In the 1950s and ’60s, about one half of Native children in the U.S. were wholly or partly raised in boarding schools, foster or adoptive placements, or were simply not born to women sterilized in government hospitals. Limiting births and removing children is one definition in the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide. ICWA was adopted to stop these indiscriminate practices, protect Native women and families, and preserve Native children’s heritage and cultural identity.
