Consider This from NPR - Investigating The Tragic History Of Federal Indian Boarding Schools

Episode Date: May 21, 2022

Last year the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves on the site of a former residential school for Indigenous children in British Columbia. The news was shocking, but among Indigenous people of Canada and survivors of the country's boarding school system, it was not a surprise. For generations there had been stories of children taken away from their parents never to be heard from again. Those who did return told of neglect, abuse, and forced assimilation. It's a brutal history that the United States and Canada share. Shortly after the unmarked graves were found in Canada, US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland called for an investigation into US boarding schools. Her first report, released last week, identified more than 400 institutions operated or supported by the US government. At 53 of these schools, there are marked and unmarked burial sites with the remains of children who died there.We hear stories from some of the survivors of the boarding schools and speak with Secretary Haaland about the ongoing investigation and a year-long listening tour to bear witness to survivors and facilitate healing. This episode contains discussions of child abuse that some listeners may find disturbing.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu slash forward. I rise today to acknowledge and honor the 215 children who did not return home from the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Saul Mamaquai is a member of Canada's Kingfisher Lake First Nation, and he's also a member of Ontario's Provincial Parliament. Last year, he managed to make himself heard over the shouts of anti-lockdown protesters

as he spoke with deep feeling on the floor of Parliament about the discovery of the remains of 215 children found in unmarked graves on the site of a former residential school for Indigenous children in British Columbia. Indigenous people across the country are hurting. We are in pain. Remembering all those who have lost and the destruction of what residential schools has left behind. When news of the discovered remains broke last year, many people were shocked.

But among the Indigenous people of Canada and survivors of the country's boarding school system, it was no surprise. For generations, there had been stories, children taken away from their parents, never to be heard from again. And among those who did return, there were more stories of neglect and emotional and physical abuse. It is a great open secret that our children lie on these properties of former schools. An open secret that Canadians can no longer look away from. It is a brutal history that the United States and Canada share. For more than a century, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government.

That's U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. Shortly after those unmarked graves were found in Canada, she called for an investigation into U.S. boarding schools. Her first report was released last week and identified more than 400 institutions operated or supported by the U.S. government. Native American children were promised an education, but many were taken from their families whether they wanted to go or not to face a program with the avowed goal of eradicating their identity, language, and culture. And for many, it still isn't clear how many that was not all. At 53 of these schools, there are marked and unmarked burial sites with the remains of children who died there.

I come from ancestors who endured the horrors of the Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead. Now we are uniquely positioned to assist in the effort to recover the dark history of these institutions that have haunted our families for too long. Ramona Charette-Klein is 74. She was one of the children who survived. She told her story before a congressional hearing last week. I remember being afraid to sleep at night, fearful of the matron's son, who walked the halls at night,

using a flashlight to spot me in bed. He touched me like no child should ever be touched. Recognizing the impacts of the federal Indian boarding school system cannot just be a historical reckoning. We must also chart a path forward to deal with these legacy issues. Consider this. From 1819 to 1969, federal Indian boarding schools removed hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children

from their families. A new initiative hopes to shed light on the history of this decades-long project of forced assimilation and to offer survivors a way to heal and move forward. That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Michelle Martin. It is Saturday This from NPR. At the age of seven, Ramona Charette Klein was taken from her mother and sent to the Fort Totten Indian School in North Dakota.

Six of her mother's eight children were taken that day. Klein reflected on that moment during an interview with our colleagues at Here and Now. I remember her crying, having her hand on her face, crying as we drove away, not knowing for sure where I was going. And she remembers how it felt. Pain. Emotional pain. I feel it today. At the boarding school, Klein was sexually abused by the matron's son and physically abused by the matron. The physical abuse, my lower back was bruised,

and it hurt to the touch after being hit with the paddle, referred to as the Board of Education. So those bruises healed. The emotional bruises, I'm still working on. Nearly seven decades later, Klein is still trying to heal from all that she suffered during her four years at the Fort Totten Indian School. I'm better in some ways. I used to be really angry. Everything about that experience has affected my personal life and my professional life. Klein says that working as an educator and supporting her students

helped her deal with what she experienced. I taught students from kindergarten to postdocs, and I tried, I really tried to work at creating a safe environment for all students where they felt emotionally safe. And while Klein says she still finds it difficult to talk about what happened, she feels that what she experienced is part of a much bigger story that people need to hear. Thousands and thousands of children over time in history have been beaten, sexually abused, food withheld. And then the residue of that, when you see people struggling just in their life and blaming the individual and saying, look at the Indians, they're drunk. They don't know how to work. That hurts deeply. I deal with that almost on a daily basis.

Just little things being said and no sensitivity or wondering why that person might be having that type of behavior. I want the world to be educated about what did take place and continues to take place and the impact of the intergenerational trauma. Coming up, the Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, discusses what's next in her investigation. I spoke with the Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, about her department's investigation into federal Indian boarding schools. I asked her why this matters at this point in the nation's history. You know, from the time the Europeans came to this continent, started colonizing the Indians, It was really all about the land. Land theft and the extermination of indigenous people has a long and deep stem in what we now know as the Americas. But even after the systemic killings of indigenous people more or less ended, the killing of their

culture went on in full force. The rationale for that idea was bluntly articulated in Captain Richard Henry Pratt's famous speech in 1892, where he called for a program to, quote, kill the Indian in him and save the man. They had already committed genocide against the Indians, and they worked very hard to kill as many off as they could, but it was impossible to kill them all off because we persevered through all of those eras. So finally, it was thought if they can take the children away from their families, assimilate them, turn them into essentially into white people, then they wouldn't have that problem anymore. Clearly, it didn't work. And we still have distinct tribes, tribal nations that have a proud culture and a proud heritage.

And today we're doing everything we can to support them. Secretary Holland is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna. Her own family is part of the story. Her maternal grandparents were taken from their homes and forced to attend government-run boarding schools from the ages of 8 through 13. There was a time in my college career where I would go out to Laguna, and I would go out every single weekend and take my tape recorder, and my grandmother and I would have conversations for hours and hours. And several times, her time in boarding school came up. And I feel like that helped her to heal. And now she wants to help more survivors. The Road to Healing will be a year-long nationwide listening tour

where survivors can share their experiences of federal Indian boarding schools as part of a permanent oral history. Our elders are not going to live forever. We want to make sure that they have an opportunity to speak about this issue if that's what they choose to do. And so we want to document that history in a way that's respectful and informative. There's currently a bill in Congress introduced by Democratic Representative Sharice Davids from Kansas that would establish a truth and healing commission dedicated to hearing about the experiences of Indigenous children. It would be similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the Canadian government in 2008 to explore the history and the impact of boarding schools or so-called residential schools in that country.

Do you agree with this recommendation? And what do you think would be needed to ensure the success of such a commission? Well, I did watch the hearing, you know, one initiative isn't going to remedy it. We need all of our government to weigh in on this issue. We need everybody's help to ensure that we are truly making a concerted effort to help these families and these communities heal from this tragic history. We are in a moment where some people are very interested in exploring these painful parts of the American story, and also interrogating what might the long-term effects of these

institutions and practices might be now. And other people say, well, that was a long time ago. Like, what's the relevance? So I would put that question to you. Do you feel that there's a current impact of these practices that we should talk about? Oh, absolutely. There are current impacts in drug addiction and in poverty and the lack of economic development or health disparities. I mean, when people are invisible, you don't have to pay attention, right? And that's why representation matters. That's why we should care about every single community in this country. So bringing all these things to light, it will make us become a better country for it.

But but as you know, as as we said earlier, there are those who say this is in the past. It's divisive. It's picking at old source to those who take that point of view, how do you respond to that? Right. Well, of course, you heard Jim LaBelle give his testimony. I was born in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1947. I've been waiting 67 years to tell this story. While I might have received an education or a white man's education. In the process, I lost my own language, my own culture, my traditions. In 1955, I went to Rheingold Institute and witnessed so many atrocities that almost became normal or normalized. Tell him that it's an old sore. Tell somebody like Jim LaBelle that his history doesn't matter and that the pain that he experienced firsthand isn't worth remedying. These are real people and these are their lives. those comments before. I think it's important that we heal as a country. Everyone's experience in the boarding school system, whether they're a survivor or a descendant, that pain is real. And it's incumbent on me to ensure that I am paying attention to that and that I'm doing

all I can to make sure that we can heal and get people past that pain. That's the Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland. She is the first Native American person to serve as a presidential cabinet secretary. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Michelle Martin.