If the U.S. accuses China of forced assimilation of the Uyghur people, they can say “you did it too,” and they’d be right.
Early 20th century attempts to force Native Americans to become “white” are a dark chapter in American history. “Assimilation” was a dismal failure, and the formal policy was abandoned in the 1930s, although informal efforts continued long afterward (read details here).
It was done in part by kidnapping their children and putting them in boarding schools, where their hair was shorn, they were forbidden to speak their language, and prevented from learning their tribal cultures and traditions (read story here, and see photo below).
For purposes of clarity, Native Americans’ long hair has religious significance to them, and cutting their hair is a symbolic act of stripping them of their religious belief. The white people who ran the boarding schools knew this, and the hair-shearing was deliberate, and strictly enforced.
And to put the boarding school practices in context, how would you like the government to kidnap your children, deprive you of any contact with them, and force them to be something different from you? That’s what our government did to the Native Americans, at the same time it was trying to disband the reservations, and push Native Americans into the country’s workforce.
That cruel and disastrous policy led to Congress enacting the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (details here), which gives tribes control over custody, foster care, and adoption placements of Native American children, and first dibs on placing tribal minors.
Now Texas and some white couples are suing to overturn the provisions of ICWA giving preference to Native American families in adoptions of Native American children — and the Supreme Court’s conservatives could throw out the right of tribes to keep their own children within the tribe. (Read story here.)
White families have no business adopting Native American children, when there are Native American families willing and able to take them.
As for Texas, this is just another chapter in the age-old story of state-federal conflict. After the Indians were subdued, the reservations were created under federal authority to protect them from state governments and local white residents, who were often very hostile toward the Native Americans. In some cases, they had to be protected by federal troops. Texas should butt out, and if they won’t, the state should be sent packing.
The issue before the Supreme Court is framed in the language of 14th Amendment equal protection. That’s a misreading of the amendment’s intent. “Equal protection” doesn’t mean or imply that everybody has to be white. A ruling in the plaintiffs’ favor would revive the ugly and racist policy of assimilation, and there’s nothing equal about that.
But what it finally all boils down to is white families have no business ripping Native American children out of their culture and raising them to be white. That won’t work, and it’s profoundly racist in a way a white family claiming a “right” to do that can’t possibly comprehend. Even if no Native American family can be found to take the child and placement with a white family is necessary, a family that would sue for a “right” to adopt Native American children is the last place I’d send that child to.
In the past, the Supreme Court has upheld tribal rights, which are created by Congress, and it should do so again. But I don’t trust this court, and I especially don’t trust the six Catholic justices who think the framers of the Constitution created a society only for white Christians. They did no such thing, nor can it be done, no matter what the court decides. Whether the justices like it or not, we are a pluralistic society of different ethnicities, cultures, and religious; and any effort to elevate one above the others should be repudiated.
That is the true meaning of the 14th Amendment and its equality guarantees. In this context, “equal protection” means Indian children get to grow up in Indian communities and families.
Related story: A GOP congressman is calling for a military blockade of a reservation that objects to a border wall on its land, read story here.
