Tulalip woman helped uncover dark history of Indian boarding schools (Marysville: hotels, elementary school)

[homesinseattle]

Article link here: https://www.heraldnet.com/news/tulal...qhXAr2RzNCZuUg

“TULALIP — When she was about 9 years old, Deborah Parker’s grandmother taught her how to hide beneath the dining room table.

Parker, then a tall elementary school student from Tulalip, crouched down beside her grandmother. The tablecloth draped over the edges, acting as a veil from the outside world.

“This is what we did so they wouldn’t take us to the boarding school,” her grandmother said.

“I just remember those thoughts of, like, how scary would it be for government officials to come and try and take your child, and you have no choice?” Parker said. “I can’t imagine.”

Parker, now the chief executive of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, is leading efforts to find records, graves and stories that expose the hard truths about the U.S. Indian Boarding School system.

On Wednesday, she spoke at the nation’s capital following the release of a U.S. Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, a key first step in a long-awaited reckoning.

“Our children had their own regalia, prayers and religion before Indian boarding schools violently took them away,” she said Wednesday. “… Boarding schools operated as a broad system with a singular goal: to strip us of our languages, identities and cultures, these life ways that have connected us to the land since time immemorial”.

[MechAndy]

My heart goes out to these people.

I am old enough to have seen some of this type of damage.
In grammar school one of my friends was a Navajo and forced against his will to live with a religious family that tried to indoctrinate him in CA.

I think that church might of placed the kids far away from their families on purpose.

He hated every minute of it and once told me that he wished there was never a Christopher Columbus.

[JackieLovesSun]

absolutely heartbreaking.

[uniquetraveler]

On a different note.. US government needs to change the name of Native Americans from "Indians". Columbus and crew made an error and thought they landed in India 600 years back, but we don't need to keep perpetuating the wrong understanding from colonial days.

[jertheber]

I spent my teen years living near the Tulalip reservation west of Marysville, it was my first glimpse of modern native culture, hidden away as second or third class citizens along the road to Priest Point. We had no idea that "Indians" lived so close, or that they lived in such dire poverty. To think that we never really knew any of the native tribes people, or went to school with them, speaks to the social isolation of reservation life.

I don't know that we as a nation will ever know the full extent of the terrible atrocities our government visited upon the native peoples. Organized religion did a lot of the dirty work for those who wanted a forced assimilation of native tribes, and the BIA, ostensibly there to help the natives, was staffed with all manner of monsters who beat down the native populace to the delight of their masters in government.

For all the talk about how we are now a "modern nation" and that these events were part of the "old" ways," it's obvious that life on the reservations isn't much better today. Ian Frazier's book On The Rez tells the story of a people deprived of their own culture, and, the mainstream modern culture. Left to manage their affairs on raw land with the BIA as the uncaring landlord..

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312278595/ontherez

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by jertheber

I spent my teen years living near the Tulalip reservation west of Marysville, it was my first glimpse of modern native culture, hidden away as second or third class citizens along the road to Priest Point. We had no idea that "Indians" lived so close, or that they lived in such dire poverty. To think that we never really knew any of the native tribes people, or went to school with them, speaks to the social isolation of reservation life.

I don't know that we as a nation will ever know the full extent of the terrible atrocities our government visited upon the native peoples. Organized religion did a lot of the dirty work for those who wanted a forced assimilation of native tribes, and the BIA, ostensibly there to help the natives, was staffed with all manner of monsters who beat down the native populace to the delight of their masters in government.

For all the talk about how we are now a "modern nation" and that these events were part of the "old" ways," it's obvious that life on the reservations isn't much better today. Ian Frazier's book On The Rez tells the story of a people deprived of their own culture, and, the mainstream modern culture. Left to manage their affairs on raw land with the BIA as the uncaring landlord..

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312278595/ontherez

Things are looking up, now that the old paternalistic BIA system has been revamped, and a government-to-government relationship between tribal nations and the federal government has been instituted. Many of the federally-recognized tribes have been pursuing community economic development projects, such as resort hotels, concert venues, restaurants, tourism, museums and art galleries, etc.

There are many historical tribes who, for various reasons don't have federal recognition, or had their federal status terminated. A few of those have managed to fund programs, services, and economic projects through private grants and collaboration with environmental organizations that fund land acquisition for conservation. Most are not doing so well. Some have petitioned for federal recognition, and been denied, in spite of once having had federal recognition.

IMO, the bolded speaks to the failure of the education system. Typically, when anything is taught about Native Americans, it's done in terms of the past, not the present. It's rarely, if ever, mentioned, that these are living cultures, adapting to modern life while preserving traditions that give their life meaning, and that help guide their youth as they learn to walk in two worlds: Native and non-Native. The education system gives the impression of having been designed to keep people separate from the mainstream, rather than educating about how to make life for everyone more equitable. Perhaps that's changing now. But there seems to be a backlash.