Stolen Land, Federal Boarding School Report (podcasts)

 

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More than a historical document—it’s the ongoing reality of domination, land dispossession, and the attempted erasure of entire peoples.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

 

 

Episode 009: McGirt v. Oklahoma: Revealing and Concealing Domination

Our conversation moves beyond McGirt into other claims of a right of domination—including claims of “bureaucratic expertism” that seek domination over all people. We say that free existence requires free inquiry into all claims of a right of domination.

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Red Thought Project | Haaland v. Brackeen

HISTORY and context of taking all children away from their tribal families

See more videos: https://www.redthought.org/

“TO RISE ABOVE THE COMMON MOLD”

From Peter D'Errico's blog

Osage / Cherokee Professor Rennard Strickland passed on January 5, 2021. He was a major figure in law and legal history, a law teacher and Dean at several schools, and a major contributor to Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

He wrote this essay fifty years ago, based on a speech before the Tenth Circuit Roundtable of the Law Student Division of the ABA in October 1974.  His essay was published in the same issue as mine on “The Law is Terror Put Into Words”.

Strickland said his law student audience were “preparing to move into the mad world of the twentieth century.” He called on them “to free us from the traditional molds of thinking and to come face to face with the reality of this changing world.”

His description of the problems they faced and his advice to them are as relevant in 2025 as in 1975:

He said:

“It is not enough to hold all of the ‘right views’ and espouse all the ‘right causes’ without asking why are these the ‘right views’ and the ‘right causes’…. Your challenge as young lawyers is to …lead us into an age of ‘reality, reason, and common sense.’"

University of Oklahoma College of Law Photo

And I will add that we lawyers as public policy leaders in executive and legislative posts have not let down this tradition of “credulity, superstition, and fanaticism.” Your challenge as young lawyers is to break out of this mold, free us from the limitations of your age, and lead us into an age of “reality, reason, and common sense.”

 

KEEP READING:  https://peterderrico.substack.com/p/in-memory-rennard-strickland-to-rise

John Kane interviews Peter d'Errico

Author of "Federal Anti-Indian Law", Peter d'Errico joins John Kane to talk about his work as it relates to the Osage Murders, Native gaming and US domination.

More Episodes 

Peter d'Errico Speaks at Parliament of the World's Religions (video)

 BLOG POST

'Christian discovery' and the legal entrapment of Indigenous Peoples

 

MAPPING THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY (podcast)

My takeaway from this excellent podcast: The Supreme Court just makes up rules ... and it has all along...and IT'S CRAZY! And it's been going on since the invention of the DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY. - Trace, Blog Editor

MAPPING THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY: Johnson v. McIntosh and Federal Anti-Indian Law with Peter d’Errico

The goal of this Podcast is to help identify these systems of domination that have been sustained by greed and power, through the subjugation of human beings and the natural world.  

Philip P. Arnold and Sandra Bigtree, “S02E03 - Johnson v M’intosh and Federal Anti-Indian Law with Peter d’Errico,” Mapping the Doctrine of Discovery (Podcast), July 13, 2023. https://podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org/season2/episode-03/.

⤓ Download a transcript of the Episode as a PDF // LISTEN

Cutting through the Brackeen v Haaland case

 

Was it a victory?

Read my friend Peter (law professor) on Substack.

Cutting Through the US Claim of a Right of Domination over Indigenous People: An Analysis of Haaland v. Brackeen

https://peterderrico.substack.com/i/130980867/haaland-v-brackeen-misplaced-celebration

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