They were removed from their land and exterminated. They weren’t simply conquered and then taxed like subjects. Children were taken from parents and punished for speaking their own languages. Forced migrations, family separation, and cultural erasure were the tools used to commit genocide.

Native culture was targeted for extermination by governments that proudly described the ambition to erase that culture, their family structure and society from existence. It was so successful, few of those tribes remain at all and many of their cultural heritage sites, if known school at all are now an Arby’s, Tom Hortons, or a parking lot.