When Europeans came to North America, they brought patriarchal societal traditions with them, Finley said. Wrapped up in those gender roles were Europeans’ understandings of land ownership and inheritance, ideas that were crucial to the process of seizing the continent from indigenous people.

Among the measures used to extinguish native customs in the United States was the state-sponsored Native American boarding school program, which forced generations of indigenous children to attend school away from their families to be educated in Christian, European traditions.