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xxiii introduction Matt and Melanie Capobianco appeared on the popular daytime television talk show Dr. Phil on October 18, 2012, to bring their case to the public . The white middle-class South Carolina couple had sought to adopt a newborn, Veronica, with the consent of her unwed mother in 2009. Authorities served notice of the adoption to Veronica’s father, Dusten Brown, four months later, less than a week before he was to be deployed for military service in Iraq. He petitioned to gain custody of his daughter. After almost two years of legal wrangling, the family court ruled and the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed that Veronica belonged with her father, and she had moved to Oklahoma to live with Brown in January 2011. The reason? Dusten Brown is a member of the Cherokee nation, and the provisions of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (icwa) require that where possible Indian children should grow up in Indian families. Dr. Phil, his guests, and audience members expressed outrage at the awarding of custody of Veronica to her father and deep sympathy for the adoptive couple on live television that day in 2012. The Capobiancos and their supporters argued that icwa is a racist law that undermines the best interests of children like Veronica.¹ The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case, known as Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, in early 2013, and they ruled in favor of the Capobiancos in a 5-4 decision in June that year. They remanded the decision to the South Carolina Supreme Court to reconsider the proper placement of Veronica. The court soon required that Brown return Veronica to the Capobiancos. Brown fought the order for several months but finally and reluctantly gave up his daughter to the South Carolina couple in September 2013.² Dr. Phil, his guests, and his audience were surely elated at the xxiv | introduction outcome. They had belittled the biological father who wanted to raise his daughter. They had castigated the tribe who wished this little girl to grow up as a citizen of their nation. Dr. Phil had created a compelling television show by demonizing Dusten Brown and the Cherokees and casting the Capobiancos as innocent victims of an outdated piece of legislation. But had he done justice to the story? Media coverage of the controversial case failed to reveal the full back story of icwa, an act meant to redress the long history of forcible child removal that American Indian families had suffered for generations. Many Indian families who lost their children suffered trauma equal to that of the Capobiancos, but their stories have rarely garnered much public attention . Consider the story of Rosebud Sioux mother Bernadine Brokenleg, who had married Bernard Butts, a white machinist, in California. Brokenleg soon bore a daughter, Tiffany, but the marriage was troubled. According to some reports, Butts beat his wife and had not yet terminated an earlier marriage. Brokenleg annulled her marriage to Butts when Tiffany was just eighteen months old and returned to South Dakota to live on the Rosebud Reservation in 1972. When Tiffany was three years old, Brokenleg allowed her former husband and his parents to take her daughter for what she thought was a brief vacation. Instead the Butts grandparents absconded with Tiffany to Kermit, Texas, and refused to return the child to her mother. Brokenleg visited Tiffany in Texas several times between 1973 and 1975, while working as a secretary, teacher’s aide, and part-time tutor of college students in South Dakota. She spoke with Tiffany regularly on the phone, sent money for her support, and consistently insisted that she wanted Tiffany back.³ The Butts grandparents filed a petition in Winkler County District Court in Texas in 1975 to gain full custody of Tiffany and terminate Brokenleg’s parental rights. The judge ruled in favor of the Buttses, declaring that Brokenleg had left Tiffany in the possession of her paternal grandparents “without expressing an intent to return” and “at no time provided adequate support” for Tiffany while she lived in Texas. He awarded full custody of Tiffany to the Butts grandparents and then terminated Brokenleg’s parental rights altogether, asserting that “it would be detrimental and would endanger the physical and emotional well-being” ofTiffany to “return her to her mother’s custody to be reared on the Indian Reservation.”⁴ [3.147.104.248] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...

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