Hopelessly Optimistic

For those of you aren't aware and aren't involved in NDN circles, the Supreme Court just declared that tribal territories and reservations are part of states and are under state jurisdiction, including in regards to charging someone and putting them on trial in state courts for crimes related to the tribe (as opposed to this being left up to tribal courts), undoing decades of precedent for the separation of tribal and state governments.

In a few months, the Supreme Court is also going to be giving a verdict on whether or not the Indian Child Welfare Act, the only thing keeping indigenous children with their families and communities instead of being "adopted" (trafficked) to white Christian families at every chance, is unconstitutional. This act is also dependent on the belief that tribes are sovereign nations and that giving our children to people outside of our tribes is akin to the US government taking Canadian children in the Canadian foster system and trying to adopt them out to American families.

If the ICWA falls, we're going to see a modern Sixties Scoop, with Native children being stolen from their tribes and families and cultures and assimilated into white Christian society. This is not only traumatizing for the children and their families, it's also a form of cultural genocide that has been used against us before and has devastating effects.

There are family members I never knew because they disappeared into the foster system as children.

To be clear, the court today holds that Indian country within a state's territory is part of a state, not separate from a state," Kavanaugh wrote in a decision that scholars of Native American law said was a major departure from longstanding precedent.

Just to reinforce the reality of this, this isn't some small potatoes, only once in a while relevant ruling. This affects the sovereignty of Native lands.