A friend shares this video about "Sorry Day" in Australia. The day is dedicated to Aboriginal people, victims of a European (white) policy of trying to "civilize" them by removing children from their parents, to be brought up in boarding schools, among white families, etc. The failed Australian policy made me think not only of similar 19th-century policies in the United States, but of a much earlier, perhaps more innocent proposal made by commissioners of the British colonies of Maryland and Virginia to members of the Six Nations, Iroquois, in 1744. Here is the Native American response to it:  

“We know that you esteem highly the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced that you mean to do us Good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you who are wise, must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of things and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our Ideas of this kind of Education happen not to be the same as yours.

“We have had some Experience of it. Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces: they were instructed in all your Sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad Runners; ignorant of every means of living in the woods…neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counsellors, they were totally good for nothing.

“We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline in accepting it; and, to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them.”

— The Chiefs of Indians of the Six Nations at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in response to an offer from the commissioners of Maryland and Virginia to educate twelve young Indian men at William & Mary College, June 17 1744. (We put this quote on page 33 of a history text, now out of print. West Virginia: A History for Beginners, by John Alexander Williams.)