Ensuring Their Futures

I read “SCOTUS Should Uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act” (Perspective, November 27) just after finishing our annual Thanksgiving dinner, a ritual based on a nicely sanitized version of that “first Thanksgiving.” In elementary school, our teachers told us Pilgrims and Indians were great friends then, the Pilgrims especially grateful to the Indians for helping them to survive those first winters. Somehow, no one ever told us the rest of the story. All of us owe writer Samantha Maltais and her people a vast apology for the harm we have done and a firm commitment to a future in which the United States will finally begin to live up to its promise of equal justice for all. It will help that they will soon have an excellent lawyer to help them do that.

Linda Cades

Easton, Maryland

I wish Ms. Maltais 35 years as a SCOTUS justice!

David Abraham

Richmond, Virginia

The individual circumstances of this one case are heartbreaking. The foster care and adoption system in this country is plagued with challenges. The Indian Child Welfare Act is an absolutely crucial attempt to redress damage done to tribes and their children, because their welfare and interests were basically ignored for so long! It’s easy to understand why attached caregivers would fight to keep a child they love in their home. However, it’s tragic that their effort to keep this one child in a familiar, loving home may have negative ramifications for many, many, other children and families if they succeed in this lawsuit.

s651fc

posted on bostonglobe.com

There seems to be two separate issues: Upholding the Act as reasonable under the Constitution, which the court will likely do, and, if, in this particular case, the child might incur more harm than not if removed to an unfamiliar place within the tribe. The court will have to determine if there are limits to the interpretation of the Act — if a detriment to the child, in certain cases, can be taken into consideration when determining where to place the child.

Galactaca

posted on bostonglobe.com

In the words of Roxanne

Dunbar-Ortiz: “Modern Indigenous nations and communities are societies formed by their resistance to Colonialism, through which they have carried their practices and histories. It is breathtaking, but no miracle, that they have survived as peoples.” Maltais is living proof of this.

Barbara Dennett

Rotonda West, Florida