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Related: About this forumEditorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school
In her work for both the Tulalip Tribes and a national healing coalition investigating the history of Indian boarding schools in the United States, Deborah Parker has listened to the stories of elders who were separated from their families as children and often sent far from home to the residential institutions.
The stories are so abundant that those of us working on the boarding school issue hear stories daily, stories in secret, in the dark, in the corners, Parker said. The stories start with, Yeah, that happened to my grandmother or my grandfather.
One story shared between a grandfather and grandson, Parker said in a recent interview, involved the grandparent when he was 9 years old and had been sent to the school on the Tulalip reservation, run by the U.S. government and the Catholic Church, where thousands of Indigenous children from around the state and region had been sent over the decades.
As told to Parker, the boy learned that his 11-year-old brother, also at the Tulalip school, had been killed by someone on the schools staff, because they didnt want him to speak his language, or sing a song.
The boy sneaked out of the school and left Tulalip, Parker said, and walked home along the shoreline until he reached his tribal home on Lummi Island in Whatcom County.
When the grandson tells this story, Parker said, he has this pain he doesnt quite understand. He knows that when many of the children did return, they didnt return whole.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-getting-to-the-truth-of-tulalip-boarding-school/
niyad
(112,438 posts)church, have so much blood on their hands, so much for which they must be held accountable. So much pain and loss that can never be undone.