Keeping the Children: The Indian Child Welfare Act and the Battle for Tribal Sovereignty
How a 1978 Law Became the Front Line in the Fight Over Native Families

About this book:

For generations, the most effective weapon against Native American nations wasn't war or broken treaties—it was the systematic theft of their children. By the 1970s, an staggering 25 to 35 percent of all Native children had been wrenched from their families and placed in non-Native homes, an existential crisis that threatened the very survival of tribal nations. *Keeping the Children* traces this dark history from colonial hostage-taking and the brutal "Kill the Indian, Save the Man" boarding schools through the mid-century Indian Adoption Project, exposing how child welfare systems became instruments of cultural eradication.

But this is also a story of fierce resistance. The book takes you inside the grassroots organizing of Native mothers, the explosive 1974 congressional hearings that shocked the nation, and the hard-won passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act—a law that recognized tribes as political sovereigns with a vital interest in their children's futures. From the landmark *Holyfield* decision to the heart-wrenching Baby Veronica custody battle and the Supreme Court showdown in *Brackeen v. Haaland*, you'll witness the decades-long legal war waged by conservative think tanks and the adoption industry to dismantle ICWA by recasting tribal citizenship as racial preference.

Meticulously researched and urgently told, *Keeping the Children* reveals why a 1978 child welfare statute became the front line in the battle for tribal sovereignty—and why the fight to keep Native children with their families is inseparable from the fight for Native nations to exist at all. This is American history at its most devastating and most hopeful, essential reading for anyone who believes that the survival of a people depends on the right to raise their own.