We shouldn’t even have to be reminded of this. Not only is it true, but it wasn’t even that fucking long ago. By world history standards, the first Euro settlements in the western hemisphere were more or less yesterday. Speaking of, they came here to exploit resources, period, end of story. From the earliest Catholic “missions” (seeking mineral wealth) to the latter part of the fur trade, there was one goal: extract. To do that required rights to the land. To gain those rights required bypassing people, removing them, or, failing those, extermination. Further, it really helped if you had “cheap labor”, meaning, yes, slavery. During all of this, separation of families was a “natural” part of the wash.
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