After federal funding cuts, tribal radio station says silence is not an option

Tami Graham, executive director of KSUT Public Radio, says the last year has been "the most unreal roller coaster ride," as the station lost crucial federal funding followed by record-breaking donations.
Frank Langfitt/NPR

READ:  https://www.npr.org/2025/12/02/nx-s1-5571009/how-one-tribal-radio-station-is-fighting-to-survive-following-federal-funding-cuts 

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BACKGROUND: painful month for Canada's Indigenous communities

 HERE AND NOW | JULY 0, 2021 | BACKGROUND

Indigenous Kids' Bodies Recovered — Not Discovered, Says Canada's Assembly Of First Nations Chief

• Robin Young, Camila Beiner, Karyn Miller Medzon

It’s been a painful month for Canada's Indigenous communities.

RoseAnne Archibald was recently elected Canada's first female national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, leading more than 900,000 Indigenous people in 634 First Nations Communities.

Just days later, another 160 unmarked graves were uncovered at a former Indigenous residential school site on a Southern Gulf Island off of British Columbia. This discovery adds to the more than 1,000 graves believed to contain remains of children forcibly taken from their families and housed in the so-called schools from the late 1880s to the 1990s.

Survivors describe horrific mental and physical abuse at the sites, including the prohibition of any Indigenous cultural practices such as the use of their own languages.

“I don’t like to call them schools — they were institutions of assimilation and genocide,” Archibald says. “And our survivors said that for the longest time they were told stories of the deaths and murders that happened in these schools.”

The investigation and location of the mass graves were conducted with the use of ground penetrating radar technology.

Less than a week ago, members of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nations held a day of testimony about the findings at the Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia where the remains of 215 children were discovered in late May.

“It was extraordinarily emotional and heartbreaking,” Archibald says. “And as I was sitting in the room, I was watching other people and many of them were triggered into their old trauma.”

Archibald describes the powerful testimonies by elders who were only 5 or 6-years-old when they were taken to the schools, eliciting tears from fellow survivors in the audience. Many survivors still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, she says.

“That’s where the majority of Canadians have been deeply affected by this,” Archibald says, “because they see their own children and they understand that now, No. 1, that genocide did happen in Canada and that our children were targets of that.”

"I don’t like to call them schools — they were institutions of assimilation and genocide."

RoseAnne Archibald, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations

Elder Evelyn Camille, a survivor of the Kamloops boarding school, said that fellow students had attempted to warn the authorities about the atrocities against children at the schools but their words fell on deaf ears.

“We tried to mention over, and over, and over, ‘there are many children missing,’ ” she told the audience. “Many of our children tried to cross the river to swim across, many were lost in the water, many of our children who ran away during the winter froze to death on their way home. The black robes start lying about the children.”

Archibald says cultural genocide — the refusal to let kids speak their own languages — was one aspect of the abuse. One survivor told her about being forced to eat soap. Others were beaten.

But she says there were also horrific examples of physical genocide that the children were forced to witness.

“One of the worst stories I heard was a survivor saying that babies were put into incinerators in the schools,” she says. “These are crimes against humanity and crimes against children.”

It’s important that people hear about these atrocities, she says, because truth must proceed reconciliation. As Canadians learn and process this chapter in history, she says survivors can focus on healing the intergenerational trauma they experience.

And the government, she says, needs to be part of the healing by creating programs that provide funding and resources to the community.

“Reparations have to happen to communities [and] to families right across Canada,” she says. “When you think of mental health and addiction issues, almost all of that comes out of the colonization experience, particularly the fact that every family has just had to send their children to school.”

Archibald points to the research of Dr. Pamela Toulouse who says that 100% of First Nations people suffer from intergenerational trauma.

“That’s the impact of these institutions,” Archibald says.

Shoes, flowers, and stuffed animals sit outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School where flowers and cards have been left as part of a growing makeshift memorial to honour the 215 children whose remains have been discovered buried near the facility in Kamloops on June 5, 2021. (Photo by Cole Burston / AFP) (Photo by COLE BURSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

Archibald is calling for an independent criminal investigation into the church organizations that operated these institutions. She says the investigation should also delve into the role of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in removing the children from their families and policing the schools.

As to what she wants from a criminal investigation, she says the answer is simple: “justice.”

“That’s what these children deserve,” she says. “It is the government of Canada that has to be accountable for this.”

So far the remains of more than 1,600 children have been located, and she anticipates that “thousands upon thousands more” will be located as investigations continue.

Because she says there’s a conflict of interest in Canada investigating its own wrongdoing, Archibald and the Assembly of First Nations want outside help from the United Nations International Criminal Court.

Another issue for First Nations survivors is the complicity of the Catholic church in the operation of the schools, Archibald says.

A First Nations delegation will be headed to the Vatican this December to meet with Pope Francis, who has not apologized for the church’s role. Archibald has said she would not participate in the trip.

“We need more than an apology. We need reparations. We need justice,” she says. “We’re not going to get that by having a lovely visit with the pope in the Vatican.”

Since the first graves were discovered in May, at least five Catholic churches were set on fire in protest.

“I get it, there is so much hurt,” Archibald says. “You’re talking about thousands of children.”

She explains Canadians need to do more than destroy or burn the symbols and edificies of colonization. The entire system needs to be decolonized, she says.

“First Nations need to live in a world that our spirituality, that our culture and our language are respected and lifted up,” she says. “This whole genocide process was about destroying everything about us — including taking the lives of our children.”

What needs to happen now, she concludes, is to address the systemic issues that affect Indigenous people — racism, hatred and condescension.

“We can lift each other up,” Archibald says, “and live in a world where everyone is safe and loved and respected and deemed worthy.”

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Karyn Miller-Medzon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Camila Beiner and Miller-Medzon adapted it for the web.

Indigenous Kids' Bodies Recovered — Not Discovered, Says Canada's Assembly Of First Nations Chief

More than 1,000 graves in Canada are believed to contain the remains of Indigenous children forcibly taken from their families and housed in the so-called schools from the late 1880s to the 1990s.

More unmarked graves have been unearthed at a former Indigenous residential school site in Canada. The graves are believed to contain remains of Indigenous children forcibly taken from their families from the late 1880s to the 1990s. We talk with Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald.  That and more, in hour two of Here & Now's July 20, 2021, full broadcast. You can find more at hereandnow.org — and follow us on Twitter, Instagram or join the conversation on Facebook.

This program aired on July 20, 2021.

READ MORE

• Nevada Indian Commission Head On Residential School Deaths In U.S.: 'Shocking' But 'Known All Along'
• Canadian Indigenous Chief: 'Nobody Can Deny Residential Schools Were The Genocide Of Our People'

 

I've never told anyone

Stories of life in Indian boarding schools

Dan Gunderson | Moorhead, Minn. MPR NEWS

A young girl prays at her bedside at a boarding school. A new book by an Ojibwe author tells the stories life for American Indian children in boarding schools designed to purge their language and culture.

Courtesy of North Dakota State University Press | Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions

Denise Lajimodiere's interest in the Indian boarding school experience began with the stories of her parents.
"Mama was made to kneel on a broomstick for not speaking English, locked in closets for not speaking English,” she said. “They would pee their pants and then the nuns would take them out [of the closet] and beat them for peeing their pants.”
Lajimodiere is Ojibwe, and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota. She was an educator for 44 years, working as an elementary school teacher and principal before ending her career recently as as an associate professor of educational leadership at North Dakota State University in Fargo.
Her parents were separated from their families and sent to federal government-run boarding schools as children. Thousands of Native children met the same fate during the boarding school era, which scholars estimate lasted from the late 1800s to well into the middle of the 20th century.

Denise Lajimodiere's grandfather Benjamin an his sister Martha, circa 1898.

Denise Lajimodiere for MPR News

The children were sent to the schools to be purged of their Native cultures, languages and spiritual practices — forced to learn English, and often abused.
The experiences of those children, now with children and grandchildren of their own, have left a deep scar on many in the generations that came after them.
“Papa was beaten with a belt. He saw one of his fellow students die from a beating at the school,” she said.
Her parents rarely talked about their boarding school experience. She only was able to coax stories from her father in the last years of his life.
“Papa said, 'I just couldn't learn that language,'“ she said, “so they put lye soap in his mouth and the kids would get blisters."
Lajimodiere believed her parents’ boarding school abuse was a reason for the family dysfunction she grew up with, so she began a decade-long quest to understand it, interviewing people who went through the experience.
"It's a journey I had to go on to forgive my dad for the way we were raised, for his temper, his verbal abuse and for the beatings,” she said. “So, it was a long journey to understand why my father was the way he was."
What she found was a trove of stories closely guarded for decades by those who lived them. She tells those stories in their own words in her new book, “Stringing Rosaries.” She collected the stories using strict academic research protocols, but the listening was intensely personal.

Many of the former boarding school residents she interviewed prefaced their stories by telling Lajimodiere, “'I've never told anybody my story. I've never told my kids. I've never told my grandkids. I had to think about these stories all my life about what happened to me. I don't want my kids to have to think about it or know about it,’” she said.

Denise Lajimodiere, author of “Stringing Rosaries.”

Amber Mattson | Courtesy of Dreamcatcher Photography

For most people, Lajimodiere promised anonymity before they would share with her the stories.
She recalls one elderly woman who refused to even let family know she was being interviewed for the book.
"She became very quiet, even though it was a huge house, and no one was in the house,” recalled Lajimodiere. “She started whispering about being sexually abused and she said, 'I don't know why I'm telling you. I have not told anybody.' Almost every survivor in the book experienced sexual abuse, or they witnessed it."
Lajimodiere found that, while the stories people told her were often infused with painful and traumatic memories, that pain was not universal. Some people recalled their time at a boarding school fondly. But Lajimodiere says even those people — who said they preferred the school experience to alcoholism, abuse or hunger they experienced at home — shared stories of abuse in the boarding schools.
As she traveled the country doing research on boarding schools and collecting stories, Lajimodiere said she would often find herself sitting in her car, sobbing, after an interview.
She realizes now that she was experiencing the collective intergenerational trauma of losing language, culture and identity. Her parents both spoke their native languages, Ojibwe and Cree, before they went to boarding school.
"My father never spoke Cree again; that was completely beaten out of him,” said Lajimodiere. “So, now, at my age, I'm trying to relearn Ojibwe. Ojibwe is the language of our ceremonies — and our ceremonies have come back very strong."
Lajimodiere thinks connecting with traditional ceremony and culture is helping Native Americans across the country recover from the generational impact of the boarding school era.
She asked people she interviewed what it would take to heal from the trauma they experienced.
“Some of the people in the book say an apology would be a recognition of what the government did to us. Others have said, 'Boarding schools destroyed my childhood; I'll never get that back, so an apology would mean nothing,’" she said.
“Many of them said [what would be healing would be] a return to tribal spirituality and to the languages, our traditions and our ceremonies," she said.
Lajimodiere felt compelled to share the stories because many who attended boarding schools in the first half of the 1900s are now elderly and dying.
She's clear that she doesn't want the stories to elicit pity. She wants understanding.
“I want the world to know that part of why we are the way we are,” she said, “with high alcoholism, high diabetes and a lot of other health issues, one of the overarching reasons is the boarding school era.”

More:

• 'The Wolf at Twilight' Novel explores the legacy of Indian boarding schools
• 'Older than America 'Film crew revisits Indian boarding schools
• • 'Pure love on the dance floor' Celebrating the jingle dress tradition
  • Minnesota sounds and voices Ojibwe women singers learn from their ancestors' voices
   

NPR Airs Inaccurate Story about Indian Child Welfare Act Custody Case

Published December 19, 2018

NORMAN, Okla.  —  The Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) issued the following statement after National Public Radio broadcast and published “Native American Adoption Law Challenged As Racially Biased” - an inaccurate and imprecise story about an Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) custody case:

NPR violated its ethics policy by failing to thoroughly fact check its reporting and allowing racist language and views on air unchallenged. “Native American Adoption Law Challenged As Racially Biased” by Wade Goodwyn contains multiple factual inaccuracies, lacks context, and propagates racist language and ideas.

Goodwyn says "It turned out that Mason's mother - and therefore - Mason, was part Indian." This is a misleading and incorrect statement: The child's mother is a tribal citizen, therefore the child is also a tribal citizen. This designation is foundational to federal Indian law. To frame it otherwise is inaccurate and irresponsible, especially given the sensitivity owed to children involved in ICWA cases. Goodwyn also discloses the identity of a child involved in adoption proceedings – a violation of their safety and privacy.

Goodwyn uses a quote from the child’s adoptive parent: "Mason didn't even look Indian in the least regards." This is deceptive and racially-coded language that defines the child's identity by physical appearance or skin color. These types of depictions of Native people are blatantly racist and should have been addressed by editors before publication and in the story. In ICWA cases, the child’s identity is based on a political connection to a sovereign nation, and is not based on racial identifiers. This framing runs counter to NPR’s policy of respect and accuracy.

The Goldwater Institute's Timothy Sandefur, who was chosen as a primary source, provided a misleading argument that ICWA is a matter of race, not of citizenship. This is disinformation often raised by groups that seek to diminish and destroy the political identity of Indigenous peoples and the sovereign status of tribal nations. By airing these views nationally, NPR has provided a megaphone for anti-Indian ideas and a platform for racism against Native people. As per NPR ethics, reporters should check sources’ "facts," as advocates can skew the context of the story.

NPR has an ethical obligation to report these views in their social and political context but must also be committed to reporting these ideas responsibly. The network’s ethics policy makes this clear in numerous ways, and NAJA urges NPR to immediately correct the story. NPR should also review its policies and personnel that allowed an unchecked platform for racist ideas that propagate hostility and racism toward Indigenous people.

It is the position of NAJA that NPR is in violation of its own ethics policies by failing to conduct due diligence before publication. The network continues to suffer missteps and stereotypical coverage of Native communities, and NAJA has repeatedly offered free cultural competency and ethics training to NPR staff and editors in the past with no response. However, the offer remains and NAJA would be happy to work with NPR to facilitate more accurate, and ethical, journalism.

NAJA is sponsoring an Indian Child Welfare Act reporting symposium at the University of Oklahoma. Learn more here.

NPR Airs Inaccurate Story about Indian Child Welfare Act Custody Case by Native News Online Staff

Why are adoptees doing it; scams to Adopt #NAAM2014 #flipthescript

By Trace

In my ongoing effort to make my blog readers realize that the adoption industry is not what we think it is: here is more about adoption scams:

January 08, 2007 | Listen: All Things Considered  Download

PJ Whiskeyman of Littitz, Pa., sought to adopt two girls from Ukraine whose pictures she saw on an adoption service Web site.  Sasha Aslanian/American RadioWorks

Finding Home: 50 Years of International Adoption

The Many Faces of Adoption  

******************

And here is a really wonderful post by adoptee artist Tracy Hammond (who nailed it on gratitude and so much more)

#flipthescript: Why Are Adoptees Doing It?

Today’s #flipthescripter is Tracy Hammond, an adoptee rights activist and a “baby scoop” era adoptee. She is a part-time metal-smith and jewelry artist. She is widely known for the broken heart adoption pendant she created and sells on Etsy (the Kay Jeweler debacle originally joined us) — that’s her work in the image above for this series.  Tracy writes about her experience being an adoptee on her blog at Adoptee Path.
 

Read more

 

Diane Tells His Name on NPR #NDN #Adoption

NPR StoryCorps on American Indian Adoption by Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Listen Here.

Transcript:

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And it's time now for StoryCorps, the project recording the stories of everyday Americans. And today, we're going to hear from Diane Tells His Name. She's a Lakota Indian. Growing up, she never knew anything about her heritage. She was adopted when she was a baby. And at StoryCorps, her daughter, Bonnie Buchanan, asks Diane about her childhood.

BONNIE BUCHANAN: When did you first feel like you were different?

DIANE TELLS HIS NAME: Probably elementary school. I had a younger sister, and I really didn't like doing the same things that she would do. She would do tea parties and play with dolls and things like that, and I was outside looking at the clouds and the stars. And my sister was blond, tall and thin like my mother, and I was round and brown.

(LAUGHTER)

NAME: I remember going through the family albums, looking for my face in the old photographs, and I didn't see me. And eventually, when I was 37 years old, I happened to see a picture of my mom in October of 1951 - and it shocked me, because I was born in November of 1951 - and my mother was not pregnant. So that's when I knew that I was adopted.

BUCHANAN: How did you feel?

NAME: It was very satisfying to know that I wasn't crazy. I didn't blame them. I wasn't angry with them. In 1951, you just didn't talk about those things. So when I got my original birth certificate, it said on there my birth mother's name, and it said that she was born at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

So I went to South Dakota to receive my Indian name and get a crash course in how to be Indian. After that, my husband and I told Indian Family Services we wanted to adopt a child from my tribe, a Lakota child. And, finally, they faxed us a picture of a little Indian child, and she was drinking chocolate syrup out of a Hershey's bottle. And our son said, that's her. That's the one we need to adopt. And it was you.

I started doing research on your family, and when I started looking at your family tree, I saw one of my relatives on your paper. So we are cousins. I thought that was just - that was amazing. I'm glad you're my baby.

BUCHANAN: I know. I'm glad you adopted me.

NAME: I am, too. It's like our whole family was just planned out so that it would be best for all of us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: You can take a moment to collect yourself. That's Bonnie Buchanan with her mom, Diane Tells His Name, at StoryCorps in San Francisco. Their story will be archived with thousands of others at the Library of Congress. The podcast is at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

I am so happy that Diane was able to record her story with her daughter. She is a contributor in the new anthology TWO WORLDS: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects.  Her photo is on the cover, next to the book title. I am blessed to call her my relative and friend! ...Trace