As an organization dedicated to ending violence against Native women, the NIWRC continues to support the removal and renaming of statues, monuments, and imagery that glorify colonization, genocide, and conquest.

Violence against Native women was normalized by acts of war against Indian Nations and federal programs to assimilate Indigenous peoples.

The forcibly removal of Indian children from their homes to federal institutions referred to as “boarding schools,” the prosecution and incarceration of Native women for refusing to marry according to state laws, and the forced sterilization of Native women funded under federal programs are just a few examples of the government infrastructure supporting cultural genocide.

These federal programs and the Code of Indian Offenses reflected a dehumanization of Native women by the American public—its cultural icons such as Christopher Columbus.

While cultural symbols honoring historical figures, who committed genocide through the power of the US government are coming down across the nation, other symbols continue to stand.

Today we are joined by Rose Quilt to discuss this public reckoning with the truth of United States history.