I have been following the case that brought the Indian Child Welfare Act to the Supreme Court with great interest ever since listening to Rebecca Nagle’s podcast This Land. In it she elucidates how custody battles over Native children are a thinly veiled attempt to threaten tribal sovereignty and civil rights. She and many others were holding their breath to see if Native communities would be denied their rights yet again, as the U.S. has done with such cruel consistency over the past 500 years. But, as Chase Iron Eyes describes so eloquently in the opening line of his story, when the ruling was announced, it was like “an enormous, collective sigh of relief from Native America.” The lawyer with the Lakota People’s Law Project wrote one of the many amicus briefs for the case. In his exclusive column for YES!, Iron Eyes explains the takeaways of the ruling and reminds readers that this breath of fresh air needs to restore and ready activists for the continued fight to uphold Native sovereignty.

Read the story here.