For decades, welfare laws kept Native American families together. Will the supreme court end them?
The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed to redress years of mass separations of Native families. This month, the court hears a case that could overturn it
When Kimora Toledo was a little girl, she and her mother Malisha would make the hour-long drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jemez Pueblo at least once a month. Malisha, who is from Jemez and Tesuque Pueblos, had moved her family to Albuquerque for a better job, but her father was a Jemez medicine man and it was important to her that Kimora be immersed in that heritage. On one of those visits to Jemez, Malisha remembers dancing alongside Kimora – who’s Jemez, Tesuque, Diné and Black – during the feast day celebrations. She hoped it would be the first of many times they’d dance together.
But Malisha battled a criminal record and her ex, Kimora’s father, managed to gain custody over Kimora and her younger brother. The two children would spend several years living at their dad’s house in Albuquerque, without those monthly visits to the pueblo.
