This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
For a hundred years, white people in America thought that the way to deal with Native Americans — those few who survived displacement — was to assimilate them, persuade them to abandon their cultural heritage and adopt European ways.
And even though that belief was officially rejected decades ago, too much of it apparently remains among child welfare agencies in Utah, where American Indian children are four times more likely to be in foster care than children of other backgrounds.
Few American Indian children are taken from their natural families because they are being abused. Two-thirds are removed, instead, due to case workers deciding they are being neglected. But how much of that determination is based on cultural differences?
Since a finding of neglect is subject to how the case worker perceives a normal, loving family, it's more than possible that those children are loved, but their parents express emotion in a way the case worker doesn't recognize.
It would be shameful if children were taken from their homes simply because their family life is different from what is considered by the dominant culture as usual or good.
Utah has a history of failed experiments in forced assimilation. Until 1996 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operated a program for 50 years in which American Indian children left their homes and were placed in Mormon homes or in a boarding school.
Their experience was often one of humiliation, rejection and lost identity. Research has found that American Indian children have a suicide rate 1.5 to 3 times higher than children of other ethnic groups. And American Indian children raised in non-Indian homes commit suicide six times more often than other American Indian children.
Prospects are bleak for those who reach the age of 18 while in foster care. Their often unhappy childhoods lead to mental disorders or post-traumatic stress syndrome, and many end up homeless, in prison or dead within two years.
There has got to be a better way.
One is outlined in the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. It states that American Indian extended families, other tribe members or other Indian families should be given priority when foster-care placements are made. Tribal courts, not state courts, should have authority over American Indian child welfare issues because they do more to keep relationships and cultural ties intact.
Utah owes it to American Indians to leave family decisions to them whenever possible.