Government Takes Girl from Foster Family for Being Part Native American

We often complain when the government fails to enforce its own laws, but oftentimes, it’s just as bad when the government blindly enforces an otherwise sensible law. That certainly seems to be the case with the Page family in Southern California, who just lost their foster child for a bizarre reason.

Four years ago the Page family took in the now 6-year-old Lexi, and have been trying to officially adopt her for some time. But on Monday, 6 year-old Lexi was wrenched away from the only parents she’s ever known, by an agent with the LA Department of Children and Family Services. The reason? She is 1/64th Choctaw Indian.

Because of her ancestry, the family she ends up with is determined by the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was originally signed into law to prevent the government from kidnapping native children and putting them in white families. It gives tribal governments a say in where a foster child can be sent. But now it’s being used to take a girl who has no Native American identity, whose father has never lived on a reservation or had any ties to the tribe, so she can be sent to live with the extended relatives of her father in Utah.

The Page family plans to challenge the State’s decision to take Lexi away, so the case can go to the California Supreme Court. According to their lawyer, “The tribe’s statement suggesting that Lexi will be raised in ‘Indian culture’ in Utah is preposterous.”