Is America Ready to Face the Truth About the Atrocities Against Indigenous Children?
On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland revealed at the National Congress of American Indians annual midyear conference that the federal government, led by her department, will undertake an investigation of the loss of human life and the lasting consequences of federal Indian boarding schools. The announcement comes on the heels of a continent-shaking discovery made three weeks ago by the Tkemlps te Secwpemc First Nation, which found the remains of 215 Indigenous children buried in a mass grave outside of Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada. In the following weeks, Indigenous leaders in Canada and the United States called for more accountability and transparency from the settler governments that perpetrated these acts, as well as the religious institutions that often welded themselves to the schools assimilationist missions. Though these boarding schools represent an undeniable atrocity, their history is not common knowledge among non-Indigenous Americans. These schools were set up by the American and Canadian governments, in partnership with various Christian denominations, during the late nineteenth century, and expanded until the mid-twentieth century. Across both nations, their design was sinister in intent and in practice, following the infamous Kill the Indian, save the man, creed coined by Richard Pratt, the founder of Pennsylvanias Carlisle Indian Industrial School. What this slogan meant in practice was that schools and their instructors sought to strip Indigenous youth of their languages, their traditions, and their lives, if necessary, so as to streamline the systematic theft of land and resources from Indigenous nations. They were the culmination of the practices previously perfected in the missions and forts established by local governments and Christian leaders. Boarding schools were the colonizers most efficient attempt at cultural genocidea harrowing truth given that many survivors of these schools, and some of the schools themselves, are still alive today. The discovery of Indigenous childrens bodies at Kamloops has presented yet another opportunity for reckoning and self-reflection for the colonial powers. Unsurprisingly, it has been Indigenous officials within both governments who have led the way on these fronts. A week after the Kamloops discovery, Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo and the first Native official appointed to a Cabinet position, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in which she shared that her grandparents were taken away from their homes as children. We have a generation of lost or injured children who are now the lost or injured aunts, uncles, parents, and grandparents of those who live today, Haaland observed, recounting the experience of her grandmother sharing the painful memories of being taken from her family by priests to attend Carlisle.