ACLU Oral Statement for Panel Discussion on the Negative Impact of Colonialism at the 51st Session of the UN Human Rights Council

The ACLU delivered a video statement during the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council, which held a panel discussion on the Negative Impact of the Legacies of Colonialism on the Enjoyment of Human Rights (HRC RES. 48/7). The statement was delivered by Ms. Theodora Simon, Advocate for the Racial and Economic Justice Program at the ACLU of Northern California and an enrolled citizen of the Navajo nation.

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Transcript:

I‘m Tedde Simon, an Advocate with the American Civil Liberties Union and an enrolled citizen of the Navajo nation.

Throughout history, the US government has continually sought to eradicate tribes, erase tribal culture, and destroy Indigenous peoples’ futures in order to settle and colonize this land.

A main tool of this has always been the forced assimilation of Indigenous children.

In severing Native children from their homes and tribes, cleansing them of their Indigenous identity, and forcing them to adopt western cultural norms, Indigenous lifeways would fade in history. And tribes would cease to exist, replaced by US settlers.

From the early 1800s to the middle of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children were violently torn from their families and sent to government institutions designed to violently assimilate them. Children as young as four years old faced brutal punishment for speaking their Indigenous languages or engaging in any cultural or religious practices.

Later, the Indian Adoption Project was created explicitly to adopt Native children into white homes. By the early 1970s, 80% of Native American families living on reservations had lost at least one child.

There is not a Native person alive today not impacted by policies of forced child removal.

While little has been done to redress past injustices, the US has made some progress towards preventing future harms on this scale. But today, even those modest efforts are under attack. In the case Brackeen v Haaland, the US Supreme Court will decide whether the Indian Child Welfare Act, designed to help Indigenous people preserve our tribes and our culture, is lawful. This case threatens to strike at the heart of tribal sovereignty and the future of Indigenous communities by returning to a time when Native children are routinely and lawfully severed from their communities.

The US government can never undo the damage of conquest and colonialism, but it is obligated to at minimum prevent further harm.