Mississippi Today
Choctaws fight to preserve authority over Native American adoptions
Choctaws fight to preserve authority over Native American adoptions
A challenge to a decades-old federal law that aims to keep Native American children and their families together is before the U.S. Supreme Court, and it has the potential to impact tribes around the country, including thosein Mississippi.
The Indian Child Welfare Act governs child custody of Native children. If a child is removed from their parents, the act sets preferences to place the child with another family member, another member of the tribe or a different tribe.
The case Brackeen v. Halaand before the Supreme Court challenges these preferences. Three pairs of non-Native foster parents and three states are suing the federal government and five tribes, arguing the act discriminates against non-Native people based on race.
Tribes including the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians are watching the case and see more at stake than adoption.
“As the only federally recognized tribe in the State of Mississippi, our 11,000 plus members are descendants of those members who chose to remain here in Mississippi to preserve our cultural heritage on our ancestral homelands,” the tribe said in a statement. “Today, just as in the past, the preservation and security of our tribe, and our tribal children and families are of utmost importance.”
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in November and is expected to make a ruling next year.
ICWA was created in response to the mistreatment of generations of Native American people by the government, including the enrollment of children in boarding schools where they were forced to abandon their religion and culture and the adoption of children out of tribes.
When the act passed in 1978, between 25% and 35% of all Native children were taken from their families and put in foster homes, up for adoption or into institutions, according to surveys by the Association on American Indian Affairs. They were often placed with non-Native and white families.
ICWA gives tribes the opportunity to be notified about cases involving Native American children and to intervene. It established a process for transferring child custody cases to tribal court.
The act recognizes that tribes have sovereignty and exclusive jurisdiction over their members who live on tribal land or are domiciled there. The act’s standards also apply to Native child custody proceedings in state court for those who don’t live on tribal lands.
During Senate committee hearings about Indian child welfare in the late 1970s, then Choctaw Chief Calvin Isaac testified that raising Native children in non-Native homes reduces tribes’ chances of survival.
The tribe still holds a similar view and says ICWA helps tribes maintain sovereignty by ensuring they have the opportunity to protect and preserve the wellbeing of their children.
“Children are tribal communities’ most valuable resource since the language, culture, and traditions that make those communities unique are passed down from generation to generation,” the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians said in a statement.
The Mississippi Department of Child Protective Services, which oversees foster care and adoption in the state, recognizes ICWA and has developed policies and procedures for how to handle cases with Native children and follow the act.
This includes giving the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians or any tribe that a child belongs to the right to assume jurisdiction of the child. The department also signed a memorandum of understanding with the tribe in 2020.
In the Supreme Court case, two couples from Texas and Nevada were successfully able to adopt Native American children, even after challenges from the tribes where the children were eligible for membership.
Another plaintiff, a Minnesota couple, tried to adopt a child who was placed with her grandmother, who is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. The grandmother eventually adopted the girl.
During oral arguments in November, attorneys representing the plaintiffs challenging ICWA argued a number of issues with the act, including that it violates equal protection through racial discrimination and goes beyond the powers given to Congress to regulate Native American affairs.
Another issue challengers brought up is whether Native Americans should be classified politically through tribes or racially through their ancestry.
Ian Gershengorn, the attorney representing the five tribes in the Brackeen case, told the justices during oral arguments that tribal self-government is at the core of ICWA. All federally recognized tribes and members of those tribes have a common political relationship with the United States, which he said is why a political classification is more appropriate than a racial one.
In court documents, defendants have expressed concerns that a challenge to the act could reduce the legal rights of tribes in issues including environmental regulations, land and gaming.
Ashley Landers is a professor in the human development and family science program at Ohio State University who studies child welfare of Native children. She wonders what protections for Native children will remain if ICWA is overturned or drastically changed.
“What are the protections in place to try and right this historic wrong?” Landers said. “We need to have ownership of what we’ve done to Native families.”
Some researchers and advocates want to shift the focus from adoptive parents to adoptees by having the Supreme Court consider the impact on Native American children in foster care and adoption.
Sandy White Hawk, an adoptee from the Sicangu Lakota Tribe in South Dakota, is founder of the First Nations Repatriation Institute in Minnesota. She is also research partners with Landers.
The institute serves as a resource for Native people impacted by foster care or adoption, and it supports family and cultural reunification and community healing and offers technical assistance, research, education and advocacy.
“It’s still happening,” White Hawk said about the adoption of Native American children out of their tribal communities. “Children are still being taken.”
She was placed with a white missionary couple who she said saw her adoption as a way of saving her. In that family, White Hawk endured physical and sexual abuse and grew up hearing her Native American heritage spoken about negatively.
White Hawk and Landers have researched the experiences of Native Americans, including mental health outcomes of Native adoptees and the kind of abuse they experience in foster care and adoptive homes.
In one of their papers submitted to the Supreme Court in Brackeen v. Haaland, they found that Native American adoptees are more likely to report self harm and suicidal ideation compared to white adoptees. Their research found Native adoptees have the unique context of historical trauma, assimilation and systemic child removal that suggests their mental health outcomes would differ from adoptees of other races.
“Adoption is complex and has grief and loss and it impacts everyone, but the person who gets the least support and resources is the adoptee,” White Hawk said, adding that adoptees are often expected to feel grateful about their adoptions.
Landers said it’s a false narrative that taking Native children from their homes will result in them living a better life. Instead, resources should be allocated to help families stay together and prevent removal, Landers said.
This isn’t the Mississippi Choctaws’ first Supreme Court case. Over 30 years ago, the tribe brought a case that helped interpret ICWA and define tribes’ role in the custody of Native American children.
In Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, the court ruled that through the ICWA, tribal courts have the power to hear adoption proceedings for Native children.
The case started when the tribe appealed the adoption of twins born to Choctaw tribe members who lived on reservation land in Neshoba County. The children were born hundreds of miles away in Harrison County, and the children’s parents agreed to their adoption by a non-native couple, the Holyfields.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that tribes have jurisdiction over children domiciled on a reservation based on tribe membership or eligible membership, even if they aren’t physically present there. As a result, the Harrison County Chancery Court didn’t have the jurisdiction to approve the adoption for the twins.
“MBCI was party to the first U.S. Supreme Court case to uphold ICWA and has continued to support Congress’s constitutional duty to uphold the sovereignty of Indian tribes by joining a brief supporting the tribes involved in the latest U.S. Supreme Court case challenging ICWA,” the tribe said in a statement.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/?p=201459
President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Baxter Kruger to become Mississippi’s new U.S. attorney in the Southern District and Scott Leary to become U.S. attorney for the Northern District.
The two nominations will head to the U.S. Senate for consideration. If confirmed, the two will oversee federal criminal prosecutions and investigations in the state.
Kruger graduated from the Mississippi College School of Law in 2015 and was previously an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District. He is currently the director of the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security.
Sean Tindell, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety commissioner, oversees the state’s Homeland Security Office. He congratulated Kruger on social media and praised his leadership at the agency.
“Thank you for your outstanding leadership at the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security and for your dedicated service to our state,” Tindell wrote. “Your hard work and commitment have not gone unnoticed and this nomination is a testament to that!”
Leary graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law, and he has been a federal prosecutor for most of his career.
He worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Tennessee in Memphis from 2002 to 2008. Afterward, he worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi in Oxford, where he is currently employed.
Leary told Mississippi Today that he is honored to be nominated for the position, and he looks forward to the Senate confirmation process.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Trump nominates Baxter Kruger, Scott Leary for Mississippi U.S. attorney posts appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
This article presents a straightforward news report on President Donald Trump’s nominations of Baxter Kruger and Scott Leary for U.S. attorney positions in Mississippi. It focuses on factual details about their backgrounds, qualifications, and official responses without employing loaded language or framing that favors a particular ideological perspective. The tone is neutral, with quotes and descriptions that serve to inform rather than persuade. While it reports on a political appointment by a Republican president, the coverage remains balanced and refrains from editorializing, thus adhering to neutral, factual reporting.
After more than 10 months closed due to mold, asbestos and issues with the air conditioning system, Thalia Mara Hall has officially reopened.
Outgoing Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba announced the reopening of Thalia Mara Hall during his final press conference held Monday on the arts venue’s steps.
“Today marks what we view as a full circle moment, rejoicing in the iconic space where community has come together for decades in the city of Jackson,” Lumumba said. “Thalia Mara has always been more than a venue. It has been a gathering place for people in the city of Jackson. From its first class ballet performances to gospel concerts, Thalia Mara Hall has been the backdrop for our city’s rich cultural history.”
Thalia Mara Hall closed last August after mold was found in parts of the building. The issues compounded from there, with malfunctioning HVAC systems and asbestos remediation. On June 6, the Mississippi State Fire Marshal’s Office announced that Thalia Mara Hall had finally passed inspection.
“We’re not only excited to have overcome many of the challenges that led to it being shuttered for a period of time,” Lumumba said. “We are hopeful for the future of this auditorium, that it may be able to provide a more up-to-date experience for residents, inviting shows that people are able to see across the world, bringing them here to Jackson. So this is an investment in the future.”
In total, Emad Al-Turk, a city contracted engineer and owner of Al-Turk Planning, estimates that $5 million in city and state funds went into bringing Thalia Mara Hall up to code.
The venue still has work to be completed, including reinstalling the fire curtain. The beam in which the fire curtain will be anchored has asbestos in it, so it will have to be remediated. In addition, a second air-conditioning chiller needs to be installed to properly cool the building. Until it’s installed, which could take months, Thalia Mara Hall will be operating at a lower seating capacity of about 800.
“Primarily because of the heat,” Al-Turk said. “The air conditioning would not be sufficient to actually accommodate the 2,000 people at full capacity, but starting in the fall, that should not be a problem.”
Al-Turk said the calendar is open for the city to begin booking events, though none have been scheduled for July.
“We’re very proud,” he said. “This took a little bit longer than what we anticipated, but we had probably seven or eight different contractors we had to coordinate with and all of them did a superb job to get us where we are today.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Jackson’s performing arts venue Thalia Mara Hall is now open appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The article presents a straightforward report on the reopening of Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson, focusing on facts and statements from city officials without promoting any ideological viewpoint. The tone is neutral and positive, emphasizing the community and cultural significance of the venue while detailing the challenges overcome during renovations. The coverage centers on public investment and future prospects, without partisan framing or editorializing. While quotes from Mayor Lumumba and a city engineer highlight optimism and civic pride, the article maintains balanced, factual reporting rather than advancing a political agenda.
Mississippi Today
‘Hurdles waiting in the shadows’: Lumumba reflects on challenges and triumphs on final day as Jackson mayor
On his last day as mayor of Jackson, Chokwe Antar Lumumba recounted accomplishments, praised his executive team and said he has no plans to seek office again.
He spoke during a press conference outside of the city’s Thalia Mara Hall, which was recently cleared for reopening after nearly a year of remediation. The briefing, meant to give media members a peek inside the downtown theater, marked one of Lumumba’s final forays as mayor.
Longtime state Sen. John Horhn — who defeated Lumumba in the Democratic primary runoff — will be inaugurated as mayor Tuesday, but Lumumba won’t be present. Not for any contentious reason, the 42-year-old mayor noted, but because he returns to his private law practice Tuesday.
“I’ve got to work now, y’all,” Lumumba said. “I’ve got a job.”
Thalia Mara Hall’s presumptive comeback was a fitting end for Lumumba, who pledged to make Jackson the most radical city in America but instead spent much of his eight years in office parrying one emergency after another. The auditorium was built in 1968 and closed nearly 11 months ago after workers found mold caused by a faulty HVAC system – on top of broken elevators, fire safety concerns and vandalism.
“This job is a fast-pitched sport,” Lumumba said. “There’s an abundance of challenges that have to be addressed, and it seems like the moment that you’ve gotten over one hurdle, there’s another one that is waiting in the shadows.”
Outside the theater Monday, Lumumba reflected on the high points of his leadership instead of the many crises — some seemingly self-inflicted — he faced as mayor.
He presided over the city during the coronavirus pandemic and the rise in crime it brought, but also the one-two punch of the 2021 and 2022 water crises, exacerbated by the city’s mismanagement of its water plants, and the 18-day pause in trash pickup spurred by Lumumba’s contentious negotiations with the city council in 2023.
Then in 2024, Lumumba was indicted alongside other city and county officials in a sweeping federal corruption probe targeting the proposed development of a hotel across from the city’s convention center, a project that has remained stalled in a 20-year saga of failed bids and political consternation.
Slated for trial next year, Lumumba has repeatedly maintained his innocence.
The city’s youngest mayor also brought some victories to Jackson, particularly in his first year in office. In 2017, he ended a furlough of city employees and worked with then-Gov. Phil Bryant to avoid a state takeover of Jackson Public Schools. In 2019, the city successfully sued German engineering firm Siemens and its local contractors for $89 million over botched work installing the city’s water-sewer billing infrastructure.
“I think that that was a pivotal moment to say that this city is going to hold people responsible for the work that they do,” Lumumba said.
Lumumba had more time than any other mayor to usher in the 1% sales tax, which residents approved in 2014 to fund infrastructure improvements.
“We paved 144 streets,” he said. “There are residents that still are waiting on their roads to be repaved. And you don’t really feel it until it’s your street that gets repaved, but that is a significant undertaking.”
And under his administration, crime has fallen dramatically recently, with homicides cut by a third and shootings cut in half in the last year.
Lumumba was first elected in 2017 after defeating Tony Yarber, a business-friendly mayor who faced his own scandals as mayor. A criminal justice attorney, Lumumba said he never planned to seek office until the stunning death of his father, Chokwe Lumumba Sr., eight months into his first term as mayor in 2014.
“I can say without reservation, and unequivocally, we remember where we started. We are in a much better position than we started,” Lumumba said.
Lumumba said he has sat down with Horhn in recent months, answered questions “as extensively as I could,” and promised to remain reachable to the new mayor.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post 'Hurdles waiting in the shadows': Lumumba reflects on challenges and triumphs on final day as Jackson mayor appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
The article reports on outgoing Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s reflections without overt editorializing but subtly frames his tenure within progressive contexts, emphasizing his self-described goal to make Jackson “the most radical city in America.” The piece highlights his accomplishments alongside challenges, including public crises and a federal indictment, maintaining a factual tone yet noting contentious moments like labor disputes and governance issues. While it avoids partisan rhetoric, the focus on social justice efforts, infrastructure investment, and crime reduction, as well as positive framing of Lumumba’s achievements, aligns with a center-left perspective that values progressive governance and accountability.
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