(Continued from page 25)

• The justices ruled 5-4 that the law doesn't give the Native American father a "trump card at the eleventh hour" to get the girl.
• South Carolina courts said the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act favored the biological father of the girl. The South Carolina couple who raised her for the first 27 months of her life appealed that decision.
• The justices did not go as far as they could have to take away tribal sovereignty with their decision, Abourezk said, but he fears they are headed in that direction.
• Abourezk led the American Indian Policy Review Commission, which investigated conditions in Indian Country in the 1970s. He said the commission heard lots of testimony showing how adoption by white social services agencies like the Mormon Church left tribes in turmoil because their children were being taken away.
• "We found Indian kids grew up thinking they were white and starting to date and found out they were Indians, so that didn't work well," he said.
• He said that the commission found that even if the Native American mother was alcoholic it was better that the Native American children stayed with her rather than be adopted by a white family.
• "You build up the tribes" he said, not tear them down, which is what the government has been doing for hundreds of years, he said.
• Meanwhile, Heather Smith, a spokeswoman for the ACLU in South Dakota, said the Supreme Court ruling should bolster a lawsuit the agency has filed against the state's Department of Social Services.
• The ACLU, along with the Oglala Sioux and Rosebud Sioux tribes and three Native American parents, filed a suit in federal court in May, alleging the state routinely violates the Indian Child Welfare Act.
• The lawsuit alleges that when children are removed from a home based on accusations of neglect or abuse, parents aren't given a proper hearing to determine whether a child should be kept away longer.
• Smith said Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling affirms the federal law and the rights of existing families.
•

• BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- President Barack Obama has approved a federal disaster for the Standing Rock Indian Reservation following severe storms and flooding.
• The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe requested federal aid following the storms and flooding during the end of May and beginning of June.

(Continued on page 27)