Burial sites found at 53 Native American boarding schools

[RPM 26426]

May 11 (Reuters) - A U.S. government investigation into the dark history of Native American boarding schools has found "marked or unmarked burial sites" at 53 of them, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said on Wednesday.

Haaland, the first Native American cabinet member, announced the investigation last year. In releasing preliminary findings during a press conference in Washington, she spoke through tears and in a choked-up voice.

"The federal policies that attempted to wipe out Native identity, language and culture continue to manifest in the pain tribal communities face today," Haaland said. "We must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past."

Until Wednesday, the U.S. government had yet to provide any true accounting of the legacy of the schools, which used education to change culture so tribal land could be taken. Families were forced to send their children to the schools.

To compile Haaland's report, researchers located records on 408 schools that received federal funding from 1819 to 1969, and another 89 schools that did not receive money from the government. About half the schools were run for the government by or supported by churches of various denominations. Many children were abused at the schools, and tens of thousands were never heard from again, activists and researchers say.

The report noted that "rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse" took place at the schools and is well documented, and that so far the investigation had found over 500 children who died while in school custody. Investigators said they expect to uncover many more deaths.

"Our children had names. Our children had families. Our children have their own languages," she said at the press conference. "Our children had their own regalia, prayers and religion before Indian boarding schools violently took them away."

Researchers examined government records and spoke to Native Americans to prepare the report. The results detail a history dating to at least 1801, when the first such schools opened, and one in which education was used as a weapon.

Native American affairs, including education, were a War Department responsibility until 1849 and the military remained involved even after civilians took over, the report noted.

The schools were described as resembling military academies in their regimentation and strictness and emphasizing vocational skills. Police were called on to force families to send their children to the schools. Food was denied to families as another way to force them to surrender their children.

"These conditions included militarized and identity alteration methodologies - on kids!" said Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Interior Department, who heads the investigation.

Conditions at former Indian boarding schools gained global attention last year when tribal leaders in Canada announced the discovery of the unmarked graves of 215 children at the site of the former Kamloops residential school for indigenous children, as such institutions are known in Canada.

Unlike the United States, Canada carried out a full investigation into its schools via a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The U.S. government has never acknowledged how many children attended such schools, how many children died or went missing from them or even how many schools existed.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/interior-dept-investigation-finds-burial-sites-53-indian-boarding-schools-2022-05-11/

[Celery Man 21026]

it is incredibly fucked up how, even after genociding them, we just kept genociding them

[Samson's Wig 3195]

[Post Oak 20327]

Goddamnit

[Captainant 27970]

Genocide? 

In MY manifest destiny??

[Deej 77163]

[Brisketexan 105569]

Many of those schools were run by church denominations....and not just the Catholic church.  If you belong to a mainline denomination, odds are your denomination ran at least one of those schools.  And no matter what the thinking might have been at the time ("we're really HELPING them -- saving them from being savages!"), atrocities are atrocities.  It was done in our name, both as Americans and as church members (for many of us).  We own this.  Honesty and truth are the only legitimate way forward.

[RomaVicta 30072]

I've done some research on this. Just Google the subject and look at the images. Bare wooden rooms filled with full hopeless-eyed kids.

There really wasn't much well meaning in it. That's just one of the lies we habitually tell ourselves to sugar coat atrocity.

[crash_davis 23154]

honest question. don't tase me, bro.

so would discussing this in school be considered critical race theory? 

[Pato del Muerto 52855]

24 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

honest question. don't tase me, bro.

so would discussing this in school be considered critical race theory? 

Yes, because it should make the white kids uncomfortable about the past. 
 

it sure as shit makes me uncomfortable. And sad, and upset. 
 

we as a country love to rub other countries’ histories in their faces. But looking inward at our own past actions and inactions isn’t acceptable to a decent chunk of us. 

[atomheartbevo 90041]

58 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

I've done some research on this. Just Google the subject and look at the images. Bare wooden rooms filled with full hopeless-eyed kids.

There really wasn't much well meaning in it. That's just one of the lies we habitually tell ourselves to sugar coat atrocity.

Yep, have done some research/reading on it for some genealogy-related stuff, and it was fucking awful.  It wasn't enough to force them on to some shitty land (in some cases, land that they had very few ties to), but we'd take the kids and try to "educate" the Indian out of them.

[Captainant 27970]

2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

but we'd take the kids and try to "educate" the savage out of them

Fixed for historical accuracy

[Pods 7594]

Our treatment of Native Americans has been, and continues to be, horrid.

So here's the deal... We're going to take your land and give you a much smaller amount of this shitty desert land in exchange, so long as that shitty desert land never turns out to have gold, oil, or anything else valuable. We'll sign treaties with you, but reserve the right to completely change our mind without notice. We'll take your kids, abuse a bunch, kill some, and send you back the damaged husks. We'll desecrate your graves and then make scary movies about it. 

We all understand that every scrap of occupied Earth was taken from someone else by force, usually many times throughout history. All but the first Native Americans to arrive in North America took their land from someone else. That is all true, but it doesn't exonerate what we did. 

We can't change what was done in our name in the past. We can change how we act going forward and we should try as hard as we can to make it as right as we can for them. 

[Grade of D as in David 13253]

43 minutes ago, Pods said:

 

We can't change what was done in our name in the past. We can change how we act going forward and we should try as hard as we can to make it as right as we can for them. 

Agreed, but it all starts with acknowledging the atrocities, which makes people uncomfortable.

[ztejas 43741]

2 hours ago, crash_davis said:

honest question. don't tase me, bro.

so would discussing this in school be considered critical race theory? 

No I think this is just racist and terrible on it's own and should be acknowledged as such regardless of party lines.

[PRONG HORN 3166]

6 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

we as a country love to rub other countries’ histories in their faces. But looking inward at our own past actions and inactions isn’t acceptable to a decent chunk of us. 

 

People don't like having the truth pointed out to them sometimes.  This is why Dances With Wolves has never been very popular on the movie boards from HF all the way to Surly.  Posters had a hard time getting past their guilt and because of that, thought the movie wasn't very good.  They didn't understand that that feeling wasn't produced by the movie itself.  It came from within.    

 

 

 

[ztejas 43741]

59 minutes ago, PRONG HORN said:

This is why Dances With Wolves has never been very popular on the movie boards from HF all the way to Surly.  Posters had a hard time getting past their guilt and because of that, thought the movie wasn't very good.  They didn't understand that that feeling wasn't produced by the movie itself.  It came from within. 

Or maybe Dances With Wolves just kind of sucks.