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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul presented perhaps the strongest worded
government apology to date for her state’s role in operating an Indian
boarding school from 1875 to 1957.
“Today, on behalf of the State of New York, I apologize to the Seneca
Nation of Indians – and the survivors and descendants from all Nations –
who attended the Thomas Indian School,” Hochul said. “We cannot change
the horrors of the past, but I recommit to the truth, justice,
reconciliation, accountability, and healing that are so essential to
move forward together.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul will make what is
believed to be the first trip by a sitting New York governor to Seneca
Nation Territory next week, when she will apologize to the Seneca people
and thousands of former Indigenous students and descendants for what
she said was New York’s role in separating them from their families and
forcing them to assimilate at the Thomas Indian School in Western New
York’s Cattaraugus Territory.
Hochul’s Tuesday visit includes meetings with survivors of atrocities
committed at the residential boarding school, which the state owned and
operated from 1875 to 1957, she and Seneca President J. Conrad Seneca
announced Friday morning.
“The atrocities that our children suffered at the Thomas Indian
School have remained hidden in the shadows for far too long,” Seneca
said in a statement Friday. “At long last, our people will hear,
directly from the Governor, the words we have waited lifetimes for the
State of New York to say — ‘We’re sorry.’”
Native American children who attended the boarding schools were
stripped of their cultural identity and suffered abuse, violence, hatred
and in at least several hundred cases, death, at the hands of school
officials, according to the report.
The school system discouraged American Indian, Alaska Native and
Native Hawaiian languages, religions and cultural practices and used
corporal punishment to enforce rules, according to the more than
100-page report, which included information on marked and unmarked
burial sites at or near school facilites, the identification of children
and investigating abuses.
Seneca’s father attended Thomas Indian School, and his grandmother
was removed from her family at the age 11 and forced to attend Carlisle
Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Hochul noted.
“I know the pain and the trauma because I have seen it and felt it in
my own family, just as countless families have borne that pain and
carried it every day for generations,” Seneca said.
Hochul said her visit will fulfill a pledge she made to Seneca in Albany earlier this year.
“No words or actions will ever be able to undo the pain and suffering
of the Seneca people and other Indigenous peoples across the State, but
by visiting the Seneca Nation and the site of the Thomas Indian School
we will mark a new day in our relations,” Hochul said in a statement.
The Canadian Medical
Association (CMA) apologized for its role and the role of the medical
profession in past and ongoing harms to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis
Peoples in the health system.
In presenting the apology at a ceremony held on Wednesday, Sept. 18,
in Victoria on the ancestral lands of the lək̓ʷəŋiʔnəŋ-speaking people
of Songhees and Xwsepsum Nations., CMA President Dr. Joss Reimer spoke
of the organization's commitment to being accountable and working
together with Indigenous Peoples to do better in the spirit of humility
and reciprocity.
“We have not lived up to the ethical standards the medical profession
is expected to uphold to ensure the highest standard of care is
provided to patients and trust is fostered in physicians, residents and
medical students,” she said. “We realize we have left Indigenous Peoples
out of that high standard of care.”
The ceremony also included singers, drummers, dancers, musicians and storytellers.
Approximately 225 guests, including local and national Indigenous
leaders, members of the CMA Indigenous Guiding Circle and Indigenous
Survivors listened as CMA leadership outlined the organization’s path to
an apology.
“Today,
we turn the first page of a new chapter in the CMA’s history,” said Dr.
Alika Lafontaine, CMA president (2022–23). “It's a chapter that we hope
First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples can write with us together, as
we work toward a health system that provides Indigenous Peoples with the right care, at the right time, in the right place, in a good way.”
That path included an in-depth review of more than 150 years of
archives, which revealed the role the CMA, and the medical profession,
have played in the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples, whether through
action or inaction. These harms include the devastating impacts of
Indian hospitals, forced medical experimentation, forced sterilization,
child apprehensions, systemic racism, neglect and abuse within the
health care system.
The CMA’s first Indigenous president, Dr. Lafontaine announced the
association’s commitment to an apology in June 2023, as an important
part of the CMA’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada’s Calls to Action. With the goal of creating meaningful change
in health care and in the relationship between physicians and
Indigenous Peoples, the CMA is hoping the apology inspires members of
the profession and medical organizations to begin their own
reconciliation journeys.
Building on past reconciliation work, the CMA’s ReconciliACTION Plan
outlines how it will advance health and well-being for Indigenous
Peoples, support the medical profession’s journey toward truth and
reconciliation, and promote internal reconciliation as an organization.
The Healing Stone will remain at the cultural center for two years
before returning to New Zealand for the next World Indigenous Suicide
Prevention Conference. Alongside the stone, the Seneca Nation received
other gifts from previous conference hosts, which will also be displayed
at the cultural center.
The Onöhsagwë:de’ Cultural Center is open six days a week and offers
exhibits, collections, and educational programs. To learn more visit
their website.
Ahead of its release, we sat down with Fancy Dance
director Erica Tremblay to talk about her narrative debut with Lily
Gladstone.
Fancy Dance will mean different things to different people. For a start, no one seems able to describe what genre of film it is. Since its Sundance debut last year, it’s been described as a road trip
movie, a coming-of-age story and a crime drama. More than those, though,
it feels like a window into life on a modern-day Seneca-Cayuga Nation
reservation; a snapshot still rarely put on the big screen, let alone
one given a profile like Apple have given this one.
Starring Lily Gladstone as tough-as-nails grifter, Jax, and Isabel
Deroy-Olson as her niece, Roki, the film starts days after the
disappearance of Jax’s sister (and Roki’s mother), Tawi. Together, they
fight child services and Roki’s white grandparents to track Tawi down –
and prepare for a dance at the upcoming powwow while they’re at it.
With a profile boosted by Gladstone’s Killers Of The Flower MoonOscar
nomination, the film arrives on Apple TV+ on Friday. We sat down with its
director, Erica Tremblay, to talk Gladstone, building believable
characters and making the jump from documentary filmmaking.
Kim Wheeler was adopted during the Sixties Scoop and fought to find her way back to her culture My name is Kim Wheeler but some know me as...
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You are not alone
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
Diane Tells His Name
click photo
Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie
NO MORE STOLEN SISTERS
click image
We conclude this series & continue the conversation by naming that adoption is genocide. This naming refers to the process of genocide that breaks kinship ties through adoption & other forms of family separation & policing 🧵#NAAM2022#AdoptionIsTraumaAND#AdopteeTwitter#FFY 1/6 pic.twitter.com/46v0mWISZ1
As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.
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