Indian Child Welfare Act

The Los Angeles Times has a clearly written summary of the tangled history of the little Cherokee girl who has been the subject of a cross-state, cross-sovereign nation custody dispute between her biological American Indian father and her adoptive white parents. The post begins: "Was justice served Monday when a little girl called Veronica was taken from her biological father, a Cherokee, and returned to the white South Carolina couple who had begun to adopt her at birth four years ago? This is one of those heartbreaking stories that periodically makes headlines, sending a shiver down the spines of adoptive parents and enraging Native Americans whose children had been ripped away from them so often that a federal law was passed in 1978 to put safeguards in place."

The Washington Post's Robert Barnes reports on the latest legal disputes in the custody dispute over Baby Veronica between her adoptive white parents and her biological American Indian father: "Since a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled in Veronica’s case in June, here’s who else has had a say: two South Carolina courts, three Oklahoma courts, the Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation, a battalion of lawyers, two governors and someone from the United Nations." One of the legal issues is South Carolina's call to extradite the biological father to face contempt charges for not following court orders in favor of the adoptive parents.

A United Nations official has called on courts in South Carolina and Oklahoma to respect the human rights of a little girl who is a member of the Cherokee Nation and is the subject of a cross-state custody dispute. Veronica lived the first two years of her life with adopted parents in South Carolina and the next two years with her American Indian father, who argues he did not consent to the adoption. When the US Supreme Court heard the case, the justices ruled that several provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act did not apply to American Indian biological fathers who are not custodians. The UN official cited the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which sets out goals for the collective rights of indigenous peoples around the globe and  which President Obama has agreed to follow.