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ALMOST THREE MILLION VISITORS!
President
Joe Biden took the historic step to formally apologize for the
federal government’s role in the failed Indian Board School era. The
first-of-its-kind acknowledgement comes after Department of Interior
Secretary Deb Haaland released the final report from a three-year investigation
that included formal listening sessions from boarding school survivors
and their relatives. The report documented at least 18,000 Native
children who were sent to distant live-in schools where they were forced
to abandon their languages and cultures. They were subjected to
extensive physical and sexual abuse. Nearly 1,000 children died while
attending the institutions far from their families. We’ll hear from Sec.
Haaland and others who have been working on building the infrastructure
of healing from the Boarding School Era.
President Joe Biden’s remarks from the Gila River Indian Community, Arizona and Remarks from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland before Pres. Biden’s boarding schools apology:
President Biden to Make Historic Apology for Federal Indian Boarding School System
The presidential apology fulfills the first of eight recommendations made in the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report, Volume II,
released by the Interior Department in June 2024. The 105-page report
was penned by Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Bryan Newland (Bay
Mills Indian Community) at the direction of Interior Secretary Deb
Haaland (Laguna Pueblo), the first ever cabinet secretary in U.S.
history.
“This is incredibly meaningful to have a sitting president admit the
wrongdoings of the government, and I'm just honored to see this happen
during my lifetime,” Haaland said in an interview with Native News Online. “I'm incredibly grateful to the president. He is courageous, he's kind, and he really is committed to Indian Country.”
Andrea Currie on Finding Otipemisiwak: The People Who Own Themselves
The
Saulteaux Métis writer, healer and activist shares stories of family,
resilience and her life as a Sixties Scoop survivor in her latest book.
Finding Otipemisiwakis the story of Sixties Scoop survivor
Andrea Currie and her journey to finding her Métis roots and reuniting
with her birth family. It's a tale of survival, identity, family and
culture in the face of colonial practices and Indigenous erasure.
Currie
is a writer, healer and activist. She lives in Cape Breton where she
works as a psychotherapist in Indigenous mental health.
She spoke with The Next Chapter's Antonio Michael Downing about finding a way back to her heritage.
You
start off the book by saying, since nobody has written what I need to
read, I'll have to write it myself. Why do you think the Sixties Scoop
has remained in the shadows?
Given what we're
talking about in terms of the history of all these colonial
interventions, I really feel like we could flip that question and ask
settler folks why so much of the history of what has happened to
Indigenous peoples on our homelands remains in the shadows.
We
are still, in so many places and communities and regions, some of us
just surviving. Others are prioritizing healing and finding ways to
strengthen our Indigenous cultures and to live as well as we can in our
communities, or wherever we choose to be.
So I'd kind of
like to ask our settler listeners, why is it that it's taking so long
for this history to become just a part of our understanding, our
collective understanding as a country? I do think there's a lot of
difficult feelings that this history brings up for people, right?
There's a human response to want to deny, avoid, not get into that, but
we have to move forward to repair and create the relationships that we
could have had and could still have if we don't acknowledge this
history.
You reunite with your younger brother Rob, who the book is dedicated to. Can you tell us more about him and your life together?
I
would love to. Rob and I were the youngest two of three adopted
children. We were both Métis Sixties Scoop kids, although we had no idea
of that at the time, but what we did know is that we did not feel
acceptable or that we belonged in that family. It seemed like our
adoptive mother was always disappointed in us and there was some way
that we were supposed to be that we just couldn't measure up to.
That created an incredible bond between us.
- Andrea Currie
But
we also knew that there was something not right about this, you know?
And I think because we both shared that experience, we were able to
guard each other's perceptions about that ... and that created an
incredible bond between us. I honestly think it helped us survive our
childhoods.
He
was sent back to Children's Aid when he was 15, which changed the
trajectory of his life forever and was a devastating loss to me. So I
included parts of Rob's story in my book to resist that erasure of him
and his truth and to honour him.
In the book you reflect on the concept of blood memory. What is blood memory and your relationship to it?
Blood
memory is the knowledge that is present in us both spiritually and
genetically. It's our ability to know things without ever having
consciously learned them. So I had a number of moments in my childhood
that I recall vividly when I knew how to do something without ever
having been taught or shown, like weave a mat out of reeds, for example.
Or
when I clearly had beliefs that were unlike the rest of the family
members that I was growing up with, that I now see were aligned with
Métis core values and ways of thinking. In fact, later on, after I'd met
my birth family, I remember sharing some of these stories of
disconnection with my oldest sister and her simply saying to me, "You
were thinking like a Métis."
When you spoke to
your birth mother for the very first time, she mentioned the parallels
between your life and the life of your family. Can you tell me more
about that?
I come from a family of writers.
For instance, my grandmother is a celebrated Métis writer, Marie Therese
Goulet Courchaine. I have always loved to write and I've been a
musician. When I met my family and we were just sharing information and
stories about what we'd been up to for, you know, 38 years, I sent my
mother some CDs that I'd been part of recording. She sent back CDs
recorded by my brother and his band and my uncle and his band.
I
can't even tell you how profound and just joyful it was to realize that
in many ways, in much of my life, I had been living a parallel life
that was still in some ways connected to the lives of my birth family
members.
I had been living a parallel life that was still in some ways connected to the lives of my birth family members.
- Andrea Currie
You were 38 when this journey of reconnecting with your birth family began. What place do you see this book in that journey?
I
have had the opportunity to do a lot of healing in the 26 years since I
found my family and to really do some of the work of integrating all of
this. It's a lot, as you can imagine. And so this book really isn't for
me.
This book was written to contribute to the
conversation that I think needs to happen in our country, and in
particular, it's written for other Sixties Scoop survivors so that we
don't feel alone. I want other Sixties Scoop people to be able to find
things to read or stories to hear and to connect with that help them
feel less alone.
Heiltsuk Nation Chief Marilyn Slett told the United Nations in Geneva
this week that Canada is still operating with a policy of “legislated
extinction” toward Indigenous people.
Slett spoke to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) and told them that Canada has only completed two
of the 231 recommendations that came out of the National Inquiry into
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
“And more than half have not been started,” she told the committee on October 14.
As she spoke, Slett wore traditional regalia of the Heiltsuk Nation —
located on the coast of British Columbia — including an apron gifted to
her by her grandmother, a button blanket, and a cedar headpiece.
In
the 1950s American Catholics were eager to adopt thousands of Italian
children from an impoverished country. They thought they were saving
orphans.
They were wrong.
Most
of the children were not orphans. They were the children of unwed
mothers who had been pressured into giving up their child by their
families and a powerful church. Today, thousands of American adoptees
are still struggling to piece together their lost lives, decades after
the Vatican's orphan program ended in 1970.
Adoptee
John Campitelli felt his entire life was based on a lie once he learned
what had happened to him and his birth mother, Francesca. Campitelli is
still angry at the church.
"They
told her that they would take care of me and that was a lie. They
didn't take care of me," he said. "They cut all relationships that I
could possibly have with my birth family and they shipped me overseas."
The Vatican's post-WWII orphan program
At
the end of World War II, Italy was a shattered country. Hundreds of
thousands of children were abandoned in institutions run by the Catholic
Church. Alarmed by the growing number of children, the Vatican decided
to send children to America for adoption and the promise of a better
life.
Between
1950 and 1970, the Church sent thousands of children born out of
wedlock to America on orphan visas. The Church arranged the visas,
helped by a 1950 U.S. law that broadened the definition of orphan to
include a child with one living parent, but a parent who couldn't
provide care.
New
York author Maria Laurino uncovered the Vatican's orphan program in her
new book, out Oct. 15, "The Price of Children." Laurino pieced the
story together from hundreds of documents in the Church's New York
archives. Laurino told 60 Minutes the linchpin of the program was a
consent form that birth mothers were supposed to sign that severed all
rights to the child. But Laurino said often doctors or lawyers signed
the consent form without telling the mothers. Others were deliberately
misled.
Maria Laurino
60 Minutes
"There
were women who were trapped into this situation and tremendous pressure
to relinquish their children," Laurino said. "There were women who were
tricked, who signed forms they didn't understand. And, in the worst
cases, there were women who were told their child had died."
What records from the time show
For
Francesca, Campitelli's mother, and thousands like her, it was
devastating to learn that the child she'd entrusted to the Church had
disappeared. She was unmarried and had been forced by her family to give
up her son. He was sent to a Catholic-run institution for the children
of unwed mothers. When Francesca handed over her baby to the nuns, her
name was stripped from the birth record. Her baby son became an orphan.
Campitelli showed 60 Minutes the Church documents that changed his life:
"It
says here, 'they abandoned since birth and their whereabouts are
unknown,'" Campitelli said. "They knew damn well where my mom was."
His
birth mother, he said, thought she could get her son back once she got
her life together. He told 60 Minutes she never consented to an
adoption, or for her son to be sent to the United States.
Laurino
found letters from other distraught mothers pleading for their child's
return. She read from one letter, addressed to Monsignor Andrew Landi,
an American priest living in Rome who ran the orphan program.
"I beg that my children be repatriated," the mother wrote, "If I cannot again see my children, I will shorten my life."
Laurino
also found correspondence that showed Landi sent local priests to scour
Italy's countryside for more children to be sent to America. The Church
charged $475 per child – what would now be around $4,500.
Reuniting with his birth mother
The
Vatican's orphan program ended in 1970, but the fallout continues,
rippling across generations. Campitelli said the Church caused great
suffering for him and for his mother.
He
was 28 when he was reunited with his mother. He spent more than a
decade trying to find her. It was a daunting search, with few clues.
Even his surname was false, invented by the state to cut all ties
between the baby and his birth mother.
Campitelli and his mother first spoke by phone in 1991.
"It brought me to tears, I must admit," he said. "We said we were never going to let go of each other from then on."
Two months later, he was on a flight to Italy.
"We
had exchanged photographs, but I said I didn't need a photograph
because I saw that lady there in front of me and I said, 'That's my mom,
she looks identical to me,'" Campitelli said. "And after 28 years I
could say that, you know. I just ran over to her, and I embraced her.
And I said, 'Mom, finally,' and I kissed her. I said 'Mom, no one had to
tell me who you were. I knew who you were. I just had to look at
you.'"
He moved back to Italy to be closer to his birth family.
"Am I angry at the Church?"
Mary
Relotto, another adoptee impacted by the program, reunited with her
birth mother, Anna Maria, in 1992, but it took Relotto years to feel
ready to ask why she was given away.
"She
didn't have clothes for us," Relotto said. "She was in a desperate
situation, you know? So, instead of the Church helping her…maintain a
house and feed her children, they took her children."
Anna
Maria agreed to share her story if her last name was withheld because,
even decades later, the stigma of having a child out of wedlock remains.
She told 60 Minutes about her son Christian — Relotto's brother — who
was sent to a church-run institution when she became ill. But when she
went back to pick up her baby, she says the nuns told her he had died.
Mary Relotto and Anna Maria with family
60 Minutes
"I went into a depression," Anna Maria said in Italian.
She
told 60 Minutes she searched for him everywhere, wondering how he had
died and whether he was buried. No one could give her any answers.
To
this day, the Church insists the program was the best chance for a new
life for these children. Laurino said she believes that Landi "turned a
blind eye" to the plight of the birth mothers, and focused on the merits
of the program. He died in 1999 without ever expressing any regrets.
"[He
thought ] that they were bringing children to good Catholic homes, and
that these children would be raised well in the United States," said
Laurino.
For her part, Relotto says she should never have been sent to America.
"Am
I angry at the Church? Hell, yeah, I am," she said. "I would have a
different life, too. And while it might have been difficult, I still
would've survived it without this kind of grief that I have inside of me
now."
Bill
Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent
who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe,
for more than four decades with CBS News.
“What changes when an institution publishes a land acknowledgment?” he asked. “What material, tangible changes are enacted?”
The answers to these questions still appear to elude some
of the most well-attended art institutions across the United States. So
much so that someIndigenous scholars have come to regard the standard land acknowledgment as “hollow,” “empty,” “performative,” and, as Pierce put it, “not enough.”
Hyperallergic
looked into the land acknowledgments — or lack thereof — at 15 popular
art museums and institutions in the country, and while this is by no
means a comprehensive list, there’s certainly a lot to glean from the
varying approaches. Some institutions have opted to incorporate land
acknowledgements on their grounds. In 2021, for example, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan installed a plaque on its Fifth Avenue façade coupled with an article
from the curators behind the effort contextualizing the plaque in
addition to other initiatives within the museum. That same year, the
Legion of Honor and de Young Museum in San Francisco installed a
physical acknowledgment on an exterior wall, complemented by a detailed online text.
The
Forge Project website requires visitors to physically check off
acknowledgments and advocacy statements before being permitted to enter.
(screenshot Rhea Nayyar/Hyperallergic via forgeproject.com)
Many
museums have relegated their land acknowledgements to their websites,
sometimes adding links for additional resources and using digital space
for further contextualization. In New York City, the Brooklyn Museum and the Queens Museum
have dedicated land acknowledgements in their “About” pages online; the
Brooklyn Museum also has an acknowledgement on the footer of its
website. The Whitney Museum of American Art
features a devoted land acknowledgment webpage with additional context
on overlapping territories and diasporic relationships, as well as links
to the Lenape Center, the American Indian Community House, and the digital nonprofit Native Land.
The Art Institute of Chicago‘s digital land acknowledgment was implemented in 2019 through a live ceremony
with the city’s American Indian Center, a collaborator on the endeavor.
The page includes a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section that also
addresses criticisms of land acknowledgments among other points of
interest, including an answer to the question, “Isn’t a statement a bit
hollow?” The Cleveland Art Museum‘s
land acknowledgment page also includes FAQ section tackling criticisms
and providing more historical context about the Native populations of
the region as well as the museum’s stated commitments to Native tribes
today.
Alternatively, some high-profile institutions have not
included land acknowledgements on their websites. The National Gallery
of Art in Washington, DC, confirmed that it does not have a land
acknowledgment in an email to Hyperallergic. The High Museum of
Art in Atlanta; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum
of Modern Art in Manhattan do not appear to have land acknowledgments
online, nor did they immediately respond to Hyperallergic‘s inquiries. The Getty Museum and Foundation, meawhile, announced in 2021
that the development of a land acknowledgment in collaboration with
relevant Indigenous leaders was in the works, and has issued a FAQs document about the timeline, process, and permissions for individual acknowledgments in the meantime.
To
better understand how a land acknowledgment should be folded into more
comprehensive institutional initiatives to engage with and support
Native people living today, Hyperallergic checked in with
Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation), executive director and
chief curator of Forge Project. The Native-led nonprofit on
Moh-He-Con-Nuck/Mohican (Stockbridge-Munsee) land in Taghkanic, New
York, is devoted to cultivating and advancing Indigenous leadership in
the arts and culture sector.
“The way that I understand and frame a land acknowledgment
is that it should be a declaration of an institution’s relationships,”
Hopkins explained in a phone call. “It’s not just a declaration of
people who were there on a certain land area — people who are still
there. I feel like that relationship part is really key and it’s often
left out of land acknowledgments.”
During
a Meadow Work day in September 2023, neighbors from the region
participate in and learn more about the land remediation work through
the Forge Project and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. (photo by
Thatcher Keats, courtesy of Forge Project)
Hopkins elaborated that it’s the institutions thatmust develop relations with existing Indigenous communities in a non-extractive manner.
“You
don’t go to a community who is overwhelmed and under-resourced and say,
‘Hey, we want to plan a land acknowledgment,’ — you approach them with
what you can offer them in order to begin the relationship,” she said.
“So that perhaps some of your institutional resources may directly
benefit them. Museums often think that they can develop a relationship
through programming, but I actually think that what needs to happen
first is building trust and asking the question, ‘What do you need from
us?’ instead of ‘What do we need from you?'”
Hopkins used the
Forge Project as an example, highlighting that the organization shares
50% of the proceeds from any paid visitor tours on its grounds with the
Stockbridge-Munsee Community, in addition to collaborating in ongoing
research on land history and labor exploitation in the area. The Forge
Project has also engaged in land remediation with the Community through
the removal of invasive plant species and growth of endemic plant
specimens to support original biodiversity and rekindle Indigenous
knowledge and stewardship of the land.
Another point Hopkins
brought up is the basis of land acknowledgments pacifying history, or
failing to address the violence and brutality against the Native
populations whose land institutions were built on. Many acknowledgments
will state that the institution or organization is located on the“unceded,
ancestral homelands” of a particular Native tribe or community without
elaborating on the processes of dispossession, dehumanization, and
violent expulsion.
“Oftentimes, land acknowledgments intentionally or unintentionally underscore this really violent myth of the ‘vanishing Native,’
and hardly anyone ever answers the question of ‘Why are people not
here?'” Hopkins continued, highlighting that colonial histories have
always centered violence in the transformation of traditional territory
into property.
“Museums have been inherently extractive
and there still needs to be a lot of work done in order to shift those
practices at their base level,” Hopkins noted. “They shouldn’t presume
that there is an interest in collaboration or a desire for a
relationship simply because they’re museums. Certain Native communities
may have other priorities, perhaps rooted in healthcare and education,
and it’s up to institutions to understand and reflect on who benefits
from forging a relationship, and what can be done outside of just
programming.”
A
protester at the Whitney Museum during the "Nine Weeks of Art and
Action." Taken with permission on May 17, 2019. (photo Hakim
Bishara/Hyperallergic)
You’ve probably heard one. You may have helped craft one. A
land acknowledgment is quickly becoming de rigueur among mainstream
cultural and arts institutions. An official will stand at a podium and
announce: This building is situated on the unceded land of the XYZ people. As if those people are not still here. As if this all happened in the past. He will breathe deeply and continue: We pay homage to the original stewards of these lands. The audience will nod in agreement. As if homage were the same as returning stolen land.
A land acknowledgment is not enough.
Museums that once stole Indigenous bones now celebrate
Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Organizations that have never hired an
Indigenous person now admit the impact of Indigenous genocide through
social media. Land-grant universities scramble to draft statements about
their historical ties to fraudulent treaties and pilfered graves.
Indeed, these are challenging times for institutions trying to do right
by Indigenous peoples.
Some institutions will seek the input of an
Indigenous scholar or perhaps a community. They will feel contented and
“diverse” because of this input. They want a decolonial to-do list. But
what we have are questions: What changes when an institution publishes a
land acknowledgment? What material, tangible changes are enacted?
Without action, without structural change, acknowledging stolen land is what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang call a “settler move to innocence.” Institutions are not innocent. Settlers are not innocent.
The
problem with land acknowledgments is that they are almost never
followed by meaningful action. Acknowledgment without action is an empty
gesture, exculpatory and self-serving. What is more, such gestures
shift the onus of action back onto Indigenous people, who neither asked
for an apology nor have the ability to forgive on behalf of the land
that has been stolen and desecrated. It is not my place to forgive on
behalf of the land.
A land acknowledgment is not enough.
This
is what settler institutions do not understand: Land does not require
that you confirm it exists, but that you reciprocate the care it has
given you. Land is not asking for acknowledgment. It is asking to be
returned to itself. It is asking to be heard and cared for and attended
to. It is asking to be free.
Land is not an object, not a thing. Land does not require recognition. It requires care. It requires presence.
Land is a gift, a relative, a body that sustains other
bodies. And if the land is our relative, then we cannot simply
acknowledge it as land. We must understand what our responsibilities are
to the land as our kin. We must engage in a reciprocal relationship
with the land. Land is — in its animate multiplicities — an ongoing
enactment of reciprocity.
A land acknowledgment is not enough.
To
engage with the land on the land’s terms is an act of reciprocity.
Reciprocity, rather than recognition, is what the land requires because
that is what it has already given. Are you not alive, breathing, because
of this land?
The land exists regardless of settler
acknowledgment, which can only ever be the first step toward meaningful
action. Next steps involve building relationships with that land as if
it were your kin. Because it is.
Two people hold hands at the oral history project site visit in Harbor Springs, Michigan. Provided photo.
They’ve come from the Turtle Mountain Band of
Chippewa. From the Ojibwe and Inupiaq. Smoke rises from bundles of
sweetgrass, cedar and sage as they tell their stories of surviving
Indian boarding schools.
For some, the recounting is not new. They bring weathered
black-and-white family photos to honor relatives lost. Others, until
now, have never disclosed their still-raw childhood trauma.
Across the country, a group of travelingIndigenous
oral historians are there to listen, and to record these vital
first-person narratives. They are part of an ongoing collaboration
between the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
and the U.S. Department of the Interior. The goal is to more fully
document the systemic abuse endured by generations of Indigenous people
under the government’s attempts at forced assimilation that began in the
1800s and lasted for over a century.
Ramona Klein, a 77-year-old from North Dakota shared a particularly
harrowing memory with the historians, tribal officials and spiritual
leaders who gathered in Bismarck, North Dakota in June to support the
survivors.
She remembered a “big, green bus.” It carried Klein and her five
siblings away from their sobbing mother and the Turtle Mountain Band of
Chippewa Indians to the militaristic Fort Totten Indian Boarding School.
When the children arrived in 1954, she said, they met a matron who
meted out beatings with a wooden paddle that school staff called “the
board of education.”
The first-of-its-kind oral history project, underway since March,
receives and archives these memories. Three historians and a team of an
additional 10 to 12 people have so far visited Indigenous communities in
Oklahoma, Alaska, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Michigan, and
will continue their work through 2026.
Their holistic approach recognizes that painful narratives cannot be
collected without caring for the people who experienced the trauma.
Charlee
Brissette, is a Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians tribal
member and a descendant of boarding school survivors. She works as the
oral historian team lead. Provided photo.
“Many times people feel a sense of lightness after sharing their
story,” said Charlee Brissette, a Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa
Indians tribal member and oral history project team lead. “But
everybody’s story is unique, and when it comes to talking about abuse,
sometimes they don’t always feel light in that moment.”
In each location, video interviews begin and end in a circle, in
accordance with Indigenous practices. Interviewees share in spaces made
sacred. An altar set up at each site offers traditional medicine set in
an abalone shell alongside eagle and crow feathers. Participants are
provided native food reflective of each region — smoked salmon and moose
in Alaska and smoked trout in Michigan. Powwow songs, deerskin drumming
and other performances are provided by artists including Salish Spirit
Canoe Family, Osage Tribal Singers, and the Alaska Native Heritage
Dancers.
Indigenous psychologists stand by onsite, ready to suggest a pause for water or nourishment, or some time to decompress at the beading table.
“I don’t know if I would have felt that same sense of healing in the
absence of those things,” said James LaBelle. He recounted his time at
two Bureau of Indian Affairs schools during his interview in Anchorage,
Alaska, in May. “It would have been a stark, cold interview.”
Linda Yamane holding a coiled basket (all images courtesy Linda Yamane)
For most of her early life, Linda Yamane thought Ohlone
fine coil basketry had disappeared from the world. But when she was a
Master’s student at San Jose State University, she saw a poster
displaying Ohlone baskets and lists of which institutions held them.
Four decades later, Yamane says, she is one of the only people
practicing Ohlone coil basketry aside from her one apprentice.
Yamane, who lives in Seaside, California, is a member of the Rumsen Ohlone Tribal Community,
indigenous to the Monterey Bay, Carmel River Valley, and Point Lobos
area in Northern California. Ohlone refers to a linguistic association
of Northern California Indigenous peoples who share languages belonging
to the Penutian family. Rumsen is one of eight linguistic communities
under the Ohlone umbrella.
Master Chilkat weaver Kerri Dick (Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, Tlingit,
Kootenay), whose artistry fused traditional carving, weaving, and
beading practices that she learned from family members and shared with
her local Haida Gwaii community, died at age 41, as confirmed by her
family in an announcement posted yesterday to Facebook. The cause of death has not been made public.
Some of the 200 cultural items that
the Wyoming Episcopal Church returned to the Northern Arapaho tribe last week.
(Crystal C'Bearing)
The Wyoming Episcopal diocese has
had about 200 Northern Arapaho tribal items since 1946. On Monday, the tribe
gets them back.
The Wyoming Episcopal Church is set
to returnabout 200 cultural items to the Northern Arapaho tribe on
Monday after a years-long effort by the tribe to repatriate the artifacts.
The momentous return for the
Northern Arapaho comes as Indigenous activists have urged
the nation to reckon with its violent history toward Native Americans. The
federal government has tightened laws to
return tribes’ items, cities have removed Christopher Columbus monuments, and under the Biden administration,
the federal government has said the federal holiday that falls on Monday marks
both Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
The Wyoming Episcopal Church
possessed the Northern Arapaho tribe’s artifacts for nearly 80 years — ranging
from children’s toys to bows and arrows to traditional dresses. Given to the
church by a local store owner who bartered for the items, the state’s Episcopal
leadership had been reluctant to return the artifacts for decades, but it
shifted its stance as the tribe continued pressing for the items’ return and as
the nation more broadly recognized past wrongs toward Native Americans.
It’s about time the items return
home, said Jordan Dresser, a former chairman of the Northern Arapaho tribe and
one of the community leaders who worked for the artifacts’ return. The Northern
Arapaho reside in west central Wyoming on the Wind River Reservation.
“This is a huge win for us. This is
for the future. This is us being able to hold on to our culture and our legacy.
I get emotional about it, because I just never thought it was going to happen,”
Dresser said. “Repatriation has become a big, hot topic in this country, but
this is a battle that tribes have been fighting for years.”
The church said the items’ return is
long overdue.
“We hope that their return is the
beginning of reconciliation, healing and shared community between the Episcopal
Church in Wyoming and the Northern Arapaho people,” said Megan Nickles, chair
of the standing committee of the Wyoming Episcopal Church. “I would challenge
other institutions around the world that hold sacred items to also return them
home where they belong.”
The items will eventually be displayed in a museum —
currently under renovation — on the Wind River Reservation, Dresser said,
“where the Arapaho people can come learn about themselves.”
Beaded clothing items are some of
the artifacts being returned. (Crystal C'Bearing)
Across the country, Native American
tribes have fought for years to reclaim
their human remains and sacred items from museums, universities and other
entities.
The Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act, passed by Congress in 1990, requires museums
and federal agencies to identify and send back sacred items to their respective
cultural groups. Compliance was slow — or nonexistent — and the Interior Department issued rules this year to strengthen the law, setting a deadline of five years for
federally funded entities to ensure their collections comply with the law.
Following the order, several museums
across the country began covering displays of artifacts from federally
recognized Native American and Native Hawaiian groups as they determined
whether they could obtain consent for the exhibits or would have to return the
artifacts, The Washington Post reported.
This helped create the perfect storm
for the Wyoming Episcopal Church to return the Northern Arapaho artifacts in
its possession. The church is not subject to that law, but it further
encouraged all American institutions to reevaluate what to do with artifacts
they possess, Dresser said.
The Episcopal Church in Wyoming had
possessed the items since 1946. Edith May Adams, who served at St. Michael’s
Mission in Ethete, Wyo., ran a small market where she amassed the items as many
Native residents would trade them in for necessities, the church said in a
statement. Adams later deeded the collection to the church, and the church held
the items for the next 78 years.
In 2012, Dresser and other tribe
members approached the church to obtain some of the items for a historical
display at the Wind River Hotel and Casino. At first, they were told no,
Dresser said.
“There were concerns about us having
capabilities of housing them. Some had issues with it being connected to a casino,”
Dresser said. “We felt like at the core of it, in our hearts, we knew how to
care for these items, we just didn’t have the technical expertise for it.”
Dresser went on to obtain a master’s degree in museum
studies. “Just to get that foot in the door — so at least one of our tribal
members has the technical expertise,” he said, stressing that the tribe “always
had the cultural expertise.”
Discussions continued, and
eventually the church agreed to loan the tribe about 20 items.
“Back in 2012, we were just happy
with the loan,” Dresser said. “Even though, in the back of my head, I thought
these should just be ours, because they are ours.”
The conversations did not stop —
tribal leaders pressed forward with discussions about the ultimate return of
the items to the Northern Arapaho. The tribe’s historic preservation office
made repatriation a priority, and many tribal members are also members of the
Episcopal Church. “They remind the church of their obligations to our people,”
Dresser said.
Twelve years later, their dream is
set to be realized Monday.
The approximately 200 items range
widely, Dresser said. There are beaded items and figurines, but Dresser’s
favorites are the rawhide suitcases. “The earliest suitcases that our people
used to put things in,” he said. “They’re just beautiful.”
The tribe and church plan to gather for a ceremony honoring
the items’ return. Now, after years of dispossession, comes the best part,
Dresser said: “It’s up to us what we want to do next.”
St. Michaels was a residential school where generations of Indigenous children were abused. https://t.co/4qpnZ89uWf — Ruth H. Robertson (R...
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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
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60s Scoop Survivors Legal Support
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Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
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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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