SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Former U.S. Senator James Abourezk has been released from the hospital to receive at-home hospice care, a news release from the Abourezk family said. 

The former U.S. Representative (1971-73) and Senator (73-79) from South Dakota will turn 92 on Feb. 24.

“He will be in the care of a hospice team from a Sioux Falls hospital, along with his wife Sanaa Abourezk and members of his family,” the news release from the family said. 

Abourezk, a longtime Democrat, will be remembered as the author of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which passed in Congress in 1978. The act tried to preserve Indian families and their tribal culture by arranging for the placement of Indian children in homes of their cultures, as well as to reunite them with families. 

Abourezk was generally viewed as a critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He worked vigorously to bring home POW’s from the Vietnam war.

In 1974, TIME magazine named Sen. Abourezk as one of the “200 Faces for the Future.”