The Indian Child Welfare Act is in from of the U.S. Supreme Court…During oral arguments about the constitutionality of a 1978 law enacted to protect Native American children in the U.S. and strengthen their families, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said:
“[T]he policy is for Congress to make. And Congress understood these decisions as integral to the continued thriving of Indian communities. And Congress had a different view of the costs and benefits of how these decisions were being made. And that’s not something that we can second-guess, is it?” Over the past 50 years, the Supreme Court has increasingly claimed the power to be the final arbitrator of Indian policy.
It was a 5 day round trip for a direct descendant of Chief Big Foot who traveled to the Barre Museum in Massachusetts to accept the artifacts that have been kept there for over a century. Cedric Broken Nose told KIPI News that at the beginning of the journey back with the items, he smelled “oldness”, but as he got closer to home he smelled “sweet medicine”. He feels at peace and says the items are being held in a secure location at Oglala Lakota College in Pine Ridge. The artifacts will remain in wasigala ohun, a one year period of grieving and then it will be decided, by ceremony, how to honor the items. Some pipes and tomahawks may be kept on display. Broken Nose is a member of a delegation that has been working for months to bring the items home and says he “encourages all other museums, schools and colleges to reconsider returning items to tribal people so they can heal.
