The Destruction Of American Indian Families

Filled with the detailed history of the Indian Adoption Project, Indian Removal Act, Indian Boarding Schools and Institutions, along with the involvement of the Child Protective Services to assimilate Indian Children into a non Indian culture. Government research reveals the corruption of the American people and their attempts to destroy the Native American Families, Tribes, Cultures, and the greed and/or lack of understanding behind the Destruction of the American Indian Family. This book gives a great amount of detail along with further resources in the footnotes, for those interested in continuing their education in this field.

The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man." This fully revised edition of Education for Extinction offers the only comprehensive account of this dispiriting effort, and incorporates the last twenty-five years of scholarship. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments, relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender rituals, football contests, and industrial training. Especially poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance. Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by white men. The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision. Partly because of persistent student resistance, but also partly because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically. Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested in Western history, Native American studies, American race relations, education history, and multiculturalism.

"Examination of the post-WWII international phenomenon of governments legally taking indigenous children away from their primary families and placing them with adoptive parents in the U.S., Canada, and Australia"--

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, America finds itself on the brink of a new racial consciousness. The old, unquestioned confidence with which individuals can be classified (as embodied, for instance, in previous U.S. census categories) has been eroded. In its place are shifting paradigms and new norms for racial identity. Eva Marie Garroutte examines the changing processes of racial identification and their implications by looking specifically at the case of American Indians.

An outstanding resource for contemporary American Indians as well as students and scholars interested in community and ethnicity, this book dispels the myth that all American Indians live on reservations and are plagued with problems, and serves to illustrate a unique, dynamic model of community formation. City-dwelling American Indians are part of both the ongoing ethnic history of American cities in the 20th and 21st centuries and the ancient history of American Indians. Today, more than three-quarters of American Indians live in cities, having migrated to urban areas in the 1950s because of influences such as the Termination and Relocation policy of the federal government, which was designed to end the legal status of tribes, and because of the draw of employment, housing, and educational opportunities. This book documents how North America was home to many ancient urban Indian civilizations and progresses to describing contemporary urban American Indian communities, lifestyles, and organizations. The book concentrates on contemporary urban American Indian communities and the modern-day experiences of the individuals who live within them. The authors outline urban Indian identity, relationships, and communities, drawing connections between ancient urban Indian civilizations hundreds of years ago to the activism of contemporary urban Indians. As a result, readers will gain an in-depth understanding of both ancient and contemporary urban Indian communities; comprehend the differences, similarities, and overlap between reservation and urban American Indian communities; and gain insight into the key role of urban environments in creating ethnic community identities.

Winner of the 2021 Bancroft Prize and the 2021 Ridenhour Book Prize Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction Named a Top Ten Best Book of 2020 by the Washington Post and Publishers Weekly and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2020 A masterful and unsettling history of “Indian Removal,” the forced migration of Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s and the state-sponsored theft of their lands. In May 1830, the United States launched an unprecedented campaign to expel 80,000 Native Americans from their eastern homelands to territories west of the Mississippi River. In a firestorm of fraud and violence, thousands of Native Americans lost their lives, and thousands more lost their farms and possessions. The operation soon devolved into an unofficial policy of extermination, enabled by US officials, southern planters, and northern speculators. Hailed for its searing insight, Unworthy Republic transforms our understanding of this pivotal period in American history.

The “fascinating” #1 New York Times bestseller that awakened the world to the destruction of American Indians in the nineteenth-century West (The Wall Street Journal). First published in 1970, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee generated shockwaves with its frank and heartbreaking depiction of the systematic annihilation of American Indian tribes across the western frontier. In this nonfiction account, Dee Brown focuses on the betrayals, battles, and massacres suffered by American Indians between 1860 and 1890. He tells of the many tribes and their renowned chiefs—from Geronimo to Red Cloud, Sitting Bull to Crazy Horse—who struggled to combat the destruction of their people and culture. Forcefully written and meticulously researched, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee inspired a generation to take a second look at how the West was won. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dee Brown including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.