Displacement and dispossession have been part of the history of the United States since the nation's inception. After Native Americans were thought to have a soul, they were no longer exterminated physically, but rather culturally (Smith 37). Indigenous lands were taken and they were reduced to small, inadequate reserves. Native Americans were forced to attend boarding schools and were culturally dispossessed, women in particular faced challenges as they faced discrimination based on their gender and ethnicity. We continue to see similar dispossession in modern society. Andrea Smith's writings on the struggle of Native Americans in the boarding school system and Gloria Anzaldua's mestiza consciousness demonstrate the dispossession of non-white people in the United States. Native American allies advocated “kill the Indian and save the man” (Smith 36 ).” It was much more convenient to commit “cultural rather than physical genocide (Smith 37).” Native Americans were denied the right to their culture, children were forced to attend boarding schools that would free them from their cultural practices and “civilize” them. Native Americans were supposed to be civilized in these boarding schools and taught American culture, with the supposed goal of assimilating into mainstream society, but “because of racism in the United States, Native peoples could never truly assimilate into mainstream society (Smith 37 ).” Native Americans were dispossessed of their own culture, one door was closed without the other door ever being opened. Andrea Smith quotes Native American writer K. Tsianina Lomawaima as saying that "[an] ideological logic more fully explains training in domesticity: it was training in dispossession u...... middle of paper... ...tted. Native Americans were treated like soulless animals. Native children in schools had their faces rubbed in their own excrement (Smith 39) the same way we rub a puppy's face in its own urine. let's destroy the house. Once it was evident that it was more convenient to educate and butcher the culture of the natives instead of killing them, the boarding school system was quickly implemented. People of color continue to face the massacre of their culture. Native Americans have social problems present in their communities that are the legacy of the dispossession they suffered long and not long ago. Other people of color today in the United States also continue to suffer from racist and discriminatory practices, Spanish-speaking immigrants being just one. example of a similar expropriation caused by state intervention in the transmission of language and culture.