Alaska's high court reversed a decision to end a Native mother's parental rights — over how the state made its case

The Alaska Supreme Court has thrown out a decision terminating a Native mother's parental rights — not because it found her fit to parent, but because the state failed to justify breaking up her family the way the law for Native children requires.

In a July 2 opinion, the court reversed the termination of Viva G.'s rights to her young son, Raleigh, finding that the "cultural expert" the state put on the stand — a witness required under the Indian Child Welfare Act — gave testimony too thin to count. The expert, a tribal elder, voiced general concern about substance abuse and said the tribal council worried for the child's safety. But he never explained the tribe's own child-rearing standards, how Viva's conduct measured against them, or why the tribe's culture called for termination rather than another path.

That grounding is the whole point of the requirement. ICWA, passed in 1978 after generations of Native children were taken into non-Native homes — a history especially stark in Alaska — sets a high bar for removing a Native child, and demands expert testimony rooted in the child's own tribe's standards, so the decision isn't driven by dominant-culture assumptions. A tribe simply endorsing termination, the court held, is not the reasoned cultural analysis the law requires.

This was not a clean case. The record shows Viva was discharged from inpatient treatment for aggression and missed 71 drug tests. Raleigh, born in 2023 and treated for withdrawal at birth, has spent nearly his whole life in foster care, most recently with a member of his tribe. The ruling does not send him home; it returns the case to the lower court, leaving his future unsettled once more.

Justice Pate dissented, arguing the testimony was adequate and that the majority risked second-guessing findings that belong to the trial judge.

For a child who has never known a permanent home, the wait starts again.