Schools tried to forcibly assimilate Indigenous kids. Can the U.S. make amends?
Summary
TLDRThe discovery of a mass grave with 215 children's remains near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada has brought to light the dark history of forced assimilation of indigenous people. In the U.S., a similar history is being acknowledged through the uncovering of photographs from a boarding school for Native American children in Minnesota. The Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict, who operated such schools, are now part of a reconciliation effort, including a digital repatriation of these photographs to the descendants of the students, aiming to provide closure and aid in the healing process.
Takeaways
- π’ The remains of 215 children were found in a mass grave near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada, highlighting a dark chapter in history.
- π« Indian boarding schools were established to forcibly assimilate indigenous children into mainstream society, operating from the 1870s to the 1970s.
- π« At these schools, Native languages, religions, and customs were forbidden as part of the assimilation process.
- π Students at the College of Saint Benedict discovered previously unseen photographs in the monastery's archives, shedding light on the boarding school era.
- π€ The boarding schools' impact is still felt today, disrupting families and making it difficult for descendants to build healthy relationships.
- π΅ Community elders and descendants seek closure and the recovery of cultural artifacts as part of the healing process.
- π The Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict acknowledge past wrongs and have issued an apology to the White Earth community.
- π A digital repatriation effort is underway to make historical photographs accessible to descendants of Native boarding school students.
- π This local effort is part of a broader national movement to address historical injustices against Native American communities.
- π The story suggests a potential model for reconciliation and repatriation efforts between institutions and tribal nations.
Q & A
What was the shocking discovery near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School?
-A mass grave with the remains of 215 children was found near the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
What is the significance of the discovery at Kamloops in relation to indigenous history?
-The discovery is part of a dark history of forcibly assimilating indigenous people through Indian boarding schools, which aimed to strip away their indigenous cultures.
What was the purpose of the federal initiative announced by Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland?
-The initiative aims to uncover the truth and lasting consequences of the boarding schools that were used to forcibly assimilate indigenous children.
What did students at the College of Saint Benedict discover in the archives?
-Students discovered an archive of photographs related to Native American boarding schools, including images that had never been seen before.
How did the boarding schools operated by the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict impact Native American students?
-The boarding schools aimed to separate Native American children from their homes and strip away their indigenous cultures, including forbidding their languages, religions, and customs.
What was the role of the boarding schools in the broader assimilation policies of the time?
-The boarding schools were part of a deliberate act to assimilate Native American children into mainstream society, often against the will of their families.
How did the boarding school system affect the families and communities of Native American students?
-The boarding school system disrupted families and communities for multiple generations, making it difficult for individuals to make healthy choices and build healthy relationships.
What is the concept of 'digital repatriation' mentioned in the script?
-Digital repatriation refers to the process of making historical materials, such as photographs, accessible to descendants of Native boarding school students, as a form of cultural restitution.
What is the significance of the apology from the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict?
-The apology signifies a recognition of past wrongs and an attempt at reconciliation, acknowledging the injustices done to Native American communities in the past.
What is the goal of Jaime Arsenault and the White Earth community in relation to the boarding school history?
-The goal is to use the history as a starting point for healing and to create a model for other repatriation efforts between institutions and tribal nations.
How does the script suggest that the past boarding school history can contribute to moving forward as a country?
-By acknowledging and examining the past events, the script suggests that it can serve as an impetus for moving forward and promoting reconciliation and healing.
Outlines
π« Dark History of Native American Boarding Schools
The script discusses the recent discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada. This shocking find is part of a larger, dark history of forcibly assimilating indigenous people through boarding schools. The U.S. has a similar history, with Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland announcing a federal initiative to uncover the truth about these schools. The story focuses on one such boarding school and the efforts to understand and acknowledge the troubled past. It includes interviews with a graduate, a tribal historic preservation officer, and a retired historian, all of whom discuss the lasting impact of these schools on indigenous communities, including the loss of culture, family separation, and the difficulty in building healthy relationships and communities.
πΈ Digital Repatriation and Healing Through History
This paragraph delves into the process of digital repatriation, where old photographs from a boarding school's archive are being shared with the descendants of Native American boarding school students. The photographs, found in the Saint Benedict's Monastery in Minnesota, provide a detailed look into the lives of the children who attended the school. The initiative is part of a larger national effort to return cultural artifacts and human remains to tribal nations. The script discusses the emotional impact of these photographs on community members and the potential for healing and reconciliation. It also touches on the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict's regret for past injustices and their recent apology to the White Earth community. The hope is that this collaboration can serve as a model for other repatriation efforts and help in moving towards healing for the affected communities.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘Mass grave
π‘Forcibly assimilating indigenous people
π‘Indian boarding schools
π‘Cultural erasure
π‘Residential school
π‘Tribal historic preservation officer
π‘Digital repatriation
π‘Truth and reconciliation
π‘Native American studies
π‘Assimilation policies
π‘Repatriation
Highlights
A mass grave with the remains of 215 children was found near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada, highlighting the dark history of forcibly assimilating indigenous people.
The U.S. has a similar history with Indian boarding schools aimed at assimilating Native American children, with a federal initiative announced to uncover the truth about these schools.
Rare photographs from an archive in Minnesota reveal a lost time in Native American boarding schools, providing a new perspective on a painful history.
The Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict operated boarding schools for Native American students, with a goal to strip away indigenous cultures.
The boarding schools' policies led to the loss of indigenous languages, religions, and customs, and had lasting impacts on Native American communities.
The boarding school system was a deliberate act by the U.S. government to assimilate Native American children, often against the will of their families.
The impact of the boarding schools is still felt today, disrupting families and making it difficult for individuals to build healthy relationships.
The monastery at the College of Saint Benedict has opened its archives to help understand and acknowledge the troubled past of Native American boarding schools.
Students and tribal members are working together to study and digitize over a hundred old photographs from the boarding school era.
The photographs provide a detailed documentation of the living conditions and daily life of Native American children in boarding schools.
The digital repatriation of these photographs is part of a larger national effort to return cultural artifacts and human remains to tribal nations.
The process of sharing these materials is seen as a step towards truth and reconciliation between institutions and tribal nations.
The monastery has issued an apology to the White Earth community for its role in the boarding school system.
The current Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict acknowledge past wrongs and express regret for the injustices done to Native American communities.
Jaime Arsenault hopes the collaboration between the White Earth community and the monastery can serve as a model for other repatriation efforts.
The story of the boarding schools is complex and painful, but it is essential for moving forward as a country and promoting healing.
Transcripts
JUDY WOODRUFF: A mass grave with the remains of 215 children was recently found near the
former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, a boarding school in British Columbia,
Canada. It closed in 1978.
It was a shocking discovery, and part of a dark history of forcibly assimilating indigenous
people.
Indian boarding schools have a long history in this country as well. Just yesterday, Secretary
of Interior Deb Haaland announced a new federal initiative that will -- quote -- "uncover
the truth" and the lasting consequences of these schools.
Jeffrey Brown has the story of one of them and an attempt to understand and acknowledge
a troubled past.
It's part of our arts and culture series, canvas.
JEFFREY BROWN: Portraits of a lost time, a painful time for many, a boarding school for
Native American children.
BELEN BENWAY, Graduate, College of Saint Benedict: And then we also had this photograph.
WOMAN: OK.
BELEN BENWAY: And you wouldn't happen to know what these buildings are?
JEFFREY BROWN: They were found in an unusual archive, in the basement of the Saint Benedict's
Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, by students at the adjacent College of Saint Benedict,
including Belen Benway.
BELEN BENWAY: So ,the first time that I went into the archives, and I saw the first photo,
it was really just life-changing for me, honestly, because you got to see this whole other side
of history that you don't really get taught about a lot.
I found out that a lot of the pictures had never really been seen before. Like, they
didn't even know that they had these photographs until we were out looking for them.
JEFFREY BROWN: Some three hours north, at the White Earth Indian Reservation, tribal
historic preservation officer Jaime Arsenault was also deeply moved by photographs she'd
never seen before.
JAIME ARSENAULT, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer: When I first saw the images, I was
thinking about the community, about family members that maybe never had seen those images
either.
JEFFREY BROWN: In the late 19th century, the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict began
operating boarding schools for Native American students, including one on the White Earth
Reservation.
The sisters were hardly alone. From the 1870s to as late as the 1970s, nearly 400 boarding
schools, most of them government-run, operated around the country. Native languages, religion,
and customs were forbidden. The goal, to separate Indian children from their homes and strip
away their indigenous cultures.
JAIME ARSENAULT: There was loss of allotments, loss of timber, loss of access to water or
loss of access to be able to do subsistence living and feed your family. Ceremonies and
traditional practices were frowned upon, in the sense that your food rations could be
withheld, that type of thing.
And in the middle of all of that came this loss of children.
SISTER CAROL BERG, Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict: The sisters who came were
not, to put IT bluntly, trained at all. I suspect most of them knew little or nothing
about American Indians at that point.
JEFFREY BROWN: Sister Carol Berg is a retired historian who focused her doctoral dissertation
White Earth and broader assimilation policies.
SISTER CAROL BERG: It was a deliberate act. There's no doubt about that. Some parents
were glad to have the children come because the children had a roof over their heads,
they had three meals a day.
But, in the end, I think American Indian families had no choice. I mean, they had to submit
to this policy.
JEFFREY BROWN: By the middle of the 20th century, the White Earth Reservation boarding school
became a day school and eventually closed in 1969.
But the impact of separation from family and culture, Jaime Arsenault says, can be felt
to this day.
JAIME ARSENAULT: It disrupted lots of families, and for multiple generations. And then it
makes it more difficult for somebody to make a healthy choice. It makes it more difficult
for someone to build healthy relationships.
TED GORDON, College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University: I knew that there's
a very complex history there, that this was an issue for Native communities that had a
severe impact on their identities, on their family structures. And I had wanted to know
more about it.
JEFFREY BROWN: Ted Gordon is an anthropology professor at the College of Saint Benedict
and Saint John's University who focuses on Native American studies.
TED GORDON: I wouldn't describe it as a kind of intentionally hidden in any sense. But
was this something that was -- where students were actively taught about this history, where
there were opportunities for people to learn about it, beyond somebody who would take the
initiative to read the history of the land here? That wasn't happening.
JEFFREY BROWN: Gordon found the monastery eager to open its archives, and he recruited
students like Belen Benway, herself a member of the Prairie Island Indian Community, also
in Minnesota, to help gather and study a trove of more than a hundred old photographs.
BELEN BENWAY: You can see like the emotions and how they physically lived, because they
took pictures of every -- they really had a good documentation of a lot of things that
went on in the schools. They had the pictures of the bedrooms that they would sleep in.
They had a picture of them in class. They had pictures of every single thing that they
did at the schools. So, it really painted a strong picture for me.
JEFFREY BROWN: Ted Gordon and his team approached Jaime Arsenault at the White Earth Reservation.
TED GORDON: And so Jaime suggested, why don't we write a new chapter? And if we share these
materials, that's what we're kind of describing as the truth part in truth and reconciliation.
JEFFREY BROWN: It's a small piece of a larger national effort.
In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, an
attempt to return human remains and sacred cultural artifacts taken from tribal nations
without their consent.
JAIME ARSENAULT: We're really trying to expand the definition of what repatriation is. And
so that could be language. It could be an archive. It can be a photograph.
JEFFREY BROWN: In this case, it's a digital repatriation of dozens of photographs, now
accessible to descendants of Native boarding school students.
EVELYN BELLANGER, Descendant of Native Boarding School Student: I think we need closure.
JEFFREY BROWN: People like community elders Evelyn Bellanger and Joe Lagarde. Both had
family members who attended the schools.
JOE LAGARDE, Descendant of Native Boarding School Student: Yes, we have to start to recover
what is ours, whether it's artifacts they call or our sacred item.
EVELYN BELLANGER: What they have and what -- connecting with them is not going to change
anything that happened. But it's a starting point for a relationship that can help us
lead to healing.
JEFFREY BROWN: It's something that's weighed on the present-day Sisters of the Order of
Saint Benedict.
SISTER CAROL BERG: We certainly do regret that we have done some injustice, I think,
in the past, again, much out of ignorance, I would say, not out of ill will, but we must
acknowledge, I think, that we have done some wrongs.
JEFFREY BROWN: And now the monastery has done just that, in a recent letter to Jaime Arsenault
and the White Earth community that included an apology.
You were talking about the kind of national moment we're in.
JAIME ARSENAULT: Right.
JEFFREY BROWN: Do you think of what's happening now between White Earth and the college and
the monastery, is it a good story, in a sense, or potentially a good story?
JAIME ARSENAULT: I do, because we're taking a history that is complex and, for many people,
very, very painful, and we're trying to move forward as a country.
But I think that we really need to look at some of these past events that are unfinished,
right? And we need to really examine that, really look at that, and use that as that
impetus to move forward.
JEFFREY BROWN: Arsenault hopes this will become a model for other repatriation efforts between
institutions and tribal nations, but she knows many open wounds remain.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Such a huge story. So important to follow that.
Thank you, Jeff Brown.
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