My family experienced Indian boarding schools – and genocide

By Rosalyn LaPier  | 11/20/2024

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This article was originally published by The Conversation and is republished here by permission. Read the original article.

I am a direct descendant of family members that were forced as children to attend either a U.S. government-operated or church-run Indian boarding school. They include my mother, all four of my grandparents and the majority of my great-grandparents.

On Oct. 25, 2024, Joe Biden, the first U.S. president to formally apologize for the policy of sending Native American children to Indian boarding schools, called it one of the most “horrific chapters” in U.S. history and “a mark of shame.” But he did not call it a genocide.

President Biden to apologize for federal Indian boarding schools

Yet, over the past 10 years, many historians and Indigenous scholars have said that what happened at the Indian boarding schools “meets the definition of genocide.”

From the 19th to 20th century, children were physically removed from their homes and separated from their families and communities, often without the consent of their parents. The purpose of these schools was to strip Native American children of their Indigenous names, languages, religions and cultural practices.

The U.S. government operated the boarding schools directly or paid Christian churches to run them. Historians and scholars have written about the history of Indian boarding schools for decades. But, as Biden noted, “most Americans don’t know about this history.”

As an Indigenous scholar who studies Indigenous history and the descendant of Indian boarding school survivors, I know about the “horrific” history of Indian boarding schools from both survivors and scholars who contend they were places of genocide.

Was it genocide?

The United Nations defines “genocide” as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Scholars have researched different cases of genocide of Indigenous peoples in the United States.

Historian Jeffery Ostler, in his 2019 book “Surviving Genocide,” argues that the unlawful annexation of Indigenous lands, the deportation of Indigenous peoples and the numerous deaths of children and adults that occurred as they walked hundreds of miles from their homelands in the 19th century constitute genocide.

The mass killings of Indigenous peoples after gold was found in the 19th century in what is now California also constitutes genocide, writes historian Benjamin Madley in his 2017 book “An American Genocide.” At the time, a large migration of new settlers to California to mine gold brought with it the killing and displacement of Indigenous peoples.

Other scholars have focused on the forced assimilation of children at Indian boarding schools. Sociologist Andrew Woolford argues that scholars need to start calling what happened at Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th century “genocide” because of the “sheer destructiveness of these institutions.”

Woolford, a former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, explains in his 2015 book “This Benevolent Experiment” that the goal of Indian boarding schools was the “forcible transformation of multiple Indigenous peoples so that they would no longer exist as an obstacle (real or perceived) to settler colonial domination on the continent.”

First- and second-grade students sit in a classroom at the former Genoa Indian Industrial School in Genoa, Neb. Researchers are now trying to locate the bodies of more than 80 Native American children buried near the school. National Archives/AP

Indigenous writers have explained how this transformation at Indian boarding schools occurred. “Federal agents beat Native children in such schools for speaking Native languages, held them in unsanitary conditions, and forced them into manual and dangerous forms of labor,” writes Indigenous law professor Maggie Blackhawk.

Indian Boarding School Survivors and Their Loved Ones Have Responded to Biden’s Apology. Their Message: Now Take Action

By Nancy Marie Spears IMPRINT

“The only thing we have left is the cemetery where a lot of our Quapaws are buried,” says Carrie Wilson, whose mother was forced to attend St. Mary of the Quapaws school in Oklahoma. Photo illustration by Julie Reynolds.

In its attempt to crush Native America through assimilation, the U.S. government created, operated, funded and perpetuated a network of hundreds of Indian boarding schools across the country. For centuries, the government forcibly severed Indigenous children from their families and tribal homes. Countless students were subjected to sexual, emotional and physical abuse. Nearly 1,000 schoolchildren died. Many were buried in unmarked graves.

Last month, over 200 years after the first school opened, outgoing President Joe Biden apologized.

How the apology landed for everyone is impossible to fully capture. But The Imprint reached out to boarding school survivors and their descendants, and compiled public statements made in recent weeks. 

For some, the apology rang hollow. Others described it as an important first step. But they all said more specific action must follow: more funding for education, the return of buried children’s remains, and adherence to reforms called for by the U.S. Interior Department, which is led by the nation’s first Indigenous cabinet-level secretary, Deb Haaland.

“The apology was a welcome statement to me that should result in solid action in terms of remedying harms to Tribal families and communities,” wrote legal scholar Angelique EagleWoman, chief justice on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Supreme Court and director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

President Biden’s apology is the latest in a short list of acknowledgements of historical harms caused by the U.S. government:

• 1983: The U.S. apologized for shielding a former Gestapo officer known as the “Butcher of Lyon.”

• 1988: President Ronald Reagan apologized to Japanese Americans for their forced removal to internment camps during World War II. The apology was accompanied by $20,000 in compensation to each person who was imprisoned.
• 1993: Congress apologized for a 1893 coup staged against the Hawaiian Queen Lili’uokalani by American businessmen and sugar plantation owners.
• 1997: President Bill Clinton formally recognized the U.S. role in the infamous 40-year Tuskegee experiment, involving doctors from the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama who withheld medical treatment to hundreds of Black men infected with syphilis in order to study the long-term progression of the disease. More than 100 men died. 
• 2008: The second-most recent — and entirely symbolic — apology was issued by Congress, an acknowledgment of the U.S. government’s perpetuation of the Atlantic slave trade and Jim Crow laws. 

President Joe Biden after his apology in Arizona for the U.S. government’s boarding school policies. Photo still from C-SPAN livestream.

Biden acknowledged Indian boarding school survivors 16 years after the Canadian government apologized for its own network of such abusive institutions. Canada’s apology was followed by a $2 billion settlement with First Nations to compensate survivors for the schools’ acts of “cultural genocide.” 

Mental health experts interviewed for this piece emphasized restitution as critical for individual and collective healing from historical trauma. They pointed out that unlike Canada, the U.S. president did not announce his apology alongside any meaningful next steps beyond verbal acknowledgement.

Spero Manson, medical anthropologist and director of the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health, said when answering the question of ‘what does an apology need to have in order to offer healing?’ that self-determination is key. Individuals on this recovery journey, he said, must have the opportunity to dictate their own course in navigating the consequences of their traumas. Boarding school survivors and their descendants are no exception.

“When we talk about treating patients who suffer from trauma — and the emotional and psychological consequences thereof — after that first acknowledging of the root causes, we begin to explore ways to reassert a sense of self-efficacy, of reacquiring the ability to interact positively with one’s environment,” Manson said. “We see this happening at community levels as well as individuals, or at least the prospects of that happening.

So what resources are necessary to enable people to continue on this recovery journey? There are many different resources. The problem is, from my point of view, with the changing nature of federal initiatives and priorities, there’s great uncertainty about the ability of the government to commit consistently, long term, to the provision of these resources and attendant support for tribal communities.”

The Association on American Indian Affairs has called for burial remains to be returned home to ancestral lands.

“Justice requires action, including the repatriation of children who were buried at these schools,” reads a public statement released after the apology. “We must ensure this work not only continues but expands in the next administration. Our next generations depend on it.”

Self-described Indigiqueer scholar and activist Autumn Asher BlackDeer was not impressed with Biden’s apology.

“Apologies without action are like the drive-by privilege checks or hollow readings of land acknowledgments,” said BlackDeer, who is Southern Cheyenne and an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. “No imperialist is getting a pat on the back from me anytime soon.”

Below are responses to Biden’s apology to boarding school survivors and their descendants from around the country:

Judge Abby Abinanti. Provided photo

Abby Abinanti, chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Nation

Abinanti’s mother and her two sisters were sent to Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, California.

“The apology is an important starting point and must be followed up by substantive efforts to ‘make it right.’ That is where the major work must be done with the families, the descendants. Discussions must occur at the ground level, and plans must be created.”

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Robert Ludgate, child welfare expert and Siksika Nation descendant

Although he is employed by the University of Washington as a development and facilitation specialist, his views do not reflect the views or positions of the university.

“Taking steps to remedy the effects of the boarding/residential school systems means focusing on contemporary child welfare system reform as they are inextricably intertwined. An apology without action to address what is happening now to Native families in the child welfare system means very little.

Any meaningful apology related to the boarding/residential school system needs to acknowledge both its context in the contemporary child welfare system and be followed with action for systemic changes within the contemporary child welfare system.”

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Angelique EagleWoman, chief justice on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Supreme Court

EagleWoman’s father, grandparents and great-grandparents attended Indian boarding schools.

“U.S. President Biden spoke for a government that was engaged in genocidal acts toward Tribal Nations for over a hundred years when he gave the apology on Oct. 25, 2024. This was a long time in coming and absolutely necessary to acknowledge the intergenerational trauma stemming from deliberate U.S. policies towards Tribal children.

The suppression of this history must end. By understanding the harms from the U.S. Indian boarding school era, the need for contemporary responses such as the Indian Child Welfare Act to provide active efforts in unifying Tribal families and transferring child cases to Tribal courts is better understood. 

The apology was a welcome statement to me that should result in solid action in terms of remedying harms to Tribal families and communities.”

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Sen. Mary Kunesh

Minnesota Sen. Mary Kunesh, a New Brighton, Minnesota lawmaker of Lakota heritage

“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems. This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught. 

The generational trauma caused by over a century of family separation and forced cultural assimilation still weighs on Indigenous communities to this day. In a time where we see a resurgence of white supremacist attitudes in this country, it is crucial that we reject these hateful ideas, in order to make sure we do not repeat these injustices of history. Furthermore, we must remain vigilant of acts of ethnic cleansing and prevent them from happening, both in our country and around the world.”

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan

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Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan of White Earth Band of Ojibwe

Flanagan is a descendant of boarding school survivors.

“There literally is no Native person who hasn’t been impacted by this,” she told The Minnesota Star Tribune. “I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities. It’s a powerful first step toward healing.”

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Angelique Albert, CEO of Native Forward Scholars Fund and member of Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes

Albert is the granddaughter of boarding school survivors. 

“As we build upon this moment, I encourage President Biden and the next administration to execute the additional seven recommendations from the Interior Department’s report. This includes the responsibility to educate the American public on Native history, including the history of federal Indian boarding schools, and to invest in education for Native people.”

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Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe

Barnes speaks often about boarding school survivors within his own tribe and how their needs should be uplifted. 

“I’m delighted that President Biden’s apology today has shed an unprecedented light on the evils perpetuated by the United States in Indian boarding schools and elevated the visibility of tribal nations and our fight to find justice for boarding school survivors and descendants. However, I am incredibly disappointed President Biden did not utilize this once-in-a-lifetime occasion to announce any meaningful new action that will bring us closer to those goals.

Until the U.S. Truth and Healing Commission bill is passed, and until American education systems tell the full history of this chapter in our shared history, we will still have a very long fight for justice ahead of us.”

 

SOURCE: https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/indian-boarding-school-survivors-respond-biden-apology/256088

DO MORE THAN APOLOGIZE: Native American Leaders Call Again for Action After Boarding Schools Apology

The timing of the APOLOGY did seem strange but it is ELECTION season... Trace

By Marianna McMurdock | October 31, 2024  

  

Native American leaders and survivors of the federal Indian boarding school system are calling on the Biden administration to do more than apologize to facilitate healing for their communities.

Their calls have been mounting for decades, but the remarks marked a milestone: the first time a U.S. President ever acknowledged and apologized for the system where federal agents removed children from their parents, often at gunpoint, sending them to schools thousands of miles from home, stripping families of their language and culture.

 

 

 

 

The exact number of children who were forced into boarding schools in the U.S. for over 150 years is unknown, due to poor record keeping, but nearly 19,000 have been confirmed. Physical, sexual and psychological abuse was rampant at the schools often run by religious institutions. Some children were referred to only as numbers, pre-teen girls were raped and sent home pregnant. Thousands never returned home.

Native American girls from the Omaha tribe at Carlisle School, Pennsylvania. (Getty Images)

Addressing the public on the Gila River Reservation outside of Phoenix, Arizona on October 25, President Joe Biden fulfilled a long-delayed promise to visit Indian country and called the boarding school system a “sin on our soul,” adding there was “no excuse” for how long-overdue the acknowledgement was and that “no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy. But today, we’re finally moving forward into the light.”

The timing of the visit has also been noted as a tactic in the swing state to woo Native voters to cast votes for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. But many Native Americans are frustrated by government inaction to adequately protect lands, provide access to quality education and healthcare, and enact an arms embargo against Israel.

TOP PHOTO: A protester holds a sign as US President Joe Biden speaks at the Gila River Crossing School in the Gila River Indian Community, in Laveen Village, near Phoenix, Arizona on October 25, 2024. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Getty Images)

Survivors and descendants both acknowledge how meaningful Biden’s speech was after centuries of fighting for recognition from the federal government, and call on the administration to act swiftly on the apology.

“In his last two weeks in office, we demand that President Biden also pass S.1723/H.R.7227: The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act,” said the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, a nonprofit that has worked with survivors and Tribal leaders for over a decade to educate about the system and facilitate repatriations.

The legislation would provide a path for investing in language and culture revitalization efforts, educating the American public on the system via museums or curricula, and establishing trauma-informed mental health resources.

It would also enable subpoenas to be used to investigate the scale of the system: Catholic entities have been able to hold onto private records for decades, some of which contain the only known photographs or remnants of survivors’ ancestors. Reintroduced in both the Senate and House last year, the bill has yet to reach a vote.

The mental and physical health concerns of survivors and lack of widespread reconciliation reached national spotlight earlier this year when the Interior Department released its final investigative report on the system, which revealed at least 1,000 Indigenous children died or were killed. The schools operated using over $23 billion federal dollars, adjusted for inflation.

Left: Portrait of Justin Shedee (Apache) from 1889 (Cumberland County Historical Society) Right: Letter from Justin Shedee expressing his wish to leave Carlisle (National Archives and Records Administration via Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center)

Thousands were subject to child labor to operate facilities and be “outed,” working without wage for white families near the schools.

Angelique Albert, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and chief executive of the nation’s largest direct scholarship provider for Native students, Native Forward, referred to the boarding schools not as places of education but as places of “extermination.”

Just as slavery was used as the tool to harm Black people across the Americas, “education was the tool to harm us, to assimilate us. That’s the tool where we lost our children,” Albert said, adding that the apology is a testament to the work done by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Native American cabinet member and former recipient of their scholarships, to unearth survivor testimony and investigate the system.

“She’s in the very position that implemented the boarding schools. Do you understand? It gives me chills,” Albert said, emphasizing how critical it is for the federal government to maintain close relationships with Tribal nations and put more funding behind college access for Native youth so their voices can be heard in positions they’ve been historically excluded from.

While the apology, however late, is a “critical first step in the truth and reconciliation process for Native and Indigenous communities,” Albert stressed, “Indian boarding school policies are not a horror of the past — these institutions operated through 1969, and many Native people who were subjected to these cruel policies are still living today.”

Shower in the girls dorm on the Blackfoot Reservation, Cutbank Boarding School (Bureau of Indian Affairs, Morrow, May 1951)

The boarding school system, while the focus of President Biden’s remarks, was not the only widespread, forced removal of Native children. Throughout the 60s and 70s, over a third were removed from their families and overwhelmingly placed in non-Indian homes after discriminatory welfare investigations.

In Washington, Native children were placed in foster care and adopted at rates 19 times greater than their peers. The practice was widespread until 1978’s Indian Child Welfare Act was passed by Congress, who stated “wholesale separation of Indian children from their families is perhaps the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today.”

Native populations now face disproportionately poor health outcomes, including the highest rates of substance abuse, suicidal ideation and chronic illnesses, which researchers have linked to centuries of genocide, disinvestment and generational trauma.

Following Biden’s address, an Indigenous collective gathered to pray, mourn, sing and push for more action in South Dakota, on the lands of what will soon be the Oceti Sakowin Community Academy, a “culture-based school” for Lakota, Dakota and Nakota children.

“Tonight, we took to the land and reminded the world that we are the children of survivors … We will honor our ancestors by holding this country accountable for what it has done to our people,” NDN Collective president Nick Tilsen said in a release. “The U.S. government tried to exterminate and erase us. We will continue to remind them they have failed at doing so, and the warrior spirit of our ancestors lives in all of us.”

SOURCE: https://www.yahoo.com/news/native-american-leaders-call-again-163000761.html

One word not found in President Biden’s apology is "domination" 

But instead of acknowledging the U.S. government’s ongoing claim of a right of domination over Native nations, Biden’s remarks made it seem as if all of that ended a long time ago. It’s called “A Lie of Omission” by leaving it unmentioned and out of focus. (How funny that the word “mission” is embedded in the word “omission”).

OP-ED: https://stevennewcomb.substack.com/p/on-bidens-recent-apology-for-the

 

An apology, a long time coming

October 25, 2024 By Art Hughes 

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:

LISTEN:  https://www.nativeamericacalling.com/friday-october-25-2024-an-apology-a-long-time-coming/

 

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.” 

 

https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/president-biden-to-make-historic-apology-for-federal-indian-boarding-school-system