Uncover the full history about Indigenous people’s schools
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was understandably disturbed.
She had just learned that researchers had found some 215 unmarked graves in Canada at one of the historic boarding schools used to house and educate indigenous children.
Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a U.S. cabinet secretary, was well acquainted with the history of such facilities here in the United States.
Her grandparents were wards of a similar place, separated from family and community when they were 8 years old, as reported by Arizona Republic reporter Debra Utacia Krol.
In June 2021, Haaland launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to delve into the evidence and history of U.S. federal boarding schools − 408 of them plus another 1,000 religious and privately run schools that also trained Native peoples.
If, as many in Canada and the United States suspect, these boarding schools were vehicles for crushing Native American culture and demanding conformity to white European customs, you could foresee a day when Phoenix, for instance, might no longer want to pay tribute to its own historic “Indian School” with a street name or commemorative park.
But we are long way from there, and with interest high in discovering more about these old places and whether they were instruments for good or evil or both, it is worth thinking hard about the nature of history and pay heed to some significant and contemporary warning flags.
We should know the history of these places and take advantage of any opportunity to advance our knowledge of westward expansion and its effects on Indigenous peoples.
Much has been well documented about white European exploitation, ethnic cleansing and isolation of Native Americans, but we need a fuller understanding of the institutional training of indigenous children and whether that has had long term and detrimental effects on Native Americans.
Man has a long history of inhumanity to man, and just as we should know of the Nazi’s industrial destruction of European Jewry or the abomination of the Atlantic slave trade or the genocide perpetrated by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge or Rwanda’s Hutus and Tutsis, we should also know in fine-grain detail about the white-European mistreatment of Native Americans.
Man also has a long history of bad ideas and an even worse habit of acting on them. The only way to check our capacity for large-scale cruelty is to understand human nature and vigilantly guard against its worst impulses. In this way, telling the story tells us what we must guard against and exactly how insidious ideas take root.
The history of Native American boarding schools began with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819 and continued with legislation through the 1960s, Haaland said in a June 22, 2021 statement. “During that time, the purpose of Indian boarding schools was to culturally assimilate Indigenous children by forcibly relocating them from their families and communities to distant residential facilities.”
“The languages, cultures, religions, traditional practices and even the history of Native communities was targeted for destruction,” said Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo.
To advance the mission of Interior’s boarding school initiative, Congress created the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. It aims to advance Interior’s investigation of boarding schools and the policies that created them. It also aims to create guidelines to protect student graves and support the repatriation of bodies interred there.
As we pursue the story of our past, it is important that facts lead the journey. That means scholars trained to maintain critical distance from their subject can move with evidence, wherever it leads.
When historic discovery is led by activists, by people with political agendas, it will invariably be drawn to evidence that supports their claims and avert its eyes from evidence that does not.
Recent history − in fact, the events that led to the Interior Department’s interest in boarding schools − provides a warning to all of us.
The story of Canada’s unmarked graves emerged when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation reported on May 27, 2021 that ground-penetrating radar had detected soil disturbances at an Indigenous Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia, run by the Catholic Church from 1893 to 1978.
The community’s chief, Rosanne Casimir, announced that a young anthropologist had discovered evidence of as many as 215 “missing children”.
Canadian media ran with the story. But the story was wrong. Even now there is still no evidence of mass graves. “This is the biggest fake news story in Canadian history,” wrote Jacques Rouillard, emeritus in the Department of History at the Université de Montréal. The news created a moral panic. “On May 30, the federal government lowered the flags on all its buildings to half-staff. Later, it instituted a new holiday to honour ‘missing’ children and survivors of residential schools. Spontaneously, clusters of shoes and orange shirts and other paraphernalia were placed on church steps in many cities or on the steps of legislatures in memory of the little victims.
“Around the country, churches were burned or vandalized. Statues were spray-painted and pulled down in apparent retaliation for the fate of the children. The statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislature was defaced and pulled down. Montreal’s statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, was knocked down, his detached bronze head symbolically rolling on the ground.”
There has been enough research to know that Indian boarding schools have dark chapters in their history.
But in her reporting on the Native American boarding homes, Debra Utacia Krol told the story of Donna Mitchell of Chinle, who had transferred to Phoenix Indian School in 1957 and graduated in 1961.
Mitchell said it was her idea to transfer after a friend asked her to. Her parents weren’t excited about the idea, but they permitted her to attend school.
Mitchell said Phoenix Indian School was home for her and she had never experienced the abuse that countless others had reported from other boarding schools.
Rather, she was given opportunities she otherwise would never have had. Her experience at Phoenix Indian School in the 1960s are some of her favorite memories.
"I loved it," Mitchell said. "I enjoyed it. I always talk about how Phoenix Indian School was the happiest days of my life."
History is complicated. There is evidence these boarding schools both harmed and helped indigenous children. More research will provide a clearer picture.
It will only be credible if pursued with a strong commitment to truth, evidence and historic context.
As the United States builds this more complete picture of Native American boarding homes, such as the Phoenix Indian School, we must let evidence lead and brace ourselves to be surprised. If we’ve done that, there will be more popular acceptance when we finally reach more-informed conclusions.