Indigenous Child Removal and Systematic Assimilation in the United States

Abstract

This paper examines the long history of attempts to assimilate Indigenous children in the United States. Assimilation and Indian child removal practices had a deeper and longer history dating back to Colonial America. These policies fed into a more stringent and culturally violent attempt by the U.S. to assimilate Native children in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This paper will analyze the Indian Boarding School System and Indian Adoption Project, and end with a look at federal government efforts to protect Native Children in the recent decades.