By The Imprint Staff Reporters, Photo: Unsplash, The Imprint, June 2, 2022
The Connecticut governor signed a new law late last month ensuring that federal protections for American Indian families are also enforced in state law — even if a pending U.S. Supreme Court case invalidates the related federal statute.
The legislation approved by Gov. Ned Lamont (D) ensures that proceedings involving an Indigenous child’s custody, placement in a foster or adoptive home or termination of parental rights “is conducted in accordance with the Indian Child Welfare Act.”
The federal Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, was passed in 1978 to curtail the indiscriminate separation of Indigenous children from their tribes and families by social workers, a practice that had skyrocketed in frequency at the time. The practice was widely viewed as a threat to tribal sovereignty, as children were being placed in foster care with and often adopted by non-Native families after centuries of forced displacement and violence by the government against tribes.
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