This is a bit of a tangent to the point of the OP, but re: the foster homes issue: It's one that has a different nuance with Native Americans, but it's not exactly unique to them. I wonder what we're supposed to do when a Native child is in an abusive or inadequate home. Something significantly different than we'd do for a white child? Or isn't that in and of itself discriminatory?
Because of previous gov't policies aimed at assimilating indians and tearing apart their communities, there were laws instated which are supposed to protect native communities by requiring agencies to place native children somewhere within the native community (even with distant relatives), as a first choice.
It is not so much an ethnicity issue as it is a citizenship issue. Kids who are citizens of sovereign first nations ought to be under the protection of their nation. Having control over what happens to their citizens is a human right native tribes have fought for over the years. Traditionally, the fed gov't treated natives as their 'wards' and 'children', and took control over all activities ESPECIALLY the education of the children, who were taught to forget and hate their own cultures and languages...and this did a number on their communities which they still feel the effects from. So, this right to control what happens to their kids, is extremely important.
What is happening is that the state figured it could get easy cash for every "special needs" kid they place. BUT it doesn't get money for kids housed in native homes (as a part of sovereign nations independent from US), therefore, instead of placing the kids within their community, they are sending the kids to the homes of non-natives (mainly white).
What this does is break up the community by separating the kids from having a culturally native identity...and thus this diminishes the ability of the upcoming generation to enforce their sovereignty. The other side of the coin is that the native communities in SD are among the poorest in the US...3rd world country conditions...life expectancies 20 years less; drug abuse, crime, suicide, etc etc.
As is the case for any poor kids in america, they are an incredibly easy target for "child services". It is much easier to take a kid from their home if they are poor, than if they aren't poor (regardless of presence of abuse); often (anywhere in the US) kids can be removed simply for being too poor.
Anyways, as the poorest in the state, native kids are easy targets; they are also the subject of many harmful negative stereotypes (ya know, the usual ones about being lazy, on welfare, drunkards), so it's easy for people to "believe" that no native is capable of raising their kids...incidentally negative stereotypes is another reason why poor kids are easy targets.
The stinger is that, in order to place native kids out of the community the state has to undermine the law, native sovereignty, as well as any regard for the survival of the nation. In effect, the state is BENEFITTING from the destruction of a nation....aka genocide. As non-native citizens, pretty much anyone ought to be outraged that anyone is allowing (on a gov't level) states to get away with genocide for their own benefit.
It sucks.
