This was published earlier on my other blog
By Trace Lara Hentz
American Indians know warfare. The
hair stands up on the back of the neck at the mere mention of several
deliberate massacres called Indian Wars in North America. It’s estimated
95% of the American Indian population was killed by war since first
contact.
Every Indian has heard the words:
the only good Indian is a dead Indian.
So if you can’t kill all the
Indians, you civilize them. (Like in the residential boarding schools.)
The earliest form of America’s
colonial warfare is when the missionary hand-delivers a message to a tribe:
Christianize or die. Tribes in New England convert and call themselves
the Praying Indians. For centuries, men in robes invaded with rosaries
and crucifixes. God’s men erect churches so they can teach Indian
communities their way and declare it’s illegal for Indians to do sweats or hold
ceremonies. The white God gave these orders.
From east to west, government
overseers and militias dole out rules, rations, and alcohol. The Great White
Father (America’s president) amends traditional hunting territories and instructs
Indians to farm, not hunt. Marched to isolated reservations on Trails of
Tears, many Indians starve (or die) en route. Treaties fence in the Indians so
rations of food and medicine would need to be delivered. One government agent in Minnesota says, “Let
them eat grass,” and steals their rations. The 38 Lakota men who fight to get
the rations back are hung in a mass execution, ordered by then-President
Abraham Lincoln.
Then a new round of messengers
arrived as religion-wearing ministries and government social workers. Their
message: Indians are not good enough to raise their own children. The Hopi
resist and 17 of their men get sent to Alcatraz. Wagon-loads of Indian children
are carried east or far enough away to be assimilated and taught in schools like
Haskell and Carlisle. Some kids never find their way back to their parents or
reservations. Generations of Indian kids are targets to be Christianized and
civilized by these schools.
In the same manner of warfare,
Indian children are placed in orphanages, foster homes or with non-Indian
parents. The American government creates the Indian Adoption Project (IAP) run
by Arnold Lyslo. These little Indian kids aren’t black or Asian but
exotic; their race is romanticized by Hollywood, and anxious adoptive parents
sign up. Couples who had trouble conceiving a baby could have one or two Indian
kids right away.
Lyslo travels to different states to
convince the social workers to line up white parents for the flood of Indian
kids being snatched for adoption. (In 16 states, 85% of Indian children were
removed from their tribal parents). 395 parents agree to take part in Lyslo’s
study and answer questions about their adopted Indian kids every year.
Lyslo claims poverty is the reason
these children needed to be “saved” and adopted. ARENA continues and expands
after the IAP. Thousands of Indian children are wiped from tribal rolls and
disappear into white communities. States seal their records and amend the
child’s birth certificate.
For over 30 years, Indian kids are the
lab rats for Lyslo’s human experiment, to see how well Indian children will
adapt being adopted. This warfare is called assimilation.
By 1976, American Indians go to
Congress with these abduction stories and ultimately create the Indian Child
Welfare Act.
