Full Description
On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case Adoptive Couple vs. Baby Girl, which pitted adoptive parents Matt and Melanie Capobianco against baby Veronica's biological father, Dusten Brown, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Veronica's biological mother had relinquished her for adoption to the Capobiancos without Brown's consent. Although Brown regained custody of his daughter using the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Capobiancos, rejecting the purpose of the ICWA and ignoring the long history of removing Indigenous children from their families. In A Generation Removed, a powerful blend of history and family stories, award-winning historian Margaret D. Jacobs examines how government authorities in the post-World War II era removed thousands of American Indian children from their families and placed them in non-Indian foster or adoptive families. By the late 1960s an estimated 25 to 35 percent of Indian children had been separated from their families. Jacobs also reveals the global dimensions of the phenomenon: These practices undermined Indigenous families and their communities in Canada and Australia as well. Jacobs recounts both the trauma and resilience of Indigenous families as they struggled to reclaim the care of their children, leading to the ICWA in the United States and to national investigations, landmark apologies, and redress in Australia and Canada.
Contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments A Note on Terms Abbreviations Simon Ortiz's Question Introduction Prologue Part 1. Taking Care of American Indian Children Modern Indian Life Chapter 1. The Bureaucracy of Caring for Indian Children Dana's Story Chapter 2. Caring about Indian Children in a Liberal Age Part 2. The Indian Child Welfare Crisis in Indian Country John's Story Chapter 3. Losing Children Meeting Steven Unger Chapter 4. Reclaiming Care Interviewing Bert Hirsch and Evelyn Blanchard Chapter 5. The Campaign for the Indian Child Welfare Act Part 3. The Indian Child Welfare Crisis in a Global Context Tracking Down the Douchette Family Chapter 6. The Indigenous Child Welfare Crisis in Canada Meeting Aunty Di Chapter 7. The Indigenous Child Welfare Crisis in Australia and Transnational Activism Finding Russell Moore Chapter 8. Historical Reckoning with Indigenous Child Removal in Settler Colonial Nations Afterword Notes Bibliography Index
