In order to colonize the U.S., the government consolidated its power by confining Indigenous people to “reservations”—essentially open-air prisons—on infertile and desolate land where they struggled to survive. The government then criminalized any efforts they made to leave.24 Because the U.S. government created criminal categories to authorize its own violence, it was not settler land theft and genocide of the people indigenous to it that became a crime; rather, the U.S. set up Courts of Indian Offenses to criminalize Indigenous social, economic, and religious practices.25
