This season is all about the Indian Child Welfare Act and the federal attacks on it.
ALM
– as referred to in court documents – is a Navajo and Cherokee toddler.
When he was a baby, a white couple from the suburbs of Dallas wanted to
adopt him, but a federal law said they couldn’t. So they sued. Today,
the lawsuit doesn’t just impact the future of one child, or even the
future of one law. It threatens the entire legal structure defending
Native American rights.
In
season 2 of This Land, host Rebecca Nagle investigates how the far
right is using Native children to quietly dismantle American Indian
tribes.
Tune in beginning August 23rd.
Some White supremacists don't know we can REALLY SEE what they are doing
The Shawnee Indian Mission, from 1839 to 1862, was a manual training
school for children from the Shawnee, Delaware, and other American
Indian tribes, and is now a state historic site. Its founder was Thomas
Johnson, the namesake of Johnson County, who held at least seven
enslaved individuals at the mission in the 1850s. (Max McCoy/Kansas
Reflector)
Shawnee Indian Mission is a bit of the 1850s frontier in the midst of
one of the richest suburban neighborhoods in the country. Just a block
away is the buzz of traffic on Shawnee Mission Parkway, and the homes in
the area cost more than most of us can afford. But for $5, Wednesday
through Saturday, you can visit the historic site with its three
original brick buildings and its 12 pastoral acres and imagine what life
might have been like for the missionaries, the Shawnee and Delaware
children who boarded at the school, and travelers on the Santa Fe
Trail, which ran just a few hundred yards north.
What you can’t do, unless you already know about them, is imagine what
life must have been like for the enslaved persons who helped build the
mission and were bound to Thomas Johnson, the Methodist preacher and
pro-slavery advocate who founded the school.
These enslaved persons aren’t mentioned in the 2015 video shown
to visitors. Only one of the interpretive displays mentions them. By one
account, it says, Johnson “owned at least six slaves at the
mission,” with perhaps another 10 who were children of the enslaved.
The display includes a reproduction of an 1856 bill of sale, from David
Burge to Johnson, at Westport, Missouri, of an enslaved girl named
Martha, of about 15 years, “sound in body and mind and a slave for
life.”
...
In addition to 2020’s summer of George Floyd, there have been discoveries this year at boarding schools in the United States and Canada of hundreds of unmarked graves
of First Peoples children. The Shawnee Indian Mission is attempting to
address the latter, at the urging of tribal leaders, with a ground-penetrating radar
survey of the mission’s cemetery. The cemetery is separated by a few
blocks from the historic site and is locally known as Johnson Cemetery,
because that’s where Johnson and some of his family are buried.
As Indigenous community members and archaeologists continue to discover
unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the sites of Canadian
residential schools, the United States is reckoning with its own history
of off-reservation boarding schools.
In July 2021, nine Sicangu Lakota students who died at the Carlisle
Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania were disinterred and returned to their homelands at Whetstone Bay in South Dakota.
One of these young people was Ernest Knocks Off. Ernest, who came
from the Sicangu Oyate or Burnt Thigh Nation, was among the first group
of students to arrive at Carlisle, in 1879. He entered school at age 18
and attempted to run away soon after arriving. He ultimately went on a hunger strike and died of complications of diphtheria on Dec. 14, 1880.
My new book “Writing Their Bodies: Restoring Rhetorical Relations at the Carlisle Indian School”
explores how Indigenous children resisted English-only education at
Carlisle, which became the prototype for both Indian schools across the
U.S. and residential schools in Canada. Ernest Knocks Off was 18 when he arrived at the Carlisle boarding school in 1879. He was one of many young Native people who fought – in his case, to the death – to retain their language and culture.
Pratt and his supervisors at the Bureau of Indian Affairs hoped that
they could break up tribes by disrupting the transmission of language
and culture from one generation to the next. By destroying tribal identities, they hoped to take land in communally held reservations and guaranteed by treaties.
Notice: Howard Slow Bull (age 18) goes to the institution in 1886, is sent to farmers in PA in 1888 and dies in 1893 at age 25. These are the mysteries we still need to solve... so their souls can rest... These were not schools but DEATH CAMPS and these children were hostages.... Blog Editor
CHICAGO — In a resolution with multiple requests, the American Bar Association House of Delegates, a 597-member policy body, is calling on Congress to conduct oversight hearings on Indian boarding schools. The resolution was adopted by the ABA Monday evening.
Looks like lawyers will get in on the action here in the US... Blog Editor
Canadian Bishops convey commitment to healing and reconciliation
The Permanent Council of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops
(CCCB) released a statement on Friday noting its support to Bishops of
Saskatchewan who are have issued an “Appeal for Support of Healing and Reconciliation” in
favor of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. The project aims to generate
fundraising to promote healing and reconciliation. It also foresees
cemeteries on the sites of former residential schools, as well as
educational and cultural support. The goal of the campaign, according to
the Bishops of Saskatchewan, is to "support Indian Residential School
survivors and their communities, and to engage more deeply in our own
ongoing commitment and response to the Truth and Reconciliation
process." - Source: Canadian Bishops convey commitment to healing and reconciliation - Vatican News
The world's richest church needs to ask others to pay for their actions? Blog Editor
Not just in Canada, American has a bad history problem, too...
Against Residential School Denialism
Residential school denialism
is not the outright denial of the Indian Residential School system’s
existence, but rather the rejection or misrepresentation of basic facts
about residential schooling to undermine truth and reconciliation
efforts.
Residential school denialists employ an
array of rhetorical arguments. The end game of denialism is to obscure
truth about Canada’s residential school system in ways that ultimately
protect the status quo as well as guilty parties.
For
years, alumni from the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma
have been searching for information about the students who died at their
old boarding school, one of hundreds once set up by the U.S. government
to assimilate young Native Americans.
Sifting
through archived records, the volunteer group has compiled 67 names,
but with little funding for more research, they have no way of knowing
how many of the children are buried in Chilocco’s cemetery, which bears
only a single marked grave.
Theirs
is one of numerous efforts by tribal historians and researchers over
the past several years to uncover evidence of Native Americans who died
at the boarding schools. Until now, these grass roots investigations
have been stymied by limited resources and logistical hurdles.
Now,
those leading the projects are hoping a new federal investigation can
shed light on a mystery that has haunted Indian Country for generations.
In June, Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland launched a review of
Native American boarding schools, hoping to figure out how many
students died at the institutions—whether from disease, accidents or
mistreatment—and where they are buried. The move was spurred by the recent discovery of mass graves of indigenous children at boarding schools in Canada.
“The
government abandoned this sacred site when they closed Chilocco in
1980,” said Jim Baker, the alumni group’s president. If the Interior
Department provides resources, he added, “then we can do a comprehensive
ground-penetrating radar survey.”
Ground penetrating radar, also known as GPR or impulse radar,
is an electromagnetic technology operating on the physics of the earth
to capture images of the subsurface using pulses from the radar.
This
technology is diverse and can work on pavement, rocks, ice and even
freshwater. This technology was first used in the early 1970s when
several different teams of scientists began to develop radar for viewing
into the earth.
This radar was first developed for military applications such as locating tunnels under the DMZ between North and South Korea.
Most of the time, these machines are purchased by companies rather than by individuals.
How much does ground penetrating radar cost?
Traditionally,
a GPR system can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $90,000 brand new. A
simple system will tend to be less than $10,000, while those that are
over $35,000 will require an experienced user.
For instance, a forum member on this TreasureNet.com forum thread
claimed that they saw a GPR sell for $3,600 on eBay. Another forum
member on this same thread claimed that you should be prepared to spend
at least $30,000 on a brand new device.
AccurateLocators.com, for
instance, sells a unique GPR and the software for about $15,000;
however, the antenna system will have to be purchased separately. The
average antenna, depending upon the frequency, can cost $2,500 to as
much as $6,500.
US Radar, Inc., according to their official website, starts pricing around $14,000, depending on the specific model. The costs include the cart, tablet, battery and the software to do basic utility locating.
There are many myths around intimate
partner violence, particularly around
victims who identify as men. Myths about violence are harmful. Myths
keep people silent, add to shame and guilt, make people doubt the
violence and can even perpetuate violence. The truth
is anyone can be a victim of intimate partner violence.
FALSE: Abuse only happens to men who are in same-sex relationships.
TRUE:
Abuse can happen to anyone. Abuse happens when one person uses a
pattern of violent and coercive tactics to gain and keep power and
control over another partner. Sexual orientation
does not dictate abuse. Men can be abused by a person of any gender.
Twenty-six percent of gay men, 37 percent of bisexual men and 29 percent
of heterosexual men have experienced physical violence, experienced
rape and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime (Ncadv.Org,
2021).
FALSE:
Men will always be mistaken as the abuser if they report the violence
and they won’t be welcome at domestic violence shelters or programs.
TRUE:
While women are more likely to be the victims of abuse than men, that
is not always the case. When there is abuse in relationships between men
and women, it is untrue that men
are always the abusers.
It
is well documented that there is a
need for more Native-specific shelters throughout the country. However,
many shelters house anyone who is a victim of violence, including men.
Some shelters may provide accommodations for
men outside of their traditional shelter, such as at an extended stay
hotel. StrongHearts advocates can help male victim-survivors find a
shelter that is safe for them and their dependent children.
FALSE: Men should just tough it out.
TRUE:
This myth is particularly insidious as it denies the violence and
abuse, minimizes the real effects of violence and perpetuates harmful
ideas about rigid gender roles.
Tribal gender roles were once as diverse as the tribes and cultures
themselves. During colonization, Native peoples’ understanding of their
place within their tribal community was disrupted and destroyed. Traditional gender
roles were lost, harming future generations.Predominant American
culture teaches boys a harmful definition of masculinity. They are often
taught to suppress their emotions and that controlling others is
strength. This toxic messaging harms men who are
experiencing intimate partner violence, as it discourages them from
seeking the support they need and further makes them feel inadequate
because of the abuse.
The
impacts and experiences of violence are very real. In addition to
physical harm, victims may experience depression, anxiety, disconnection
from friends, family and themselves and post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of abuse. These impacts and experiences cannot just be toughed out.
FALSE: Native men are "wife-beaters.”
TRUE:
Native women experience a disproportionately high rate of violence;
however, studies show most violence against Native women (and men) is
not caused by Native men. Of all Native
women who have experienced violence, 97% had an interracial perpetrator,
meaning the violence was done by someone who is not Native. (National
Institute of Justice, 2021).
Stereotypes like this are unfounded and racist. They harm Native women
as much as Native men as it distracts from the reality of their
situation and does nothing to address the root causes of violence
against Native peoples.
FALSE: Men can't be abused. They are bigger, stronger, tougher.
TRUE: Untrue.
Men
are abused. No matter someone’s size or strength they can experience
abuse. Intimate partner violence can take many forms and men can
experience physical abuse, emotional abuse,
sexual abuse, financial abuse, digital abuse, and cultural abuse. Most
people experience many if not all of the above forms of abuse.
●One in seven men report having experienced severe physical violence from an intimate partner
in their lifetime (Cdc.Gov 2021).
●38 million men have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their
lifetime (Cdc.Gov 2021).
●One in 10 men have experienced rape, physical violence and/or
stalking by an intimate partner (Cdc.Gov 2021).
Emotional
abuse is the most common form of abuse reported to StrongHearts Native
Helpline. Emotional abuse is intentional tactics that cause someone
psychological, mental, or spiritual
harm, especially as a means of control over that person. Emotional abuse
against men can include:
●Questioning where they’ve been and questioning where they’ve been and with whom.
●Calling them names, belittling them.
●Enforcing
unhealthy gender roles and expectations: saying they aren’t man enough,
shaming them if they are not the main financial contributor to the
household,
pressuring them into sexual activity to prove their manhood, etc.
●Constantly accusing them of cheating.
●Limiting their time with friends and relatives.
StrongHearts
Native Helpline is here for all Native Americans and Alaska Natives,
whatever their gender or sexual identity. If you think you are being
abused,
StrongHearts can help. StrongHearts advocates take a Native-centered,
empowerment-based approach to every contact. Services are anonymous and
confidential. Call or text 1-844-7NATIVE (762-8483) or visit strongheartshelpline.org for
one-on-one chat advocacy 24/7.
The discovery of three mass burial sites
at former residential schools has left the Canadian public reeling. The
grim—but sadly unsurprising—news has resulted in calls for action, with
a number of Indigenous groups calling for accountability in the form of
criminal justice.
Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme has described
the unmarked gravesites at the former Marieval Indian Residential School
as a “crime scene”, while Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations
Chief Bobby Cameron described the situation as a “crime against
humanity”. The Native Women’s Association of Canada is demanding charges
as an essential step toward reconciliation.
Their
position is that the criminal charges are not only appropriate, but
necessary. It is a concrete, unambiguous position. Seeing it through,
though, will be anything but.
The first hurdle on the road to criminal prosecution will be building a case.
(left) Vancouver lawyer Sarah Leamon writes a regular column on Straight.com
The
discovery of these mass gravesites is not enough on its own. Even when
combined with first-hand accounts of the abuse that happened at
residential schools, more evidence will likely be required to proceed
with a criminal prosecution.
Canadian police have exclusive
jurisdiction to investigate crimes and to recommend criminal charges to
the government as a result of their findings. In this case, the RCMP
would need to begin an investigation of the burial sites. This would be
an intense exercise that would likely not just involve physically
pulling these sites apart, but also examining documents and interviewing
witnesses in order to determine what actually happened.
The
passage of time, combined with the general unreliability and/or
unavailability of supporting records and documents, could make securing
the evidence required tenuous at best.
If enough evidence is
uncovered, the next stage would be to lay charges. However, there will
likely be a number of practical complexities associated with doing so.
For example, naming parties to the proceeding could present a significant challenge.
Given
the age of these gravesites, it is logical to conclude that many of the
individuals responsible are deceased. Living parties to the crime may
be difficult to locate. Bringing them within the jurisdiction of our
courts could be a near-impossible task.
Given these realities,
some have suggested that the entities responsible for the schools—not
the individuals who carried out the abuse—should be charged. After all,
we know that these so-called schools were run by the Catholic Church and
funded by the federal government.
While an incorporated body is a
legal person, capable of being criminal charged, this approach is still
potentially fraught with difficulty.
Consider that criminal
charges in this country are almost always laid by the Crown.
Government-employed lawyers prosecute crimes as agents of the Crown.
If
charges were to be laid by the Crown against the federal government, an
unprecedented legal quagmire would arise. The government would be
prosecuting itself.
Although private prosecutions are technically
possible, which would help sidestep this impractical and improbable
situation, the circumstances under which they occur is narrow and
complicated. Navigating such a prosecution would be exceedingly
circuitous, why may explain—at least in part—why they are so exceedingly
rare.
Then arises the question with respect to the appropriate
legislation. It seems that acts of this nature would be more
appropriately prosecuted under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act than the more commonly used Criminal Code.
This piece of legislation is just 20 years old—a relative baby compared to the Criminal Code—and with very few charges having ever proceeded under it, it is largely unchartered legal territory.
Moreover,
proceedings under this act must only proceed with written personal
consent from the attorney general. Obtaining such consent could be a
laborious effort.
Finally, like in all criminal proceedings, the
standard for a successful prosecution is high. In order to secure a
conviction, Crown must prove their case beyond any reasonable doubt.
This is the highest legal standard of proof available. It is one that
presents challenges to Crown, sometimes even in seemingly
straightforward cases.
Underpinning all of these complexities is
the government’s extremely poor record when it comes to the treatment of
Indigenous people.
Many have pointed out the RCMP’s complicity in
the operation of residential schools. Bearing this context in mind,
there is a looming concern that any police investigation or government
action in relation to this tragedy would be disingenuous at best and
dishonest at worst.
Given the seemingly enormous odds against a
domestic prosecution, the International Criminal Court may be a more
pragmatic forum for such a proceeding.
There is no indication that this matter has been referred to this court as of yet.
Sarah Leamon is a criminal defence lawyer. She holds a master of arts in women’s studies from UBC. Follow her on Twitter @SarahLeamonLaw and find her website here. The Georgia Straight publishes opinions like this from the community to encourage constructive debate on important issues.
John Jones was just 7 years old when he was forced to attend the Alberni Residential School in Canada. Stories from survivors of Canada’s residential schools.
Residential schools were a key tool in America’s long history of Native genocide
Why we need to grapple with these past atrocities.
The recent discovery of unmarked mass graves of 1,300 Indigenous children
buried in five former residential schools has forced Canada to come to
grips with a legacy of cultural and physical genocide against Native
people.
In
the 19th and 20th centuries, 150,000 children were separated from their
families, language and culture and placed in 150 government-funded
residential schools. There, children were subjected to torture, trauma
and death to “kill the Indian in the child.”
Thousands of children died — 4,100 according to Canada’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission on the residential schools, although the
actual number may have been as high as 15,000.
And we can only imagine the trauma these children experienced,
including those who were forced to bury their classmates and build their
coffins.
The
disturbing news from Canada was a reminder that the United States
maintained its own system of 367 Indian boarding schools from 1860 until 1978. The two countries’ systems were intertwined, with the United States providing a model that Canada would adopt and emulate.
Responding
to events in Canada, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first
Native American to hold a Cabinet position and a granddaughter of people
forced into these boarding schools — announced an investigation of
residential schools. She noted that most Americans would be alarmed to
learn that “the United States also has a history of taking Native
children from their families in an effort to eradicate our culture and
erase us as a people.” But, she emphasized, “it is a history that we
must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.”
She
is right. Just as America is being forced to address its legacy of
enslavement, segregation and systemic racism, the nation must confront
the genocide of Indigenous people — who are rendered all butinvisible
in society — and the role of settler colonialism in building the
country. Native American genocide, like slavery, constitutes America’s
original sin.
From
the earliest colonial days, violently clearing the land of Indigenous
people — like slavery — was critical to the formation of the country.
And, as with slavery, Christianity played an instrumental rolein advancing violence against Indigenous communities.Three
papal edicts — known together as the Doctrine of Discovery — provided a
religious justification for colonial conquest and exploitation of
non-Christian people and paved the way for the West African slave trade,
slavery and Indigenous genocide.
These
beliefs permeated the Declaration of Independence, which referred to
the original inhabitants of this land as “merciless Indian savages.” And
with U.S. expansion came Native American dispossession, death, forced
relocation and containment in reservations. In fact, it was public
policy. In 1819, Congress enacted the Civilization Fund Act,
which authorized the president “in every case where he shall judge
improvement in the habits and condition of such Indians practicable” to
“employ capable persons of good moral character” to introduce tribes to
the “arts of civilization.” In 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was
established to administer the fund, which paid Christian missionaries to
“civilize” the Indians.
The
creation of residential schools were part of the broader settler
colonial project to exterminate Native American culture and separate
them from the land through war and violence. The first government-run
boarding school for Native American children was the Carlisle School,
which opened in Pennsylvania in 1879 for the purpose of “civilizing” by
forcibly assimilating the children into White society. Founded by a
Civil War veteran, Gen. William Henry Platt, who was in charge of Native American prisonersof war,
its mission was clear. “A great general has said that the only good
Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been
an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres,” Platt said. “In a
sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian
there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save
the man.”
Of the 10,000 children who attended the Carlisle School until it closed in 1918, more than 180 diedamid
abuse, malnourishment and disease related to substandard living
conditions. After 100 years, the bodies of 10 of these children were
returned to their families in June 2021.
Nevertheless, Carlisle came to serve as a model for other residential schools. Employing Platt’s assimilationist and genocidal philosophy
of eliminating Native American culture, these schools adhered to
policies forcing children to speak, dress and behave according to White American values,
focusing on individualism and materialism, private rather than communal
property and the monogamous nuclear family structure. Boys received
industrial training, while girls learned home life skills in regimented
environments, suffering under living conditions the Native American
Rights Fund described as “somewhere between dungeons and death camps” in
a 2019 report.
Between one-third and 40 percent of the Indian boarding schools in the United States were operated by Christian denominations. Churches believed that “civilizing” and converting
Indigenous people to Christianity was their only hope of salvation from
a “dying” culture. Missionaries regarded Indigenous spirituality as
witchcraft and Christianity as the only acceptable moral law for a civilized society.
But, in fact, the boarding school system is now recognized as a form of genocide
designed to forcibly remove children from their homes and separate them
from their families, culture, clothing and language. Their hair was cut
in a humiliating manner. Sadistic missionaries punished them for speaking their native tongue by washing out their mouths with soap, lye and chlorine. They were neglected, denied food, beaten and raped, sometimes leading to death —all for the sake of destroying Indigenous culture.
And their influence spread across the northern border. Nicholas Flood Davin,
the architect of the Canadian residential school program, visited
Indigenous boarding schools in the United States in 1879 and was
impressed with what he saw, particularly with the Carlisle School and
its solution to the “Indian problem” through an “aggressive civilization” policy that deconstructed Indigenous children.
“The
experience of the United States is the same as our own as far as the
adult Indian is concerned. Little can be done with him,” Davin wrote in
his 1879 report
to the Canadian government. “He can be taught to do a little at
farming, and at [live]stock-raising, and to dress in a more civilized
manner, but that is all. The child, again, who goes to a day school
learns little, and what little he learns is soon forgotten, while his
tastes are fashioned at home, and his inherited aversion [avoidance] to
toil [work] is in no way combated [stopped].” In Canada, residential
schooling was made compulsory for all First Nations children in 1920.
Most of the schools ceased operations by the mid-1970s, with the last one closing in the late 1990s. With the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2007, Canada paid reparations to the survivors of residential schools and issued an apology.
Lawyers
in Canada have requested the International Criminal Court investigate
the Canadian government and the Vatican for alleged crimes against humanity. While the Canadian government identified 5,300abusers,
none have been charged under a federal law addressing war crimes and
crimes against humanity. A few priests have faced sexual assault charges
but not homicide. Out of more than 38,000 reports of abuse at the residential schools, there were fewer than 50 convictions.
The
mass graves in Canada are a wake-up call for the United States to seize
the opportunity and get on the right side of human rights. As a country
with a long, unresolved and traumatic history of genocide and mass
graves, of family separation and the erasure of children, America must
heal itself by accounting for its past.
As a Diné child, I relished the time spent traveling to lectures that
my dad delivered to museums and universities about his work as a
photographer. The old Kodak projector slides dropped into focus with the
rhythm of his lessons: Navajo people are the land, Navajo culture is Navajo survival. Native culture is Native survival.
His talks would share what it meant to be Navajo. As he shared about
his work he would illustrate the legacy of Federal Indian Policy and its
treatment of Native people. I still couldn’t imagine at that age what
the U.S. government boarding schools had done to attack the very essence
of my identity and pride in my culture I held so dear. Each time he
delivered a talk, he asked a simple question that rings in my head to
this day: “how many schools do you know that have graveyards next to
them?”
That question rings in my head again today, and the past several
weeks as multiple First Nations and Indigenous communities have
uncovered mass graveyards of people— many of them children— at the sites
of former residential schools in Canada.
Here at the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, we’ve long stated the importance of providing a land acknowledgement before events, gatherings and meetings.
Whether in-person or online, the purpose of a land acknowledgement is
meant to restore and name the ancestral and continuing bond between
Indigenous peoples and the land, air, minerals, water, vision that we’ve
stewarded since time immemorial. We see this as a small first
step toward being in right relationship, toward true Native sovereignty.
Today, we ask you to join us in recommitting to acknowledging not only
the proper stewards of our land, but the specific violence that keeps
that space in settler occupation. We ask you to commit to naming and
contextualizing the violence that undergirds the places we call home.
For
most Americans, the idea of a boarding school might invoke images of
affluent college prep schools, or repositories for disobedient students.
For Indigenous people in the US and Canada, the term brings forth
terror. Indigenous boarding schools were a tactical experiment,
supported by the US War Department and the Department of Interior.
After hundreds of years of attempted ethnic genocide, Indigenous people
maintained their hard-fought connection to land and culture. The U.S.
government made the strategic decision to wage a new kind of war. Alongside the implementation of the Dawes Act of 1887, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was a targeted effort to obliterate the ties children had between their culture and land before they were fully developed.
The continuing slogan of the first boarding school, Carlisle Indian
School was “kill the Indian, save the man.” A phrase illustrative of the
genocidal agenda at the center of these institutions. The school opened
in 1879 and swiftly became a “success” by white supremacist standards
as the children were taught Euro-centric education and were severely
punished for practicing any part of their culture, language or
Indigenous way of knowings.
According to the National Boarding School Healing Coalition,
“between 1869 and the 1960s, it’s likely that hundreds of thousands of
Native American children were removed from their homes and families and
placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the
churches. Though we don’t know how many children were taken in
total, by 1900 there were 20,000 children in Indian boarding schools,
and by 1925 that number had more than tripled.”
In Canada, from the 1800s to 1996 over 150,000 children
were removed from their families and communities. Regardless of which
side of the colonial border, Indigenous children were sent away from
everything they knew and forced to assimilate into the settler culture.
For countless Indigenous children, this meant pervasive abuse,
psychological torment, cultural erasure and, as the recent headlines
illustrate, murder.
In times like these I think of my dad, the photographer, how
do you photograph the invisible? How do you document the erased? The
Indian Boarding School Project created ghost generations. I
have never wanted to become accepting of this horrific legacy in the
U.S. education system. Children “graduated” from these hellish places to
find a country that regarded them as subhuman, no matter how hard
they’d had the culture beaten out of them. Many tried to return home and
found they could no longer communicate with their own families, or
practice their most sacred rites. Many lay in graveyards next to these
schools, waiting to be found. We see now that the ghosts of this trauma
want to be seen.
So how can we begin to be in right relationship? Here are some first steps:
Push for action to fund the U.S. efforts to investigate what happened to the thousands of children who didn’t return home: a call that Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland declared. Contact your representatives and let them know you support this call to action.
Incorporate and specifically name the violence of boarding schools into the land acknowledgements you are already giving. Be explicit about the history necessary for truth-telling. (Check out the USDAC Native Land page if you don’t know how to get started)
Research the location of boarding schools near you.
Since Carlisle proved to be “successful,” the U.S. and Canadian
governments funded the opening of these schools across both countries,
many times partnering with churches like the Catholic Church to operate
these schools. For these reasons there are hundreds of schools that were
opened across the U.S. and Canada.
You can access the curriculumof the National Indian Boarding School Healing Coalition to learn more about the history of the boarding school here.
You can teach the children in your life about the boarding school experience. There is a very poignant, child-appropriate episode of Molly of Denali here from PBS. You can read and access questions to help have a generative conversation with the children in your life here.
You can participate in Orange Shirt Day, a legacy project meant to build awareness of the residential school project and its harmful events.
Indigenous Nations and communities have long carried the living
history and trauma of the boarding school era. It is time for allies to
help in fighting for justice and truth. Without truth we will never
reach the hope of reconciliation.
Yours in solidarity,
Jaclyn Roessel, Director of Decolonized Futures & Radical Dreams
wsj.com
