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The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the decision of Federal District Court Judge Jeffrey Viken holding that the due process and ICWA rights of parents were being violated in abuse and neglect proceedings in Pennington County, South Dakota.  However, the appeals court decision was not based on an analysis of constitutional rights or…

34 Federal District Court Judge Viken issued new orders on December 15th in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Fleming case (previously Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnick).  The Court already found in favor of the Plaintiffs over a four years ago, but had not issued orders with any real teeth until now.  As such, the…

I was recently appointed to represent a young child who is the subject of an abuse and neglect case.  I went to visit with the child at her daycare, and was spontaneously commended by the daycare provider for coming to meet with the child.  She told me that she is also a foster parent and…

The soon-to-be final version of the new ICWA regulations were published on June 8, 2016.  They will not officially take effect until December 12, 2016.  There is extensive commentary prior to the actual regulations in both of the versions linked below: Federal Register Version (actual rule starts at 81 Fed. Reg. 38864) Department of Interior…

Seventh Circuit Judge Jeff Davis, and presumably the South Dakota Attorney General’s office that now represents him, have stipulated to pay fifty thousand ($50,000!!!) in sanctions due to failing to produce requested discovery in the Oglala Sioux Tribe vs. Van Hunnik federal class action.  A pile of documents were unsealed earlier this month as a…

I have posted previously (here and here) about some ongoing ICWA litigation around the country.  The ICWA Defense Project has released a memorandum with updates on the latest procedural happenings in these cases.  It is recommended reading for anyone trying to keep up, and can be found at the following link: March 15, 2016 ICWA…

The Federal Court has denied the motions to reconsider submitted by the Defendants in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik federal class action case.  The Court found most of the Defendants’ arguments to be either without any merit or duplicative of earlier arguments that were already rejected.  The Court’s Order is linked below: 2016_02_19…

Earlier this week I had my first opportunity to observe temporary custody (48 hour) hearings in Pennington County since the Federal District Court entered its Order granting partial summary judgment in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik case.  Among other things, the Federal Court found that Pennington County courts were violating the constitutional due process…

In a bit of a deviation from my usual blog topics, I feel the need to address the topic of shared parenting. The issue has often become a political one, including in South Dakota. I have seen a number of misconceptions and just plain bad arguments from people on both sides of the issue. I…

The United States Department of Justice has filed a federal lawsuit against the South Dakota Department of Social Services alleging employment discrimination against Native American job applicants.  You can view the DOJ press release here, and the federal court complaint here. The complaint alleges that the Pine Ridge DSS office hired less-qualified white people rather…

Since the BIA indicated its intention to publish new regulations regarding the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), there have been at least five lawsuits filed challenging various aspects of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), state versions of that law, or the new BIA Guidelines upon which the proposed regulations are based.  I previously…

Two federal court lawsuits have recently been filed challenging aspects of ICWA.  The complaint in each case is linked below: 2015.05.27 Nat Council for Adoption v. Jewell Complaint 2015.06.03 Baby Doe – MN ICWA Challenge in Voluntary Adoption The National Council for Adoption v. Jewell case takes aim at the federal ICWA and the New…

The deadline has passed to submit comments on the BIA’s proposed ICWA regulations.  I submitted what ended up spiraling into a short treatise on the topic.  My comments may be useful to those trying to grasp the changes that would be made by the proposed regulations, as well as some of the substantive changes of…

The Plaintiffs in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik federal class action have submitted their response to the reconsideration motions of the Defendants.  That response is linked below: 2015_05_11 187 Plaintiff Response to Reconsideration Motions

The Defendants in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik federal class action have all requested that the Court reconsider it’s most recent order, which granted summary judgment to the Plaintiffs on essentially all issues.  The reconsideration documents are available on Turtle Talk, and linked below.  The briefs (documents 168, 171, & 172) contain the…

On March 20, the BIA issued an expansive set of proposed regulations regarding state implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).  This is an exceptionally important development.  Previously, with regarding most parts of ICWA, the BIA only issued guidelines.  The Guidelines are persuasive authority that courts can look to for guidance, but are not…

The Federal District Court has granted summary judgment in favor of the Plaintiffs on essentially all issues, both ICWA and due process related, in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik case.  The Court’s Order is linked below: 2015_03_30 150 Order (Granting Partial Summary Judgment) A separate order granting declaratory and injunctive relief will be…

For the first time since 1979, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has updated its Guidelines for State Courts in Indian Child Custody Proceedings.  While not binding legal precedent, this document provides guidance in interpreting the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).  The original 1979 version has been relied  upon heavily by the courts.  Linked below is…

The Associated Press released a story today with the headline “Abused kids die as authorities fail to protect.”  The main thrust of the story is that kids are dying from abuse in situations where authorities should have known they were being abused.  The story describes the child welfare system as “failing.” For some of the…

On November 5, 2014, Laura Rena Murray of Al Jazeera America published a story titled “The Standing Rock Sioux fight to get their children back.”  It primarily told the story of Lois Thunder, a Native American grandmother seeking custody of her grandchildren.  The children were removed from their parents due to issues with alcohol and…

Allegations have flown in recent years that the South Dakota Department of Social Services is running roughshod over the Native community, taking Indian children from their parents without reason so it can cash in on huge sums of federal money.  I have discussed the money part in the past, and have been able to show…

The Defendants in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v Van Hunnick federal class action suit submitted responses to the Plaintiff’s motions for summary judgment in early September.  Those responses are linked below: 2014_09_05 128 Defendant’s Reponse to 1922 Summary Judgment Motion 2014_09_05 129 Defendant’s Reponse to Due Process Summary Judgment Motion The responsive briefs of the…

About two weeks ago, I attended the fourth annual Children’s Justice Conference in Rapid City.  The conference is sponsored by the Unified Judicial System’s Court Improvement Program.  The event was essentially a continuing education event primarily for therapists, social workers, and CASA volunteers.  Out of the well over 100 people in attendance, there were a…

I have been meaning to write this post for a while, but how to do so in any remotely concise fashion has proven difficult to figure out.  Just the Plaintiffs’ motions for summary judgment span over 60 combined pages.  The following is my best shot, and leaves out a lot of what I could say…

Not long after the controversy created when NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos deconstructed the Native Foster Care Series, NPR has attempted to restrict the role of its ombudsman.  While searching for a replacement for Mr. Schumacher-Matos, who would have left anyway as his three-year term was approaching an end, NPR posted a job description for the…

I have been a bit behind in keeping up-to-date on the latest happenings in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik federal class action.  For those wanting more timely updates, my suggestion is to follow the Turtle Talk blogging of Matthew L.M. Fletcher and Kate Ford regarding the case. At this point, it appears that…

I previously wrote about the discovery dispute in the Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik federal class action suit.  As I speculated would happen, the Federal Court has directly ordered the court reporters to produce the transcripts in question.  The Order Granting Motion to Compel is provided below.  I previously wrote about this case here…

The latest development in the federal class-action suit Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik, which I previously wrote about here, is a dispute over discovery.  Here is a very brief summary of that dispute. The Federal Court has essentially said that transcripts of every third 48 hour hearing in ICWA case should be produced.  South…

On January 28, 2014, the Federal District Court denied all motions to dismiss that had been submitted in Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik, and also certified the case as a class action.  I have been waiting for these decisions by the Court before writing about this case, but unfortunately find myself too busy to…

Against my better judgment, I opened a Twitter account today.  You can follow me at @KyleDKrause.  Chances are that virtually everything I tweet in the near future will be related to the report done by the NPR Ombudsman regarding the Native Foster Care series. NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos, appeared on-air today on All Things Considered…

I have managed to read at least once all six parts of the report done by NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos regarding the Native Foster Care Series, as well as the Editor’s Note in response to the Ombudsman by Kinsey Wilson and Margaret Low Smith.  It appears that the Ombudsman did a thorough job.  I agree…

The Ombudsman for NPR, Edward Schumacher-Matos, has finally released a SIX part response to the Native Foster Care Series that aired on NPR in October of 2011.  Below are a few links: An 80 page PDF of the Ombudsman’s entire response can be found here. S. Dakota Indian Foster Care 1: Investigative Storytelling Gone Awry…

Way back in October of 2011, I posted this brief look at child welfare funding.  Since that time, I have learned more about the topic.  More significantly however, false information on the subject continues to infect and distort the discussion regarding Indian child welfare in South Dakota.  In this post, I will further examine the…

I recently spent most of May 15-17 attending the Great Plains ICWA Summit held in Rapid City.  I was there for almost the entirety of the Summit, but may have missed a few things due to side conversations.  I came away with a number of thoughts which are not necessarily connected.  I think it best…

I have received another agenda for the upcoming ICWA Summit.  It is slightly different than the previous one, and linked below in PDF format. 2013.05.13 BIA Summit Agenda According to this article, the summit will be broadcast on KOLC-TV, which is available on some South Dakota cable networks, and potentially streamed online.

I received a revised agenda for the upcoming ICWA Summit late yesterday afternoon.  It is attached below in PDF format.  My understanding is that additional changes to the agenda may still occur, but this one is closer to the final product than the one I posted previously.  The most notable change from the previous version…

About a month ago, I posted about the upcoming ICWA summit that is being sponsored by the BIA on May 15-17 at the Ramkota hotel in Rapid City.  I indicated that I would post a copy of the agenda for that summit as soon as one became available.  Unfortunately, there has been some disagreement over…

In late October of 2011, NPR reporters Lisa Sullivan and Amy Walters published a three-part series on Native American foster care in South Dakota.  The stories were incredibly biased, misleading, and sometimes blatantly and demonstrably factually false.  I have written about them extensively in numerous previous posts. As of yet, no one from NPR has…

In my previous post, I linked to an Associated Press article that said a long-awaited summit on Indian foster care had been scheduled for April 15 through 17 in Rapid City.  As that date loomed closer and no additional details emerged, I decided to try to obtain them.  I talked to an official at the…

A summit is finally being scheduled regarding Indian foster care.  I previously wrote about how the BIA had indicated that it would hold such a summit, but had not followed through.  Unfortunately, the only information I have found on the summit has been a single Associated Press article, published in various sources on February 7th…

Three days into the trial of former South Dakota state’s attorney Brandon Taliaferro and court appointed special advocate (CASA) Shirley Schwab, the judge in the case has dismissed all of the charges following the conclusion of the prosecution’s case.  The two had been charged with subordination of perjury and witness tampering, along with misdemeanor charges…

In my previous post, I wrote about a Report to Congress that was prepared by the Lakota People’s Law Project and the ICWA Directors of at least some of South Dakota’s nine tribes.  Six of the ICWA Directors approved the Report during a meeting on November 29, 2012.  My understanding is that it is now…

An Associated Press story by Sioux Falls correspondent Kristi Eaton with the headline “Report: South Dakota breaks child-protection laws” recently started being published by newspapers.  The Yankton Daily Press and Dakotan was the first South Dakota outlet I found to that published the story.  The story itself appears to me to be factually accurate, although…

In a previous post, I briefly discussed the prospect of changing some of South Dakota’s confidentiality laws regarding child abuse and neglect proceedings.  It has been a while, but here is the promised follow-up. First, a little background.  My discussion of South Dakota’s confidentiality laws stemmed from my writings regarding the Native Foster Care Series…

It has been almost eleven months since the NPR series on Native children in foster care in South Dakota first aired in late October of 2011.   The overwhelming majority of my previous entries have dealt with the series in some fashion.  In short, the series was a dishonest and deceptive piece of work designed…

The Second Annual South Dakota Children’s Justice Conference was held in Rapid City on September 11, 2012, and will be held in Sioux Falls on September 13, 2012.  I attended the event in Rapid City.  This was the second year that such a conference was held, and I am thrilled that it appears that this…

It has been quite some time since my last post, and I hope to be a bit more on the ball going forward.  I recently added the ability to follow my blog using an RSS feed, which can be done by clicking here, or on the RSS icon in the right sidebar.  Subscribing to the…

It has been a bit over two months since the NPR Reports on Native American children in foster care that I wrote about extensively below.  A few things have happened since that time. First, it appears that the NPR ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, will eventually publish some sort of response to the reports.  He indicates as…

Native American children account for about 15% of South Dakota’s population, but over 50% of the children in foster care.  This statistic alone is a bit shocking, but cannot tell the whole story.  There are two primary types of reasons that could explain the disparity.  One is that Native Americans are treated differently than other…

I have obtained a copy of much of the information that the South Dakota Governor’s Office sent out to legislators and the media in response to the recent NPR reports on Native American Children in Foster Care.  There is a wealth of good and specific information, and all of these are recommended reading for anyone…

A few good sources of information have become available on this topic since I first posted my response to NPR’s reports on Native American Children in foster care.  The local public radio program Dakota Midday devoted an hour to the issue on its November 1st program.  Among its guests included Secretary of the South Dakota…

In my previous comments on the NPR series on Native American children in foster care, I indicated that significant federal funding exists to subsidize foster care placements, but relatively little funding exists for programs to prevent foster care placements.  I have done some research since making this statement, and the numbers I have found appear…

Since posting my initial response to Part 1 of the NPR series related to Native American children and foster care, the subsequent parts of the series have been published.  Below are links to the reports. Part 1:  Incentives and Cultural Bias Fuel Foster System (This is the report I responded to below.) Part 2:  Tribes…

On October 25, 2011, the NPR show “All Things Considered” aired part one of a three-part series on Native American children in South Dakota who are removed from their parents’ care by the Department of Social Services (DSS).  There are several written reports on NPR’s website.  This one most closely reflects the audio of the…