Genoa, Nebraska, on the land of the Pawnee people, enrolling over 4,300 children from over forty Indian tribes. 18 This was government-sanctioned cultural genocide and intentional separation of children from their families, tribes, and cultures in which children as young as five years old were forbidden from speaking their native language, required to convert to Christianity, subject to abuse and exploitation, and killed by diseases in over-crowded schools. 19 The Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs and researchers are currently in the process of searching for mass graves at the Genoa School site. 20 In addition, beginning in the 1920s until it became illegal in the 1960s, redlining was rampant in Omaha. 21 This government action of denying home loans and other services based on race systematically created disparities in generational wealth that even current income and education cannot bridge. 22 Redlining has had a lasting impact on upward mobility for generations of black and African American families, and can still be plainly seen in local communities. 23 Today’s reality is a direct line from Nebraska’s history of systemic racism. Moreover, the “child welfare system” itself—which some now refer to as the “family regulation system”—is an extension of America’s dark history of forced family separation based on race and poverty. The thread weaves from the U.S. government dispossessing Native lands and Native children to white slave owners separating Black families and devaluing Black family bonds through orphan trains bringing children for forced child labor in the Midwest. It also extends today to family separation through immigration and criminal justice systems. 24 Even reforms to address poverty have conditioned assistance on family regulation. Federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) reforms in 1996 increased surveillance of poor mothers and reduced services, particularly in communities of color. 25 This, in turn, resulted in the child welfare system being used as a means of accessing assistance, conditioned on the state custody of children. 26 Ongoing Harms and the Need The creation of informal and formal community supports for children and families, through local community collaboratives, rather than punitive systems has been transformative. However, even in light of this progress, the net of the formal child protection system is still too expansive—particularly at the front-end, with overbroad investigations and statutory definitions of abuse and neglect. Today, nationally, more than half of all Black children will be the subject of a CPS investigation at ______________ 18 The Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project. About Genoa & Indian Boarding Schools . https://genoaindianschool. org/about-genoa-indian-boarding-schools. Accessed 28 April 2022. 19 The Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project. About Genoa & Indian Boarding Schools . https://genoaindianschool. org/about-genoa-indian-boarding-schools. Accessed 28 April 2022. 20 Chung, Christine. “Researchers Identify Dozens of Native Students Who Died at Nebraska School.” New York Times . 11 Nov. 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/us/native-american-boarding-school-deaths-nebraska.html. Accessed 28 April 2022. 21 Fletcher Sasse, Adam. “A History of Redlining in Omaha.” North Omaha History . https://northomahahistory. com/2015/08/02/a-history-of-red-lining-in-north-omaha/. Accessed 1 May 2022. 22 The Union for Contemporary Art. Undesign the Redline . https://www.u-ca.org/redline. Accessed 28 April 2022. 23 Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America . Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017. 24 Minoff, Elisa. “Entangled Roots: The Role of Race in Policies that Separate Families.” Center for the Study of Social Polic y, Oct. 2018, p.4. https://cssp.org/resource/entangled-roots/. Accessed 28 April 2022. 25 Roberts, Dorothy E. “Democratizing Criminal Law as an Abolitionist Project.” Northwestern University Law Review , Vol. 111, 1597-1601, 2017, p. 1602-1603. 26 Roberts, Dorothy E. “Democratizing Criminal Law as an Abolitionist Project.” Northwestern University Law Review, Vol. 111, 1597-1601, 2017, p. 1602-1603.
112 | FIJ Quarterly | Summer 2022
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