Oklahoma Indian Child Welfare Act

This act governs child custody proceedings involving Indian children, covering foster care placement, termination of parental rights, and preadoptive and adoptive placement. It allocates jurisdiction between state courts and Indian tribes — providing for transfer of proceedings to tribal court, a tribe's right to intervene, and full faith and credit for tribal acts — and it conditions state proceedings on notice to the child's parent, Indian custodian, and tribe, appointed counsel for indigent parents and custodians, proof of efforts to prevent the breakup of the Indian family, and heightened evidentiary standards before a child may be placed or parental rights ended. It further prescribes the form and withdrawal of voluntary consent, ranked placement preferences favoring the extended family, the tribe, and other Indian homes, procedures to invalidate placements taken in violation of state or federal law, recordkeeping and reporting duties for the state child welfare agency, authority for agreements between that agency and tribes, emergency removal standards, and a rule that any federal law offering greater protection controls.

Editorial summary generated from the text of this act. It is not part of the statute — read the sections below for the operative language.