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Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ .
MY EMAIL: tracelara@pm.me
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.”
Archiving the legacy
The oral history project
is part of the broader Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative — a
comprehensive examination into the lingering impact of boarding schools
on Indigenous children and their families. Launched in June 2021
by Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland, the undertaking is being
carried out by the same government entity responsible for the creation
of the boarding schools. Haaland, of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe, is the
nation’s first Indigenous cabinet secretary and herself a descendant of
survivors.
The first-ever effort has also included two investigative reports released by the Interior Department in 2022 and earlier this year, as well as a 12-stop Road to Healing tour that offered survivors the opportunity to share their experiences with Haaland and other federal officials.
In 2023, the department granted the National Native American Boarding
School Healing Coalition $3.7 million to establish an archive of video
interviews with former students — the federal initiative’s final piece.
The oral component will complement a database featuring an interactive map of school locations and a timeline of how long schools operated, according to archival records.
The Department of the Interior and the Smithsonian National Museum of
Natural History are now exploring how to share the project with the
public. But survivors will have full ownership of their interviews — and
they will decide whether their stories will be made public, said Samuel
Torres, seniordirector of the oral history project and deputy CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
The benefits of ceremony
Beginning in 1819, the U.S. government forcibly removed thousands of
Indigenous children from their families and communities, ordering them
to boarding schools across the nation. At these institutions, American
Indian, Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian children were stripped of
their languages, religions and cultural beliefs. There were523
Indian boarding schools across 38 states in the U.S. Most were
established and supported by the federal government; some were run by
religious institutions.
Over centuries, children in boarding schools were physically, emotionally and sexually abused.
Others died. Burial sites have been located at 53 schools, and the
Interior Department’s investigation has tallied nearly 1,000 deaths of
school children, buried in 74 marked or unmarked graves across 65 school
sites.
“It’s
only because of time, distance and age that I was able to look back and
try to analyze what happened to me. And of course, it was boarding
school that happened to me.”
— James LaBelle, 77, taken from home at age 8
The federal government’s effort to document first-person accounts of
these historical wrongs has some historical precedent. The personal
narratives of some of the 120,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated during
World War II are housed in the U.S. Library of Congress. In the 1930s,
the oral histories of more that 2,300 formerly enslaved people were
collected as part of the Federal Writers’ Project.
But the attention to ceremony and healing is what makes this oral
history project unique. Boarding school survivors who share their
stories are referred to as “narrators.’’
James
LaBelle is an enrolled citizen of the Native village of Port Graham. He
was interviewed in Anchorage, Alaska, as part of the National Native
American Boarding School Healing Coalition’s oral history project.
Provided photo.
The Minnesota-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition was selected for the job because of thenonprofit’s
reputation for “survivor-centered” protocols, according to the Interior
Department. Torres, the project’s lead researcher, described the work
as a reclamation of cultural identities that boarding schools robbed
from Indigenous children. It also honors relatives who never came home.
“When we open the ceremony and invite our ancestors, they are there
with us,” he said. “When we ask the questions — and when individuals
respond — the spirits of the ancestors live in those responses, they
live in this process.”
Torres hopes this holistic method becomes a model for Indigenous
research. The work is tailored to the rituals of each tribal nation, and
their particular customs and traditions.
“Our visits are intentionally designed, not simply to be uniform
events, but to be reflective of the people, the place, and traditions of
the land we are visiting,”Torres said. In Alaska, a
ceremonial oil lamp is lit. In Oklahoma, participants joined the
lighting of the cedar ceremony. But regardless of particular
differences, the inclusion of ancestral spirits remains.
Medical anthropologist Spero Manson, director of the Centers for
American Indian and Alaska Native Health, described the benefits of
ceremony and traditional healing practices, which are utilized by a
number of Indigenous health care providers. Manson, who is Little Shell
Chippewa, has observed the approach in his work with Navajo war veterans
who’ve survived combat. He said the approach helps survivors overcome
trauma and find meaning in experiences that have otherwise disrupted
their lives.
“We’ve had whole generations of Native people who have been
disenfranchised and marginalized from how to parent effectively, how to
contribute to their extended families and their communities,” Manson
said. “What these ceremonies do is they bring us back in. They’re part
of the reintegration process.”
‘What does healing look like?’
Samuel Torres, senior director of the oral history project. Photo by Las Vegas Event Photography.
Outreach for the oral history project is being conducted through news
outlets, social media and word of mouth. After signing a consent form,
participants review the questions that will be asked, and agree to
sittings with Indigenous photographers and videographers. Each interview
can take an hour or longer. So far, more than 100 have been completed,
involving between 13 and 29 survivors in each site.
The interviews take into account that not everyone confronted abuse
or trauma at boarding schools. Historian Brissette said the intentional
questions about the healing process come at the end of interviews for
all who share their stories.They include: “What does healing look like for you?” and “Why did you feel compelled to share your story with us?”
Last month, the project traveled to Harbor Springs, Michigan, to meet
Indigenous elders and their families. Brissette’s relatives were among
them. Her uncle, cousins and mother attended Holy Childhood School of
Jesus in Harbor Springs, the state’s first federally run school.
“When I first started learning about boarding schools 15 years ago, I
found out my mom had attended,” Brissette said. “I was mind-blown
because I’ve learned what boarding schools were for, I’d heard all of
the atrocities about them, so this work is very personal to me — and my
family’s experiences definitely informs the work I do.”
Although the video interview required her to relive harsh memories,
Klein, of Crystal Springs, spoke positively about her retelling
experience. She said she felt respected, not pressured, to recall her
most vulnerable moments.
“Ceremony is crucial because for so many of us survivors, we lost that,” Klein said.
She has since given back to the project, by working as a volunteer
when historians visited North Dakota and Montana. Through that effort,
Klein was able to give fellow narrators and their descendants the same
care she received during her interview. She poured warm cups of coffee,
and offered prayers and a shoulder to cry on. She ferried people to and
from airports. And afterward, she thanked other survivors for their
attendance in carefully crafted notes.
Ramona
Klein is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa
Indians. She was interviewed in Bismarck, North Dakota. Provided photo.
The final project site visits for 2024 will be Utah and Hawaii. Next
spring, the nonprofit will visit the Oneida Indian Nation’s homelands in
New York. Colorado, Washington and a return to Alaska are also on the
travel agenda.
LaBelle, a Native village of Port Graham member, told historians his
story in Anchorage last May. He attended Wrangell Institute and Mt.
Edgecumbe High School in southeast Alaska between 1955 and 1965.
He was 8 years old when he was taken, along with his younger brother,
Kermit, from his mother. Now 77, LaBelle said he witnessed unchecked,
widespread abuse during his decade at boarding schools.
Some children didn’t live at the schools year-round and were likely
thrilled to return home at the year’s end. But not LaBelle. He’d lost
all connection to his mother, her Inupiaq language and customs. When she
died, he recounted, he didn’t — couldn’t — cry at her funeral.
Looking back, he asks himself why. What happened that caused such shame and estrangement?
“It’s only because of time, distance and age that I was able to look
back and try to analyze what happened to me,” LaBelle said. “And of
course, it was boarding school that happened to me.”
Nancy
Marie Spears works nationally covering Indigenous children and families
with a focus on the Indian Child Welfare Act. She is an enrolled member
of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
I am a scholar of
Colonial-Indigenous relations and think that officially recognizing
Indigenous Peoples Day – and, more broadly, Native Americans’ history
and survival – is important.
Yet,
Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day should also serve as a reminder
of the violent past endured by Indigenous communities in North America.
This past – complete with settlers’ brutal tactics of violence – is often ignored in the U.S.
My research on New England examines the important role that settlers’ wars against Native Americans played in their colonization of the region.
This
warfare often targeted Native American women and children and was often
encouraged through scalp bounties – meaning people or local governments
offering money in exchange for a Native American’s scalp.
Understanding scalping
Scalping
describes the forceful removal of the human scalp with hair attached.
The violent act is usually performed with a knife, but it can also be
done by other means. Someone can scalp victims who are already dead, but
there are also examples of people being scalped while they are still
alive.
In
several Indigenous cultures in North America, scalping was part of
human trophy taking, which involves claiming human body parts as a war
trophy. Scalps were taken during warfare as displays of military prowess
or for ceremonial purposes. But just because scalping was practiced by
some Native American societies, it does not mean that it was practiced
by all.
Eyewitness
accounts, histories and even art and popular films about the American
West have perpetuated the false idea that scalping is a uniquely
indigenous practice.
White
settlers’ wide use of scalping against Indigenous peoples is far less
acknowledged and understood. In fact, Colonists’ use of scalping against
Native American people likely accelerated this practice.
Various
European American colonizers also scalped Native American people from
at least the 17th through the 19th centuries. It was a way to provide
proof that someone killed a Native American person. Several North
American colonial powers, from the British to the Spanish empires, paid
bounties to people who turned in scalps of killed Native Americans.
Scalp bounties in New England and California
Colonies, territories and states in what is now the U.S. used scalp bounties widely from the 17th through the 19th centuries.
Colonial
governments in New England issued over 60 scalp bounties from the 1680s
through the 1750s, typically during various conflicts between Colonists
and Native Americans.
Massachusetts made the widest use of scalp bounties among the New England Colonies in the 1700s.
Massachusetts’
lieutenant governor issued one of the most notorious scalp bounty
declarations in 1775. This declaration, called the Spencer Phips Proclamation of 1755, provides a glimpse into how this brutal system worked.
“For
every scalp of such Female Indian or male Indian under the Age of
Twelve Years, that shall be killed and brought in as Evidence of their
being killed …, Twenty Pounds,” the declaration reads.
This reward was a large amount of money for Colonists, equivalent to more than 5,000 pounds, or US$12,000 in today’s currency. The scalp of a male Native American could fetch two and a half times this amount.
In
the Colonial era, such violence was normalized by anti-Native American
sentiment and a sense of racial superiority among Colonists.
And the violent trend was long-standing. As several historians point out, violence against and scalping of Native Americans also played a significant role in the conquest of California in 1846.
One historian has called California “the murder state”
in the 1800s, as the scalping and massacres of Native Americans
accompanied white settlers’ taking Native American land. State and
federal officials, as well as several businesses, supported this
genocide by paying bounties to scalp hunters.
From a contemporary perspective, the United Nations would consider the targeted killing of Indigenous women and children to be genocide.
The
Spencer Phips Proclamation offered a bounty for Native Americans’
scalps in 1755. The town of Spencer, Mass., is named after this Spencer
Phips, the former lieutenant governor of the colony. Journal of the American Revolution
Memory and violence
Centuries later, California and Massachusetts have had different responses to their role in these sordid histories.
California
has acknowledged “historic wrongdoings” and the violence committed
against the Indigenous people who live in the state. In 2019, California
Gov. Gavin Newsom set up a a Truth and Healing Councilto discuss and examine the state’s historical relationship with Native Americans.
In
Massachusetts, state officials have largely been silent on this issue.
This places Massachusetts more in line with much of the United States.
This
is true even as Massachusetts, under the leadership of then-Gov.
Charlie Baker, put a special emphasis on genocide education in the school curriculum.
Legacies of scalping
The legacies of violence and scalping are deeply rooted and can be observed in numerous parts of U.S. society today.
For instance, various communities, including Lovewell, Maine,
and Spencer, Massachusetts, are named after scalp bounty hunters.
Locals are often not aware of the history behind these names. Such town
names, and the history of violence connected to them, often hide in
plain sight.
But if you look closely, from the writings of early Euro-American colonizers and American literature to popular sport mascots and state and town seals, the brutality wrought upon Indigenous people remains at the forefront of U.S. culture more than five centuries after it began.
This article is republished from The Conversation,
a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and
trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was
written by: Christoph Strobel, UMass Lowell
Christoph
Strobel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding
from any company or organization that would benefit from this article,
and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic
appointment.
For the third year, the United States will officially observe Columbus Day alongside Indigenous Peoples Day on Oct. 9, 2023.
T he Métis National Council and the Government of Canada will be working collaboratively, Nation-to-Nation, to develop a process to engag...
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.
OUR HISTORY
BOOK 5: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects
