The mission of the INDIAN CREEK TRIBE CHICKAMAUGA CREEK & CHEROKEE NATION INC.
(CCCNI) Children and Family Services Administration (CFSA) is to fulfill the social responsibilities and obligations of the Tribe.  CFSA programs are designed to preserve, protect, and strengthen the children and families of the Tribe.  CFSA programs strive to empower individuals and families, cultivate nurturing home environments, and educate individuals, families, and communities.  CFSA promotes culture awareness and identification and preserves the integrity of the family unit for the purpose of creating an environment which allows maximum opportunity for positive development.

Director -

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) ((Pub.L. 95-608, 93 Stat. 3071, enacted November 8, 1978), codified at 25 U.S.C. § 1901–1963.) is a Federal law that governs jurisdiction over the removal of Native American (Indian) children from their families and/or the tribe.

ICWA gives tribal governments a strong voice concerning child custody proceedings which involve Indian children by allocating tribes exclusive jurisdiction over the case when the child resides on or is domiciled on the reservation or when the child is a ward of the tribe; and concurrent, but presumptive, jurisdiction over non-reservation Native Americans’ custody proceedings.

The ICWA was originally enacted bycongress in 1978 due to the high removal rate of Indian children from their traditional homes and essentially from Indian culture as a whole. Before the bill was enacted, as many as 25 to 35 percent of all Indian children were being removed from their Indian homes and placed in non-Indian homes, with presumably the absence of Indian culture. In some cases, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) paid the states to remove Indian children and to place them with non-Indian families and religious groups. Testimony in the House Committee for Interior and Insular Affairs showed that in some cases, the per capita rate of Indian children in foster care was up to nearly 16 times higher than the rate for non-Indians.If Indian children continued to be removed from Indian homes at this rate, tribal survival would continue to be threatened. Congress recognized this, and stated that the interests of tribal stability were as important as that of the best interests of the child. One of the factors in this judgment was that due to the differences in culture, what was in the best interest of a non-Indian child were not necessarily what was in the best interest of an Indian child, especially due to extended families and tribal relationships.