America ReFramed

(Gentle music)

Lutie

Everybody that comes to Lummi, I always say, "Well, who are you and what are you doing here, and how come you're here and away from home? What do you want?" And I do that to everybody, no matter who they are. I guess because we've been hurt so many times in our lives, as Native people, and we have the mistrust. You have to gain your trust in order for some of us to speak.

Archival voice

Here's your (indistinct) Use these pieces for the chokers.

Lutie

We were forbid to do our traditional beliefs, and our people were put in jail for practicing our belief. (gentle music) It's not an easy thing to talk about. We were forced to go to school. Kids were pulled out of their homes.

Some of them not even knowing, the families not even knowing where their children were. The churches and the government took our kids and put them in foster care, foster homes.

Narrator

I grew up knowing the terrible history that the US has with its Indigenous people and my family. After centuries of stolen land and genocide, our people did not die out. We survived, an obstacle to manifest destiny.

So the US came up with a solution to get rid of us

absorb and assimilate.

Man

So the US came up with a solution to get rid of us

On the one hand, we have the Navajo as we find him in the desert. Few of these boys and girls have ever seen a white man, yet, through the agencies of the government, they are being rapidly brought from their state of comparative savagery and barbarism, to one of civilization. ♪ John Brown had a little Indian ♪ ♪ John Brown had a little Indian ♪ ♪ John Brown had a little Indian ♪ ♪ One little Indian boy ♪

Narrator

So the US came up with a solution to get rid of us

The Indian Adoption Project began in 1958 as a government effort to remove Native children from their families and place them in white homes.

Man off camera

So the US came up with a solution to get rid of us

For decades, Indian parents and their children have been at the mercy of abusive action of local, state, federal, and private agency officials. Between 25 and 35% of all American Indian children are removed from their families. Welfare agencies seemed to have operated on the premise that most Indian children would really be better off growing up non-Indian. It has been called, by some, cultural genocide.