“In those days the Indian schools were like jails and run along military lines, with roll calls four times a day. We had to stand at attention, or march in step. The B.I.A. thought that the best way to teach us was to stop us from being Indians. The Government teachers were all third-grade teachers. They […]
Sweetwater Nannauck was helping her ill father when she heard the story of his boarding school experience. As she listened to him, his pain became he own and she often felt angry when thinking about his experience. She believes Native American communities need to heal, saying “healing ourselves also brings healing for the Earth, healing […]
Pre-1900 25 off reservation boarding schools were established that housed 10,000 students. By the end of the Boarding School Era, over 100,000 children had attended residential school. The mantra of these schools was to “kill the Indian to save the man.” Children were horribly abused at these institutions and the trauma is something many survivors […]
Indian boarding schools were one of the cruelest experiments inflicted upon Native American communities across the United States. In most schools little emphasis was placed on education and the institutions became a breeding ground for abuse, cultural genocide, and forced assimilation. Years after their school experiences ended, students unable to cope with the trauma they […]
Stories, memories, and research from the traumatic boarding school era were discussed at the Third Permanent U.N. Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City in 2004. Communities and boarding school survivors are still becoming aware of the effects of the trauma experienced at school, and the aversion to discussing this history is having detrimental […]
New research on survivors of the Holocaust shows how catastrophic events can alter our body chemistry, and how these changes can transmit to the next generation. The result? Our children may suffer the effects of a traumatic event they never witnessed. NewsHour’s Stephen Fee has the story. Video Available Here Source: PBS News Hour. “Study […]
A psychologist speaking at a conference in Canada says a series of suicides in the Saskatchewan community will not be solved with outside help. Dr. Darien Thira, who has worked in First Nations communities for years says 4 key areas are crucial to help restore communities: caring connection, empowerment, having a meaningful role in the […]
Science is discovering that trauma can be passed down to children and grandchildren through epigenetics. This prompts the question, what is epigenetics? We all know the image of a DNA double helix. Imagine now that each of the thirteen rungs in the spiral ladder that makes a chromosome is not simply a rung, but a […]
A Navajo woman named Eulynda Toledo-Benalli shares her family’s history with the boarding school system in the U.S. Her father was kidnapped and sent to school in Colorado, while generations later, Toledo-Benalli was sent to school in Rehoboth, NM with her siblings. They suffered abuse at the hands of the schools, and their parents didn’t […]
Walter Littlemoon attended a federal Indian boarding school in South Dakota sixty years ago. The mission of many of these schools, as late as 1950, was to “kill the Indian and save the man.” The children were not allowed to be Indians – to speak their language or express their culture or native identity in […]
Hunter Genia is a well respected member of the Saginaw Chippewa Wellness community and works at the tribe’s Behavioral Health department. He shares very personal stories of he and his relatives’ experiencing direct impacts from being swept into the boarding school systems, and generational aftershocks of those experiences. Watch Video Here Source: Mount Pleasant Industrial […]
South Dakota is violating ICWA by abducting and kidnapping Native children and placing them with white families. The practices of the state fall under the category of genocide according to the UN’s General Assembly definition. A legal campaign is underway to have the children returned to their families. Despite the state’s claims that they have […]
