Any “Healing” Conversation must be Grounded in Truth

SUBSTACK: We examine the U.S. government’s Federal Indian Boarding School Report, often framed as a historic apology. We analyze its language, its focus on “assimilation” and “dispossession,” and what it reveals—and obscures—about domination, genocide, and the continuing structure of federal Indian policy

The FEDERAL INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOL REPORT: Apology, Assimilation, Domination by Peter d'Errico

More than a historical document—it’s the ongoing reality of domination, land dispossession, and the attempted erasure of entire peoples.

Read on Substack

As we walk through volumes one and two of the report, we look beyond the bureaucratic language and euphemisms to examine how these so called boarding schools functioned as prisons for children — an admitted tool in the overall program to seize Indigenous lands.

We connect the report’s own admissions—about cultural “assimilation,” forced citizenship, and the U.S. government’s ‘trust’ doctrine—to the broader system that tried to destroy Indigenous nationhood while training Native children to identify with “our nation,” the United States, instead of their own peoples.

In this discussion, we also bring in powerful firsthand accounts and historical testimony that the official report only partially grapples with: the chaining and flogging of children, the dungeons and unmarked graves, the parents imprisoned for resisting the kidnapping of their own sons and daughters.

We don’t dwell on these stories to shock, but to insist that any “healing” conversation must be grounded in truth—truth about genocide, about land theft, and about a still active domination system that did not end when the schools closed.

We talk about what a rightful education looks like, about how language shapes identity, and why “remembrance” without legal change serves to mask the operations of the ongoing system.

We encourage you to watch and listen to this conversation and then explore the resources linked with it, including the Boarding School reports themselves and the book Massacre by Robert Gesner.

Resources:

“Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report” –

Volume I - https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/inline-files/bsi_investigative_report_may_2022_508.pdf

Volume II - https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/media_document/doi_federal_indian_boarding_school_initiative_investigative_report_vii_final_508_compliant.pdf

“Indian Civilization Act” (1819) - https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/3/STATUTE-3-Pg516b.pdf

“Report of the Committee, to whom was referred so much of the President’s message as relates to the civilization of the Indian tribes” - https://www.loc.gov/item/ca25001025/

“Raphael Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide” - https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2t4ds5

Robert Gessner, Massacre; a survey of today’s American Indian - https://archive.org/details/massacresurveyof0000gess_i8w6

 

 

Secretary Haaland Message to Indigenous Boarding School Survivors

‘I will never forgive this school for what they did to me'

Donald Neconie, 84, Kiowa, testifed on Saturday, July 9, 2022, as part of the U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland's Road to Healing tour of the brutality he suffered while attending Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in the 1940s. Haaland, Laguna Pueblo and the first Indigenous person to sit in a presidential cabinet, kicked off the yearlong tour in Anadarko to hear testimony from survivors and descendants of Indian boarding schools. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)

Road to Healing: Deb Haaland pledges boarding school truths will be uncovered

WARNING: This story has disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the US. The National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline in Canada can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.

Mary Annette Pember |  ICT

ANADARKO, Oklahoma — A journey like no other began at last Saturday for survivors of U.S. Indian boarding schools.

Young and old, descendants and survivors, crowded into the gymnasium of Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, to share their experiences as the kickoff to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s Road to Healing tour.

Until now, former boarding school students were largely ignored, forced to survive brutality and separation from family, culture and language, and deal with childhood traumas as best they could.

Finally, the world is listening.

“I still feel that pain,” said Donald Neconie, 84, Kiowa, who attended Riverside school in the 1940s.

Neconie, a former U.S. Marine, described physical and sexual abuse at the hands of school employees. School leaders knew of the abuse but did nothing to stop it, he said.

“You couldn’t cry or tell anyone, because if you did, you knew it would be worse,” he said. “I will never forgive this school for what they did to me.”

KEEP READING 

Related stories:
—US boarding school investigative report released
—Native leaders push for boarding school commission
—215 bodies found at residential school in Canada
—A Mother's Pray: Bring the children home

 

Burial sites found at 53 Native American boarding schools | More Headlines

 May 11, 2022  REUTERS

May 11 (Reuters) - A U.S. government investigation into the dark history of Native American boarding schools has found "marked or unmarked burial sites" at 53 of them, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said on Wednesday, May 11, 2022.

'IDENTITY ALTERATION'

Researchers examined government records and spoke to Native Americans to prepare the report. The results detail a history dating to at least 1801, when the first such schools opened, and one in which education was used as a weapon.

Native American affairs, including education, were a War Department responsibility until 1849 and the military remained involved even after civilians took over, the report noted.

The schools were described as resembling military academies in their regimentation and strictness and emphasizing vocational skills. Police were called on to force families to send their children to the schools. Food was denied to families as another way to force them to surrender their children.

"These conditions included militarized and identity alteration methodologies - on kids!" said Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Interior Department, who heads the investigation.

Conditions at former Indian boarding schools gained global attention last year when tribal leaders in Canada announced the discovery of the unmarked graves of 215 children at the site of the former Kamloops residential school for indigenous children, as such institutions are known in Canada.

Unlike the United States, Canada carried out a full investigation into its schools via a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The U.S. government has never acknowledged how many children attended such schools, how many children died or went missing from them or even how many schools existed.

The report released on Wednesday included recommendations for funding programs to preserve the Native American languages the schools tried to stamp out, and establishing a federal memorial.

READ MORE 

 

**

'Our children deserve to be found': Federal report examines Native lives, cultures lost at Indian ...

Wisconsin Public Radio |

At least 500 Native American children died while being forced to attend federal ... He said this means protecting the Indian Child Welfare Act, ...

 

Report: Christians May Have Helped Run Half of Native American Boarding Schools

Christianity Today

... times more than the number of schools documented in Canada's residential school system by that country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

 

**

Travelling exhibit shows legacy of 'Sixties Scoop' - Cranbrook Daily Townsman

Cranbrook Daily Townsman

Exhibit telling the history of the “Sixties Scoop” and its survivors was on display at the Cranbrook History Centre May 11.

 

 

US Boarding School Report

US boarding school investigative report released

By Kalle Benallie
The findings show the federal Indian boarding school system consisted of at least 408 federal schools across 37 states and roughly 53 different schools had been identified with marked or unmarked burial sites ... continue reading

 

The Assistant Secretary Releases the Boarding School Report

May 11, 2022 Kate Fort

Here:

Boarding_School_Initiative_Volume_1_Investigative_Report_May_2022

Assistant Secretary Newland makes eight recommendations to the Secretary of the Interior to fulfill the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, including producing a list of marked and unmarked burial sites at Federal Indian boarding schools and an approximation of the total amount of Federal funding used to support the Federal Indian boarding school system, including any monies that may have come from Tribal and individual Indian trust accounts held in trust by the United States. Assistant Secretary Newland ultimately concludes that further investigation is required to determine the legacy impacts of the Federal Indian boarding school system on American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians today.

 

One Year in Office: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland

 

Deb Haaland marks first year in office

By Pauly Denetclaw As the first Indigenous person to lead the Department of the Interior, her voice has finally been heard. But is it enough?  Just three weeks after the discovery made in Kamloops, Haaland announced at the National Congress of American Indian 2021 Mid Year Conference that the Interior Department would undertake a comprehensive review of federal boarding schools with an emphasis on cemeteries and potential burial sites. “As I read stories about an unmarked grave in Canada where the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found last month, I was sick to my stomach,” Haaland wrote in an op-ed. “But the deaths of Indigenous children at the hands of government were not limited to that side of the border… 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. It is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.” ... continue reading

Remarks by President Biden at the Tribal Nations Summit

November 15, 2021 • Speeches and Remarks

Via Teleconference | South Court Auditorium | 11:50 A.M. EST
 
THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Madam Secretary.  And I say to the press, “Excuse my back.”  (The President turns to the video call screen behind him.)  Next time in Washington, okay?  I see you all up on the board behind me, and I hope we do this in person.  I hope, I hope, I hope.  That’s my — that’s my hope.  Thank you.
 
Good morning.  I want to thank you for joining us.  This is a big day.  I think, as my mother would say, former Senator Dan Inouye is looking down going, “Finally.  Finally.”  I was raised by Dan Inouye in the United States Senate.
 
And to President Fawn Sharp and Chairman Hill of the Oneida Nation, and our President Holsey: I thank you all for what you’re doing, and I want to recognize you.
 
And, Chairman Hill, I thought going — being from Upstate New York, in college, and my deceased wife is from Skaneateles Lake, not far from Oneida, New York — I thought that the Oneida Nation was all in Central New York, but obviously you’re up in Wisconsin.  Come down and see us in Oneida.  (Laughs.)
 
Anyway, I want to thank you, Madam Secretary, for your remarks.  But I also want to thank you, Deb, for being willing to join when I asked you to come along and to serve.  And as I said, I was confident, at the time, you would be incredibly important.
 

Bay Mills president's Indian Affairs appointment will transform relationships #ProtectICWA

 | Opinion by Kirsten Matoy Carlson

It was a historic ceremony: U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first tribal citizen to hold the position, swearing in Bryan Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community, as Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs.

For the first time in American history, tribal citizens lead the U.S. in its government-to-government relationship with American Indian and Alaska Native Nations. 

As assistant secretary, Newland becomes the highest-ranking official in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. One of the oldest federal agencies, the Bureau of Indian Affairs exists to enhance the quality of life, promote economic opportunity, and carry out the federal responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, tribal governments and Alaska Natives. 

Newland’s experiences as an attorney for tribal governments, a policy advisor in the Obama Administration, the Chief Judge of the Bay Mills Indian Community, and the President of the Bay Mills Indian Community make him especially qualified to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Bay Mills Indian Community is located near the Upper Peninsula's Whitefish Bay, on the shores of Lake Superior. 

Newland is uniquely positioned to advance the Biden Administration’s priorities of upholding the United States’ trust responsibility to tribal nations, strengthening the nation-to-nation relationship between the United States and Indian tribes, and working to empower tribal nations to govern their own communities and make their own decisions.

In leading the BIA, Newland will draw on many of his own experiences as a tribal leader to improve the relationship between tribal governments and the United States. 

Having just finished serving his community as tribal president, Newland knows firsthand the struggles faced by tribal governments in developing sustainable economies, protecting their territories, and serving their communities. He showed tremendous leadership during the pandemic, urging the BIA to provide adequate testing in Indian country and ensuring that tribal governments received funding allocated to them under the CARES Act. 

His advocacy for federal government accountability to Indian country demonstrates his deep understanding of the trust relationship between the United States government and Indian tribes. This understanding will serve him well as he takes on a key role in implementing the trust relationship and assisting tribal governments as they recover from a pandemic, which has disproportionately affected their communities.

Newland’s vision for helping tribal governments stems from his knowledge that tribal communities are best served when they are empowered to craft their own solutions to problems. Like President Biden and Secretary Haaland, he is dedicated to advancing the federal government’s commitment to ensuring tribal consultation on and input into federal policymaking. As a former Tribal President, he brings key insights into what works for tribal leaders in this process as he seeks to improve it.

Newland shares many of the values of other tribal leaders and will prioritize them as Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. Raised in his traditional Anishinaabek homeland along the shores of Lake Superior, he values the restoring and strengthening of tribal homelands so that every Native person has a place to call home. He understands that tribal homelands must be economically viable and has emphasized the need to restore tribal wealth to tribal communities so that they will thrive for generations yet to come. As tribal president, he sought to protect his own tribal homeland by vocally opposing Enbridge’s Line 5.

In addition to his on the ground experiences in Indian country, Newland understands the challenges facing the BIA, which has not always served Indian country well. 

He acknowledges that the agency has contributed to the state of affairs in Indian country and sees undoing colonization as intergenerational work. He has emphasized the importance of children to Native communities and acknowledged the incredible harm done to tribal families, cultures, and communities when their children are removed. 

As assistant secretary, he will support enforcement of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which prevents the unnecessary removal of Indian children from their tribal communities.

Newland’s appointment, alongside Haaland's historic appointment, will usher in a transformative new era in federal Indian affairs. As head of the BIA during an administration devoted to tribal sovereignty and racial equity, Newland can start to undo the colonization that has pervaded federal Indian law and policy from within.

Kirsten Matoy Carlson is a professor of law and adjunct associate professor of political science at the Wayne State University Law School, and is a leading authority on federal Indian law and legislation.

SOURCE

Lost Lives, Lost Culture

(click) New York Times: “Lost Lives, Lost Culture: The Forgotten History of Indigenous Boarding Schools” (USA)

The discovery of the bodies in Canada led Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first
Native American to head the department that once ran the boarding schools in the United
States — and herself the granddaughter of people forced to attend them — to announce that
the government would search the grounds of former facilities to identify the remains of
children.
That many children died in the schools on this side of the border is not in question. Just last
week, nine Lakota children who perished at the federal boarding school in Carlisle, Pa., were
disinterred and buried in buffalo robes in a ceremony on a tribal reservation in South Dakota.
Many of the deaths of former students have been recorded in federal archives and
newspaper death notices. Based on what those records indicate, the search for bodies of
other students is already underway at two former schools in Colorado: Grand Junction Indian
School in central Colorado, which closed in 1911, and the Fort Lewis Indian School, which
closed in 1910 and reopened in Durango as Fort Lewis College.

I have the pdf if you cannot access this story. Email me: laratrace@outlook.com

Unmarked Graves at Indian Residential Schools Speak to Horrors Faced By Students

OG History is a Teen Vogue series in which we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens.

By Ruth Hopkins |July 14, 2021

COLE BURSTON

Trigger warning: This piece contains sensitive content involving the abuse of children.

The truth never stays hidden forever.

This summer, non-Natives were shocked and horrified to learn that the remains of thousands of Indigenous children are buried in unmarked graves at residential and boarding schools in Canada and the United States.

It began on May 27, when the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Nation of British Columbia announced that they had uncovered the remains of 215 students near Kamloops Indian Residential School. Indigenous children, some as young as three years old, died there after being taken to the institution, which was run by the Catholic church until the federal government assumed control in the 1970s. According to the nation’s chief, Rosanne Casimir, the missing children are undocumented deaths, meaning that to their knowledge the families were never told of their passing.

But that was just the start. Within the week, the Muskowekwan First Nation of Saskatchewan announced that, after working in partnership with two universities, they had also found at least 35 unmarked graves near the former Catholic-operated Muskowekwan Indian Residential School before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work had begun in 2018 but was put on hold due to the pandemic. The community held a ceremony for the spirits of the dead Indigenous children that they had found, but they’re still looking for more graves. The school was open until 1997.

Soon after, the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation of Manitoba released a statement that they too are recovering remains found in 104 “potential graves” at three separate sites near Brandon Indian Residential School, which was run by both Methodist and United churches from 1895 to 1972. Records account for only 78 bodies and some that have been found are not within sites designated as cemeteries.

As a Native woman and the daughter of a boarding school survivor, each of these grisly discoveries has been absolutely soul-crushing for me to process. But hearing word of the remains of Dakota children being found at Brandon really hit close to home. They are a part of my Native Nation, the Oceti Sakowin (Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota Sioux). Members of the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation descend from Dakota who left Minnesota after the Dakota War of 1862, when the U.S. government broke our treaties, starved us, hung 38 of our warriors in the largest mass execution in U.S. history, put bounties on our scalps, and exiled us from our ancestral homelands.

The Sioux Valley Dakota Nation is concerned about not only uncovering the remains of their dead but identifying them as well. “The children buried at these sites must have their identities restored and their stories told,” said Jennifer Bone, Sioux Valley Chief, in a video statement.

Then, on June 24, the Cowessess First Nation said it had found an astonishing 751 unmarked burial sites near the former Catholic-run Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan. Their Chief, Cadmus Delorme, said the area is being treated as a “crime scene.”

Right after the announcement by Cowessess First Nation, the Lower Kootenay Band of Ktunaxa First Nation stated that the bodies of 182 children had been found at the Catholic-run St. Eugene's Mission School in Cranbrook, British Columbia. Some were buried only three or four feet below ground.

Children's red dresses are staked along a highway near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

COLE BURSTON

Part of the small memorial honoring the recently discovered mass grave at the Kamloops Residential School.

Rick Madonik

Folks have reacted by setting up memorials in honor of the children all over North America. Others may be responding by setting fires. While no suspects have been named, since news broke that more than 1,000 unmarked graves of Indigenous children have been discovered at residential schools in Canada, fires have destroyed four Catholic churches located on Indigenous lands. Additional churches and statues of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth, and other historical figures were vandalized on Canada Day, July 1.

WATCH

Cynthia Nixon on Roseanne, Weed, and Public Transportation | Side Take

Native and non-Native leaders alike, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have asked Pope Francis to apologize on behalf of the Catholic Church for its role in running residential schools. The Pope recently agreed to meet with representatives from three of Canada’s largest Indigenous groups in December. But the Vatican hasn’t released residential school records, despite repeated requests to do so.

The Canadian government itself has long known about the severe abuse and neglect that occurred at residential schools, though. In 2015, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called residential schools “cultural genocide.”

In fact, investigators hired by Canada’s government located 5,315 alleged abusers who either worked at or attended residential schools — not to charge them criminally, but to see if they would testify in hearings that would determine whether residential school survivors received compensation, the CBC reported in 2016.

You see, the Canadian government is already bound to settlement agreements with residential school survivors. Canada’s government is currently appealing a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling ordering Ottawa to pay $40,000 each to 50,000 First Nations children separated from their families and put into residential schools via a program run by the local child welfare system. (Federal leaders have offered payment to individual school survivors via a government-created settlement fund and two class-action lawsuits, but Indigenous leaders say reparations must also be granted to communities and nations).

The American equivalent to Canada’s residential schools is boarding schools. Native children throughout the United States were forced to attend these institutions, which essentially functioned as reeducation camps, over the past 150 years or so, for the purposes of being indoctrinated with Christianity, assimilated into white society, and trained as laborers.

If families declined to enroll their children in these schools, the Bureau of Indian Affairs could withhold Treaty-promised food rations and other goods. Government agents, priests, and nuns would also push their way into homes on reservations and quite literally abduct Native children and take them to boarding schools. Some of those children were never seen or heard from again.

1950: North American Indian children in their dormitory at a Canadian boarding school.

Hulton Archive

The first off-reservation boarding school was established in an old Army barracks. It was called Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Started by Civil War Lieutenant Colonel Richard Henry Pratt to “kill the Indian and save the man,” he preached “civilizing” Native children by (often literally) beating their Native languages, religions, customs, and kinship bonds out of them. More than 10,000 were taken to Carlisle, and many dozens of students died there. There are 186 Native children buried in the boarding school cemetery, some with headstones carved with the word “Unknown” upon them. Right now, the remains of 10 children who died at Carlisle are finally being returned to their families.

There were 367 of these boarding schools in the United States, and attendance was less about learning to read and write, and more about learning to obey and submit. Children were given new names and stripped of their cultural and physical identities, forced to wear Western dress and cut their hair. Many died from preventable causes. Physical and sexual abuse were common. Schools were unsanitary, unsafe, and riddled with disease. Students were not given adequate nutrition, access to medical care, or even proper attire. Children were also involuntarily leased out to white homes as menial laborers, where some were killed. Some died while trying to escape.

The Catholic church also sold Native children to strangers for as little as $10. In 1952, Tekakwitha Indian Mission did just that on the Lake Traverse Reservation, where I live and am an enrolled Tribal member.

Residential and boarding schools were prisons of atrocity where extreme brutality, torment, misery, and suffering were inflicted upon the most vulnerable members of Native society. Stories of what went on in those places have persisted among survivors and their families for decades. Stephanie Scott, the executive director of Canada’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation told ABC News, “We’ve heard stories about young girls getting pregnant and the children being born and put into incinerators…of children being hidden in walls. We went to the community one time where there was a caretaker’s house where we found this strap that was covered in blood.”

My own father, who was pulled from his mother’s arms at the age of four and taken to boarding school, told stories of other children freezing to death in their bunks. All of my aunts and uncles were also forced to attend these institutions. One of my uncles refused to stop speaking the Dakota language and was beaten on a daily basis for his defiance. Years later, he would become one of his Tribe’s last fluent language speakers and taught the language to elementary school students on the Spirit Lake Nation Reservation. On a few occasions, my father, who died from COVID-19 in November, spoke of another brother in hushed tones — one that never came home. We do not know where his remains are. They are not in our family cemetery.

While the Western world is just realizing the horrors of residential and boarding schools, Native communities have always known. We did not forget all the children who never returned. We kept their memory alive, never giving up on them. Survivors, with tears in their eyes, bravely recounted the crimes they had witnessed and how they were robbed of their innocence. Because of residential and boarding schools, entire families and communities live with intergenerational trauma, passed down from deeply wounded survivors who never healed.

Canada is ahead of the United States in regard to uncovering the truth about residential and boarding schools. Here in the U.S., it took one of us to cut to the heart of the matter. Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native woman to head the Department of the Interior, spurred on by the recent discoveries of unmarked graves up north, recently launched an investigation into boarding schools in the United States. Her grandparents were forced to attend one and she didn’t forget the evils of those schools. 

Now, thanks to her leadership, the U.S. will search the grounds of former boarding schools for the remains of Native children who were stolen from their families and their people to be brutalized and stripped of their culture and kinship bonds. A reckoning is coming, one that must happen if our nation is going to endure. Thousands of lost children, whose lives were stolen, cry out to be found — for justice and for peace. At long last, the public has heard them.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: The U.S. Used the Indian Removal Act to Commit Ethnic Cleansing

Indian Boarding School Survivors Take Action at Cathedral of Saint Paul

A demonstrator holds a sign at the steps of the Cathedral of Saint Paul on July 1, 2021. (Photo/Darren Thompson)

By Darren Thompson | July 03, 2021

SAINT PAUL, Minn. — The American Indian Movement (AIM) Twin Cities chapter held a press conference and protest on Thursday outside the Cathedral of Saint Paul in the Saint Paul, Minn,

The event brought several dozen people from around the Twin Cities to protest the recent discoveries of more than 1,000 children found in an unmarked graves at various residential schools in Canada. 

“My name is Michael Anthony, after the Saint Michael and Saint Anthony,” AIM Twin Cities Chairman Mike Forcia said at the press conference. “The church must acknowledge its participation in the genocide of our people.”

Last year, Native News Online reported that Forcia was charged and convicted last year for the toppling of the Christopher Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol grounds. 

Organizers posted American Indian Movement flags, sang on the drum, and addressed the history of boarding schools and its complicated relationship with the Catholic church. Demonstrators held signs in traffic that read "Search Every School!” and “From Canada to the USA, Honor Native Treaties.” 

Demonstrators host a press conference at the steps of the Cathedral of Saint Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota on July 1, 2021. (Photo/Darren Thompson)

A confrontation between tourists of the Cathedral and a demonstrator erupted into an argument over the land the church is built on. Shortly after, a fight broke out between a man who claimed he attended church at the Cathedral and a participant in the demonstration. 

The demonstration was held in conjunction with Cancel Canada Day, where tens of thousands of people demonstrated and marched throughout towns and cities in Canada. On day normally celebrated by Canadians for their country’s confederation on July 1, statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II were toppled. Thousands protested from coast to coast over the mass graves of Indigenous children being discovered at residential boarding schools that were operated for decades by the Canadian federal government and Catholic churches. 

“As more stories break of the bodies of over one thousand children being recovered from mass graves at boarding school sites in Canada, I find myself holding my eight-year-old daughter close each night,” Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan said to Native News Online. “These children never got to go home to their parents and their communities who loved them. They endured physical and sexual abuse, and their childhoods were stolen under the guise of ‘Kill the Indian, and save the man.’”

“Kill the Indian, and save the man” was the ethos instilled by General Richard H. Pratt—founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which established a model for other Indian boarding schools. It's goal was to strip American Indian children of their culture in order to "Americanize" them. At the Carlisle Indian School and at other Indian boarding schools, American Indian children were strictly forbidden to speak their tribal languages or practice their spirituality. Their clothing was burned and replaced with military drab, and long hair was cut and styled in Euro-American fashion. 

For American Indians, the boarding school left a lasting distrust of the entire U.S. education system. According to the National School Boards Association, Native American students performed two to three grade levels below their white peers in reading and math. They were two times more likely to drop out of school than their white peers, according to a study conducted by National Caucus of Native American State Legislators.

“This is not ancient history or a Canadian issue; our parents and grandparents in Minnesota and across the United States attended these institutions, but too many people do not know about this painful chapter in our history,” Flanagan added. 

Recently, at the National Congress of American Indians’ Mid Year Conference, Secretary of Interior Debra Haaland announced that she established the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, which is tasked with identifying past boarding schools throughout the country and investigating possible burial sites, then identifying those buried and returning the remains to their rightful tribes. A report from the initiative is due to Secretary Haaland on April 1, 2022.

“It is time to tell the whole truth about our history, and it is time to take action to ensure that Native children and people are safe, valued, and protected in their communities now and in the future,” Flanagan said.  SOURCE

The investigation that will change how America thinks about its past

In truth, the 367 boarding schools in operation in the U.S. were camps of strategic cultural genocide: This is what achieving civilization looked like in practice: 

Students were stripped of all things associated with Native life. 

Their long hair, a source of pride for many Native peoples, was cut short, usually into identical bowl haircuts. 

They exchanged traditional clothing for uniforms, and embarked on a life influenced by strict military-style regimentation.

Students were physically punished for speaking their Native languages. 

Contact with family and community members was discouraged or forbidden altogether. 

Survivors have described a culture of pervasive physical and sexual abuse at the schools. 

Food and medical attention were often scarce; many students died. 

Their parents sometimes learned of their death only after they had been buried in school cemeteries, some of which were unmarked. -The Atlantic

  Jeva Lange | July 2, 2021

Uncovering the abuses of Indigenous boarding schools will be Deb Haaland's most important legacy...

The horrors of the boarding school system are an open topic in Canada where, earlier this year, the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found in a mass grave at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. That sickening announcement was followed last week by the report of an additional 751 unmarked graves of children found near a residential school in Saskatchewan. Already this week, another 182 graves were found at a former school east of Vancouver, Canada. In total, an estimated 6,000 children are thought to have died at schools in Canada, while "it's likely that the number of students who died in the United States is much higher," Christine Diindiisi McCleave, the executive director of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS), told High Country News.

GOOD READ: The investigation that will change how America thinks about its past

**

(click headlines)

As recently discovered unmarked Indigenous graves in Canada nears 1000, activists demand justice

ABC News

There were reports from the TRC -- a commission funded by the Canadian government as part of a legal settlement to address the wrongs of the system ...

 

Statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II Have Been Torn Down in Canada

TownandCountrymag.com

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission identified this as "cultural genocide," and national anger has been mounting ever since. 

"We Were Children" trailer 2012

New legislation strengthens Oregon’s commitment to help preserve Tribal families

Oregon is the seventh state to pass a state-based ICWA in alignment with the federal act, joining states such as Minnesota and Tennessee. Before the federal act passed in 1978, generations of Tribal children across the country were removed from their families and communities, often placed without connection to their Tribal culture. 

“The passage of the Oregon Indian Child Welfare Act (ORICWA) in 2020 spoke to the State of Oregon’s commitment to protecting and preserving Tribal children and families,” said Adam Becenti, ODHS Tribal Affairs Director. “The recent changes to ORICWA will now enhance how Child Welfare engages with Tribal families and strengthen partnership with Oregon Tribal Nations. This is a significant step forward in repairing historical wounds and honoring the government-to-government relationship with Tribal Nations.”  MORE

We Must Learn about this History

 (continuing coverage)

Deb Haaland, the U.S. interior secretary, is the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.

As I read stories about an unmarked grave in Canada where the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found last month, I was sick to my stomach. But the deaths of Indigenous children at the hands of government were not limited to that side of the border. Many Americans may 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. It is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.

Here.

WaPo: “Deb Haaland: My grandparents were stolen from their families as children. We must learn about this history.” by Matthew L.M. Fletcher

HUGE NEWS! Deb Haaland makes history as first Indigenous cabinet secretary

 

 

In a historic vote on Monday, Debra Haaland was confirmed as President Biden’s Interior secretary. As a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, she will be the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history.

Haaland, a former representative from New Mexico, was confirmed with a 51 to 40 split in the Senate, the narrowest margin of any of Biden’s cabinet picks so far. At the helm of the Department of the Interior, which houses the Department of Indian Affairs, she will oversee 500 million acres of public land, including the national parks system and oil and gas drilling on federal land. The Interior has an important part to play in tackling climate change, as one-quarter of all U.S. emissions can be attributed to fossil fuels extracted on these lands.

READ: Deb Haaland makes history as first Indigenous cabinet secretary

Truth & Healing Commission Conversation with Deb Haaland (updated)

 

kakichihiwewin project director S.A. sat down virtually with Congresswoman Deb Haaland (future Cabinet member) on November 24th to talk about the Truth & Healing Commission, her experiences and the importance of this telling our truths.

 

Today, I held a virtual roundtable with Tribal leaders. It’s the start of @joeBiden’s & my commitment to
listening to our Indigenous communities as we work to address environmental injustice and live up to this country’s trust responsibility. https://t.co/BmktgyvsqA

— Deb Haaland (@DebHaalandNM) December 28, 2020

A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior.

Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.

I am honored and ready to serve.

— Deb Haaland (@DebHaalandNM) December 18, 2020

The Interior Department manages our public lands to make sure we protect them, honor them, & preserve them for future generations.

This was all Indigenous land, once — so it's ironic that we've never had a Native American Interior Secretary.

I would be honored to be the first. pic.twitter.com/RiSbGDNd3u

— Deb Haaland (@DebHaalandNM) December 29, 2020