Should non-Native American families be allowed to adopt Native American children?

“In 2014, Paul Buckley and his wife, Cheryl Becker, fostered a baby boy named Mason. They had seen other members of their Phoenix church community foster children and were inspired.

"We both have a heart for helping children," Buckley explains. "And it seemed like a way that we could provide something to the community and specifically to children."

After raising Mason for a year and a half, Buckley and Becker moved to adopt. It was straightforward until, late in the legal proceedings, the Choctaw Nation intervened on behalf of the child's great-uncle. It turned out that Mason's birth mother — and therefore Mason — is a Choctaw citizen.

"His mother had never mentioned this. We had never been told that there was anything there," Buckley says. "Mason didn't even look Indian in the least regards. Most everybody that was involved in the case was equally shocked."

Although the court and the state of Arizona were on the cusp of allowing Mason to be adopted, the legal proceedings were terminated.

The law says all Native American children must only be placed with and adopted by a family member, a member of their tribe or, failing that, a family from another tribe. Non-Natives cannot legally adopt a Native American child in need of a home; because of this law, many Native children simply get shuffled from foster home to foster home.

Opponents of the law call it an unconstitutional race-based intrusion on states’ powers to govern adoptions.”