Inhumane
Title: World News #108 – Inhumane (100% American)
Subject: Immigration, Police Brutality, and Native & Black History
Created: 2026
Medium: Graphic Design
Software: Adobe Illustrator CC & Adobe Photoshop CC
Dimensions: 48″x36″
Articles
“When examining what Ritchie (2017) names “enduring legacies” of police violence, she starts with colonialism and that “the earliest manifestations of policing in the United States took the form of military violence” during the systemic seizer of land, genocide, and removal of tens of millions of indigenous populations. Citing work by Native American Studies author and professor, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Ritchie points out that colonial armies and settlers didn’t differentiate treatment of women from men, nor children from adults.
In the 1630s, Puritan settlers began a war against the Pequot people of what’s now called Connecticut, “entering Indigenous villages and killing women and children or taking them hostage” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014, p. 62). Another mercenary, John Mason, led soldiers to attack a fort occupied by only women, children, and old men, and “Slaughter ensued” (p. 62). After killing Pequot fighters, they set fire to structures and burned the survivors alive.
Upon setting their sights on discovering gold in California, the government supported settler-colonists in their extermination efforts against Native Americans in the state. The Daily Alta California wrote in 1849: “Whites are becoming impressed with the belief that it will be absolutely necessary to exterminate the savages before they can labor much longer in the mines with security” (Blakemore, 2020). White settlers were legally allowed to enslave California Natives, take custody of Native children and convict them for crimes and subject them to convict-labor. In 1851, California’s first governor, Peter Hardenman Burnett, used state money to pay and arm militias to kill thousands of Native Americans, including women and children.”
– LibreText Social Sciences, 10.4: Policing, Colonialism, and Slavery
“There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement.
Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules.
The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.
Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.”
– The Conversation, The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops
Download the 11″x8.5″ print (.pdf), World News #108 – Inhumane (100% American).
Close-ups
World News
World News is a series of artworks by Ihanktonwan Dakota artist David Bernie that discusses issues and stories affecting communities worldwide.
Creative Commons License
World News #108: Inhumane (100% American) © 2026 by David Bernie is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
