The ICWA was put in place in order to help Tribes maintain cultural continuity and as a counter balance to the effects of colonialism and the ongoing breakdown of Native American families and cultures brought on by it. It was designed to prevent situations just like the one with baby Veronica, where Native American children are opportunistically whisked away from their Indian relatives and placed in situations where their cultural heritage is most often downplayed or ignored, thus contributing to the once clearly stated aims of the U.S. federal government to completely assimilate the Native American or the “kill the Indian and save the man” program of one Richard Henry Pratt, founder and longstanding superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, Pa.

The case has garnered national attention and involved governors Mary Fallin of Okla. and Nikki Haley of S.C. It is my firm belief that there is some “conservative” ideology behind how both governors have handled this case, particularly Fallin.

Dating back to the days of the venerated Ronald Reagan, certain elements of the Republican Party and of conservative ideology have held that the U.S. federal government’s relationship with Native American tribes is tantamount to socialism and is the major contributing factor for ongoing poverty and other sagging measurements of well-being for American Indians. Their basic philosophy is that Indians have not prospered because the U.S. has given them too much —of course having nothing to do with an ongoing legacy of dehumanization and treaties broken or ignored by the U.S.