I absolutely agree that the these historical events and rules still impact our society today. It is easy to see in the segregation of neighborhoods, the inequalities in our education system and our healthcare system. Many of these events were familiar to me, however I was shocked to learn about the Adoption Era of Native peoples. As a social worker it is incomprehensible to me that racism would run so deep as to think it justified to remove children from healthy homes. The emotional impacts and trauma were evident on the adults interviewed. When I started grad school, it was often joked that social workers were simply stereotyped as the ones that take babies away from families. Never could I have imagined, that the Adoption Era may have led to that stereotype as it was the social workers taking children away in order to enforce racism and white supremacy. There is still much work to be done!
