In re Declaring Corneliusen

MR. JUSTICE JOHN C. HARRISON

delivered the Opinion of the Court.

This is an appeal from an order of the district court of the sixteenth judicial district, county of Prairie, declaring four children of Wilma Jean Corneliusen to be dependent and neglected children, and awarding custody, care and control to the State Welfare Department.

Wilma Jean Corneliusen, the mother of the four children, is a 32 year old woman of Indian heritage. Her early life was spent in a Catholic convent where she received a high school education. Sometime after graduation from high school in South Dakota in 1959, she…