"We were buoyed by former Assistant Secretary Echo Hawk's commitment, made not only to us but also to other members of Congress who expressed concern over this serious issue, and awaited the outcome of such a summit. Fourteen months have passed since our initial inquiry and it appears that a summit, or stakeholder meeting of any kind, has yet to materialize."

More than 33 years after Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, American Indian children in Utah are still being removed from their homes and placed in foster care far too often – a troubling statistic that is the focus of the state's tribes and government officials. True, there has been a vast improvement in out-of-home placements over those decades. In 1976, two years before passage of the act, American Indian children in Utah were 1,500 times more likely to be in foster care than other children in the state, said Utah Appeals Court Judge William Thorne, who spoke March 16 at the first Indian Child Welfare Conference to be held in Salt Lake City. Today, American Indian children are four times more likely to be in foster care, a rate still significant enough to place Utah in the top 10 states for disproportionate rates.

"I especially ask the remnant of the house of Israel, the descendants of the people of the Book of Mormon, wherever you may be, to read and reread the Book of Mormon."