The Abenaki are Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was predominantly spoken in Maine, while the Western Abenaki language was spoken in Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
The Penobscot are an Indigenous people in North America from the Northeastern Woodlands region. They are organized as a federally recognized tribe in Maine and as a First Nations band government in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec.
The Passamaquoddy are a Native American/First Nations people who live in northeastern North America. Their traditional homeland, Peskotomuhkatikuk, straddles the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the U.S. state of Maine in a region called Dawnland. They are one of the constituent nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy.
The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by various Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease.
The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that governs jurisdiction over the removal of American Indian children from their families in custody, foster care and adoption cases.
Calvin Murray Sinclair is a former member of the Canadian Senate and First Nations lawyer who served as chairman of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2009 to 2015. He previously served as a judge in Manitoba from 1988 to 2009, being the first Indigenous judge appointed in the province. Sinclair was appointed to the Senate of Canada on April 2, 2016. In November 2020, he announced his retirement from the Senate effective January 31, 2021.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was a truth and reconciliation commission active in Canada from 2008 to 2015, organized by the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
Aboriginal child protection describes services designed specifically for protection of the children of "aboriginal" or indigenous peoples, particularly where they are a minority within a country. This may differ at international, national, legal, cultural, social, professional and program levels from general or mainstream child protection services. Fundamental human rights are a source of many of the differences. Aboriginal child protection may be an integral or a distinct aspect of mainstream services or it may be exercised formally or informally by an aboriginal people itself. There has been controversy about systemic genocide in child protection systems enforced with aboriginal children in post-colonial societies.
The Association on American Indian Affairs is a nonprofit human rights charity located in Rockville, Maryland. Founded in 1922, it is dedicated to protecting the rights of Native Americans.
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U.S. 30 (1989), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Indian Child Welfare Act governed adoptions of Indian children. It ruled that a tribal court had jurisdiction over a state court, regardless of the location of birth of the child, if the child or the natural parents resided on the reservation.
The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, 570 U.S. 637 (2013), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which held that several sections of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) do not apply to Native American biological fathers who are not custodians of a Native American child. The court held that the procedures required by the ICWA to end parental rights do not apply when the child has never lived with the father. Additionally, the requirement to make extra efforts to preserve the Native American family also does not apply, nor is the preferred placement of the child in another Native American family required when no other party has formally sought to adopt the child.
The Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians of Maine (HBMI) is a federally recognized tribe of Maliseet, whose land is along the Meduxnekeag River in Maine, United States. They are headquartered in Littleton, Maine, located in Aroostook County.
Sherri L. Mitchell - Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset is a Penobscot lawyer, author, teacher and activist from Maine. Mitchell is the author of Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, a narrative of 'Indigenous Wisdom' that provides "a road map for the spirit and a compass of compassion for humanity."
The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement is an agreement between the government of Canada and approximately 86,000 Indigenous peoples in Canada who at some point were enrolled as children in the Canadian Indian residential school system, a system which was in place between 1879 and 1997. The IRSSA recognized the damage inflicted by the residential schools and established a C$1.9-billion compensation package called CEP for all former IRS students. The agreement, announced in 2006, was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is the archival repository for all of the material collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, purposed to compile the complete history and legacy of Canada's residential school system.
Rebecca Sockbeson is a Wabanaki scholar and activist in the field of Indigenous Peoples' education.
Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U.S. 255 (2023), was a Supreme Court of the United States case brought by the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana, and individual plaintiffs, that sought to declare the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) unconstitutional. In addition to Haaland v. Brackeen, three additional cases were consolidated to be heard at the same time: Cherokee Nation v. Brackeen, Texas v. Haaland, and Brackeen v. Haaland.
Kathryn E. Fort is an attorney, author, professor, director the MSU Law Clinic at Michigan State University College of Law, Associate Director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center, and runs the Indian Law Clinic. She is considered a national expert on ICWA. Fort teaches American Indian Children & the Law, Indian Law Clinic courses I and II. Fort started the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) Appellate Project.
Sandy White Hawk "Cokata Najinn Winyan" is a Sicangu Lakota adoptee from the Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota. She is a writer, a speaker, and an activist. She is the founder and executive director of First Nations Repatriation Institute, the Elder in Residence at the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she formed the First Nations Orphans Association, and she was named the 2017 Champion for Native Children by the National Indian Child Welfare Association
