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The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 was enacted to protect Native American children from being unjustly removed from their families and placed in non-Native homes, a practice that contributed to cultural erasure. ICWA prioritizes keeping Native children within their families, tribes, or other Native communities to preserve their cultural identity and sovereignty. In contrast, the policy behind Indian boarding schools (19th–20th centuries) aimed to forcibly assimilate Native children by removing them from their families, prohibiting their languages and traditions, and indoctrinating them into Euro-American culture. This system, rooted in the belief of "kill the Indian, save the man," caused lasting trauma and cultural disruption. ICWA was a direct response to such historical policies, seeking to restore tribal authority over child welfare and prevent further cultural genocide.

This searchable database includes 650+ citations to law review articles on the Indian Child Welfare Act including Indian Boarding Schools. In 2025, 71 additional citations were added from 2024. 

Documents were gathered through an electronic database search using the following search terms: "Alaskan Native" or "Indian " or indigenous within the same sentence of "Child welfare" or  "Boarding School"). Most Relevant documents have those terms in the title.

The documents were not reviewed and may only be tangentially related to the topic.  Furthermore, it is possible that an inappropriate article is included in the database. If you think an article is racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic or otherwise inappropriate,  please email with the (1) name of the database and (2) the complete name of the article. 

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