Why history matters...In late 1872, General William T. Sherman deemed any Native American living outside a designated reservation-as defined by the US Government - a criminal and a “hostile.” 
He further proposed that Native American children be taken from captured parents as a consequence of their failure to comply with US reservation policy and to further the children’s transformation from a life as “unqualified savages.”
Francis Walker, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at the time, wrote to his boss, the Secretary of the Interior, “I gravely doubt whether the law of the land or the public sentiment of the country would justify parents being permanently deprived of their children..” #DoNotGiveIn
