“1899 – Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1899, Part 1” (2017). US and Indian Relations. 51. https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/hornbeck_usa_2_e/51 “It is a wonderful work in which the Government is engaged, and a visit to the schools will astonish the most unsympathetic. On the reservation will be seen the half-naked, often filthy and vermin-infected, children brought…

The phrase “merciless Indian savages”, penned by Thomas Jefferson in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, is one of the most widely recognized examples of how the United States government has described Indigenous peoples. Yet it is only one of countless dehumanizing terms that have appeared in federal records, laws, policies, reports, and correspondence over the…