Jad Abumrad (host) / main Radiolab host voice

Yeah, he goes tribe to tribe trying to convince them or force them, tell them they have no, there's no way out of it.

He argues that this will be best for all of them.

I remember this.

This was like out of e pluribus unum, like to integrate them into the whole.

They will melt into the wider culture.

That's what will save them.

Part of this was part of the social workers that were working in this period

They were working under the auspices of this thing called the Indian Adoption Project, which was very much about that idea of, like, you take these kids from their poor conditions and you connect them directly to white families that are looking to adopt.

So part of this was definitely top-down.

Very much.

In any case, the end result of this is that a third of these kids are being taken away.

There were literally communities where there were no children.

That's Terry Cross.

He's the executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association.

That's Marsha Zug again.

So what do you do?

Well, it's too massive a problem if you're trying to fight all these removals of kids on a case-by-case basis.

So Burt spent years— Walking the halls of Congress, literally.

So it does a lot, but basically when it comes to adoptions... ICWA has placement preferences.

If they say no?