Deb Haaland: My grandparents were stolen from their families as children. We must learn about this

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

As I read stories about an unmarked grave in Canada where the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found last month, I was sick to my stomach. But the deaths of Indigenous children at the hands of government were not limited to that side of the border. Many Americans may be alarmed to learn that the United States also has a history of taking Native children from their families in an effort to eradicate our culture and erase us as a people. It is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.

I am a product of these horrific assimilation policies. My maternal grandparents were stolen from their families when they were only 8 years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture and communities until they were 13. Many children like them never made it back home.

Over nearly 100 years, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into scores of boarding schools run by religious institutions and the U.S. government. Some studies suggest that by 1926, nearly 83 percent of Native American school-age children were in the system. Many children were doused with DDT upon arrival, and as their coerced re-education got underway, they endured physical abuse for speaking their tribal languages or practicing traditions that didn’t fit into what the government believed was the American ideal.

My great-grandfather was taken to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Its founder coined the phrase “kill the Indian, and save the man,” which genuinely reflects the influences that framed these policies at the time.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/11/deb-haaland-indigenous-boarding-schools/

[jpak]

1. Will the GQP fret about this "Cancel Culture "?

I'm thinking

No

Yup

[dlk]

2. This was another facet of the American push to erase the native cultures

When people lose their history, they lose a piece of who they are.

[QED]

3. Smithsonian Mag had an article about Tskahovi Tewanima, classmate and teammate of Jim Thorpe

The article told of how he was removed from his Hopi community and forced to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in PA.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/tsokahovi-twanima-carlisle-olympic-star-180977694/

"One morning in November 1906, a Hopi teenager on the Second Mesa of the Arizona reservation awoke to pandemonium. A U.S. Army officer was calling the villagers together. He said the government had reached the limit of its patience. For two decades, the tribe had refused to send its children to government-sanctioned boarding schools, as directed; now, under military compulsion, every Hopi child had to attend one. Soldiers began rounding up sleepy-eyed children and older kids, too. Mothers wailed, babies cried and fathers vowed to stand up to the Army. But the unarmed Hopi were no match for the soldiers, and their young ones were seized.

Tsökahovi Tewanima, a teenager who was 5 feet 4½ inches tall and weighed 110 pounds, was described by one soldier as “thin, emaciated and beligerent [sic].” Tewanima and ten other teens were handcuffed and marched 20 miles east to Keams Canyon, says Leigh Lomayestewa, Tewanima’s nephew. There, the Hopi youths were shackled and forced to build a road. In mid-January 1907, the soldiers marched the prisoners 110 miles east to Fort Wingate, New Mexico, where they boarded a train. About five days later, they arrived at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, roughly 2,000 miles from home.

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R