The Changing Legal Environment and ICWA in Alaska: A Regional Study

By 1974, according to the Association of American Indian Affairs, approximately 25 to 35 percent of all Indian children were separated from their families and placed in foster homes, adoptive homes, or institutions.The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed in 1978 in response to this overwhelming evidence that Native children were being adopted out of tribes at alarming rates. ICWA mandates that tribes and Alaska Native villages have jurisdiction over their child welfare cases, and mandates certain rules when Native children's cases are heard in state courts, including permitting the tribe to intervene in the state case at any time, higher levels of proof, and special evidentiary requirements. This report describes the current implementation status of ICWA in Interior and Southcentral Alaska, with an analysis of the changing legal environment and its significance for Alaska Native villages. In Alaska, recent changes in state law and state court acceptance of the tribal role in ICWA proceedings has legally eliminated state resistance to tribes transferring cases from state court to their own forums, and may lead to a change in the numbers of cases heard in tribal courts in Alaska.Bureau of Indian AffairsAcknowledgements / Introduction / Historical Analysis of ICWA Implementation in Alaska / Ethnographic analysis of ICWA implementation in Alaska / Conclusion / Recommendations / Bibliography / Appendix: Eklutna Questionnair

Leveraging Change: Increasing Access to Arts Education in Rural Areas

In 2015, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) received funding in the first round of collective impact grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to launch the pilot initiative, Leveraging Change: Improving Access to Arts Education in Rural Areas. The authors conducted research which included a literature review and interviews with arts education leaders in rural areas. Using the research compiled through this process, a pilot convening was held in western Massachusetts' Berkshire County to activate ideas, stimulate the exchange of information, and generate cross-sector collaboration focused on strengthening support for arts education in the region. This working paper is a summary of the research results and insights gleaned from this pilot initiative

Ambiguities in the HBT approach to determine the interaction regions

The necessary and sufficient condition for a quantity to be measurable by the HBT method is given and discussed.Comment: Report at the conference QCD08, July 2008, LateX 8 pages, no figure

Employment Contract Matching: An Analysis of Dual Earner Couples and Working Households

We explore the significance of intra-couple and intra -household influences on three broad types of employment contracts: self-employment, performance related pay, and salaried employment. Individuals may pool income risk with their partners by holding a diversified portfolio of employment contracts, introducing intra-household risk pooling. Alternatively, employment contract matching may occur whereby individuals within couples or households are employed under similar contracts. Our empirical analysis, based on cross-section data drawn from the British Family Expenditure Surveys 1996 to 2000, provides evidence of employment contract matching both within dual earner couples and, to a lesser extent, in the context of working household members.Dual Earner Couples; Employment Contract Matching; Self-employment; Assortative Mating

Who are the Self-employed? A New Approach

Whilst the individual supply-side characteristics of the self-employed are well documented, the literature has largely neglected (or mis-specified) demand-side aspects. Our econometric framework, based on the parameterised DOGEV model, allows us to separately, and simultaneously, model supply and demand-side influences. We show that whilst individual characteristics are important determinants of type of employment contract held, there are important contract-specific factors influencing the contract an individual is employed under. Our results suggest that workers may be "captive" to particular types of employment because of the sectors in which they work, the number of hours they prefer to work and their ethnicity.self-employment, captivity

Lisa Brown in a Senior Piano Recital

This is the program for the senior piano recital of Lisa Brown. Violinist Candace Burton assisted the performance. The recital took place on January 31, 1977, on the Mabee Fine Arts Center Recital Hall