NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending May 27, 2025

● The Imprint reports on a new study from the National Indian Child Welfare Association. The study finds that “Tribes have redefined and tailored U.S. laws governing foster care cases to match the priorities of their unique communities and cultures.” 

● The Montana Free Press and ICT report that in Montana, which tears apart families at one of the highest rates in the country, in part because of how many Native American children are taken, the governor signed legislation to extend the state's version of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was due to sunset. But the legislature failed to pass provisions that would have strengthened the law.

● Also in The Imprint, Stephane Jeffcoat writes about California legislation that would make it less likely that children lose all contact with their parents when those parents are in jail. She writes: 

We say we value family, but our systems often act in ways that destroy them — quietly, bureaucratically, and without accountability. 

AB 1195 gives parents a fighting chance. It gives children the right to know their parents didn’t abandon them — they were just locked out of the process. It gives courts the clarity they need, based on accurate records — not assumptions. 

● We all remember the old “master narrative” about adoptions from China, right? As a result of the nation’s former “one child” policy, Chinese parents were abandoning children, especially girls, in the streets, and their only hope was white American adoptive parents. A new book, excerpted in The New Yorker, makes clear the real story was somewhat different.

● And speaking of false narratives, for half a century our take on “permanence” for children has been based on deeply flawed science – but “science” that was enormously comforting to white saviors. The latest in a series of webinars from the ABA Center on Children and the Law sets the record straight.