly Indian pow-wows, enrolled in Indian programs to deal with his alcohol problem, and attended several "sweats."
1 Except as indicated, all further statutory references are to the Welfare and Institutions Code.
2 Rather than set forth a survey of cases nationally which have either accepted or rejected the doctrine, we will simply cite Crystal R. v. Superior Court (1997) 59 Cal.App.4th 703 and the voluminous list of cases cited therein for that purpose.
6 The court set out at some length the rules that were to govern these proceedings. It directed that the parents would bear the burden of proof on the issue; that the lower court's inquiry must focus on the parents' ties to the tribe, rather than on any relationship between the tribe and extended family members; and that the determination must be made as of the time the parents relinquished their parental rights. The court also identified several factors bearing on the determination.
"In any adoptive placement of an Indian child under State law, a preference shall be given, in the absence of good cause to the contrary, to a placement with (1) a member of the child's extended family; (2) other members of the Indian child's tribe; or (3) other Indian families."
9 Other cases that have considered this question include Matter of Adoption of Riffle (Mont. 1996) 922 P.2d 510, 515; Yavapai-Apache Tribe v. Mejia (Tex.App. 1995) 906 S.W.2d 152, 169; In Interest of J.W. (Iowa App. 1995) 528 N.W.2d 657; People in Interest of J.L.P. (Colo.App. 1994) 870 P.2d 1252, 1256-1259; In re Interest of C.W. (Neb. 1992) 479 N.W.2d 105, 113-114; C.E.H. v. L.M.W. (Mo.App.W.D. 1992) 837 S.W.2d 947, 952-955; In re Baby Girl A., supra, 230 Cal.App.3d at p. 1620; In re Robert T. (1988) 200 Cal.App.3d 657, 663; Matter of Adoption of T.R.M. (Ind. 1988) 525 N.E.2d 298; Matter of Appeal in Maricopa County (Ariz.App. 1983) 667 P.2d 228, 234; In re Interest of Bird Head (Neb. 1983) 331 N.W.2d 785, 791. See also Guidelines for State Courts; Indian Child Custody Proceedings, 44 Federal Register 67584 et seq. (Nov. 26, 1979).
12 The department argues that Mishiola's contacts with the Indian community are irrelevant because the children qualify as Indian children through their father's tribe. Not even the courts that have argued most forcefully for the existing Indian family doctrine have proposed such a broad application of it.
13 Thus, this appeal arrives in a different posture than those in Bridget R. and Crystal R., where no "significant contacts" determination had yet been made, and Alexandria Y., where the appellate court was able to determine that neither the mother nor the child had any relationship at all with the mother's tribe.
14 Alicia and her half-sibling Nathaniel have lived with their maternal great aunt since shortly after they were removed from their parents' custody in 1994. Henry, Jr., and Andrew have lived since 1995 with their current foster caretakers, a non-Indian couple who wish to adopt them.
15 Our conclusion that the court erred by applying the existing Indian family doctrine renders moot the issue whether the Gila River Indian Community received proper notice of the section 366.26 hearing.

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