How Indigenous Child-Removal Practices in PostWar North America Helped Lay a Foundation for Contemporary Migrant Family Separation Policies in the United States of America

Abstract: The United States of America was founded on imperialist ideals that favoured European protestant values and blood. Meanwhile the Native peoples of the lands on which the very country was founded were treated as a “problem”. In times of conflict children are often the most vulnerable group, suffering great trauma and distress. This paper has outlined the origins of policies that would exploit and traumatise Native American children by removing them from their families, effectively violating their rights. Evidence is presented through historical analysis that these practices are so ingrained in the American political system that is was with relative easy that contemporary policies were passed, that would violate the human rights of Indigenous blooded immigrant children by forcibly separating them from their parents and subjecting them to subhuman conditions in migrant detention centers along the US-Mexico border.