The leaders of four American Indian tribes in North Dakota have signed a new agreement with the state over federal funding for child welfare services, including allowing tribes to license foster care parents on and off reservations.
Read the full article at the Bismark Tribune website.
The University of North Dakota Department of Social Work has received a $2.4-million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support implementation and evaluation of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in North Dakota over the next five years.
UND is partnering in this grant with the Children and Family Services Training Center, the North Dakota Supreme Court, the North Dakota Bureau of Indian Affairs, the North Dakota Division of Children and Family Services, the Native American Training Institute, the Spirit Lake Nation and the Standing Rock Nation. The CFSTC is housed in the UND Department of Social Work; the Center provides training for all child welfare workers across the state and will develop new training on best practices in ICWA implementation.
Read the full article at the University of North Dakota website.
Two tribes of the Lakota Sioux Nation in South Dakota Indian Country have been awarded planning grants by the Department of Health and Human Services, marking a historic moment in the ongoing effort to stop the illegal State seizure of Lakota children by creating an independent tribal-run family services program administered for Lakota, by Lakota.
See the press release at the PRWeb website.
Five South Dakota tribes have asked the federal government for financial assistance to help operate their own foster care services.
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The Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Yankton, Oglala and Crow Creek Sioux tribes submitted applications Monday seeking federal planning dollars to develop and operate their own programs.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe received one of the $300,000 grants last fall and is among the first tribes in the nation to do so.
Read the full article at the Argus Leader website.
Standing Rock’s tribal council urged the United States to take action in a September 17 resolution claiming that South Dakota has been taking its children into care and adopting them out of the tribe illegally, in violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act. The resolution was passed the day after a child-welfare advocate informed the council that a young tribal member whom the state’s Department of Social Services (DSS) had placed with a white adoptive couple was homeless on the streets of Aberdeen, South Dakota.
Read the full article at the Indian Country Today Media Network website.
July 09, 2013. Following mounting anger over charges that the state has routinely and illegally placed Native American children with non-native foster parents, South Dakota tribes gathered Monday in Rapid City to discuss how they could form their own tribal-run foster care systems.
Read more at the Rapid City Journal website.
The Great Plains Indian Child Welfare Act Summit will feature tribal leaders, ICWA experts, lawmakers, BIA officials, and a civil rights attorney from the Department of Justice. The conference will articulate structural solutions to a long-standing crisis in Native foster care in South Dakota, where 740 Lakota children are taken into foster care by the state each year and 90% are placed into non-Native homes and institutons, in violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs of the Department of Interior, Kevin Washburn, is scheduled to appear at the summit, and subject matter experts on the summit agenda include the Honorable Judge B. J. Jones of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Tribal Court, and the Honorable Judge William A. Thorne of the Utah Court of Appeals.
Read more at PR Web.
