The United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has recently announced it will be updating the guidelines of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), ensuring greater emphasis on keeping Native American children with their families and communities, says the article. The ICWA was passed in 1978 in response to hearings that revealed that “an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families had been broken up when public and private agencies subjected Indian children to unwarranted removal, most of whom were eventually placed in non-Indian homes.” The current guidelines will provide guidance to state and tribal courts and “will help ensure tribal children are not removed from their communities, cultures and extended families.”
