This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aim to inform readers across the state.
Utah’s version of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act has once again stalled in the Legislature.
Around two dozen Indigenous Utahns from some of the state’s eight federally recognized tribes gathered at the capitol on Feb. 21, to call on lawmakers to pass the latest version of the bill.
“Here we are as tribes united and confronting the state to say this is the time, this is the year,” Autumn Gillard, a member of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, told KUER. “We want to take control of our own rights and our own children, and we’re very capable of doing that.”
HB30, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Angela Romero, would enshrine ICWA into state law. The federal law passed by Congress in 1978 prioritizes the placement of Indigenous children in the foster care or adoption system with Indigenous families.
The congressional action was a response to the forced removal of Native American children from their homes, often without reason, who were then placed in government-operated residential boarding schools or with non-Native families. Former President Joe Biden apologized to tribes last year for the country’s 150-year boarding school policy.
Read more at kuer.org.
