In Re Santos Y.

Vito A. Constanzo, Holland and Knight, San Francisco, for Interveners and Respondents, on behalf of the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa Indians.

Christie Parker & Hale, Irvine, Brian Brookey; Native American Rights Fund and Mark C. Tilden as Amici Curiae on behalf of Interveners.

Janette Freeman Cochran, Pasadena, for Minor under appointment of the Court of Appeal.

BOREN, P.J.

The trial court, feeling compelled by the Indian Child Welfare Act, ordered the Minor in this dependency case removed from the home of the only parents the Minor knows and transferred to a home on a Chippewa Indian reservation in Minnesota. We apply the "existing Indian family doctrine" and the doctrine of waiver to reverse the trial court's placement order.

In a hearing under Welfare and Institutions Code section 366.26, [1] the trial court terminated parental rights and, under authority of the Indian Child Welfare Act (the ICWA or the Act) (25 U.S.C. ง 1901 et seq.), ordered Santos Y. (hereafter the Minor) removed from his foster adoptive home with his de facto parents, Arturo G. and Lucila G. (also known as Lucila C.) (hereafter Appellants), and placed in a pre-adoptive home on the Grand Portage…