This isn’t the first time the United States split up families
The nation has a legacy of separating Native American children, parents
Everyone living in the United States does so on indigenous lands. The same goes for Mexico and Canada, too.
Native American nations predate present-day political boundaries. In fact, several native nations have territories that overlap current borders, and many of the families currently crossing the border are from indigenous communities. In September 2016, families in detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement spoke at least 28 different indigenous languages.
We see friends, colleagues and news outlets decrying the recent family separations at the border as something new in the United States, but history tells us otherwise. Our nation has a legacy of splitting up families that long precedes the current human rights crisis.
In 1824, the U.S. government established the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the War Department to administer an assimilationist schooling program that officials believed would solve the “Indian problem.” Between 1869 and the 1970s, indigenous children attended 351 federal schools across 29 states. In 1902, the commissioner of Indian Affairs, William A. Jones, expressed no shame about taking these children from their homes:
“These pupils are gathered from the cabin, the wickiup and the tepee. Partly by cajolery and partly by threats; partly by bribery and partly by fraud; partly by persuasion and partly by force, they are induced to leave their homes and their kindred to enter these schools and take upon themselves the outward semblance of civilized life.”
Upon arriving at school, children were forced to give up their home clothes, cut their hair, speak only English and, in the early versions of the schools, choose English names and practice Christianity. Early boarding schools’ curricula degraded native cultures, and children faced corporal punishment if they spoke their own languages. The schools often lacked adequate medical and food supplies, resulting in the deaths of untold numbers of indigenous children. To enforce enrollment, federal agents sometimes withheld food from native parents who did not send their children to the government schools.
“This is not just Native American history; this is American history,” Christine Diindiisi McCleave, executive officer of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told us. “We all need to know the truth about what happened in this country, especially in light of the current events with children being taken into custody at the southern border. We have to know where we’ve been to know where we’re going.”
Even after the government stops taking children from their parents, the practice can have consequences that last for a lifetime. The National Indian Education Association has noted that indigenous families still confront the intergenerational impacts of these policies.
In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act to finally address the devastating numbers of native children removed from their families and placed outside their tribal communities. Forty years later, however, some states continue to disrupt indigenous families — in 2011, for example, native children were 15 percent of South Dakota’s child population but more than 50 percent of children in state care.
A recent Native American Child Welfare Association statement notes the parallels between the current family separations at the border and the history of removing indigenous children from their families by states and private adoption agencies.
We heed Northern Cheyenne elder Henrietta Mann’s guidance: “This is the home generations upon generations of my ancestors first loved and now share with the many who came seeking a new life and perhaps sanctuary, sometimes carrying only hope in their hearts. It is that hope and the great capacity we have been given to love one another and to revere each small grain of soil of this sacred landscape that makes this country good, welcoming, safe and honorable. It is time to stop the trajectory of yet another heartbreaking road to historical trauma.”
We join our voices with Henrietta Mann, NIEA, NICWA, the Native American Rights Fund and the National Congress of American Indians. We must work to swiftly reunite families and to heal the pain already caused through these separations. Instead of choosing trauma and disruption, let us instead embrace love, goodness and honor, welcoming the families who have traveled to us seeking safe harbor.
To add your support, please consider calling your representatives in Congress, donating to an organization that supports separated families or volunteering with an advocacy organization like the Texas Civil Rights Project or RAICES Texas. McCoy is a Ph.D. candidate in American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her great-grandparents attended Fort Totten Indian Industrial School and Wahpeton Indian School. Shear is an assistant professor of social studies education at Penn State University-Altoona. Her work focuses on the presentations of Indigenous peoples and nations in social studies curriculum, including how state standards and textbooks narrate the histories of the boarding schools.