Court Opinion

ID: 9677949
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:06:58.43997+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:00.612756
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The policy underlying the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is
to protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families by the establishment of minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children from their families and the placement of such children in foster or adoptive homes which will reflect the unique values of Indian culture.
25 U.S.C. § 1902 (2000).
The ICWA was enacted because “an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families [had been] broken up by the removal, often unwarranted, of their children from them by nontribal public and private agencies and [because] an alarmingly high percentage of such children [were] placed in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes and *310institutions.” 25 U.S.C. § 1901, subd. 4 (2000). Congressional hearings and reports chronicled the scale of the abusive child-welfare practices that Native-American families were required to endure:
Studies undertaken by the Association on American Indian Affairs in 1969 and 1974, and presented in the Senate hearings, showed that 25 to 35% of all Indian children had been separated from their families and placed in adoptive families, foster care, or institutions. Adoptive placements counted significantly in this total: in the State of Minnesota, for example, one in eight Indian children under the age of 18 was in an adoptive home, and during the year 1971-1972 nearly one in every four infants under one year of age was placed for adoption. The adoption rate of Indian children was eight times that of non-Indian children. Approximately 90% of the Indian placements were in non-Indian homes.
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U.S. 30, 32-33, 109 S.Ct. 1597, 104 L.Ed.2d 29 (1989) (citing Indian Child Welfare Program, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., 3, 15 (statement of William Byler); H.R.Rep. No. 95-1386, p. 9 (1978), 2nd Sess. 1978 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 7530, 7531) (citations omitted). Sadly, as the senate subcommittee hearings make clear, Minnesota’s role in the abusive removal of these children was prominent.
These abusive practices have taken a heavy toll on Native-American culture, as well as Native-American children individually. See Curt Brown, Finding Indian Adoptees’ Pasts, Star Trib. (Minneapolis), July 3, 2006, at B1 (quoting a First Nations Orphan Association official as referring to pre-ICWA policies as “the cultural rape of forced assimilation”); Susan Baxter Quash-Mah & Deb Johnson Shelton, Seeking Permanent Homes for American Indian Children, Native American Times, Nov. 24, 2004, at 4 (noting that the teen suicide rate among Native-Americans is higher than among any other ethnic or racial group and that the suicide rate is even higher for Native-American children raised in non-Native-American homes).
The court relies on authority suggesting that most state court systems and child welfare agencies seem to be making broad-based efforts to fulfill the mandates of the ICWA. See Barbara Ann Atwood, Flashpoints Under the Indian Child Welfare Act: Toward a New Understanding of State Court Resistance, 51 Emory L.J. 587, 622 (2002). However, the court cites no examples of such efforts in Minnesota. Moreover, in the end, the relevant question is not whether states are making broad-based efforts to comply with the ICWA, but rather the question that needs to be asked is whether the states’ efforts are effective. It is not clear that Minnesota’s efforts have been effective. In fact, a report from this court suggests not only that Native-American children continue to be disproportionately placed out of home, but also that the number of such out-of-home placements is increasing. Minnesota Supreme Court, Minnesota’s Court Performance in Child Protection Cases: A Reassessment Under The Federal Court Improvement Program 24 (Dec. 2005). Because the goals of the ICWA appear to be unfulfilled and because, as the court notes, the good-cause exception for the transfer of cases to tribal courts may operate as a mechanism for easy circumvention of the ICWA, I would interpret the good-cause exception narrowly and hold it to be inapplicable to the circumstances of the present case.1
*311Irrespective of whether the good-cause exception was invoked in this case for the purpose of undermining the policy underlying the ICWA, by today’s decision the ICWA is undermined nonetheless, and the goals of the ICWA — yet to be achieved— are placed further out of reach by the precedent this case sets.
Therefore, I dissent.

. In addition, I question the wisdom of blind allegiance to guidelines created in 1979 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs — an agency that bears much of the responsibility for the offensive child welfare practices targeted by the ICWA. Cf. Lisa Demer, Natives receive apology for 1950s racial adoptions, Anchorage Daily News, Apr. 25, 2001, B1.