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From: ErthAvengr
Feb.7-14,2003
Admitting Guilt is the First Step in
Healing the Wounds
By: Tim Giago
(c) 2003 Lakota Media Inc.
What has been the long-term impact of the Indian boarding school experiment?
I say experiment because over the past 125 years the Indian people have been
used for many social, educational and welfare experiments. Indians were like
the miner’s canary. When tossed into the caverns if we perished the
experiments were ended or altered. In many instances the experiments were
carried out to their conclusion regardless of the circumstances.
The immediate impact upon the Indian children was that of being taken from
their traditional homes and incarcerated in an institution where they were
shorn of their long hair, dressed alike, bombarded with propaganda and
separated from their traditional teachers.
Stomping out the language was also a top priority. Belittling and ridiculing
the traditional spirituality became another goal of the people who acted with
the best intentions. If they could make English the first language and
convert the children to Christianity the road to acculturation would nearly
be complete.
They also had to teach that there were no heroes or religious leaders amongst
the ancestors of the children. We were never taught about the spiritual
leadership of Black Elk or of the wartime heroics of Crazy Horse. It was only
when the Catholic Church was convinced that Black Elk had converted to
Catholicism that they allowed his name to be mentioned in the classroom. They
never taught us that while studying their ways Black Elk still retained his
traditional Lakota beliefs.
Many of those who came out west to educate the Indian children were misfits.
They were sent out here by the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the Catholic
Church on a mission of killing the Indian while saving the child. Among the
teachers finding their way to the Indian reservations were many that came
here as a form of punishment. In the Catholic Church many came out to the
reservations as a form of penance.
Among those teachers were many pedophiles. They found an easy place to prey
on innocent children because we were so isolated that no one really cared
what happened to us. The most prevalent form of punishment was the leather
strap. After observing and receiving many severe beatings with the strap I
cannot help but conclude that many of the teachers sent out west were also
sadists.
Many traditional Lakota (and members of other Indian nations) came out of the
boarding schools as broken children. They did not know who they were and what
part they would or could play in society-at-large, or in their own
reservation societies.
They returned to a world where their parents and grandparents spoke a
language they could no longer understand or speak. They often felt like
outcasts in their own tiospaye (camp or
extended family). Shorn of hair and spirit, many turned to alcohol to
dull their senses and to allow them to feel like warriors once more. Under
the influence they often committed acts of violence. Many ended up in prison
for crimes they could not remember committing.
Even worse, many of those who had been sexually assaulted by the teachers,
priests, brothers and nuns often turned to committing the same revolting acts
against their own children and family members. They became abusers themselves
and the abuse took on the form of violence against spouses and children. They
became a part of a society that was struggling to find itself. Those who had
escaped the abuse or who rose above it became the foundation for creating a
better society. They tried to find ways to save the abused and forgotten
alcoholics.
Having been placed in institutions where parental ties were sliced, many of
us grew up without a family peer to emulate. We were segregated by gender on
the school ground and in the classrooms and so we learned little about
dealing with members of the opposite sex. And beyond that, the nuns and
priests who were our instructors preached to us about sex as a mortal sin.
Many of the boys and girls I grew up with came out of the Indian missions and
boarding schools as victims. They entered relationships without the knowledge
they should have learned from their traditional teachers, their parents and
grand parents. They were surrounded by the guilt pounded into their minds by
the Church and the government.
So many could not be saved. They could be seen walking the streets and alleys
of the bordertowns and the reservations as lost people. Many were, and still
are, dying from the effects of the cheap wine and drugs they took to find
themselves. The jails and prisons of states with large Indian populations are
overflowing with Indians. We have the shortest life expectancy of any
minority in this nation.
The long-term impact of the boarding schools has not ended. There are
thousands of Indian children with grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts and
siblings who were victims of the boarding schools and who ended their lives
as broken people. The historical and horrific suffering of these relatives
has been passed on through the generations.
What can be done to bring this portion of the Indian’s history to closure?
First of all, the government and the Church groups must admit that what they
did was wrong. They must admit that they severely damaged several generations
of Indian children with a failed and oftentimes fatal policy.
The Church and state should even consider financial restitution to their
victims. But I believe that as long as the United States and the different
Church groups refuse to admit their collaboration in one of the most shameful
chapters of American history, the pain and suffering of the victims will go
on.
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