Why is the right suddenly interested in Native American adoption law? | Nick Estes

A 1978 law tried to remedy adoption practices created to forcibly assimilate Native children. Now conservative lawyers are arguing that the law constitutes reverse racism'

George Armstrong Custer of the Seventh Cavalry was infamous during the nineteenth-century Indian wars for riding into the enemy camp, holding Native women, children and elders hostage at gunpoint, and forcing the surrender of the tribe. He systematically attacked and captured civilians to crush Indigenous resistance, which is partly how he defeated the Cheyenne at the Battle of Washita River in 1868. Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho warriors later killed Custer as he fled after trying the same hostage-taking ploy at the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876.

Attacking noncombatants, especially children, to enable the conquest of land by destroying the family, and therefore Indigenous nations, wasn't unique to Custer or the US military.