Paving the Road to Icwa: Indian Slavery, Malignant Adoption, and Other Forms of Assimilation

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) emerged as a necessary federal response to the epidemic separation of Indian children from their families. By the early 1970s Native children were up to 20 times more likely to be placed in foster care and/or adoption agencies in some states. In New Mexico the Indian slave trade established a colonial framework of natal alienation, social death, and attempted assimilation. Framed as a form of adoption, those who purchased Indian captives were expected to teach them Spanish, raise them in the Catholic Church, and release them upon reaching adulthood. Long after the conclusion of the Mexican-American War these assumptions lay at the core of the Indian boarding school movement before becoming foundational to the assumptions of child protective services agencies by the mid-20th century. In my presentation, I will examine ICWA as a long needed yet still contested end to assimilative policies shaped by the recognition that tribal family structures have their own value and validity.