Inside the US push to uncover Indigenous boarding school graves
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
San Francisco, California – Phil Smith’s parents dropped him off at the Charles H Burke Indian School in New Mexico when he was five years old, in 1954.
A member of the Navajo Nation, Smith would attend the boarding school just outside the nation’s borders for one year, before moving onto other similar schools in the United States.
He spoke the Navajo language when he arrived but was taught that it “was no good, it’s not useful, (and) you need to only learn English”, explained Smith’s daughter, Farina King, who shared his story with Al Jazeera.
As a result, Smith didn’t teach King or her siblings the Navajo language. “And then I don’t learn Navajo, and I’m placed in this very difficult position where I’m the one who has to do this reconnecting work,” she said.
Hundreds of schools
In 1927, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal government agency, converted former army buildings at Fort Wingate, about 210km (130 miles) west of Albuquerque, into the school for Navajo and Zuni children.
In the 1860s, the ancestors of the Navajo students had been forced to march in what is known as the “Long Walk” to Fort Sumner, where they were confined. One-third died of disease and starvation.
According to a researcher who visited the Charles H Burke Indian School in 1927 as part of a survey of Indian boarding schools in the US, a Navajo girl died from tuberculosis the morning of his visit.
In The Meriam Report, a survey of the living conditions for Native Americans across the country, Lewis Meriam wrote that the school “was as distressing as any place I have visited”.
The US government ran at least 367 schools ( PDF ) like this one – forced assimilation institutions that aimed to exterminate Indigenous language and culture, according to the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. The US operated 25 of these schools and supported hundreds more that were run by churches, most often the Catholic Church.
Federal investigation
In June, following the discovery of hundreds of Indigenous child graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School in western Canada, US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland ordered a federal task force to investigate graves at the schools.
That was when King said she realised that she exists today because her father and ancestors survived the institutions.
“In the United States there needs to be a real acknowledgement across the board with critical masses – not only top-down from the government, but how do we get Americans of all walks of life and backgrounds to understand the significance of this?” King said.
Now, the search is on for missing children and graves in the US. Native American communities have long known that graves existed at the sites of the former boarding schools, and they have been carrying the weight of survivors’ trauma for generations.
In July, the remains of nine Lakota children who died at the government-run Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania were returned to their families.
Earlier this month, the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition – the group that has pushed for six years for the government to release boarding school records – announced it would collaborate with the Department of the Interior on its investigation.
The department is now consulting with Indigenous communities, including tribal governments, Alaska Native corporations and Native Hawaiian groups, on key issues to be included in its report, a spokesperson wrote in an email. The consultation will also lay a foundation for future site work to protect potential graves.
“Topics being discussed include appropriate protocols on handling sensitive information in existing records, potential repatriation of human remains, and management of sites of former boarding schools,” the spokesperson wrote.
The task force is expected to deliver a report by April 1 next year.
‘They most definitely have graves’
The schools, which operated from the late 1800s until the 1970s in the US, were part of a policy that forced Indigenous people from their land and onto reservations. In an 1892 speech , US Army officer Richard Pratt, who founded one of the first schools, described the policy as: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”
The US system inspired Canada’s similar network of so-called “ residential schools “; in an 1879 report, Canada’s then-Minister of the Interior Nicholas Flood Davin recommended Canada adopt the US Indian boarding school system.
From 2008 to 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission gathered testimony from 7,000 survivors of the institutions. The Indian Residential Schools settlement agreement compensated students who attended 139 schools across Canada. An estimated 150,000 First Nation, Metis and Inuit children passed through the system , and the commission estimated that 6,000 children died at the schools from disease, starvation, abuse, fires, and other causes.
Christine McCleave, CEO of the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told Al Jazeera she hopes the US task force, along with a bill before Congress to establish a truth commission, will result in the US government hearing survivors’ testimony, similarly to what happened in Canada.
The US had at least twice the number of schools as Canada did, so McCleave said she believes at least twice as many Indigenous people passed through the institutions. She also predicted the US government would likely discover that most of the schools have graves associated with them.
“If they were open at the turn of the century, then they most definitely have graves, because there was a high rate of student deaths from tuberculosis and influenza – preventable diseases,” she said.
Canada’s commission declared the schools amounted to cultural genocide, and McCleave wants a similar declaration from the US. “Anybody can look at the United Nations definition of genocide and see that the United States has done all of those things to Indigenous peoples in this country.”
Protocol for searches
Marsha Small, a northern Cheyenne researcher, did a survey in 2019 using multiple scanning tools that found a total of 222 graves at the site of the former Chemawa Indian School in Oregon.
That total included 210 graves associated with the boarding school, Small said, while community members unconnected to the boarding school era were also buried in the cemetery.
Small has interviewed survivors about harsh punishment at the school; one person said her father still had scars from being whipped at Chemawa, Small told Al Jazeera. “They really were concentration camps, they really were prisons,” she said of the schools.
It was a genocide, she said. “It’s an eradication of our people.”
Together, Small and King are developing protocols for how to respond when graves are discovered at the boarding schools. King said they have shared these protocols with the Navajo Nation.
When remains are found, they likely come from multiple nations, and each nation has different protocols for how to respond to graves, Small said. Some nations want ground-penetrating radar used, while others do not want their children disturbed in any way. “They might be buried right next to each other,” she said.
Meanwhile, McCleave and Small also are calling on the federal government to establish a crisis hotline for survivors of the institutions. “The Band-Aid has been ripped off, the scab is exposed, pulled off, and now it’s a raw wound,” Small said.
The Department of the Interior told Al Jazeera that the federal Indian Health Services is working with Native leaders to develop culturally appropriate resources to support those who may experience trauma resulting from the task force investigation.
McCleave said she hopes the April report will specifically mention which schools have graves associated with them. “I do see this as a very hopeful beginning to a long road that we have ahead of us of truth and healing,” she said.
Before anyone goes there, yes Canada has been just as woeful and I have seeded well over 1/2 dozen articles reporting so.
their opinions don't matter... cue the anti-CRT chorus.
Over and over we hear that past is not the fault of the living, not our responsibility.
Clever people here and there insist that if they never owned slaves they aren't responsible for slavery or racism.
Some of those same clever people insist that because older factions of the Democrat Party were dominant in the
Southern States and allowed Jim Crow and "sperate but equal" BS, then all modern Dems are racists.
Best to ignore that kind of two faced trolling IMHO.
While some sane people who aren't racists don't feel at all responsible for events from decades or centuries ago. If they are responsible for racism and slavery, please make a logical, coherent case for such a claim.
I would love to see an argument as to why I am responsible for slavery and racism in America or anywhere.
Would you prefer the "lest we forget" argument first?
There's no cure for "Stuck on Stupid".... ( scroll down for all definitions)
Seriously?
What, exactly, would you love about it?
I thought I made it abundantly clear that I wished for a logical, coherent argument.
Maybe you should be more precise and just argue your point without the unnecessary questions.
Well, for starters, it would be nice to actually see a cogent response to what I wrote.
Whether or not I would love it is really immaterial, and it doesn't matter anyway because no one has even poorly attempted to try it.
I will see if I can convince Polonius to come and fill you in.
getting someone to argue your points for you?
Would that be the so-called clever people in comment 1.1.2?
True...
Morning Hallux...when you look back white man has trod and trampled its way all around the world on First Nations people..
I hope the Aboriginies in Australia received better treatment than most "First Nations people".
One wonders what the world would look like if the outcome of Waterloo was different.
There would be alot more people that speak French?
Morning no not really.. exactly the same went on here... Koori kids were taken to be "educated" thousands of kilometres away from their families...
Many in the outback trained to be Jackaroos (cowboys) and girls domestic servants at the stations. (Homesteads).
Most never saw their families again. Blackbirding also went on..raiding the Pacific islands for slaves to work in the canefields up Queensland...
Massacres occurred here as well but not to the extent of numbers of souls lost as other countries... Kooris lived in small mobs and were on the move frequently..so easy to eliminate by whites.
So no, our treatment of First Nations people was no better than anyone other country...much to our detriment.
One of the favourite topic of debate amongst some Southerners is-- what would America be like if the South had won The War Between The States? (AKA "The War for the Suppression of Yankee Insolence").
When people start playing the "If if if card" I am often tempted to reply:
If my grandmother had a wheel and two handles-- she would have been a wheelbarrow.
If...if...if ...
In any event...if the outcome of Waterloo was different...well. my first thought would be that Abba would have missed out on one of their biggest hits!
Recently one boarding school in the US that had reported no deaths at that school, records were discovered that listed over 200 Indian children had died there. The tip of the iceberg in the US.
Morning Kavika..was wondering what was happening in Canada and the US re finding the lost souls...
It all seemed to go very quiet after the initial finds..or it did here..
Are they still looking for the lost children at the schools?
Yes they are in both Canada and in the US, it's becoming more and more front page news and policies.
As horrible as it was, I have noticed one positive development recently. More and more people are becoming aware of genocides: Against American Indians, The Pol Pot Massacres. The Holocaust, The Bosnian Genocide, The Turkish "Holocaust" against The Armenians, Ongoing off and on persecution of Kurds, Yazidis, Jews, Assyrians, & other minorities in parts of the Arab world, Slavery as well as ongoing discrimination & violence vs African-Americans, The Roma, The Rohingya, The Rwandan Genocide and a few other I've probably missed.
In the past there was much attention paid to any of them for the most part-- the exception being an awareness amongst those of the targeted group, and perhaps a few friends and aquaintances.
But recently there's been a significant increase in aware of these things--and much more active groups supporting awareness. Awareness is no where near where it should be-- But there's no doubt in my mind that recently awareness is ibncreasing...as is the number of people working towards improving awareness...
Anoon Krishna..and you can add to the list the Ukraine holocaust..millions and millions of Ukrainian people were killed by Stalin... basically they were starved to death...my SIL is Ukrainian and said what had gone on...no many know of this one...
It's a travesty, and knowing that it happened in my lifetime, makes it even more shocking.
it's our age group. being taught our alleged history and ideology in school, only to witness and learn the reality in the 60's and 70's. that's what radicalized my thinking back then and that's what guides my thinking and values now.
I don't know that you were radicalized, really. I don't think realizing that kidnapping and abusing children are bad things really makes one a radical. Reactionaries might think so, but they don't count.
I meant radicalized in the traditional mode of thinking at that time, and now according to those that would prefer to whitewash our past history because it makes them feel uncomfortable.
Definitely was the beginning of a shift in the 60s...although there have been definite periods of both progress as well as "backpedling" in the decades since...
I have to agree. When I was growing up, I don't recall any 'whitewashing' of the history I learned about our country. I wasn't taught that there were good things about slavery, that we were always the good guys against the Indians and other such things. I knew at a young age we weren't perfect, but I also thought those were things of the past and that those things didn't happen anymore. It's shocking when you find out how recently they did.
I've heard people claim that the slaves had it so good. They never had to worry about problems they had in Africa: worrying about where their next meal would come from, having a roofover their head, constant danger about attack from wild animals. Yes-- I have met individuals who actually believed that slaves in the U.S. were much better of as slaves here then in Africa-- before they were enslaved!
I've heard it a lot-- although probably our experiences were quite different. For starters, I was a civil rights worker in North carolina inthe 60's...spent a lot of time in the black community, as well as with quite moderate, enlightened (white) Southerners...also with extremely rascist whites.
Well, I have heard that, However it wasn't often so much that there were "good" things mentioned about slavery-- but rather often more of a case of the bad things minimized-- or perhaps even more often they simply downplayed..or even neglected to mention the bad.
The genocide even included biological warfare. Blankets provided to some tribes were infected with smallpox. It's a disgusting part of real US history.
The British started that in the French&Indian wars.
The British also had a tiered bounty system for Indian scalps. White haired, warriors, women and children.
The British fucked up several continents culturally
Another thing they did was the way the divided up countries when giving them independence. After WWII< a lot of colonies in Africa and Asia gained independence from the colonial powers. But in those days the indigenous peoples were not parts of a country-- rather they had loyalty to their tribe.
So what the Brits should have down was to create new countries along Tribal lines. (Not always easy but still...).
They generally screwed things up in one of two two ways:
1. They created a single fairly large country of which part was given to one "tribe"-- part to another. Example: for independence they created a country called Nigeria. The North was predominantly Muslim, the Southern part predominantly indigenous Christians (plus some native religions). Not surprisingly the two groups competed with each other politically (and often violently!) to control the country.
2. The other common way they messed up was to devide an indigenous tribe into two countries-- part of the tribe was given land in one country-- but the rest of the same tribe was put in a different (adjacent) country.
It was done in the Middle East also. Take a look at T.E. Lawrence's maps for his recommendations to the British for ME divisions post WWI. He organized by cultural and political groups.
As Split Personality pointed out, it's actually a part of British history. It can't be laid at the feet of US policy, since the US didn't exist at the time.
Further, there's only one recorded case of such an attempt, meaning that, even for the British, it seems to have been a one off and, likely ineffective. From what I've read about it, the blankets came from Fort Pitt, which was under siege by the Indians. Fort Pitt also had patients with smallpox in its hospital, an infection which had come from the Indians themselves, having been suffering from it in the spring and summer of 1763. The significance of that is that even if the blankets were capable of infecting anyone, which there seems to be some doubt about, all the Indians likely to get smallpox had already had it by that time. At least, there's no evidence that the plan actually worked.
None of that excuses the attempt to do so as anything but horrific. Even making the attempt, whether effective or not, is inexcusable. I'm simply relaying what is known about the one case that has any evidence to back it up to separate it from the idea that trying to use biological warfare was a common tactic. It wasn't.
That has more holes in it than a slice of Swiss cheese. So on the 4th of July 1776 anything that happened before that date Amerian was not responsible for. All the Founding Fathers, including the first four U.S. presidents, at one point, considered themselves British subjects.
You are correct it does not excuse the attempt but it is in line with hundreds of years of genocide or being politically correct, ''Ethnic Cleansing'' which continued well into the 20th century in one form or another. Which of course this article represents.
Actually, the time scale isn't "hundreds of years' but thousands. It is simply a continuation of what humans everywhere have done to each other from the beginning of recorded history, including what other Native Americans (north and south) did to each other.
That would be more or less correct. And really, it isn't fair to say the incident was policy for the British Empire, as it was the idea of one person far removed from the Crown. But certainly one can't blame the entity known as the US for such a policy.
Are you personally responsible for the things that happened before you were born?
I can't fathom the mental gymnastics it takes to believe anyone or anything is responsible for the things that happened before it existed.
I'm not a country or a government, but you know that but chose to make some idiotic comment, [deleted]
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First of all, N. American Indians never exterminated each other. They went to war. There is a difference. Second of all, I would think by the 1970's genocide would have been taboo, wouldn't you? So your argument does not hold water.
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I have come to the conclusion that when people say that it was in the past, they are just burying their head in the sand.
With the boarding schools being active until the 1980's I guess that is really ancient history to them.
Good grief. The common histories of GB and the USA started at Jamestown before there was a GB or USA.
It's just silly to imply that the US policies towards the indigenous were anything but genocidal for a century and a half before the
attempted culture wars of these schools to "kill the Indian, save the man".
Like Australia, America was completely British culturally sharing a common language, common laws and holidays.
Those attitudes still persist.
I could never understand why some folks would want so much to defend the perpetrators of genocides...but that's another topic... so I won't dwell on it now
Anyway, how do you feel about the practice of White settlers (in the U.S.) using innocent Indians for target practice? Perhaps only one recorded case of that as well, eh?
I'm afraid it's quite a bit more complicated than what your statement implies. While I don't know whether or not NA tribes ever attempted to 'exterminate' another I believe it would be difficult to do because it would have been too hard to accomplish given the tech base they were working with. Had a particular tribe or nation been as advanced as, say, the Aztecs, they very well may have tried to exterminate other tribes.
I believe I stated my agreement with you in 3.2 . I assume you wrote this before reading it. I'll say it again, though. I was shocked to learn how recently "Indian schools" still operated when I first heard about it. While I'm not a reparations fan, what happened there was so recent that I think reparations are quite appropriate for the families affected.
That's your opinion and you're welcome to it. My own opinion is that what happened to NA's, north and south, was inevitable and, had the NA's developed technically rather than the Europeans it would have been the Europeans who were decimated. I have this opinion because the entirety of history, in every part of the world, confirms it. Over and over again. It's still happening today. Just look at Russia and China. Every polity that has had the power to project its will has done so throughout history, eventually. In the end,
NA's history wasn't as bloody as European history simply because they didn't have the tech to make it so. For whatever reason, they never developed significantly in metallurgy, for one. As tech increases so does the productivity of that society, as well as demand for resources to sustain the tech. Competition for resources causes conflict. This didn't happen to most of the NA so they never felt the same pressures the Europeans faced among the more developed world. So, what warfare they had was on a scale their tech would support, along with pressures of a given time or place, like if food were scarce for whatever reason.
You can see this verified in the differences between plains NA's and the NA's of the Pacific Northwest. Resources were much more plentiful in the Pacific Northwest so conflict in those areas were a lot less physical than among the plains NA's. In other words, there was less competition and so, less need for confrontation. But where need was a factor, confrontation increased and was more violent. Just like everywhere and everywhen.
It is simply a continuation of what humans everywhere have done to each other from the beginning of recorded history,
A slight correction. That should read:
It is simply a continuation of what some humans everywhere have done to each other from the beginning of recorded history,
Some did, Some didn't. And then there were some of us (a small minority perhaps?) who actively worked to oppose injustice.
You stated in an earlier comment that you were not aware of Indian/US history beingwhitewashed yet you were unaware of a horrific era in US history the Indian Boarding School era, that is whitewashing history. Did you learn about the Tribal Termination Action of 1953 through 1973 Where millions of acres of land were taken from tribes after congress said they were no longer Indians? How about the ICWA of 1978 or the Indian Religious Freedom as of 1978 updated 1997 both experienced and laws passed in your lifetime. Are you aware that Indian religions were outlawed by the US government? Any idea of any of that or why they were passed. Then there are the sterilization of Native women in the 1960/70/80s.
You can trace much of this back to ''Doctrine of Discovery'' and the papal bull “Inter Caetera''. If you're not familiar with it, it would be a good history lesson for you. In fact if you read the Marshall Trilogy when it was instituted into US law dispossessing Indian of their land across the US. Last used in 2009 law case.
Yes, much of US history is whitewashed.
I'm not defending it, regardless of how you wish to portray it. I was simply presenting the event as factually as I could, since so many seem to think biological warfare was a common tool. I've heard so often that the settlers used biological warfare against the NA's. That wasn't the case.
I think you already know the answer to that. I've been on here long enough for you to know. What I am against is what you are trying to do now. Make it seem as if I approve of what happened because I disavow the notion that biological warfare was an actual policy for dealing with NA's when it wasn't. That is, unless you can provide evidence that it was. If you can then I will change my opinion on it.
You see, I like to think of myself as a realist. The NA's and SA's were doomed no matter what, for two reasons. Perhaps the most devastating one was disease. Had it been the Chinese that managed to discover the 'New World' rather than the Europeans they still would have brought diseases the population had no defense against. The invasion of the New World was inevitable. It was going to happen no matter what.
The second was the practically non-existent tech base in the New World, with the exception of agriculture. I saw a documentary about how the New World beat the pants off of the Europeans. Unfortunately, that would not save them. First, because disease decimated the population and second, everything they needed to defeat the invaders they had to get from the invaders. They had no means to produce what they needed themselves, so they were constantly stuck in a cycle of capitulating to the invaders to get what they needed to protect themselves, which only served to put them even further behind.
Now, you can paint that as meaning I'm for what happened to the natives of the New World if you want. To me, it's simply fact. It says nothing about how I personally feel about it. You haven't asked but I'll tell you anyway.
I feel heartbroken over the devastation disease caused natives. It has been said a death is a tragedy but many are a statistic. I don't feel that way. I think about the bewildering frustration and sorrow families and tribes must have felt to see so many loved ones die. And it kept happening over and over with every new disease. People are making a big deal over Covid but it was nothing compared what natives suffered. From what I have read, it is estimated that, pre-contact, there were an estimated 20 to 50 million natives in the new world. Going with the higher number, by the time disease more or less finished decimating the population, there were somewhere around 2.5 million left.. in the entirety of the New World.
But I also see it as inevitable. It was going to happen and there was no way to stop it. It wasn't done on purpose. It wasn't because of malice. That doesn't make it okay. It doesn't excuse it. Those terms don't really have any more meaning than it's okay that there are mountains or excuse that water is wet. It's simply the inevitability of nature. There was simply no way the rest of the world would leave the New World untouched.
As for actions that could have been different, such as "using Indians for target practice" I obviously abhor such things. I especially denounce the Government making promises it knew it would never keep nor should have made in the first place. I denounce the Indian schools, or at least, what they were attempting to do and the results they achieved, most especially the children that died. The massacres, the racism, the indifference, all of it.
But, to be honest, I think NA's are trying to keep alive something that died a long time ago and is never going to come back. I don't think you have the same attitudes your ancestors had when we first came here because the realities of today won't allow it. You can't live that life, either, because modern realities won't allow it. I sometimes wonder if there are any pure blooded natives left. I think if there are, they are very old. The time will soon be here when there aren't. But I also think that in a few hundred years, there won't be any pure blooded anything. At that point, what portion of a person's ancestry will they claim? And why? I'm mostly descended from German and Irish but, really, I couldn't care less. Does claiming either German or Irish descent make me a better person? More worthy of anything? wouldn't thinking that it makes a difference be heading in the direction of racism? I'm of German descent so you need to view me this way! Really? Why?
You identify as NA and if that makes you happy I'm all for it, but only because it makes you happy. As far as what I think of you as a person it doesn't even register. I only care about who you are as a person. What your character is. Whether you're a great guy or a total asshole isn't relevant to whether you are NA to my mind. I would hope people treated me the same way. That is, I wasn't judged by who my ancestors were but, rather, who I am as a person. What my character is.
In the end, my view is that everyone's ancestors were abused at one point of history or another. Sad, but get over it. We can't fix what happened to them. We can only deal with what's happening now. How do we make things better now? I don't think trying to bring the past into the present does that. I think the past is only useful for learning from and nothing more.
Very well said!
I'm willing to listen. I know there's always been a minority throughout all of history, and I mean very minor, who actually worked to oppose injustice. But even then, they did so in a manner that we might not recognize as opposing injustice today. For instance, historically, slavery was thought of as right and proper in most of the world. How they treated slaves varied from place to place differed, but almost everyone considered it just part of the natural order. What about those who thought slavery was the natural part of the world but thought slaves should be treated with a certain amount of "protection' let's say? That is, they didn't oppose slavery, they opposed 'indecent' treatment of slaves? Look at some of the customs of NA's concerning "mourning warfare". Was that right? Is there a record of NA abolitionists concerning that?
The point is, regardless of how many actually tried to oppose injustice over the long history of humanity, societies felt the strong had the right to subjugate the weak. They felt it was the natural order of things. Your people were no different. If food became scares and the community suffered because of it, they competed, sometimes violently, with other tribes in order to increase the chances of survival for their own tribe or nation. They didn't say to themselves "It's our bad luck that we're starving to death. We certainly can't encroach on the next tribe over because that wouldn't be fair." They did what they had to do to keep their children fed just like everyone else. When the Europeans showed up, they competed against other tribes and nations for the resources the Europeans provided. They fought against each other, siding with either the French or the English in order to secure those resources.
I'm not pointing fingers here. I'm simply stating that humans follow human nature. Everything that happened was predictable and inevitable. We like to think we're better today but if somehow Atlantis arose from the sea today and they were technically inferior as NA's were in the beginning, the same thing would probably happen all over again, eventually. Sure as heck they'd have some resource only they had and the rest of the world would fight over it.
In the "early days of the Internet", when someone made a comment like that often the (somewhat snarky) reply would be:
Where can you get some of that stuff that you are smokin'?
But since this isn't the so called "early days of the Internet" (well, not yet anyway-- Mark Zuckerberg's comments re: the importance of the "New "Meta" to the contrary not withstanding) . . . I won't say that.
However now you got me curious-- which comment of mine, specificly, have you interpreted to mean that I am happy about my NA identity? Or even beyond that: which comment of mine have you assumed meant I was my identifying as being of NA ancestry?
We can't fix what happened to them.
But I wonder...is it possible that in the present we can do things that prevent-- or at least greatly diminish-- the probability of such things happening in the future?
(I know...you may say that I'm a dreamer . . . but perhaps I'm not the only one...???)
There's a wonderful 'olde saying from a famous Yogi-- a great spiritual master:
Prediction is difficult...especially about the future.
--Yogi Berra
You seem to be stuck on one comment and one instance. Biological warfare wasn't widely used in the sense we see biological warfare today. There are hundreds of instances that lead to the near annihilation of NA's in the Americas. The disease was one but only one which many want to use as the only thing that nearly destroyed an entire population. Between 2.5 and 5 million Natives were enslaved and sent to Europe and the Caribbean, most all died from causes associated with being enslaved. Warfare defending our land took another large toll.
Do tell me what that might be, our culture, or languages, our history? You are aware that NA's is doctors, scientists, lawyers, astronauts, teachers, politicians, CEOs, CFO business owners, authors, etc?
Let me put your mind at ease, there are 3.7 million full blood natives and another 5.9 million in a combination of one race or more. I am one of the full-bloods and no they are not all old in fact the full-blood population below 20 years old is substantial.
Not quite what I said. What I intended to convey was that, even in my school days, I was made aware that the US Cavalry weren't the shining knights in armor Hollywood portrayed them as. More, that I was made aware that 'settlers' were not the heroic pioneers out to tame an unsettled land. In other words, what John Wayne was portraying on TV didn't jive with what I was learning in school. School for me was from 1967 to 1981. I learned about the atrocities our government committed. I also learned about ones NA's committed.
I don't consider Indian Boarding Schools as whitewashing. I consider it a dirty secret most didn't know. Whitewashing would be trying to claim those schools were something other than what they obviously were, once they became common knowledge. I understand they were trying to, basically, commit cultural genocide. I understand that, for whatever reason, a lot of children died there. In spite of what you may think of me I would never condone those schools. In my opinion, NA's are hurting themselves by not assimilating into American culture, meaning those who actually resist it, but that's their choice to make, not the government's. Especially in light of the treaties they signed.
No, I'm not really familiar enough, perhaps not at all in some cases, to even attempt to comment on them specifically. Generally, though, I think these are inevitable for the same reason two objects can't occupy the same space without something rather disastrous happening. I think the idea of a nation within a nation is, untenable, to put it politely. whether or not it is fair or unfair isn't as relevant as whether it is possible due to human nature.
For example. You have a non-NA and a NA fishing the same river. The NA can take as many fish out of it as he desires but the non-NA has a limit. The non-NA guy isn't going to care about the other guy being NA. His thought is "I was born here, too. So were three generations of my ancestors."
That's what you're fighting against. People might agree that your ancestors got royally screwed but that was then and this is now. And that's the benign view. Add in people with money and power who want more money and power and you get what you see here. And your being NA isn't all that relevant. They do it to everyone. There's a popular lake near where I live. People who have lived on it for sixty years, who worked all their lives and then retired on this beautiful lake were forced out by the fact that the rich discovered it and raised property values to such a level that the little people were forced to sell because they couldn't afford the property taxes. Or consider people within cities that were forced out of their homes because Eminent Domain was used to give the land to developers. We are getting more and more homeless people because big banks and the Fed are causing property values to be so inflated, and thereby, rent to increase to such a degree people can no longer afford to live in a home or apartment. In other words, it isn't happening only to your people.
I'm sure you can add "Manifest Destinty" into the mix as well. To my mind, it doesn't matter when considering injustice. What I mean is, you're just focusing on a tiny slice of the injustice that is actually happening. Injustice is happening to everyone everywhere who doesn't have money or power. Or enough money and power and the right connections. In other words, same as it has always been.
Call me a pessimist. You'd almost certainly be right. But there's only one cause I think worth fighting for. That is the cause of Christ. Human beings are broken and we can't fix ourselves no matter how hard we try. The best we can do is set some goal for ourselves as to what we believe is right but I doubt I need to remind you that the road to Hell is paved with the best intentions. This world will never be fair. It will never be just. The best we can do as individuals is to do what Jesus said. Love God, love others as ourselves. That is why I might find that your being NA interesting but I don't find it defining. What I would find defining about you is who you are as an individual. Not so much what you say but what you do. Because, that's all that really counts in my opinion.
Agreed!
In fact, Drakkonis may well be one of the true geniuses on this site-- exponentially smarter by far than any of us!
Error on my part. I am currently experiencing vision difficulties and, on top of that, I wasn't paying close enough attention to whom I was speaking. I thought I was speaking to Kavika. My apologies.
Well, looking back over the history we've been discussing here, (and discussing so astutely I might add)-- since the birth of Christ (Peace Be Upon Him)...the world has certainly been pretty screwed up...to say the least!
Np problem!
I make many. many mistakes myself.
After all, we're all only human (well, most of us anyway ).
In my opinion? No, not really. While some may consider me pessimistic, I consider myself a realist. Human nature being what it is, everything we attempt eventually gets corrupted. Everything. In spite of how many view the founding of our nation, it was light years better than anything else anyone had produced at that point. And look how it turned out. Look at how much it was and continues to be corrupted.
Yes, it has. Some of it by those who claim Christ. It's one of the reasons I believe in Christianity. It tells us why we aren't who we would like to be and provides hope that someday, we will be.
Perhaps we should look at it like this.
National Pride.
We successfully rebelled against GB and won.
We love the Founding Fathers, the DOI, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
We won a Civil War and preserved the Union
We were first in flight.
We won WWl
We won WWll
We put 339 men and women into space.
We put 12 white men on the moon.
We spend more on defense annually than the next 7 countries combined.
We are proud to be Americans. Very Proud. Period.
We are proud of all of its accomplishments, even ugly ones like assassinations ( Bin Laden et al. .)
and being the only country to use nuclear bombs in combat...ushering in MAD by example.
Winning the arms race and the space race, always on the cutting edge of technological next steps.
We share pride in those accomplishments.
But when it comes to the really ugly side of history,
"we" are no longer in agreement of that ownership.
The My Lai, Tai Vihn, Phong Nhat, Phong Ngi, Ha My massacres in Vietnam continued the Army's legacy
of Wounded Knee, Brazos River, Council House, Sand Creek and countless other massacres of
our indigenous brothers and sisters.
Putting their children in cultural schools to "kill the Indian, save the man".
The internment of Americans of Japanese descent.
"We" deny CRT, a legal construct assembled to combat institutionalized racism still codified in HOAs
city codes, state codes and other bits of legality that SCOTUS for a long time refused to hear.
Legal red lining based on "separate but equal" that everyone with a brain knew wasn't equal.
Government sanctioned inequalities.
"We" say over and over again that we didn't own slaves so slavery & racism aren't our fault.
"We" didn't massacre Indians, escaped slaves, German POWs or Vietnamese so we don't want it taught in
our schools to our innocent white children
Let's burn those nasty CRT college level history books / s
Great news
It's our history. There's no personal guilt in taking ownership of our forefather's mistakes.
The more people that understand that and accept it,
theoretically that reduces the chances of making the same mistakes in the future
and improves our chances of fine tuning this experiment so that everyone wins.
At least one would hope....
That is exactly what has happened for decades and is in fact still trying to be sold today, so yes whitewashing.
The US government thinks that a nation within a nation is quite tenable, especially if they have the upper hand. BTW it was all set up using treaties the ones the SCOTUS calls the highest law in the land.
Ah yes, the old who cares about legal treaties screw the Indians even though it's legal and law, oh btw Indians have limits as to the number they can take. You might want to research the Fish Wars in the PNW and the Walleye Wars of WI and MN for starters.
Manifest Destiny is simply an extension of the Doctrine of Discovery. I'm not focusing on a tiny slice of injustice unless you consider the death, abuse both sexual and physical, and cultural genocide as a ''small slice'' most don't think it's a small slice unless they are too ignorant to understand the devastation that is has caused.
In case you missed it in the article the majority of boarding schools were run by religious groups the RCC being the main one and they are the ones responsible for all kinds of abuse, physical and sexual, brutality to children, thousands died why ''the churches'' were doing their best to convert us or kill us off. To this day the RCC and many other ''religious groups'' are hiding their records and fighting tooth and nail to keep this hidden. In Canada, the RCC owes millions to First Nations but are not paying. Seems that money is their God.
Perhaps you can speak to Christ and let him know that many of his followers are anything by Christ-like.
.
Defending their homelands, women and children from the Christian invaders?
The Christian schools that would take their children for cultural indoctrination and never tell
them that their children died of avoidable smallpox, TB or influenza, those Christians?
Are you kidding?
Same old trope, SP.
They wear that shit out.
No. It is simply that I was addressing what I believe to be a common misconception. That European settlers (or whatever you wish to call them) practiced biological warfare.
It wasn't widely used against the NA population in any sense. It was possibly one instance.
Look. I'm not trying to fight you. If you're looking for someone attempting to defend what happened historically, you'd better try to find someone else to argue with. My point is that, historically, every polity that could do unto others usually did and that is the nature of humanity. That includes your people as well. That it does doesn't justify anything. It's simply pointing out human nature.
I'm not aware of an argument that claims the "only' thing that nearly destroyed an entire population was disease. That is, I've never heard anyone make that argument but humans being human, I can probably accept there are some idiots out there that say so. That being said, most of the limited reading I've done on the subject suggest 95% of the New World population was killed by disease. If that's true, or even close, I would say that disease would be justified as, by far, the major downfall of the New World population.
To me, that fact makes what people intentionally did to the people of the New World even more heinous, although I doubt they understood it in those terms. Regardless of whether they did or not, a lot of what happened was simply despicable.
I'm sure you are right. I'm not sure why you are telling me this. Perhaps it would help if I try to explain how I view the world. What you describe here is bad, but hardly unique. My world view takes what you say and asks "so? How is this different from the rest of the history of the world?" In other words, what I wonder is why do you think I should take what happened to your people as somehow noteworthy or different from what humanity has always done? Maybe I'm wrong but you seem to present what happened to your people as something unique. Considering the devastation disease caused, it probably was, but that isn't what you're talking about. You're talking about what people intentionally did.
My point of view is that it doesn't matter that it was done to NA's, it matters that it was done to people. Just as it has been done throughout history. All of it. Including NA history. I object to the idea that somehow you're special because your NA. That somehow it was different from every other atrocity committed against every other people in the history of the world.
Sometimes I wonder what if. What if China became so strong that they invaded and took over the United States. What would I do? What if our situation was like the NA's? So few of us left that we couldn't do anything. Would I fight to try to bring back the US? Would I fight to get reservations? Would I protest?
I like to think I'd just continue as I have been. Do my best to love God and love others. To my mind, every human system is corrupt. Even if it starts out good the worst always rise to the top so I wouldn't put my faith in "America" or try to bring it back. I'd just do my best to live the most moral life I could. I believe that's the most I can do.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I can tell you that what I was thinking of concerning what you were replying to is the reservation system and the idea that you could keep the culture of your ancestors alive as a way of life. I don't believe that is possible and hasn't been for quite a while. You can't chase buffalo. Can't roam the plains. Can't do most of what your ancestors used to do.
I have no problem with things like conserving as much of your culture as you can, provided you don't try to live as your ancestors did. It's not that I have a bias against that but, rather, that I think attempting to do so is what keeps so many who live on reservations in abject poverty. I have not the least problem with the Government trying to educate Native populations. I'm totally against the Government trying to educate the Native out of the Native. That said, I see no incongruence between my view and NA's being "doctors, scientists, lawyers, astronauts, teachers, politicians, CEOs, CFO business owners, authors.." My opinion, for what it's worth, is that reservations shouldn't be a place to try to live on but, rather, a place to gather to in order to celebrate culture. But, like I said, that's my opinion. You're welcome to change it, and I will, if you have an interest in pursuading me.
I suppose that makes sense. After I wrote what I did I gave it a bit more thought and realized that the passage of time hasn't been as great as I first thought. It just seems that way because of my own life.
So... anyway, I wish to make it clear that I don't want to seem to be your enemy. I don't consider you to be mine. To understand what I say better you need to understand I always speak from a human in general perspective rather than a cultural one. That is, I believe that humanity as a whole is very flawed and culture is only a side note. NA's got the dirty end of the stick in a long line of dirty sticks. I firmly believe it has to do with human nature rather than culture. Culture derives mostly from human nature. For instance, I don't believe American culture was or has been better simply because it was American. Some things we did right, some we didn't. The things we did right wasn't due to the fact we were American. Same for the things we did wrong. It is the same for every culture ever. That's how I see things.
Why on earth would you make such an ignorant comment?
You identify as NA and if that makes you happy I'm all for it, but only because it makes you happy. As far as what I think of you as a person it doesn't even register. I only care about who you are as a person.
Did I just hallucinate, or did you give Kavika your blessing to 'identify as NA'? Just because you don't give a damn about your mixed bag of who's your daddy, you attempt to belittle him with your passive aggressive comments.
You're entitled to your opinions, regardless of how rambling and idiotic they are. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve with your comments, but if your intent was to damage the integrity of this site, then congrats. Mission accomplished.
Drakk,
N. American Indians are not S. American Indians, so yes it matters and you can't use the Aztecs . And extermination is pretty easy to do without tech. Just investigate how the Turks did it to the Arminians or the death marches the US gave Indians. None of this required tech.
Sorry I missed that. Oddly enough, most Indians don't want reparations. They want was is legally theirs and that is to have their treaties honored. Reparations were part of what the Church was supposed to do under a settlement made in Canada.
And this was never about tech. It has to do with abuse to a community by what had become the dominant community. It has to do with hate and feeling superior. I am an Indian, and I pass as white, and while I was driving up to Yosemite, I passed through what could be called a miners town but was still inhabited. There was a sign on the local bar that read "No Dogs, No Indians". Do you have any idea how I felt that in 2016, that was still permissible? That hate ran so deep in that town, that they had to make sure I knew that I was not a human?
Until you can walk a mile in my moccasins, you really can't get it.
Really? Then why did it break so many of them?
Kavka, I know you are smarter than that. I wasn't speaking of the governments view. I was speaking of the common American's view which, being what it is, allows the government to do what it does. That is, for the average American, it's hard to understand why one human is allowed more fish than another human simply because of who their ancestors were. Their world is gone. This one exists. Therefore, why?
The answer is treaties. I support those treaties because they were made, therefor they should be honored, but I also think they never should have been made in the first place. Historically, has any other country ever done such a thing? Maybe, but I can't think of one.
I do think it's a small slice and it provably is. All you have to do is look at world history. What has happened to your people has happened all over the world and at all times.
As I have stated earlier, being religious isn't proof against atrocities so you're arguing against the wrong guy. More than that, though, I don't consider the RCC to be truly Christian. That is, there's so much apostacy in the RCC that I can't personally consider it a Christian organization. Whether it is or isn't is ultimately up to God but that's how I see it.
That doesn't mean I don't recognize that atrocities have been committed "in the name of God," though. If someone assassinated the President in the name of NA's, would you consider that doctrine? I would hope not.
Okay, I get that's your opinion but it lacks actual reasoning. Why do you feel this is true? That is, explain why N. Americans didn't do what the S. Americans did and why it wouldn't have happened if they could have. All you appear to be doing is resting your case on the fact that what happened with the Aztecs didn't happen in the north, so therefor it couldn't have happened.
I don't understand your point of view. What the Turks did to the Armenians they did precisely because their tech base was greater than what the Armenians had. They had more weapons and a greater industrial base to support their oppression. It was the same with what the US government did to the NA's on things like the Trail of Tears. They submitted because to do otherwise wasn't really an option. They had no way to fight back without committing suicide. The only way to make the other side to submit is technological superiority. If they didn't have it, how could they do what they did?
No problem. In any case, I was expressing my opinion. Not that "reparations" could possibly replace what was lost, I'm still for making them to those who were directly affected. Although I think it falls beneath "the least we could do" it is at least something.
Believe it or not, I get it. In my opinion, we're both talking about the same things but different aspects of it. I'm approaching this from a purely historical cause and effect aspect colored by my view of human nature. From my perspective you are speaking from how you, and others, personally experience it all. That is, how it affects you, personally. I'm not sure one is more valid than the other.
For me, I tend to look at why it happened, not so much the individual consequences. That's because I feel if we understand why it happened we can do something about it, thereby minimizing the individual consequences. At the same time, I also feel that's a forlorn hope, given what I think about human nature. Sort of a catch 22, even though it isn't really.
No offense but I think that's one of the most erroneously used maxims ever. It suggests that, somehow, you're different from every other human being ever and they simply can't understand you because of it. That no experience anyone else could possibly ever have could compare to yours. Suffering is suffering, Perrie. What causes it may be unique to the individual but the results are often the same.
What a smug, condescending little comment. Based on past comments i can’t say i’m surprised.
“exponentially smarter”
[deleted]
The Anasazi had a civilization, equivalent in technology, centuries before the Aztecs.
Oh and BTFW, based on archeological findings, NEITHER committed genocide.
Something that you seem desperate to ignore is the MOTIVATION for the genocide perpetrated by Europeans on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
RACE.
Europeans viewed Indigenous peoples as inferior races and less than 'fully human', 'savage' and 'godless'. All used to justify their actions of subjugation and murder.
Roman Catholic Christians are every bit of a Christian as you are. They believe in the same basic dogma that you do,ie, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. The 2 important points. All of that other stuff is about how you worship and that's it.
To say the RCC is not Christian is a slur to all Roman Catholics that read this forum
Amen sister Robin, Amen.
And us RCs outnumber all other sects 1.2 billion to 1 billion forming the largest religious bloc on this planet.
My meaning wasn't intended to slur individuals. I was speaking of the institution known as the Roman Catholic Chruch. The differences between Biblical Christianity and the RCC are so great that they can't be said to believe the same basic dogma. Here is a list of some of those differences.
That is all your opinion and the opinions of anti-Catholic preachers. The RCC is no more corrupt than any of the other millions of churches on the planet
This story starts out so mundanely until the Police Chief starts to rationalize his behavior because of
"the Indians".
ID Sheriff Pulls Gun On LDS Youth Group Leaving Thank You Note: VIDEO - Comic Sands
Should this LEO get convicted, every arrest he was involved in for the last 36 years will be called into question.
White police chief in Idaho, strong prejudice against NAs, who's surprised?
Oh yeah, the same old trope, you would think that they would try something new, but thinking isn't part of their/his makeup.
BTW, comic sands is so far to the left on MBFC that they are like one or two seeds away from being Questionable...or Tin foil Hat crazy.
Butt, not yet.
Another meta fable shot to hell, lol.
Wow - are you really out to lunch on that one.
Lemme see - our cultures are different - our heritages are different - our traditions are different - our spirituality is different - our coloring is different - our philosophies are different - and there are more that could be added to this list.
And you just showed that you have no idea of how/why you can't compare your experiences to/with ours.
I didn't compare anyone's experience to anyone else's so I'm not sure what you are talking about. What I spoke of wasn't about comparisons but, rather, the ability to understand. I don't need to have my leg cut off to understand how painful, emotionally, and life disrupting it would be. That I don't have the experience of it doesn't mean I can't understand it.
So, no, my experience doesn't compare to yours and vice versa. That doesn't mean you can't understand me, right?
Missing from Devon Boyers statement was that no tribal members were involved.
More info here...
Armed Idaho sheriff charged with threatening girls' group in holiday ding-dong ditch gone wrong | Fox News
How many people tell the police that they only had a few drinks but were not drunk, like everyone ever convicted of a DUI?
I'm sure that the community isn't very happy since the Shoshone Bannock employs between 500 and 1,000 people (no they are not all Indians) and the benefits and wages are quite good.
The population of Blackfoot ID is 12,000 and you can bet a good number of them work at the casino.
I haven't seen that public service announcement in 40 years.
It was the first commercial that made me cry.
Fantastic video.
(I don't remember if ever saw it...but if as you say it ran long ago its possible I saw it and didn't remember).
Also, IIRC in those days I didn't watch much television.
Its interesting. Many groups have much in common with others, but there are also predominant cultural differences. American Indians (as well as many other indigenous peoples) are quite in touch with nature, the earth...and how we humans are part of the overall scheme.
As many societies "modernized' and gave up their traditional ways... I think many (most?) have become less in touch with nature. And much of what we are doing is ruining the planet....
I remembered seeing that for the first time, and I knew someone really got what it meant to be an Indian and to be caretakers of this our earth.
Great commercial the one big problem with it was that Iron Eyes Cody (the name he used) was a wannbe, his real name was Espera de Corti an 100% Italian. Not even 1% native.
Actors often portray characters of different ethnicities. The Indians in "F Troop" were Jewish. The "Last Samurai" was Tom Cruise. "The Mexican" was Brad Pitt. Marlon Brando played Sakini, a Japanese man in “The Teahouse of the August Moon”. Martin Landau played a Native American (Walks Stooped Over) in "The Hallelujah Trail".
The difference is that "Iron Eyes Cody" pretended to be a Native American even when he was not playing a character.
To this day, Hollywood casting John Wayne as Gingus Khan still amazes me. Not only did he suck in the role, but where it was filmed would eventually cost him and Hayward their lives.
I'm nitpicking, but Tom Cruise played an American calvary captain in the "Last Samurai". It's problem wasn't whitewashing. It was white savior.
Sorry, I don't watch Tom Cruise films, I just laughed at the trailer.
Brad Pitt didn't portray a "Mexican" either.
Butt Martin Landau did play an Native American. He was hilarious as the "symbol of good faith" in "Hallelujah Trail".
How sad that there was a second trail of tears for America's first children.
"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."
— Gen. Richard Henry Pratt
The truth about the US Indian boarding school policy has largely been written out of the history books. There were more than 350 government-funded, and often church-run, Indian Boarding schools across the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. Indian children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their native languages.
By 1926, nearly 83% of Indian school-age children were attending boarding schools.
367 boarding schools operated in 29 states.
My question has always been - when are the churches going to be held responsible for the treatment/deaths of the Indian children? "Everyone" is so bound and determined to get the Gvmnt to take responsibility when, in fact, it is/was the churches with the responsibility of "caring" for those hundreds of thousand Indian children. The mindset was to take the savage out of the child and replace them with "whiteness/society approved" children.
Think of this. Churches, for the most part, will tell you that if you don't accept their religion/Christ, you will die and go to hell. The Indian children in the 1800's/1900's knew very little English, if any at all. The loud-mouthed/blustering church administrators badgered/beat/huranged/belittled/punished little 5/6/7/8/9/10/etc. year olds into accepting Christ and the children had absolutely no concept of what that meant or who/what this Christ thing was.
I would imagine that when the children got sick/ill/beat-to-death, if they hadn't "accepted Christ", their care fell to the bottom of the barrel, and if they died/passed on - "well, he's/she's only a savage Indian - no one will care - let's put them in a patch of ground and keep on truckin'". After all, that "Suffer the little children unto me" phrase simply means - if the children don't accept your religious ideology, make'm suffer - they're only savages - who cares, right?
Hmmm - thinking. The U.S. Feds operated/managed 25 boarding homes/schools - 25 out of 367. The remaining 342 homes/schools were operated/managed by the churches and other businesses.
Yeah - the Feds screwed up, but the others - the others - nobody is talking about pulling their feet over the coals for all the damages done by them - non-governmental idiots out to make a buck with the killing/abuse of our children.
Those church run ''boarding schools'' were run by a large number of Christian organization, the RCC managing the most of any church.
Many of our leading politicians including some presidents have expressed very hostile attitudes towards Indians.
Here is one of Teddy Roosevelt's comments.
When Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901, he already had a long legacy of animosity toward American Indians.