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These are actual tiny child handcuffs used by the US government to restrain captured Native American children and drag them away from their families to send them to boarding schools where their identities, cultures and their rights to speak their Native languages were forcefully stripped away from them. (Photo: US government)
The recent right-wing militia occupation of federal land in Oregon once again reminds us that we actually live in what historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz refers to as the US “settler colonial state.” Amazingly, Ammon Bundy and his clan took over this land with the claim that they were the rightful owners. With typical settler arrogance, they neglected the historical truth – that the Indigenous people of the Northern Paiute nation were there long before a single imperialist ship set sail from Europe. As journalist Simon Moya-Smith has pointed out “for Native America being overlooked is nothing new. Our voices are seldom in the mainstream, our issues disregarded … this country has yet to recognize our humanity.”
Critical accounts of police abuse and mass incarceration often suffer from a similar syndrome, albeit with much better intentions. They overlook the particulars of structural violence that have been visited upon Native peoples for many centuries, and how this violence relates to but also differs from the experience of Black people. Adding the Native American dimension to framing the analysis of the criminal legal system adds new insights and offers some important lessons for alternatives.
— source truthout.org | James Kilgore | Feb 7, 2016