Tolani Lakes, Arizona

A recent homecoming in Tolani Lakes, Arizona, June 1, 1996, underscores the dramatic need for continuation of the Indian Child Welfare Act as it was written in 1978.

The story of Yvette Melanson is a prime example of why the original legislation was drafted and is still needed in Indian Country.

Melanson is one of thousands of Navajo who were taken - often illegally - from their families in the 1950s and 1960s, and adopted by non-Indian families, according to Karen MacPherson of the Albuquerque Tribune.

Melanson's saga began in a hogan on the Navajo Nation in 1953, said MacPherson, where she and her twin brother were born to Yazzi Monroe and Betty Jackson. Two days after the twins were born, their mother had fallen into a coma, and their distracted father apparently signed papers that allowed them to be adopted after a public-health nurse took them away. He didn't speak or understand English and thought he was signing papers for the temporary care of the children. It took Melanson a lifetime of searching to find her family again.

Congress passed the 1978 law to prevent the continuing abuses, like the Melanson case, of power by state agencies, the courts, and various church groups in the disruption of Indian families by enacting procedures for the removal and foster placement of Indian children and defining roles and responsibilities of authority. American Indians hoped that the law would protect Indian families, communities, and tribes against further disintegration of their traditional systems.

Today, Congress is in the process of changing the original law. The House-passed version of the bill would remove child custody proceedings from tribal courts if the cases involve children whose birth parents did not maintain "significant social, cultural or political affiliations with the tribe."

Tribes say the vague language could open the door for state courts to decide that some children are not "Indian enough" allowing them to be adopted by white families, according to an article by Carol Sowers of The Arizona Republic.

It is fairly evident this concerted effort is by a few non-Indian people who feel slighted by the 1978 law because some were asked to part with adopted Indian children in long drawn out court fights.

Granted, these people love these children and in some cases their's was the only right home for the Indian children, because some Indian parents didn't care or were in a vicious cycle of alcoholism or drug abuse to the point where those outside homes were the only answer.

But this didn't excuse some excessive behaviors - the Melanson case is one of a thousand versions.

Lou Matheson, in a recent article in Social Work, cited cases where social workers came to Indian homes and removed an Indian child with no reason given. Another woman related how she and another child were forcibly taken into a bus while they were playing on the banks of a river near their home. They spent three years in a school; their parents had believed they had drowned. Another unmarried woman having her first baby was told by a church representative that if she loved her baby she would let a white family adopt it. While in foster care one woman was never given a pair of socks, even in the winter. The horror stories go on and on in Indian Country.

In the Indian world, the traditional method used to take care of "lost children" was first to let the grandparents, aunts or uncles take care of them, not to let outside legislators or church organizations decide unilaterally where children were to be placed. Now Congress wants to interfere in this Indian way of life again.

Indian people simply cannot let the clock be turned back to these pre-1978 days. Indian people can play the same political game as non-Indians - lobby and write the local congressman or express concerns to the tribal governments - so the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 is not revised to accommodate outside interests.

As for Melanson, the search continues for her twin brother but there is some consolation in all of this. She has regained her identity as an Indian.