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If the Brackeen v. Halland case
currently challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978
before the U.S. Supreme Court is successful, Native children are more
likely to be placed with non-Native foster parents, and from there, face
a surge in psychiatric labeling and drugging.
Tribes across the U.S. are outraged by the attempt to dismantle ICWA, and a “think tank” was recently formed
in California to respond to what seems a foundational threat to
community sovereignty, beginning with who controls Native child welfare
decisions. It’s the latest in a battle as old as the United States:
White Christian evangelicals fighting for the right to take Native
children away from family, tribe, and culture, and re-educate them, no
matter the harms—and its outcome will determine whether more Native
youth are exposed to psychiatric drugs.
Chad Brackeen and his wife, Jennifer, lead plaintiffs, are White, and according to a 2019 interview with The New York Times,
also dedicated members of the fundamentalist Church of Christ, which
they attend twice a week, and through which they first became inspired
to adopt. They began as foster parents before successfully adopting a
young Dine (Navajo) boy, and then mounting efforts to adopt his sister.
They contend they are being racially discriminated against by ICWA’s
mandates favoring a great aunt of both of these children, who has
stepped forward from their tribal community seeking to adopt the sister.
...
But what about the contention that ICWA’s dismantling will also
create a surge in Native foster youth being psychiatrically labeled and
drugged? It’s frankly impossible to find adequate information bearing on
this topic because the U.S. Indian Health Service (IHS), primary
purveyor of behavioral health services in Indian Country, has never been
accountable to publicly report prescription rates and the types of
psychiatric drugs it dispenses.
Yet as I detail in my new book, Coyote’s Swing,
IHS has for decades been very involved in psychiatric labeling and
drugging. In 2013, for example, the agency attributed 850,000 of its
outpatient visits and 5,000 of its inpatient stays to a “mental
disorder.” And 10 percent of the services IHS provided that same year to
children and young adults aged 5 to 24 years had “mental disorder”
listed as the “primary reason.”
...
The history of EuroAmerican culture in North America is rife with the
theft of Native children and their childhoods and is both the root
cause and effect behind today’s Native foster care system.
According to a recent joint report by Pro Publica and NBC News,
3.5 million homes are searched annually by state child welfare agencies
investigating child maltreatment. Most searches happen without a
warrant because caregivers may not know their rights or are intimidated
by aggressive caseworkers pounding on their doors. Once inside, these
workers may push their way into a caregiver’s kitchen, go through the
refrigerator, sift through trash, and inspect bedrooms and bathrooms
while trying to observe children present in the home. Only five percent
of such coercive searches result in actual findings of child
maltreatment.
KEEP READING
ABOUT HIS BOOK:
Using a traditional Yakama tale as a motif, Coyote’s Swing
combines the author’s firsthand experiences as a consulting psychologist
with rare history and sociocultural critique, revealing how the U.S.
mental health system reframes Native American reactions to oppression
and marginalization into “mental disorders” and “mental illness,” and
how the Indian Health Service’s contemporary practices echo historical
injustices.
“In the IHS, dissension is often
suppressed as blasphemy and whistleblowers are rarely tolerated. Walker
is to be commended for his thorough research and timely recommendations
for reform of the agency’s delivery of mental health services in Indian
County…I join him in praying that this period of tribal history comes to
an end.”—Toobshudud Jack Fiander (Yakama), attorney
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