Full Description
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American Indians in the United States and Aboriginal people in Australia suffered a common experience at the hands of state authorities: the removal of their children to institutions in the name of assimilation. Although officially characterized as benevolent, these policies often inflicted great trauma on indigenous families and ultimately served the settler nations' larger goals of consolidating control over indigenous peoples and their lands.
White Mother to a Dark Race examines the key roles white women played in these removal policies. Government officials, missionaries, and reformers justified the removal of indigenous children in particularly gendered ways by focusing on the supposed deficiencies of indigenous mothers, the alleged barbarity of indigenous men, and the lack of a patriarchal nuclear family in indigenous societies. Often they deemed white women the most appropriate agents to carry out child-removal policies. Inspired by the maternalist movements of the era, many white women were eager to serve as surrogate mothers to indigenous children and maneuvered to influence public policy affecting indigenous people. Although some white women developed caring relationships with indigenous children and others became critical of government policies, many became ensnared in this insidious colonial policy.
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Preface: White Mother to a Dark Race
Acknowledgments
A Note on Terms
Abbreviations
1. Gender and Settler Colonialism in the North American West and Australia
2. Designing Indigenous Child Removal Policies
3. The Great White Mother
4. The Practice of Indigenous Child Removal
5. Intimate Betrayals
6. Groomed to Be Useful
7. Maternalism in the Institutions
8. Out of the Frying Pan
9. Challenging Indigenous Child Removal
Epilogue
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
