Thread by @NSegoviaEsq

As an Indigenous attorney from the global South, I choose to wake up in the “iron cold” of Federal Indian Law and fight for basic human rights to apply to Indigenous Peoples. Even so, it’s crushing to hear #Brackeen as #GibsonDunn attempts to erode #ICWA and #TribalSovereignty.🧵

I’ve litigated #ICWA cases with @BenRundallEsq in AZ, and even in a state with 22 federally recognized Tribes, it was abundantly clear that courts aren’t competent to respect protections meant to remedy the historical wrongs of taking Indigenous children away from their families.

Competency, while an ethical requirement in the law, clearly it isn’t the same for #SCOTUS. Constitutional law forms the body of Federal Indian Law, yet it’s astounding the Court cannot grasp that “Indian” is a political designation. They miss the point of #ICWA extraordinarily.

In an Equal Protection softball, Justice #Kavanaugh asked where we draw the line and said we don’t give white people preference to adopt white kids. SCOTUS can quibble about whether ICWA is unfair, but white children were not systematically taken from their families.

The lip service paid by #GibsonDunn during oral argument in #Brackeen to the “painful” history of the U.S. with respect to Native children when they are actively working to invalidate #ICWA and erase that history, is despicable.

The U.S. engaged in actual and cultural genocide when Native children had language, culture, and identity beaten out of them at boarding schools to “kill the Indian.” To deny that #ICWA has a necessary place in U.S. law might as well amount to denying the holocaust happened.

We need to do better. We can’t hold ourselves out to have moral authority on human rights in the world if our legal system is founded on such outdated notions as the Doctrine of Discovery and #SCOTUS can’t see the urgency of protecting Native children.

At its core, to #ProtectICWA is a matter of protecting the right of existence of Indigenous Peoples, the continuity of our languages and traditions, and a recognition of #TribalSovereignty - even though the #inherent #sovereignty of Original Nations existed long before 1776.