‘Native children belong in Native communities’: tribes decry New Mexico drug-exposed newborn rule

Demonstrators outside of the supreme court in Washington in 2022 as the court hears arguments over the Indian Child Welfare Act. Photograph: Mariam Zuhaib/AP View image in fullscreen Demonstrators outside of the supreme court in Washington in 2022 as the court hears arguments over the Indian Child Welfare Act. Photograph: Mariam Zuhaib/AP ‘Native children belong in Native communities’: tribes decry New Mexico drug-exposed newborn rule Groups say new directive fails to respect Native sovereignty amid complicated history of Indigenous child removals One morning early last July, Micha Bitsinnie arrived at work to an onslaught of messages from confused families. New Mexico’s governor Michelle Lujan Grisham had just issued a directive mandating the state’s child welfare department seek custody of all newborns who had been exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero. Some parents wondered whether medications that they were taking for addiction recovery, such as methadone, would flag their cases. Healthcare providers wondered whether the fentanyl in an epidural counted as a drug exposure. Bitsinnie supports families as a policy manager at the non-profit organization Bold Futures, which advocates for policies that keep families together. Research shows that children prenatally exposed to substances do best when they can remain in their families and receive supportive services to treat any withdrawal symptoms they experience. Bitsinnie is also a member of the Navajo nation, and she immediately noticed that the new directive appeared to be in tension with laws protecting the sovereignty of New Mexico’s Native tribes. Those laws stipulate that tribes must be immediately notified about a child welfare case involving a Native child so that they can take jurisdiction of cases involving their citizens. “How are we notifying families, tribes, nations, pueblos?” she wondered “The directive erodes important procedural safeguards for Indian families,” the ACLU wrote in an emergency petition it filed with New Mexico’s supreme court last month, noting that it “makes no reference to specific procedures and safeguards for Indian children and families established in state and federal law”. Nine tribes signed on to the lawsuit. Although the state supreme court declined to pause the governor’s mandate in early June, it will allow arguments on the case to proceed. The new directive also directly contradicted a law the state legislature had passed only months prior, directing the state’s healthcare authority – rather than its child welfare agency – to develop new rules for treating drug use during pregnancy. As states across the country have navigated the fallout of the opioid epidemic, they have struggled with how best to serve babies exposed to drugs during pregnancy. Medical professionals advocate keeping families together to prevent the stress of a traumatic separation and encourage parents to seek care rather than fearing punishment. Lawmakers, on the other hand, motivated b