Bertram Hirsch News Today

The case pitted prospective adoptive parents and Texas against the act, a federal law aimed at preventing Native American children from being separated from their extended families and their tribes.

Chris Stearns has two distinct memories from his childhood in the late 1960s. The first is somewhat hazy: a crowded New York City picnic for white families who had adopted native American boys and girls, somewhere at a hilly park.

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 sought to keep Native children in tribal communities. The Supreme Court may change that this spring.

The U.S. has a long history of separating children from their parents without regard for parents’ rights or the children’s welfare.