Remembering the Indian Removal Act: Why We Still Tend the Future

Today marks the anniversary of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, one of the most devastating pieces of legislation in United States history.  Signed into law on May 28, 1830, the Indian Removal Act authorized the forced removal of Indigenous Nations from our ancestral homelands throughout the Southeast and beyond.  Under the guise of "voluntary" agreements and federal policy, entire communities were displaced from lands they had stewarded for generations.  The result was the forced migration of tens of thousands of Indigenous people, the Chahta (Choctaw), Mvskoke (Creek), Aniyvwiyaʔi (Cherokee), Chikashsha (Chickasaw) and Yat'siminoli/Istisemole (Seminole) Nations.

Many know this history through the Trail of Tears. What is often left out is that removal was not a single event.  It was a coordinated system of policies, laws and violence designed to clear land for white settlement, expansion and profit. Families were separated.  Sacred sites were abandoned.  Languages, ceremonies and ways of life were disrupted.  Thousands died from disease, starvation, exposure and exhaustion.

The Indian Removal Act was never only about land.  Land was the target but Indigenous identity was the obstacle.  To remove Indigenous peoples from our homelands required more than physical displacement.  It required attacking the relationships that made Indigenous communities Indigenous in the first place: relationships to language, culture, ceremony, kinship, foodways, governance and place.  Removal was followed by boarding schools, allotment policies, forced assimilation, religious suppression and countless efforts to erase Indigenous peoples altogether.  The goal was not simply to take what was beneath our feet.  The goal was to sever us from who we are.  And yet we are still here.

Today the systems that made the Indian Removal Act possible have simply changed form not disappeared.  We see them in the continued extraction of resources from Indigenous lands without consent. We see them in environmental racism that places toxic industries near Indigenous, Black and other marginalized communities.  We see them in attacks on tribal sovereignty, the criminalization of cultural practices, the underfunding of Indigenous healthcare and education, the ongoing erasure of Indigenous histories from public memory.

Colonialism didn’t end.  It adapted.  But so did we.

Every time an Indigenous language is spoken, every time traditional foods are cultivated, every time a ceremony is carried forward, every time a child learns where they come from, removal fails.  This is why cultural revitalization matters.  Culture is not a relic of the past.  It is a living technology of survival.  It carries memory, belonging, resilience and instruction for future generations.  When communities reclaim ancestral knowledge, they are not simply preserving history.  They are rebuilding relationships that colonial systems attempted to destroy.

At Tending Futures, this understanding is at the heart of why we exist.  Our work is rooted in the belief that healing and liberation require more than addressing present-day harms.  We must also nurture the cultural, spiritual and communal roots that sustain us.  Through birthwork, ancestral healing practices, herbal medicine, cultural education, intergenerational gatherings and community care, we participate in the ongoing work of cultural remembrance and renewal.

As an organization grounded in rematriation, we understand that restoration is about more than land.  It’s about restoring relationships to place, ancestry, one another and most importantly relationships to the knowledge systems that sustained our peoples long before colonization.  Every healing circle, every herbal clinic, every cultural gathering, every story shared between generations is an act of resistance against the forces that sought to erase us.

We tend the future because our ancestors fought for our existence.  We revitalize culture because it was targeted for destruction.  We create spaces for Black and Indigenous communities to gather, heal and thrive because our survival has always depended on one another.

On this anniversary of the Indian Removal Act, we honor those who endured removal, those who resisted it and those who carried our traditions forward despite every effort to erase them.  Their survival is our inheritance.  What we choose to cultivate today will become the inheritance of future generations.  May we continue tending it with care.

If you believe cultural revitalization, ancestral healing and community care are essential parts of collective liberation, we invite you to support the work of Tending Futures.  Together we can ensure that what colonization sought to erase continues to bloom.

You can make a contribution to support our work here.

Yakoke for helping us tend a future rooted in memory, healing and self-determination.