According to this article, a New York-based attorney named Bertram Hirsch employed by the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) began working with the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota to assist with kinship custody disputes in the 1960s. What he soon uncovered was the very high rates of child removal in indigenous communities in the United States. His 1969 research revealed "that somewhere between 25 and 35 percent of all American Indian children had been placed in adoptive homes, foster homes or institutions. Around 90 percent of those children were being raised by non-Indians. Many would never see their biological families again."
Hirsch continued his data collection efforts and he and two Congressional staffers drafted a bill to protect indigenous children from being removed from their families and communities. The bill was eventually passed by Congress in 1978 as the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).
40 years later, the bill and its implementation is still misunderstood. "And just last week, a federal district court judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional, rendering the fate of ICWA uncertain," says the article. This article describes the history and current status of the US Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).