Since European settlers arrived on the shores of what is now known as the United States, federal and state governments, intent on seizing Indian lands, have sought to undermine and threaten the existence of tribes through the forced separation and assimilation of Native children. By severing Native children from their families, tribes, and culture, colonizers believed they could stamp out Indigeneity and erase tribal people altogether. As with any nation, the future ceases to exist if children are prevented from carrying on the languages, traditions, and knowledge passed down from each generation to the next.

This tool of assimilation and genocide has been wielded against tribal nations and Native children repeatedly throughout history, and it is happening again now.

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) — a law that aims to protect Native children from forced removal from their families, tribes, and culture and preserve tribal sovereignty — is currently under attack and at risk of being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress passed ICWA in 1978 to address the nationwide crisis of state child welfare agencies tearing Native children from their families and placing them in non-Native homes, in an attempt to force Native children to assimilate and adopt white cultural norms. Before ICWA, public and private agencies were removing 25 to 35 percent of Native American/Alaska Native children from their homes, and 85 percent of those children were placed in non-Native households.

Overwhelming evidence has found that being removed from homes and disconnected from culture, tradition, and identity profoundly harms Native children. The Indian Child Welfare Act requires state courts to make active efforts to keep Native families together and to prioritize the placement of Native children within their families and within tribal communities — where their cultural identities will be understood and celebrated.

This November, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Brackeen v. Haaland, a case that challenges the constitutionality of ICWA. If the Supreme Court rules ICWA unconstitutional, it could have devastating consequences for Native children, families and tribes while simultaneously putting the existence of tribes in jeopardy. That’s why the ACLU and the ACLUs of Northern California, Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court today urging the court to uphold the constitutionality of ICWA.

ICWA aims to address the forced separation of Native children and families and represents a small step toward acknowledging the centuries of genocidal violence that underpin this case. Beginning in the early 1800s, the architects of the Federal Indian Boarding School Program designed the program to erase the Indigenous identities of Native people. The government snatched children as young as four years old from their families and sent them to militarized boarding school institutions designed to destroy their Native identities and culture, often hundreds of miles away from their tribal homelands.

Any markers of their Indigeneity — language, clothing, traditional hairstyles, and even their names — were prohibited in these institutions. Indian boarding schools were not simply places where Native youth were stripped of their culture: many children died at these schools from outright neglect, malnutrition, untreated illness, and as a result of physical violence carried out against them.

While boarding schools were largely shuttered by the mid-1900s, the philosophy lived on: Native children were better off living with white families, even at the expense of their mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing.

In 1958, the Bureau of Indian Affairs created the Indian Adoption Project. The project’s explicit goal was to assimilate Native children into white culture through adoption and the intentional destruction of Indigenous family units and tribal communities. During this era and continuing today, practices rooted in ethnocentric stereotypes operating under the guise of “child protection” resulted in the baseless separation of thousands of Native children from their families and homelands.

It is incomprehensibly heinous that — in order to build the country we all live in today — federal and state governments targeted Native children, robbing those children, their families, their communities, and their tribal nations of everything it meant to be Indigenous.

Brackeen v. Haaland is the largest threat to Native children, families, and tribes before the Supreme Court in our lifetimes. If ICWA is overturned, states would once again be allowed to tear Native children from their families, tribes, and culture while simultaneously threatening tribes’ very existence. The legal arguments made by the plaintiffs challenging ICWA in Brackeen undermine key tenets of federal Indian law, and threaten many other laws upholding tribal sovereignty.

Tribal sovereignty is the right of tribes — 574 currently recognized by the federal government — to make and be governed by their own laws. This sovereignty is inherent, as Native Nations existed long before the creation of the United States. Hundreds of treaties have guaranteed tribal nations the right to self-govern. Through these treaties, Native Nations gave up their right to millions of acres of land that would become the United States in exchange for promises to tribes, including the guarantee that lands “reserved” for tribes would be governed by the tribes in perpetuity. The outcome of Brackeen v. Haaland could put centuries-long legal precedent upholding tribal sovereignty — including tribes’ right and ability to preserve their unique cultural identities, raise their own children and govern themselves — in jeopardy.

Native families have a right to stay together, to care for their children, and to preserve tribal culture by ensuring access to their cultural identity, language, and heritage. The Supreme Court must protect this right and uphold the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Every election is important. By voting your values, Hoosiers will have the opportunity to shape our state and country’s future this November.

Your vote will have a direct impact on who makes important decisions for you and your community. Up and down the ballot, Indiana voters will have the power to hold local leaders accountable and influence policy at every level of government. 

In addition to races like legislative seats, there are numerous lesser-known elected offices up for election. Let's break down some of these offices you may see on your ballot, so you can better understand how these officials wield the power to protect civil liberties and civil rights.

• Secretary of State: The Indiana Secretary of State is responsible for overseeing and administering elections. They can expand voting access through direct measures like automatic registration and advocate for future legislation that expands access.
• County Prosecutors: Every County Prosecutor is up for election this year in Indiana. County prosecutors have the power to decide who should be charged with a crime. They have the power to flood jails and prisons and deepen racial disparities with the stroke of a pen — they also have the discretion to do the opposite. To make change, they can:
  • Use their legal discretion to reduce mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal legal system
  • Not bring charges against people accused of violating unjust laws like low-level marijuana offenses
  • Decline to prosecute crimes related to HIV status and sex work, which disproportionately affect LGBTQ people
• County Clerks: The County Clerk runs the day-to-day operations of registration and voting. They can be responsible for training election officials, county election results, and mailing absentee ballots.
• School Boards: School board representatives can pass important policies to protect LGBTQ students from harassment, discrimination, and bullying. They can also fight back against book bans and attempts to restrict conversations about race, sexual orientation, and gender in the classroom.

Being an informed voter is one of the most impactful ways you can protect your rights. To view your specific sample ballot, visit IndianaVoters.com.

Voters have the power to send a message to elected officials about what they want prioritized. Your vote will reflect the values you want to see in the community and country.

Exercise your right to vote on November 8.

Not sure if you can vote? Learn more

Know your voting rights at the polls

 

We acknowledge that the ACLU of Indiana exists on the occupied territory of the Myaamia (Miami) and Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo) peoples.  

We recognize that our presence here today is the result of the on-going exclusions and erasure of Indigenous peoples, who were the original stewards of this land. 

We recognize the painful history upon which the state of Indiana was created, and how policies, systems, and structures continue to oppress and erase Indigenous peoples today.  

We acknowledge the lands now known as Indiana were the lands of numerous Indigenous people including the Miami, Potawatomi, Piankeshaw, Wea, Kickapoo, and Shawnee peoples. The state name “Indiana,” means the land of Indians, and derives from the “Indiana Land Company,” which held land ceased from Indigenous peoples in Virginia.  

By the mid-18th century, the Kickapoo lived in two communities, one, the “Vermillion Band,” was east of the Wabash River in Indiana. A series of treaties were used by the federal government to secure the cession of approximately one-third of Indiana in a series of treaties from 1803 to 1809, including land occupied by the Kickapoo in 1809. 

By 1840, only the Miami Nation maintained a stronghold in land and government in what is now Indiana. The Indiana Miami signed an 1854 treaty with the US government making it the only tribe recognized by the State of Indiana post removal. However, in 1899, that federal recognition was illegally stripped by the government. After several attempts to regain federal recognition, the Miami Tribe was forced to incorporate in order to survive as a group and still is without federal recognition today. Descendants of the Miami Tribe who were not forced off of their land are now members of the Miami Nation of Indians of the State of Indiana.

We acknowledge that after Indiana became a state, and for the following two centuries, federal policies such as the inflation of tribal debt were used to displace and dispossess communities of their ancestral lands. Sacred sites have been destroyed, and families and communities have been torn apart through residential boarding schools and relocation programs.  

Our shared history compels us to grapple with this legacy, taking action to interrupt the continued harm of colonialism and genocide and to redress the erasure of Indigenous peoples. 

We reaffirm our commitment to lifting up the culture and protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples in Indiana.  

We support and defend the rights of all Indigenous peoples to retain their specific cultural and religious traditions and practices. We strive to honor Indigenous cultures and traditions and, when possible and appropriate, integrate Indigenous worldviews and values into our approaches and strategies. 

What is a Land Acknowledgment?

A Land Acknowledgment is a formal statement that recognizes and respects Indigenous Peoples as traditional stewards of this land and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories. 

Find out whose land you're on: Native-Land.ca