I attended a discussion forum tonight entitled “Vectors of Violence: Persecution and Complacency in Nazi Germany and the Great Plains.” The discussion featured several scholars in various fields of study including the removal of Native American tribes (specifically the Cheyenne) from Unites Sates territories, the Holocaust, and immigration policy in America today. A discussant response was given by a scholar with expertise in Geography and Anthropology. There were common threads among each of these topics, namely the consequences of trauma and removal of specific groups of people through different periods of time. It is important to understand our past and how things came to be so that history doesn’t repeat itself. And yet here we are in 21^st century America facing the separation, disintegration, and relocation of entire families due to current immigrant policies.

In 1879 the Cheyenne were driven off their lands in the Black Hills due to the white desire for gold. They were forced to relocate to Oklahoma where they had no knowledge of the land and no resources to feed and sustain themselves. They were stripped of autonomy, agency, and power over their own fates. Many of them tried to return to South Dakota. They got as far as Nebraska and were stopped again by militants at Fort Robinson. Eventually they were starved in order to force them back to Oklahoma.

In Nazi Germany in the early 1940s Jews were persecuted through similar means. Jews were criminalized, stripped of their businesses, their rights, and eventually their homes. They were deported to concentration camps, their belongings looted and pillaged. Most were put to death through a final solution. The removal of the Jews was the most massive and comprehensive genocide in history.

Today Mexican immigrants are facing a similar fate. ICE and immigration policies are forcing families apart, Mexicans are being deported by the day with no warning and no chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. What is happening today is no different from the trauma experienced with the Cheyenne and the Jews. And this trauma has consequences. Aside from the emotional and physical trauma, family legacies, property, and future prosperity are being ripped from their beings. To not see the parallels of these anti-human acts of violence is to be blind to the reality of discrimination and injustice. The detention centers for immigrants today are not much different from the concentration camps of World War 2 or the reservations of the Cheyenne. They are built to contain and dehumanize a people. There is no privacy in these centers and there is nothing to do but sit and wait for months on end. To make matters worse, these are for-profit centers being paid for with tax-payer money. We are funding this inhumane ripping apart of an entire culture of people in this country…simply because we have believed the lie that Mexican immigrants consist of nothing but bad hombres and free-loaders…never mind that they pay taxes and do hard labor that nobody else will do.

We must recognize the methods of warfare being used through weapons of rhetoric and symbols in order to divide us as a collective people so that minorities are conquered and, ultimately, controlled. This concept is not new. Among the Cheyenne, whites used the terms hostile and blood-thirsty savages to demonize the tribes. When the Cheyenne broke out of their holding facilities in Nebraska, they called it a break out. Whites repurposed it and changed it to “outbreak” in order to insinuate that Native Americans were diseased and had the potential to overtake the white population. Among the Jews, Nazi Germany coined the term “protective custody” to insinuate that whites needed to be protected from Jewish people in order to justify the deportation of them. They had already begun the campaign of criminalizing Jews much like Trump did in 2016 by calling Mexicans “bad hombres.” The weaponry of language has long been an effective tool of oppression among different groups of people.

Another step towards preventing these horrendous acts of discrimination and criminalization of whole groups of people includes an acknowledgement of the past. Canada, specifically Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has recently made public and open apologies to indigenous people for past tragedies. This needs to happen in our country, and it needs to happen in a very public way, being covered by all media outlets. We need to extend a very public and official policy to various groups that have been oppressed in our past, and we must pay reparations. By taking away land, money, culture, agency, etc, we have stripped whole groups of people (i.e. blacks, Native Americans) of building on a legacy of prosperity. They were simply denied that option. Their ability to prosper and succeed as a people was severely undercut and has never recovered…hence, reparations.

Lastly, we all need to demand these changes. One of the scholars from tonight quoted Primo Levi saying,

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

Silence is complicity. We all need to be speaking out when we hear or see injustice. Fear is a powerful tool of manipulation, but we can stand against that tactic. We can reach out to our neighbors, take their hands, and form a protective circle around their well-being, their heritage, their culture, and their families. We need to expel colonialism and tribalism and adopt a more humanist perspective of communing and living. We need to be warriors of truth, justice, reconciliation, and peace. We need to acknowledge the trauma of removal and how it not only affects an entire people, but how it affects our country in negative ways. We need to demand that this violence stop in this era.

I find it so important to reflect on these forums and talks so that the conversation is captured and firmly implanted in my mind. There is so much to learn from others, especially experts who have so much perspective to give in any given topic. This was a free event. To have access to the intellectual and philosophical minds of our day is a gift. I am grateful for my education and even more grateful for the opportunities of being an alumni and having access like this. There is always more to learn and more perspective to gain in order to better our world and make sure it is not only livable for our children but thriving.