I had a kid in my office today, seven years old, Oglala, taken from his grandmother last month because a neighbor called in a noise complaint during a family gathering. The caseworker—good person, overworked—told me the file says "neglect indicators" because there weren't enough chairs. His grandmother has raised six kids and four grandkids in that house. She knows what neglect looks like. But the system doesn't see a multigenerational home the way it sees a white middle-class one, and so we keep doing what the boarding schools did, just slower and with paperwork. I'm tired of explaining why ICWA exists to people who think it's reverse discrimination. I'm tired of being the translator between two worlds that shouldn't need one.
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