Buried Truths

DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWSFEED

The Kamloops Indian Residential School in 1937 (Archdiocese of Vancouver)

BURIED TRUTHS | 6.4.21

Self-Care Advisory: This newsletter contains sensitive subject matter about abusive Indian boarding schools that could be triggering to some survivors. Support is here.

No sooner had I released my last newsletter out in the world when news started circulating out of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia. Making headlines was new information about unmarked graves of Indigenous students on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, a centuries-old boarding school on the Canadian reserve. One reader, a non-Native man, messaged me an article on Saturday morning with three simple letters: WTF?

The words “shocking” and “disbelief” have been widely used by many to describe reaction to the 215 Native boys and girls whose buried bodies —and now buried truths—were picked up by ground radar technology recently. (The photo above gives a pretty good representation of what 215 students looks like, by the way.) But for greater Indian Country on both sides of the colonizer’s border, this nightmare legacy is neither isolated to Kamloops or Canada; nor is it a secret. It’s one of those classic “we told you so” cases that has lingered across our homelands for so long.

“It’s something we’ve always had to fight to prove,” Kukpi7 (Tk’emlups Chief) Rosanne Casimir said during a virtual press conference held earlier this week. “It’s basically been denied by government.”

Denied. Disbelieved. Discarded.

It took Chief Casimir to file for a federal grant to basically carry out the radar survey; waiting on the feds may have taken several more years. A 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission report recommended such an investigation but it’s only now that there’s proof—and it’s too powerful to ignore.

This week, people across greater Indian Country left tiny empty shoes in shrines draped with candles and stuffed animals in honor of Kamloops students who were separated from their families, forcibly assimilated, and who never left the school. And there will be more bodies to mourn. Chief Casimir notes that the radar sweep continues at the school and that more remains could be detected. The survey has also prompted calls for more searches to be conducted at any number of Canada’s 139 residential school sites. In the United States, tribal leaders in Michigan want historic schools there to be checked, as well.

Report on the Indian schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories 1853-1932; Canada. Department of Indian Affairs

That the news cycle has only now been swept up in the boarding school legacy is not due to any lack of available evidence. From the earliest days of the Indian residential school system, the Canadian government openly acknowledged high rates of student mortality. An official 1907 report of Manitoba schools even included charts cataloging Native children as either “good,” “sick” or “dead.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report is also living, breathing oral history of today’s survivors—people who actually lived to tell the harrowing details of what happened to them at these schools; where their braids were shorn and their bodies beaten for speaking their Native language. The harder facts involve prolonged sexual abuse from clergy who mostly oversaw these schools.

Some journalists have headlined their stories about Kamloops this week as a “dark chapter” or “horrible history.” But for us, it’s a lived experience every day. My Auntie Donna who’s still alive went to a boarding school in Marty, South Dakota on the Rosebud Reservation where the Catholic school administrators kept an incinerator on the grounds known to discard the bodies of young Natives. It sounds too horrifically outlandish to believe, but there are just too many testimonials to truly doubt it. Their daily traumas also make a powerful case for such claims.

As a journalist, I’m frustrated by the reactionary coverage befallen on Indian Country this week. But as a descendant of Native boarding school survivors, I’m hopeful that because of the proof at Kamloops that finally the reconciliation process here can start to see some traction. Our efforts to heal from this legacy pales in comparison to the progress First Nations have made even when unmarked graves were discovered by radar at Oregon’s Chemawa Indian School in 2016. Where was the media then?

Here are a few stand-outs I came across in preparation for this week’s newsletter:

This timeline about Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The actual TRC report which is long but essential reading
This interactive gem, Beyond 94, that tracks the TRCs 94 recommendations
And this modern story about a Lakota boy “sold” for $10 by a Catholic priest

There are more links to explore in this week’s Index. And also an update about that survey and giveaway so many of you were so kind to participate in. Dawaa’e - thank you all for your continued readership and support. It’s wonderful that you’re here.

Hug or be hugged today,

Jenni ☀️

THE INDIGENOUS INTERNET

@sweetgrass_and_sage

INDIGENOUSLY INDEX

Total bodies discovered in a mass grave at the Kamloops Indian Residential School: 215

Youngest known age of the children detected: 3

Number of schools listed in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement: 139

Exact compensation paid to former students, Canada’s largest settlement ever: $1.9B

Total amount Canada spent to support a Truth and Reconciliation Commission: $72M

Number of calls to action the TRC recommended: 94

Total calls to action regarding children who died in residential schools: 6

Exact number of children presently listed on Canada’s student memorial register: 4090

Total listed for Kamloops: 51

Number of “known” Indian Boarding Schools in the United States: 367

Number still boarding today: 15

Number of known Native children buried at Carlisle Indian Boarding School site: 181

Number of children repatriated to their families since 2017: 12

Total children slated to be repatriated beginning June 12: 10

Total formal Truth and Reconciliation Commissions held in the US: 1

ENDORSEMENT

In the U.S., we still have no idea how many Native children went through the boarding school system but one organization has been compiling hard data. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has found at least this much: that by the year 1926, nearly 83% of Native school-age children were attending as many as 350 boarding schools operating in the country at the time. Another statistic shows that by 1900 there were 20,000 children enrolled and by 1925 that figure tripled to 60,889.

There are many ways to get involved. One of the easiest is to apply to become a member. If selected, it doesn’t cost anything but your input as Native survivors, and if you’re an ally, then your attention is what’s needed. In fact, one of the requests of allies is to invite Coalition members to your community for a presentation (be sure to ask about the blanket exercise; it’s incredibly powerful) because such buried truths are no longer acceptable. The NABS website also hosts a great resource database if ever you wanted to host your own reading circle. Sounds healing.

FEEDBACK

“I love your one-of-a-kind newsletter.”

Belinda, Washington State

Thank you for your kind email, Belinda. It was great reading it along with the hundreds of others I’ve been making my way through from that lost inbox I discovered recently. What good medicine on challenging days to receive such encouraging words of support. If you haven’t heard from me yet, you will. 🦋

I certainly heard from many of you last week. A total of 120 readers were kind enough to fill out my survey—way more than expected.

Dawaa’e, thank you!

So grateful for your time and your mind. Stay tuned for the highlights about what I’ve learned.

Also, I used Rafflecopter to help select three lucky winners at random today for those $50 dollar gift cards. If you didn’t win, don’t fret. I’m already planning my next giveaway.

QUOTE

The Indigenously newsletter is produced by Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo)