"Six years ago, when his last name was Bybee, police found Chris, then 5, and his brother Anthony, 4, in an apartment in Compton, Calif., an L.A. borough notorious for gangs, crack, and murder. The apartment was a hovel: no electricity, no running water. The toilet had overflowed and the bathtub was filled with clots of tissue and a suspect mix of murky liquids. The boys slept on cardboard boxes after their mother left them there with strangers, who, when she did not return, called the police.

The following month, in July 2000, John Moore, a Long Beach, Calif., screenwriter and his wife Terri, a second-grade teacher, opened their home to Chris and Anthony, who is dark-haired, olive-skinned, and shyer than his brother. When the boys became their foster kids, "we fell in love with them immediately and they quickly became attached to us," Mr. Moore said. "They began calling us Mom and Dad after about three to four weeks."

A month later, when no relatives had come forward to claim the boys, the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) began assessing the Moore's home for what seemed a fast-track adoption. The Moores were overjoyed. But six months later, they say, race-matching, political correctness, and the chilly indifference of social-services bureaucrats nearly ripped a fledgling family apart.

That's because Chris and Anthony are descendants of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska Indians. That means they're subject to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 1978 law that gives federally recognized Native American tribes near-complete sovereignty in adoption decisions involving children with Indian blood�even those who, like Chris and Anthony, have never had a moment's prior contact with their ancestral tribe."

Get the Story:
Drawing blood (World Magazine April 22, 2006)

Relevant Links:
National Indian Child Welfare Association - http://www.nicwa.org

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