Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
ICT's profile of Rosa Alvarez, tribal secretary of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and a former foster youth who now advocates for ICWA protections, is the kind of story Patty's journalism ethics demand: not a policy explainer, but a person. Alvarez describes her family's experiences across generations in the child welfare system, and what it meant when ICWA provided a framework for keeping Native children connected to their nations. As ICWA faces continued legal pressure, her voice is the one that should lead the coverage.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Adjustments to kinship care reimbursement rules are allowing more Native families to qualify for support when caring for relatives, and state officials report a measurable increase in Native foster homes as a result. ICT covered this as a quiet but real ICWA-adjacent win: when the financial barriers to keeping children within their extended family networks are lowered, more children stay connected to their nations. The story is light on specific voices, but the policy direction is worth tracking.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
Rosa Alvarez, tribal secretary of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and a former foster youth, shared her family's multi-generational history with the child welfare system in a profile republished by ICT from The Imprint. Alvarez's story is the kind of testimony that makes ICWA real: she is not an abstraction or a legal brief, she is a person whose family was separated by the same system that ICWA was designed to interrupt. The piece is a useful counterweight to the institutional framing that tends to dominate ICWA coverage.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
Adjustments to kinship care reimbursement rules are allowing more Native families to access support when they take in relatives or family friends, and a state official says the number of Native foster homes has increased as a result. ICT's reporting frames this as a quiet ICWA-adjacent win: when the financial barriers to kinship placement drop, more children stay within their communities and nations. The story is worth tracking as a model for what implementation, rather than litigation, can accomplish.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Adjustments to kinship care reimbursement rules in Oregon are allowing more Native families to access support when caring for relatives, resulting in a measurable increase in Native foster homes. ICT's coverage frames this as an ICWA-adjacent story: keeping Native children with Native families is the law's core purpose, and administrative rule changes that make that easier are worth tracking. The pattern may be replicable in Wisconsin.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Rosa Alvarez, tribal secretary of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and a former foster youth, shared her family's multi-generational experience in the child welfare system with The Imprint, and ICT carried the story. Her account is exactly the kind of ordinary-voice testimony that makes ICWA's stakes concrete: not a legal abstraction but a family's survival. Patty, you flagged ICWA as important to all nations — this is the human face of that policy.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
A new petition is asking the Supreme Court to revisit the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act, three years after the Court upheld it in Brackeen v. Haaland. ICT has the story, and the threat is real: the current Court's composition has shifted, and the challengers are using new procedural angles. ICWA matters to every Wisconsin nation, and Patty has noted it belongs in the brief regardless of where it fits in the chapter structure.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
ICT reports that a new petition has reached the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act as unconstitutional, just three years after the Court upheld ICWA in Brackeen v. Haaland. The new challenge appears to come from a different doctrinal angle, and the current Court's composition makes the outcome genuinely uncertain in a way it was not before. This is a story to watch closely: ICWA is the floor beneath tribal child welfare programs across the country, and another round of Supreme Court litigation would consume enormous tribal legal resources regardless of outcome.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund released its 25-year retrospective on the Tribal Supreme Court Project this week, documenting a quarter century of coordinated advocacy before the nation's highest court on behalf of tribal sovereignty. The report is a useful reference document, and its timing alongside the new ICWA challenge is pointed: the Project exists precisely because the Supreme Court is not a neutral forum, and tribal nations need sustained, coordinated legal strategy to navigate it. Worth downloading for your files.