"Contemporary Issues in Child Welfare: American Indian and Canadian Aboriginal Contests examines the spectrum of child welfare policies including: foster care, child protection, adoption, and services to keep families together. Supporting data impacting Native children and their families in the U.S. and Canada are highlighted in each chapter. The numbers of Native children in care are shocking and show a clear disproportionality for non-white children in governmental or state care. Several chapters deal with the long-term effects of the placement of Native children into boarding or residential schools and the resulting historical trauma. Contemporary Issues in Child Welfare not only looks back at the Sixties Scoop, but also argues that the current disproportionality of Native children in state and non-Native family care must be viewed as the Millennium Scoop. While the blatant practice of removing Native children from their families in order to place them within institutional care has been reduced, Native children are now more often being placed in adoptive and/or foster care. In far too many cases, courts have refused to transfer custody away from non-Native homes because system's workers believe that "the child has bonded" with the foster family and it is thus in "the child's best interest" to remain with their current non-Native family. The authors raise interesting questions--"How does bonding compare to cultural background or heritage in a child's development?" "Who is in the best position to make the decision about what is an appropriate "family" for Native children?" Considering the answers to these questions is a main thread of this important text, which will raise awareness about the issues Native families and communities continue to face in the 21st century."
