Opinion: Indian Child Welfare Act aims to keep tribes together

In a recent column, Lloyd Omdahl first argues that the Indian Child Welfare Act lets tribes engage in “sacrificing children to protect the heritage of the tribes."

Then Omdahl uses the example of the Spirit Lake Tribe’s badly run foster care program to argue that the ICWA policy of trying to keep American Indian families and tribes together is damaging to children.

But the findings of Congress’s Indian Child Welfare Act Commission of 1973 show that on the contrary, separating the children from their extended families and tribe, like Omdahl advocates, truly is damaging to the children.

Omdahl falsely believes that ICWA affects the safety of Indian children. ICWA mandates that “active efforts” be taken to place Indian children with their tribes or extended family. If no suitable family member or Indian adoptive parent is found, then the child can be placed into state custody or adopted by a non-Indian family.