Reparations Now
My heart is struggling. My mind can’t wrap around the atrocities, the horrific abuses thousands of indigenous children on this land had to endure, and the hundreds who died in these places of misery only to be placed in unmarked graves.
Not enough is being said about the bloody trinity behind this tragedy: The U.S. government, religious entities, and businessmen clasped their hands around innocent youth. Together, they stole, tortured, and buried Indigenous children. The mission was to destroy Indigenous people across this continent.
In the late 1800s the secretary of the interior tallied that it was costing about $1 million to kill one native person in warfare. He thought it was cheaper to give Indigenous children eight years of white schooling for only $1,200. That’s when boarding schools under the guise of education became the weapon of choice. A business-savvy solution to deal with the government’s enduring “Indian problem.”
The discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves on land now called Canada triggered a response on U.S soil. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has called for a review of the U.S. boarding school legacies. What has it taken to get to this point of confronting a horrible part of American history? Well, Haaland also happens to be the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history.
“Fundamentally, we just want to make sure families today get the information they’ve been wanting for decades and decades,” Haaland said in a press conference in June.
It’s been more than two centuries since these children have gone missing.
Colorado had at least three Indian boarding schools. The Teller Indian School in Grand Junction, the Southern Ute Boarding School in Ignacio, and the historic site of what is today known as Fort Lewis College near Durango.
State investigations are set to include tribal leaders, scholars and the community as they search these lands for the remains of children.
The children in these unmarked graves would have been the elders in their communities. Survivors of boarding schools are now in their late 60s through their early 80s, and our elders today.
“It reminded me of what my parents and my aunts and uncles went through. It made me really think about what their experience was like and how they may not have had a voice to speak up for themselves and even if they did, they were probably beaten,” Lee Bitsóí told the Denver Post.
Bitsóí is an Indigenous administrator at Durango’s Fort Lewis College. Many Indigenous people contend with systems and employers that have a harmful past.
Institutions that harmed a generation of people. Indigenous elders have lived with suppressed memories, PTSD, and the loss of their culture and language.
“When people do things to you when you’re growing up, it affects you spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally,” Russel Box Sr. told the New York Times in a recent article.
Box Sr. is a member of the Southern Ute tribe and was only 6 when sent to a boarding school in Ignacio
Colorado.
”We couldn’t speak our language, we couldn’t sing our prayer songs,” he said. “To this day, maybe that’s why I can’t sing.”
American soil is rotten, littered with the tears, blood and remains of stolen Indigenous children and Black enslaved children.
White headmasters, religious clergy, businessmen and politicians documented their efforts with accomplished pride. They kept proof of their forced assimilation, the ultimate anthropological trophy.
Sepia and weathered photographs capture rows of native children. Faces with deep sorrow in their eyes. Forlorn looks of mistrust and masked anger. Children frozen in foreign uniforms.
Children stripped of their traditional clothes, customs, language and history. Stripped of their families and lives. Given English names, haircuts. Left with trauma.
In these photographs I also see all the children who fought and talked back. Talked back in their native languages. Bucked when scissors came close to their hair. Those who ran away. Those who didn’t make it.
Some have tried to excuse the deaths by stating higher death rates of children in the late 1800s and 1900s. Others deny the weight of these children’s death. They want the secrets of these atrocities to remain buried.
There’s no denying it. This is proof that religion, patriotism, and this nation are cruel, inhumane, and unjust. Now we can do better.
First, we must listen to the Indigenous youth who demand radical action. Reparations Now. Abolish the Police. Water is Life. Stop the Pipelines. Land Back.
Don’t think for a second that these are cute hashtags and catchy phrases. These are centuries of prayers in action for safety, sovereignty, protection, and restoration.
Federal apologies will never be enough. Nothing will bring these children back.
However, the grandchildren of those this country could not kill are here. Native and Indigenous youth are sharp, resilient and pissed as ever. After all, Indigenous youth are their grandparents’ prayers for safety, love, and divine justice.
Let’s take their lead to help rematriate, not just repatriate, this land of sorrow back to Indigenous communities. That is the only way to honor and let these young ancestors in unmarked graves return home and rest. It is the only way for the next generation to carry their prayers into the light.