RELIGION & ADOPTION: ICWA with Dr. Courtney Lewis

In which Dr. Courtney Lewis shares her expertise and personal experience with the writing of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Dr. Lewis is Crandall Family Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and the Inaugural Director of the Native American Studies Initiative at Duke University, as well as an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

If you want to follow and boost more Native creators, Dr. Lewis recommends: Red House Project, IllumiNative, A Tribe Called Geek, Mocs and Comics, Indigenous Food Lab, NDN Girls Book Club, NDN Collective, and several more!

As always, check out keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

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Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:17

This is keeping it 101, a killjoys, Introduction to religion podcast, which is part of the amplify podcast network, we are grateful to live teach and record on the current ancestral and unceded lands of the Abenaki and Wabanaki peoples, as well as the lands of one federally recognized native nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and seven North Carolina state recognized tribal entities. Increasingly, though, native folks are pushing us to forgo land acknowledgements altogether and focus on action items. So let's start with land back. And as always, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website.

Megan Goodwin: 0:49

What's up? Nerds? Hi, hello. I'm Megan Goodwin, a scholar of American religions, race, gender and politics.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:55

Hi, hello. I'm Ilyse Morgenstein Furst, a historian of religion, Islam, race and racialization and South Asia banter.

Megan Goodwin: 1:02

Ready go?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:04

Yeah, we're in. We're I wanted to start us off strong in the banter, but you will notice that I couldn't even write it because of the horrors, because of the impending horrors,

Megan Goodwin: 1:13

very many horrors. So there were just too many atrocities. So here we are doing, doing some atrocity recording. Hello, nerds. How are you?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:26

I mean, we're doing the atrocity like I need to just we are not committing atrocities for the

Megan Goodwin: 1:33

record, violence, perhaps reporting on

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:36

atrocities, particularly around the baby industry, the

Megan Goodwin: 1:40

baby trade the baby scoop era, yeah. Wowie. Wowie. Okay, well, you know what? Rather than trying to pretend everything's fine, let's just get into it. It's fine today, nerds, we are talking about child removal, child theft, honestly, the Indian Child Welfare Act and native communities. And as a special treat, we are joined later in the episode by the director and founder of the Duke Native American Studies Initiative and enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation cultural anthropologist expert Dr Courtney Lewis. Dr Lewis will help us situate the ICWA in the broader context of adoption Native American history and experiences her own life and lineage and, of course, religion,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:23

yes, you will. Dr Lewis is a rock star, like a for real, verified rock star, and her connections to the Indian Child Welfare Act, which, frankly, a lot of folks will abbreviate i, c, W, A, nerds, but other folks pronounce as if it's a word like ICWA, back and forth between I-C-W-A and ICWA [ick-wah], but both mean the Indian Child Welfare Act, and Dr Lewis is going to chat with us about it, which feels like such a boon, and we are just so grateful that she's like, literally lending us her voice. But before we get started, Goodwin, yes, I want to be really clear with our listeners, as we have been this entire series, a lot of what we have to say today about Native children, adoption and religion is going to sound and feel frankly dystopic and harsh extreme, because those are just The facts of what we're doing, except that this toxic sludge is, is, realistically all of those things it does. It feels that way, those it is. These are harsh and extreme histories that we have to talk about. Yeah, because this is also a representative way, a typical way, that adoption and and religion are related, absolutely for Native Americans. But frankly, this system is not limited just to Native Americans. So this is a example within a toxic system.

Megan Goodwin: 3:52

Yeah, yeah, the whole system is bad. I we were just talking about this. I thought I knew how bad. And then we did this little mini series, and I was like, Oh, I don't actually fucking know anything about how bad this was. And I thought it was really bad to start. So that's been hopeful and jarring and really depressing, but yeah, the extent to which the United States of America has tried to just straight up erase native people is so tied up in the way that it is also straight up stolen native children. So I was, I was really glad that Dr Lewis agreed to speak with us also. I just think she's, she's neat. I love her. So yeah, there, there's no escaping how brutal and inhumane the treatment of indigenous peoples in what are now the Americas slash Turtle Island has been like, there's just

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 4:45

that we can't pussyfoot, that there is no avoiding it if we are going to be good historians, scholars, citizens, neighbors and people with ethics, we have to name it for what it is, and it is bottom of the barrel, genocidal. By horror, violence,

Megan Goodwin: 5:01

just and the treatment of children, the rendering of children as guardian less or parent less is is no exception here. I just the that said. We've been arguing throughout the series that adoption and religion and religious freedom are all related, and we want you, dear nerds, to hear us when we say that the example of native children and adoption slash child trafficking is a perfect example for us to delve into, because of its extremity and the way it fully, wholly encapsulates the problem.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 5:31

Yeah, look, a good case study illustrates the problem really well, and so we're fortunate that Dr Lewis is going to help us contextualize and situate and also make sense of the horrors of this. Because, like, frankly, Goodwin, what would keeping it one on one episode be without horror

Megan Goodwin: 5:50

brand? We do. We need a better brand.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 5:55

Keeping it one on one colon, horrors, but in light of the horrors, I want to just start our nerds off with some serious content warnings today, over and above the ones we've done in this whole series. Because for many of us, these are triggering issues, which doesn't mean you shouldn't listen. It just means you should be prepared to do so if you choose to. Yeah, Dr Lewis and we, as well as we frame up with Dr Lewis, has to say, we'll talk about things like but not limited to terrorism, genocide, Family and Child removal, medical violence against women, violence against Native people, and abuse as well as murder. Yeah, listen carefully to what Dr Lewis has to teach us, of course, and to how damaging this history is but also to your own bodies as you respond to this,

Megan Goodwin: 6:44

yeah, yeah, yeah, it's intense. Take breaks to the horrors. So Dr Lewis and I had a really great conversation. So I want to prioritize that as the main like focus of this episode. I

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 7:06

totally agree this is super wise. What we need to do then is to make sure our nerds are ready to listen to this in depth conversation about religion, adoption and native but especially American Indian histories. What

Megan Goodwin: 7:18

good teaching. I love that I love that we're setting up our listeners to understand the historical context and the broader ramifications of this amazing just yeah, I'm still I've been thinking about this conversation that Courtney and I had for a month now. It's just Yes, okay, so historical context, broader ramifications, etc. Here goes. We're going to give a brief overview of how Native children and their redistribution to non native families works, present tense, because this is absolutely ongoing. We have a whole section of our book, which is called religion is not done with you, available in November through Beacon Press. You can pre order it now. We're also an audiobook, very excited, but we have a whole section of our book that talks about the Doctrine of Discovery, as well as its ramifications on and for native peoples. The very, very short version of this is that the Catholic Church states, in no uncertain terms, that all native peoples globally should be converted, enslaved, more, sexually assaulted, raped. Their land should belong to the Christians doing the saving. The Christians are saved, and they are doing the saving, the converting, the enslaving and the raping.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 8:32

Yeah? And nerd, that sounds like hype harbor Lee, but it is not. It's we have the documents, yeah, to demonstrate

Megan Goodwin: 8:38

it, yeah. No, they were real proud of all the work that they were doing. So, yeah, it's great. It's great. Yeah, it is not hyperbole at all. Yeah. Anyway, that late 1400 set of decrees sets up bolsters and authorizes the white Christian supremacy inherent in European imperialism later, imperialism is less explicitly about Christianity and saving souls, though that never disappears. It just kind of goes under the radar and more about civilizing. So you know the story, nerds and I would hope that you know that this means things like kill the Indian to save the man, which is a literal quote from a literal school head, literally removing native children from their families, with the explicit goal of stamping out and killing native culture.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 9:25

And to be clear, nerds, this is genocide full stop, and it was not understood as anything else at the time, even if the language of genocide historically comes later. Here's what I mean by that, the architects of the residential school program, people like Richard Henry Pratt, who lives from 1840 to 1924 this bro and his ilk explicitly saw the removal of children from their homes and placement into residential schools like the one he ran, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Know, as a way to fix native peoples make zero mistakes. Goodwin nerds Make no mistake. He saw this as a way to save Native Americans. He was at the same time as he led this school of genocidal abuse, a rather prominent critic of racial segregation in the United States, he truly thinks he's doing good. His ideas were often seen as progressive, but the pipeline of children out of Native families and into these residential, whiteing up schools was exported from Pennsylvania across the country explicitly as a way to dislocate native peoples from the land and therefore colonize it, as well as a way to de Indian, so to speak, the people, which is in turn, a murder of the claims To the land and the culture of the land. So this is genocidal and it's Imperial, yeah, and I want to be clear about the genocide of it all, because in contemporary discourse, we are having a moral crisis about what counts as a genocide, spoilers, when you eliminate an entire population from their place and also kill their children, because maybe one day they'll be terrorists. That's genocide. Gonna be a genocide for me, bro, per the 1948 un definitions of genocide, the native removal and removal of children from native homes is also genocide. Yeah, let me quote for you, Megan, because I wouldn't be a historian for that document, that primary source quote, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article like double ie recognizes quote, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. End quote as a form of genocide that was published by the UN in 1948 as part of the Geneva Conventions. So Goodwin, that seems like it should be a mic drop, but sadly, there is more obviously actions in the 1800s aren't informing the 1948 un definition of genocide, that's that's Nazi inspired, right, right, right, right. But I specifically want to use the language of genocide, because when we talk about declaring parents unfit, when we talk about removing children from a home when we define abuse as against the state, and quote, racially inferior people raising racially inferior children. End, quote, I really hope it makes clearer for our nerds that the history of adoption is problematic at best, sinister, if we're being honest, and genocidal at worst, yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 12:45

yeah,

Unknown: 12:48

yeah. Again,

Megan Goodwin: 12:49

I just keep coming back to I already thought this was really bad, and it turns out it's just so very much worse than I realized. Yeah. So okay, to recap across what's now the US and Canada, to say nothing of other settler colonial contexts like New Zealand and Australia, native children were removed from their immediate family, removed from their extended family, removed from their communities, and relocated into care homes, schools and programs with the express written goal of removing and eradicating their nativeness. Those children were then often expressly purposefully adopted out to white families, as in, there were laws and policies and fucking marketing campaigns stating that white families were the only fit parents, and therefore these poor, sad native children needed to be raised by those good white, presumably Christian families marketing campaigns, puff pieces and good housekeeping about how allegedly unwanted native children who needed nice Christian families to show them God's love. What happens when you do a genocide, when you erase whole generations? Well, one thing about a genocide is it sure does free up some land, so yeah, all of which is to say children are and were pawns in a set of campaigns deliberately geared toward removing native sovereignty, and a primary way of doing that was through adopting out trafficking native children into white Christian families full stop. Not good housekeeping. Motherfucker.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 14:27

It came with pictures, of course, I'm gonna link to it in the show notes. It's really devastating. Yes, it's really devastating. And then it became a fad. So like, we'll recommend a lot of the books that I go to on this, but it became a fad, so that in the 1950s and early 1960s a way that specifically white families in the Midwest and often Mormon families, yes, like LDS families, it was a badge of. Good religion and good citizenry. Like, look at how well I treat my neighbor to like, have own rear a native child and like good one. Look. There's literally no talking about the last 150 200 years of US history without also talking about its violence against American Indians and native peoples among, like all other non white, non Christians. Yeah, this is a racist nation like this is just what it is, yeah. But I want to be clear here that our point is not our normal imperialism ramp rant. It is to focus on the ongoing use of children and families as a way to destroy a culture. Yeah, and I need everyone to hear me that the white Christian saviorism inherent in modern adoption, even the ones that are not like a full Social Work raid on a reservation the regular way that we get people into adoptive systems is the driving mechanism through which native people find their families destroyed, their bodies sterilized, and their children literally purchased out.

Unknown: 16:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Dr Lewis is an economist first and foremost. So the part where she said that native babies were the most dearly traded commodity in the adoption racket. Really. Woof, woof, yeah. Okay, well, I guess this is as good a place as any to welcome Dr Courtney Lewis to the podcast. But before we do, I want to highlight and just I can scream about the data that Dr Lewis presents throughout our conversation. Since, did you gloss over the horrors? Again? My, my little adopter. Reno, the thing is, I'm concerned that you did. Actually. I'm concerned that that was the like light gloss on the horrors. Okay, all right, okay, okay. I can do this. We can

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 17:07

do this. Guides here, like we gotta, we gotta be the sturdy

Unknown: 17:12

leaders. Okay, God, remember when I found out that Lewis and Clark were nepotism hires, like they're Nepo babies. I just America's not great, like it's just not great. I don't know if we've talked about that before, but I feel like we should maybe come back to it any hoodle Courtney and I mostly talked about mid 20th century to today, ranging across programs and policies related to the Indian Child Welfare Act and its related laws and context. She taught me and I will never be okay again. That upwards of two thirds, two thirds of native children, all native children, were removed from native homes during this period. So like to say nothing of before the mid 20th century. By by the time like my parents were going to grade school, two thirds of native children were being stolen from their families, yeah, and then farmed out to white families, and again, largely white Christian families. Around the same time this program of relocation was going on, upwards of a quarter, 25% of native women and girls were being sterilized, often without their overwhelming, without their consent, and often without their knowledge, even Yeah, so I can't map that math. I can't I can't, it broke my brain and my soul. But I know that two thirds of native children being removed from their families, plus one quarter of native people able to have babies being forcibly altered against their will so that they cannot have babies. Equals genocide that Yeah, and I know that the baby trade is a major part of that termination strategy.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 18:52

Yeah, there's just no way around it. Yeah. Goodwin, before we actually queue up. Dr Lewis, I want to make sure that our listeners understand. ICWA, so can we? Can we do? Like a brief definition of the ICWA?

Unknown: 19:03

Yes, yes, yes, yeah. Okay. So ICWA, ICWA, Indian Child Welfare Act, is a US federal law passed in 1978 I want to say that again, 1978 which is one me ago, the year of my birth, equals the year when the United States of America decided to stop trying to genocide native people actively, still, at least by baby trade, yeah. Just, just well and the Indian when we get under the Religious Freedom Act, but like, but yeah. So federal policy until one me ago was you need to stop being so Indian, please, and we will be taking all your land. Thanks. Thanks. ICWA is a response to anti native laws in the mid 20th century that allowed for child removal. The Indian Child Welfare Act essentially allows native people jurisdiction, sovereignty, one might say, over the removal of American Indian children from their families in custody foster care and adoption cases. So. Most important part about ICWA is that it gives tribal governments exclusive jurisdiction over children who reside on or who are domiciled on a reservation. It's important that our nerds hear the word governments hear Native people have sovereignty. ICWA helps protect that sovereignty in a similar way to how nation states can set the terms for how international adoption functions. ICWA helps protect that sovereignty in two ways. First, it bars the US government from just coming onto native lands and taking native children, as they had been doing for generations. But it also establishes that Native nations have the right to make decisions about how to raise their children. So it's not just Native families are entitled to these kids. First, it's that Native nations get to determine how Native children grow up and who gets to care for them. Dr Lewis gets into all of this, but the TLDR of all of this is that ICWA is a federal law that stopped the hemorrhaging of children from Native families, and especially native children on reservations, again, as Dr Lewis is about to teach us, two fucking thirds. Two thirds of native children were stolen from Native families and native nations. The Indian Child Welfare Act was an attempt to stop the steal.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 21:16

Yeah. On that note, let's hear from director and founder of the Duke Native American Studies Initiative, enrolled member of Cherokee Nation, cultural anthropologist and expert, Dr Courtney Lewis, about ICWA, religion, Native Americans, adoption and, of course, horrors.

Megan Goodwin: 21:48

We are now recording for keeping it 101 at killed rose, Introduction to religion. Podcast. I'm here with Dr Courtney Lewis, who is my friend and is also a smart lady and has personal and professional history with the Indian Child Welfare Act. So Dr Lewis, thank you so much for joining us. We're really excited that you're here, and if you could just introduce yourself to our nerds.

Courtney Lewis: 22:14

Absolutely it is my pleasure to be here and test distinguished company. I am a big fan. And thank you so much for inviting me to talk with you. So I'm Dr Courtney Lewis. I am the Crandall family Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. I'm also the inaugural director for the Native American Studies Initiative at Duke.

Megan Goodwin: 22:41

They are so fancy. This is very exciting. There is no reason that our listeners would know this, but you and I took a very cool class on theories of the undead approximately 1 million years ago, and we have been friends for approximately 1 million years. And I am really excited, because I think this is our first like official professional collaboration.

Courtney Lewis: 23:02

It is, it is for us. I do love that for us.

Megan Goodwin: 23:07

So hey, Dr Lewis, it is my understanding, which I found out completely by accident last week, that you have both personal and professional history with the writing of the ICWA. So what do you want to tell us about that

Courtney Lewis: 23:21

I do. So the Indian Child Welfare Act is an Act that was passed in 1978 and my dad was one of the folks that helped write this act. What?

Megan Goodwin: 23:35

How did that happen? I like, I still, my mind is still so blown at the synergy of that, because I only by accident, mentioned that we were doing all of this adoption work. So like, this is, this is an amazing story. Sorry. Go ahead,

Courtney Lewis: 23:47

it's just meant to be. It's meant to be. It's for sure. And I think I should start by saying in a fairly crude way, to be clear,

Megan Goodwin: 23:58

that is our brand.

Courtney Lewis: 24:00

I love it in the US world of baby trafficking and sales industry, American Indian babies have and still fetch the most money, and that's important. So this stealing and selling of high worth babies is also just about as American as it gets. Right. It intersects these values of capitalism, individualism with various ongoing genocidal effects. So to understand the adoption, you also have to understand what else was happening at the time of the Indian adoption project.

Megan Goodwin: 24:35

Yeah, yes, please and thank you. Hey, what was happening in 1978 around I don't know indigenous sovereignty and the American Indian Movement. And also I don't know, like your dad, what's up?

Unknown: 24:50

So at the time, just a very brief history. We're moving, at that time from what was the termination era. So this is the era when the federal government was. Terminating the governmental bodies of Native nations in order to take their land. And so as we're moving through that termination period into self determination, we have this Indian adoption project come in in 1958 so this is really straddling the line. It officially ends in 67 but its legacy continues, and this was a project funded by a federal contract from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the US Children's Bureau, administered by the Child Welfare League of America. And just to sum up and make this quick, basically the idea was to send social workers onto reservations to declare families incompetent or unsafe, and then remove the babies and put them into the foster care program, specifically with white babies. And again, this is under the auspice of removing them from poverty. So between 69 and 74 nearly a third and some estimate almost as high as two thirds, if we include urban areas of all American Indian children were removed. Jesus reservations at that time.

Megan Goodwin: 26:12

Sorry, but literally, Jesus, though, wow, yes.

Unknown: 26:16

So this, obviously,

Megan Goodwin: 26:19

I'm sorry. I just like, Can you, can you just that? Can we do the numbers one more time? So like, somewhere between 1/3 and two thirds of native children were being removed from Native families and households. Exactly.

Unknown: 26:33

Those are the numbers. That's bad.

Megan Goodwin: 26:35

Those numbers are bad. Sorry, sorry.

Unknown: 26:39

They're Always Worse than you think,

Megan Goodwin: 26:41

yeah, but, like, so much so that's most of the chip that's like most of the children. Fuck okay, I'm ignorant. Okay, great. Please continue to teach me

Unknown: 26:55

things. So of course, this is the point. Yeah, right. This is the whole point. And I want to put a pause in that and come back to what else was going on at the time, because it's very relevant. So this is what's happening all across the country, and at the time it was being championed by the federal government as this great movement forward in civil rights American Indians. Witnesses.

Megan Goodwin: 27:22

Wait so native people are having their children taking away for civil rights, correct?

Unknown: 27:29

Because we are helping the children out of poverty. Okay? Now, let's note that the reason the children are in poverty is because of the federal government to begin with, right? Remember, we're just coming off of yet another termination era which has again impoverished and taken land from Native nations. So we hear this a lot, right? You impoverish people and then you use the impoverishment to punish them, yep, yep, yeah. So that's where, that's part of where we were

Megan Goodwin: 28:00

at that right? Great, super, great country.

Courtney Lewis: 28:04

So obviously, we have a lot of American Indian people coming together about this. We have lawyers, we have activists, we have professors like my dad. Now, my dad had a very specific and kind of intimate involvement with this because he was also the first American Indian to get a PhD in Social Work, and he was working on the ground at the time with foster families and foster kids. So I'll back up a little bit and kind of give you the context of how controversial this act was, yeah, and the best way to explain that is just by stating that the first death threat I received by white terrorists was when I was three years old.

Megan Goodwin: 28:54

So specifically, because your dad was doing this work, correct?

Unknown: 28:58

So my dad told me, as I got older, that when he was putting the act through Congress so it hadn't been passed yet, he walked to his office one day at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and he walked into his office to find his assistant in tears, just sobbing over these letters that she was sorting for him now, to give a little bit more context, she was a Holocaust survivor who had fled with her family from Poland so she had seen atrocities that most people will never even have to imagine. She told my dad that he had been receiving violent death threats from people who held a stake in kidnapping Indian children. But that wasn't the thing that terrified her, it was that this particular batch of letters threatened me and my older sister, who was 12 years old at the time, threatened our lives by saying that they would come and take his. Children just like he was trying to do to them, right? So these are specifically white terrorists.

Megan Goodwin: 30:06

Yeah, they're very specifically white terrorists who are claiming to love children so much that they are threatening the lives of children, correct?

Unknown: 30:16

So at that time, my dad had always been an activist. This was part of his journey and now mine. He did not even look at the letters. He quietly took them, he crumpled them up, he threw them away without reading them. So he knew that terrorism's powers and terror so yes, he had met with leaders such as Dr King, he knew that these were not idle threats, and they were not

Megan Goodwin: 30:46

sorry. Can you, can we pause for a second in the last Oh, yeah, my dad hung out with Martin Luther King, sure, but you know, I just did like I knew your dad was a big deal, but I don't think that I had a good idea of the scope of his work or his legacy. So I am really glad that we're, we're getting to learn about this today. And also I feel like a dumbass, because, wow, he fancy Well,

Unknown: 31:09

I mean, to be fair, my dad was a very humble person. He did not write up his experiences. He didn't really talk about his experiences. He would talk to me about these experiences, but it wasn't something that he talked about a lot, and definitely not something that he published on, just as kind of his personality and his values, right? So not many people do know about this stuff, and yes, I am going to be writing this stuff up at some point. Yeah. So you know his, his whole thought process was, you do what you can to protect you and your family, but also while protecting all of the Indian country's babies. And he was never swayed. And to be fair, I am still alive. Yeah?

Megan Goodwin: 31:59

So good job. What's up? You? Kind of

Unknown: 32:06

continuing on with this, with this thread of the things that really spurred him on into this position, which was very dangerous. Again, these threats are not idle. We we see Malcolm X, we see Dr King. It's happening at the time these movements begin to start working together. So to be American Indian Movement, along with Black Panthers, along with broader civil rights movements, are all kind of coming together. So I was always very close with my dad. We have very similar personalities, very similar dispositions, for better or worse. And when I was young, we would walk to his office at UWM together. I would stay with him while I worked and talk. So that's all to say that this is what I grew up with. So I grew up remembering pretty vividly him testifying in Congress. So I was literally sitting next to him for one of those, and it's still a very fresh memory of hearing a congressman. And even at that time, I knew this was a very well intentioned thing, but it was a bit of a racist praise that to his race he was and I watched my dad graciously accept that, right? So I it really steered a path for me on how to work within these worlds. But it was really after my parents divorce where I started learning more about what was really going on with my dad. So after the divorce, I lived with him. I got older, and he got more comfortable sharing with me the more disturbing stories of his time in the field that led him to help write ICWA. And there was one very defining moment in his life as a social worker that was the catalyst for all of his future work. So he told me that he was called in as many social workers were and are to check on a report of child abuse at a foster home. When he arrived, the Mormon foster family was attempting to beat the brown out of American Indian boy that they were fostering. So this, this young boy's heinous crime, in their eyes, was that he had taken the family car for a jury ride around the block, which went fine, and it was parked back in the driveway.

Megan Goodwin: 34:35

Okay? So he did a good thing.

Unknown: 34:38

He did a kid thing. But in Mormon culture, at that time, the darkness of someone's skin corresponded to their sinfulness, and it's not

Megan Goodwin: 34:50

yet I like I I recently learned that Lamanite still gets tossed around a lot, slash occasionally Lamanite referring to people of color. Other slash Also, apparently still gets used in like Mormon bakeries to indicate that darker cookies, like the chocolate cookies, get sold, not hashtag, not all Mormons. This doesn't happen everywhere, but I was really shocked to hear that it's still very much operating circulated, yeah, in Mormon cultures, in some Mormon cultures, exactly.

Courtney Lewis: 35:21

And additionally, it's really important to note that American Indians were considered one of their, quote, lost tribes of Israel. Yeah, yeah. So at the time, it was literally their job to take these children back into the fold and whiten them into heaven. Yes, right, yes. So my dad looked at this young kid, he's beaten, he's bruised, he's terrified, he's crying, and my dad immediately took the boy's arm and left the house with him, and that's the moment where he said, Never again. Yeah, not just to that family's ability to abuse native children, but to all of the abuse that these kidnapped children were sent into. Right? So that's when he started the work of thinking about how to return all the babies to their families and communities. His goal was every single child that had been stolen from every anguished mother's arms, which is not hyperbole. I mean, social workers had been, you know, tearing babies from their mothers and families and delivering them into abusive white homes for years, decades. Yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 36:32

And you, you had said too when we talked about this before, that overwhelmingly, the native children were being placed in white Christian households, and especially Mormon households. Yes,

Courtney Lewis: 36:43

absolutely. I mean, the Indian adoption projects specified that these children would be put into white homes. Yeah, right. And Mormons were, of course, the first to step in line with this. And I want to pause just a minute here, because while it's true that, you know, these these babies are being kidnapped and taken forcefully from their mothers, I don't want to further a narrative that there are good moms and families and bad moms and families on this kind of stagnant binary. So it was not just about parents. It's not whether someone a good parent or a bad parent. That's really aside the point of what ICWA it's about a nation, a government of people, right? So the point of an outside adoption is to ultimately destroy Native nations and claim their land. So it's always about land. If you ever want to know what's going on with natives in conflict? It's going to be about the land. Yeah, so ICWA, what that really did is reinforces the native nation rights that any nation has, which is to determine how best to raise its children. So if the parents are determined to be incapable for any reason, the native nation under ICWA seeks out first the immediate family for fostering, then the extended family, then the community to offer support. So in that way, native nations hold true to governmental and community values and responsibilities to care for children and their parents, because this is also about caring for the family at large, because we're keeping families together. So under ICWA, children are going to grow up loved. They're going to grow up knowing themselves. They're going to know that they are worthy human beings, just as they are, and they're going to learn how to be caring community members for their people. And that's just what these group of ICWA creators and activists enable.

Unknown: 38:45

So the idea, just to make sure that I'm hearing this right, is rather than thinking about individual families as like independent units that don't necessarily have ties to broader communities or broader nations, ICWA helps make sure that Native nations can continue to invest in their communities and their futures, because they will have futures because they get to hold on to the kids, even if they move in between individual families, correct.

Courtney Lewis: 39:16

So ICWA is really honoring the fact that for most native peoples, we think in terms of broader community. And these adoptions are very much an individualistic philosophy, right, which, again, is a core basis for American values. So we're taking, you

Unknown: 39:33

mean, capitalism? What? What? That's shocking. Megan, shocking. I know capitalism happening here with children, children being traded like commodities, the devil. You sit, I just, I'm still really stuck on native babies being the pricit, or like the most valuable, oh yeah, they're the, they're the pricit. That's, that's the correct so i. Great, I do too. Oh,

Megan Goodwin: 40:03

I bet, I bet you.

Unknown: 40:07

So, yeah, ICWA is about child welfare, but it's also about reinforcing the sovereignty of Native nations to care for their citizens on the most basic level, which is to care for their own children, which is something that had not been honored before. And this isn't anything new. Of course, America's mythology is being funded on religious freedom, but American Indians needed their own Indian Religious Freedom Act, which didn't come until the self determination era, right? So this is not unusual. Let me

Megan Goodwin: 40:39

just check my history here, because this is not my strongest suit, but I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, that the, oh, I forget what the acronym is, but the native Religious Freedom Act is also 1978 Yeah,

Unknown: 40:52

correct. And again, not an accident, because we have a whole bunch of acts being passed at that time. So by the time we get into 78 we're into the self determination era. And this is when we have the Indian Civil Rights Act being passed, the Indian Child Welfare Act, the Indian Religious Freedom Act, all going through because specifically of the activism of native folks, and that's professionals and on the ground activism,

Megan Goodwin: 41:21

right? Because we're only five years out from the second Wounded Knee action, right at this point, it is not, it is not just that the US suddenly started feeling benevolent toward native people after trying to kill them for like several centuries, there had been a ton of legal activism, but also like direct action to really insist on native sovereignty.

Unknown: 41:46

So one of the interesting things about the Indian adoption project, and then it's continuous, or it's how it continued for at least a decade after that, was that at the exact same time, there's also the sterilization project going on. So not only are we taking babies from mothers, but we're also sterilizing specifically and of course, this is going on with other brown folks around the country. It's going on with the black community, the Mexican community, but for American Indian, specifically in North

Megan Goodwin: 42:27

Carolina, where we both were absolutely sorry, but

Unknown: 42:32

no, that's great.

Megan Goodwin: 42:35

So when we talk about horrors,

Unknown: 42:38

it is because they need to be said. So I actually, I support that, okay, but

Megan Goodwin: 42:43

sorry, you were saying that the sterilization and eugenics movements were also directly and explicitly targeting Native families and native women at this time, correct,

Unknown: 42:54

because under treaty obligations, we have created something called the IHS Indian Health Services. And so what the federal government did was compensate physicians for the cost of sterilizations at IHS facilities. We estimate that over 12,000 native women within just a four year time span, which is 72 through 76 were sterilized, and an estimated total of 24% of all Native American women, including minors, were sterilized at that time. And the only reason why bells were rung about this is because a Choctaw physician, Dr Connie URI, noticed that there have been four to 48 sterilizations performed just in the month of July in 1974 Jesus Christ, we started doing some research and found that mothers were being told that they could still have babies after the surgery. We had mothers going in to give birth and were sterilized without consent. Yeah, we had young girls, the age of 12, being brought into hospitals for various health issues and coming out sterilized. Actually it was the youngest was 11, Jesus. So we, and these are full hysterectomies. And so some of these, I should say this, went everything, everywhere, from tubal ligations to full hysterectomies at the time, which were unnecessary. So during this moment, we are not only stealing American Indian babies, but we're telling the mothers in the hospital, if you do not get your tubes tied, we will come and take your babies. We will consider you an unfit mother if you have another child. So, and this, of course, is not an auto threat, they are going to come in and take that child. So,

Megan Goodwin: 44:50

just so I've got the math right again, if I'm hearing you correctly. So at the height of this, it's a full quarter of native. Of women and girls being sterilized. Well, up to two thirds of native children are being removed from their families. So it just again, I know the goal of genocide is extinction, but that's that seems I mean, horrible, but also just really aggressive, like it is a very aggressive extinction strategy. Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown: 45:25

And the fact that most people don't know that this happened is part of that erasure, yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 45:31

yeah. And like, I know about this from, like, WGS stuff and just being in the world, but like, again, I did not have a good sense of the scope. I knew it was bad. I truly did not imagine that it was this bad and like, this is the stuff that we know about, right? So it's probably worse even than we know Cool,

Courtney Lewis: 45:48

cool. I think the the numbers, the higher end numbers, are what we estimate as the high end numbers. So yeah, much like the numbers on the Trail of Tears that are officially reported of deaths. They do not include the concentration camps before or deaths afterwards. So when you start adding up these, the overall picture it it gets pretty bleak. So you can see why the all of this. Oh, and I should also mention that there's the urban relocation program happening where they take all of the adults and relocate them into urban areas, promising them money and jobs and housing, which turns out to not be that cool. So, so adults, children, women, so and a lot of the the ones targeted for urban relocation for men. So, men, women, children, all of them in different projects. So this is obviously, you know, a big catalyst for what's going on with the red power movement at the time and aim. So that's kind of the history of what was going on, although so since then, there have been various other initiatives. There are loopholes in the Indian Child Welfare Act. It was not written to be comprehensive. It was written to be a stopgap measure to just stop the bleeding out of native children. So there are loopholes. There are issues. Up until my dad passed, he was still following what was going on with ICWA, still doing some consulting, just in the back seat. But after he passed, there were actual supreme court challenges, yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 47:47

and, like, fairly recently, right?

Unknown: 47:50

Yes, yes, definitely recently. So if you want me to, I would love just kind of briefly go over those as well. Yes, please tell me

Megan Goodwin: 48:01

more horrible things that are happening. I

Unknown: 48:05

can tell you so many

Megan Goodwin: 48:08

thing that I appreciate about you. I feel like this is why we're friends. You want horrors? I got whores. Let's go

Unknown: 48:17

of horrors. So in 2016 so up until this point, up until 2016 we were in a policy era called forced federalism. And I won't get too much into that, but one outcome of that, because normally we have, and I'm going to extraordinarily simplify this kind of a pendulum of policy of supporting Native nation policies in American Indian people to not as we go into 2016 we start a new termination era. So this was, of course, with the turnover of administration, yeah, that is now targeting to eliminate Native nations sovereignty. And they have several ways that they're doing this, but one of these ways, and of course, I will just emphasize again, the reason they want to terminate sovereignty is to claim native resources, right? This is the point. So one of these, all of the theft, again, American values, cool, settler colonialism at its finest. So they begin in earnest, to start eliminating Native nations sovereignty, and they are going to use ICWA to do this. So ICWA is going to become one of the mechanisms that they can challenge the notion, or I should say, the structure, of American Indians as citizens of a nation. So American Indians are not a race. We are citizens of a nation which is not going. Be taught in school very often. It's not something that people conceptualize very well. So this administration is going to instead twist this notion and racialize American Indians, so they're going to declare them a race of people. Now a race of people does not govern themselves, right? So if they can flip the script to say, No, American Indians are a race, then they can say, you cannot govern yourselves, and you, of course, cannot hold land as a government. So this is also why things like Port indianism is so dangerous, because when we have these outside definitions of Indian by blood, instead of recognizing nationhood and government, this opens the door to termination, right? So during this time, we have two cases come up, so we have the baby girl case that comes up, and this case comes at ICWA kind of sideways. Most recently, we had something that was much, much more blatant in what it was trying to do with ICWA, which is Brackeen versus Holland, yeah. And that case, the short and sweet of that case is that the courts were to decide whether the Indian Child Welfare Act was legal, because they want American Indians declared as a race. If American Indians are declared as a race, then it is racial prejudice to say that Cherokee nation should be able to care for Cherokee children, right, instead of immediately putting on the baby on the open market, right? Right? So that was the point of Brad keen versus Holland was to completely undermine the sovereignty of Native nations. The baby girl case, which is baby Veronica, was something a little bit different involving what ultimately ended up being kind of a financial terrorism of pursuing court cases to such an extent that they became financially unfeasible for individual American Indians to challenge. Wow. And at the end of that case, the capo biancos, who are the white family that illegally adopted this child, did sue the Father. So again, these are not idle threats, yeah. And when you're suing the poorest people of this nation, yeah, millions and millions of dollars, it is, it is a threat, absolutely. So these are the kind of things that are still going through today, that we're still battling. I'm honestly shocked that the Brackeen case went the way that it did. I mean, yeah, it was pretty clear. It was pretty clear that the case was untenable legally, but that stop 2016 on court before from doing the same thing. Yeah, so I think we were all hopeful, but also surprised that the case went the way I did, the way it did. But honestly this for American Indians, this is not the first time we face termination, it's not the first time we face genocidal efforts, right? And that's to say this is why I think that indigenous people are probably the most optimistic people, right? Because the fact that I exist today is proof that my family members in the past didn't just survive all of these attempts. No

Megan Goodwin: 54:04

bitch, you are thriving. You are thriving. You are moisturized. You are in your lane. You're very, absolutely,

Unknown: 54:10

absolutely, and you know, why would I discount everything that they were able to accomplish with my pessimism? Right? It's no like I the fact that I'm here is proof that they went through things that I hopefully will never have to endure. It was amazing. So, yeah, yeah, I expect this to come up. I expect to be challenged. I expect to have termination. I expect a left.

Megan Goodwin: 54:39

I expect this country trying to kill my people. That's what they do. Americans stay genociding, so it's

Unknown: 54:47

it's not going to be resolved in my lifetime. I don't think, However, having said that, I have to give kudos to my students, because as I see the student. Come up every year. They amaze me more and more every year, and this is widely students, but especially the Native students. They are so far ahead of where I was at their time. They have so much more knowledge. They have energy. They have less skills, you know, and they really have the drive to make this world into what they want, which is a caring, safe place to live. And who knows, I might not see this, this beautiful world in my lifetime, but if they have their way, I just might.

Megan Goodwin: 55:43

I would love that. I would love that for all of us, I feel like a world in which native folks are surviving and thriving, as a world in which all of us can survive and thrive, that feels like maybe we finally got our priorities straight. I may agree. So may it be. So

Unknown: 55:58

may it be so my

Megan Goodwin: 56:00

only other question, given that we are, you know, a religion podcast, is, hey, what does this all have to do with religion? Dr Lewis,

Unknown: 56:09

ooh, so yes, all of these programs are going to be so from the boarding schools, which we're stealing children through the Indian adoption act. These are all being administered by or privileging various Christianities, right, various sects of Christianities. Without these kind of missionizing drives, we would not have boarding schools in the way that we had, which of course, ended horrifically for Native children, and we're still finding mass graves of children's bodies, but Christianity is woven through every single one of these projects in hand in hand with the federal government. Yeah, yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 56:56

no, that's that is one of the things that was most striking to me when we were pulling the book together, was looking at all the literature around not just the privling of white Christianity, because we are a white Christian nation, so that checks out. That's what we do. That's that is how America do. But also just the the spaces where we've got really great work from like TISA Weiner, looking at claims for religious freedom, protecting and preserving native practices and identities in the early 20th century, whereas claims and arguments around religious freedom are not working to protect Native land claims currently. Or looking at the one that I got really stuck on for the book, honestly is I am. I know that Native men are incarcerated at the highest rate of any racialized group in what's now the US, and they are routinely denied access to things that they should have access to under religious land use, and incarcerated incarcerated persons act right, correct, but the fucking Q anon shaman comes in and says, I need for my religion. I have to be able to eat organic, so you have to get me a salad. Do you know how hard it is to get a salad? You know how hard it is to get a salad in prison? But like this white dude threw on some horns and called himself a shaman and use protections that are supposed to apply to minoritized folks to like, claiming a pseudo native identity to be able to get special treatment. And he didn't have to sue. He just said, I'm a showman. Give me salad. And they were just like, Oh, that. You deserve salad. I guess we're gonna

Courtney Lewis: 58:39

do that. Yeah, we had to pass a whole act for that. So just to recognize the Indian Religious Freedom Act wasn't just about Indian Religious Freedom widely. It was also because exactly what you said, we have prisoners that could not attend religious ceremonies, they couldn't sweat, they couldn't use Sage. No one's giving fire bundles to federal prisoners, and a lot of them were in federal prison at the time. And just to add, American Indians are also murdered at the highest rate by police officers. So when Black Lives Matter, movement happened, I think it was really a shock to people how much the black community had been impacted. Now up that for American Indians, and that's why we all have to work together for this. Yeah, absolutely

Megan Goodwin: 59:30

and again. Why a land, a place, a world in which native communities and nations are thriving, is a world where all of us are in a better place. Yes, correct. Okay, this was amazing. Thank you so much. We hit I think everything that we wanted to make sure that we covered for folks. Is there anything else that you want to say? Feel like people should know. Anything else you want to tell us about your dad, who seems like an amazing human?

Unknown: 59:58

I mean, I don't think it's a secret that my. My dad is the best dad in the world. So there's there's that okay, but I would also encourage people to uplift Native Voices in any way they can, and that can be as simple as just opening up your Insta account and start following these groups. We have accounts that recommend movies and books. We have accounts that teach you about different aspects of native culture that are appropriate for public consumption. Awesome. We have activist accounts, right? So go out there and really amplify these voices, because that would help. Again, we're 1% of the population, so for us, allies really make the difference. All

Megan Goodwin: 1:00:47

right, and I'm hearing you say that amplifying Native Voices is a good way to to support and be in solidarity with native peoples in a way that like buying a random sage bundle from fucking Sephora, perhaps is not

Unknown: 1:01:03

please. Please do not buy and use Sage it has become endangered, so please leave that to the native folks. We really appreciate having our religion accessible.

Megan Goodwin: 1:01:13

Yeah, well, that seems like a good note to end on, but maybe you will be kind enough to share some of your favorite Instagram accounts with me, and I will put them in the show notes so that we can direct folks to people doing cool stuff.

Unknown: 1:01:27

Absolutely,

Megan Goodwin: 1:01:39

we want to give Dr Lewis, the final word on the Indian Child Welfare Act and native sovereignty, as she has taught me, I want to say wa do to her for sharing her family history and her people's history and her hard won academic expertise on all of these issues. So with that,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:01:59

don't pack up yet. Nerds, you've got homework. I'm gonna put a bunch of stuff in the show notes that's accessible. There's a lot done. Frankly, there was a moment, particularly when the horrors and abuse of the Canadian residential schools and the uncovering of hundreds of abused and dead children's bodies and unmarked graves were uncovered just a few years ago, and so there was a spate of information publicly accessible. So I'll put those in the show notes, but here are the ones that I want to highlight. There's a really great Indian Child Welfare Act timeline that's accessible through Native American Council of legal institutes. There's a really short Vox documentary called how the US stole 1000s of Native American children that is accessible, short and very painful to watch. One of my favorite books about adoption period is actually a book about Native American adoption. It's dawn Peterson's book, which is titled Indians in the family, adoption and the politics of antebellum expansion. So she's Lincoln imperialism and adoption. Right from the jump, there's a great article, great. It's an overstatement. It's about child abuse, but it's an article that's really great about a team of people led by Ashley landers, and it's called abuse after abuse, the recurrent maltreatment of American Indian children in foster care and adoption. That's from just a couple years ago. And then there's a really great overview of how adoption and Native Americans sort of fit into social work, and that's by Deborah thibo and Michael Spencer, and it's called the Indian adoption project and the profession of Social

Megan Goodwin: 1:03:43

Work. Courtney's book, Dr Lewis's book, is not about adoption, but it is absolutely about Native sovereignty, and specifically about Native economic sovereignty. It is entitled, sovereign entrepreneurs, Cherokee small business owners, and the making of economic sovereignty came out through UNC in 2019 I also was incredibly lucky and honored to get to go out to the boundary in Western Carolina and meet Dr Lewis's community. And I just, I don't want to sound any I'm the thing that I want to say is that her work is so so grounded in her people. And not that that's in any way surprising, but it's just as an academic, and particularly as an academic who, as you know, Dr Morgenstein, first, I don't like to talk to living people. I just like to look at what they say, so I can copy and paste and then do my like discourse analysis. So it was so striking to watch Courtney be both a member of this community, and also, just like, such a thoughtful scholar of this community. So like, I can't recognize like I just I can't recommend this book enough. I also want to encourage you all to check out our article on bio politics and US health care practices as they relate to Native people. It is called fry bread wars, and it's brilliant. Also. So should you find yourself out on the boundary? I was lucky enough to try Nikki's fry bread out there, and I am told it's the best one. So you should all go check out Nikki's fry bread. It was delicious. Two other books that I want to recommend relative to this, and particularly about race and residential schools. The first one is Dr Denise lagimodyers book called stringing rosaries, the history the unforgivable and the healing of Northern Plains American Indian boarding school survivors. It is, as you would expect, a really challenging read, but it is an important one, and then the other one is not specifically about Native peoples, but I do think provides important context to what Dr Lewis was telling us about white Christian nationalism, white Christian families and the adoption of native children, and that is max Perry Mueller's race and the making of the Mormon people. So the way that Christianity functions to make whiteness, and thinking about the way that Christianity is a mode of whiteness construction that happens through the stealing of non white children and the attempt to whiten them, I think, is a worthwhile goal here so And

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:06:12

finally, as Dr Lewis pointed out, there are a ton of ways to support native folk, and one of the ways that she suggested was to follow their Insta accounts. So nerds go check out our show notes. We've got loads and loads of accounts for you to follow, and if you follow us on Insta, we will also have those available on our page.

Megan Goodwin: 1:06:33

Yeah, Courtney hooked us up. I'm gonna include some of the links on the actual podcast page as well, so you can just click through and follow these amazing native scholars and artists and community members and learn more about what they're up to, because it's dope, awesome.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:06:50

Well, you can find us on all of the social media. You can subscribe to our newsletter, find our website at keeping it one, oh, one.com. Pre order our book. Religion is not done with you, and with that, peace out nerds and do

Megan Goodwin: 1:07:04

your homework, it's on the syllabus. You

Reservation Dogs: 1:07:23

and this, everybody, this is, this is supposed to be a protest. We need people to protest and then piss off and agitate. Oh, yeah, yeah. Whose idea was this stupid name change? Anyway, ours top Nazis. Nazi hilarious. I ain't nothing funny about this honky, no, but Nazi, really? Nazi, you know, if you think about it, we actually share a lot of common ground. Historically, sharing ground hasn't been your strong suit. No one had a problem until youse came to town. That's it. The hard right coming to a town near you. Yeah, we didn't come here to counter protest. Ain't nothing peaceful gonna happen today. Hey, we don't practice violence. We do. We don't practice violence, but we are prepared for it. All right? Scotum Students,