In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous communities in the United States and Australia suffered a common experience at the hands of state authorities: the removal of their children to institutions in the name of assimilating Native Americans and protecting Aboriginal people. Although officially characterized as benevolent, these government policies often inflicted great trauma on indigenous families and ultimately served the settler nations' larger goals of consolidating control over indigenous peoples and their lands. This book takes the study of indigenous education and acculturation in new directions in its examination of the key roles white women played in these policies of indigenous child-removal.

Prologue: White Mother to a Dark Race -- Gender and Settler Colonialism in the North American West and Australia -- Designing Indigenous Child Removal Policies -- The Great White Mother -- The Practice of Indigenous Child Removal -- Intimate Betrayals -- Groomed to Be Useful -- Maternalism in the Institutions -- Out of the Frying Pan -- Challenging Indigenous Child Removal.