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Speaker 1: The day that the social worker came and got me,

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Speaker 1: drove into the driveway and I was toddling around, and

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Speaker 1: she just simply got out of the car, scooped me up,

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Speaker 1: and put me in the car.

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Speaker 2: Forty years ago, Congress passed a law to stop the

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Speaker 2: systemic removal of Native children from their families and tribes,

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Speaker 2: the Indian Child Welfare Act. But recently a small group

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Speaker 2: of people started saying it was a bad law. In

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Speaker 2: the last decade, it's been challenged more times than the

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Speaker 2: Affordable Care Act.

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Speaker 3: Shock Waves are going through the Native American community. That's

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Speaker 3: after a federal judge calls landmark legislation involving Native American

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Speaker 3: adoption illegal.

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Speaker 2: For the past four years, I've been following one case

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Speaker 2: that's now sitting on the steps of the Supreme Court.

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Speaker 2: How did this small step towards addressing generations of family

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Speaker 2: separation become a target. We put a team together and

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Speaker 2: spent a year investigating. We talked to caseworkers, lawyers, background sources,

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Speaker 2: family members, over one hundred people. We submitted sixty four

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Speaker 2: year requests spread over ten thousand pages of court documents.

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Speaker 2: Every time I thought I got to the bottom of it,

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Speaker 2: the bottom just got lower.

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Speaker 4: This case is affront for a bigger legal challenge mounted

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Speaker 4: by various conservative groups that are upset about all sorts

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Speaker 4: of federal rules and regulations, ranging from abortion rights to

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Speaker 4: the same sex marriage civil rights laws.

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Speaker 1: There is ultimately an oil and gas angle here.

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Speaker 5: If any country is not afraid, it should be because

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Speaker 5: this is the new frontier of trying to take away

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Speaker 5: everything that it means to build up an independent nation.

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Speaker 2: And we uncovered how a string of custody battles over

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Speaker 2: Native children became a federal lawsuit threatening everything from tribal

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Speaker 2: sovereignty to civil rights.

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Speaker 4: It's not about kids. It was never about kids.

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Speaker 2: I'm Rebecca Nagel Goheen, Dad de Lacayetrigue, La citizen of

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Speaker 2: Cherokee Nation. Last season on This Land, I had a

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Speaker 2: story to share with you. This season, I have a

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Speaker 2: story to uncover coming soon from Cricket Media. This Land

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Speaker 2: Season two. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.