Local tribal members weigh in

Assemblyman James Ramos, a member of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and former chairman of the tribe, said the number of child deaths noted in the federal government’s report is not surprising, and substantiates what tribal communities have known all along.

Before his grandmother, Martha Manuel Chacon, died in March 2000 at age 89, she recounted her childhood experiences at St. Boniface Indian Industrial School in Banning in a recorded interview.

Chacon said students subsisted on beans, two slices of bread and water daily and were fed hot dogs and potatoes and bread on Sunday, while the priests enjoyed lavish spreads of roast meat, cakes and pies in their dining room.

On one occasion, after slapping an overbearing nun who was taunting and bullying her, she was ordered to remove her blouse and whipped with a leather strap.

“It was traumatic,” Ramos said in a telephone interview. “Even after all those years, when bringing it up she got quiet and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. My grandmother was able to get back to the reservation, but many others weren’t allowed to come back home.”

He said the awareness raised now on what occurred at Indian boarding schools starts the process of recovery for so many Indigenous peoples.

“It starts to open that door to healing, because now there is true acknowledgment that this has happened,” Ramos said. “And now there’s more advocacy around it.”

Anthony Morales, chairman of the Gabrieleno San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians, commends the federal government for its investigation, but questions why it doesn’t extend to the California Mission system, where thousands of Indigenous peoples died during similar assimilation processes.

He said approximately 6,000 Indigenous people — from his tribe and others across the country — died at the San Gabriel Mission and are buried in and around there.

“The mission system was no different than the (Indian) boarding school system,” Morales said. “To me, what’s the difference?”

Charles Martin, chairman of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, said in a statement that the government’s report marks a significant first step toward acknowledging the “dark history of past federal policies of assimilation” among Indigenous peoples that “resulted in the heartbreaking deaths of untold numbers of children.”

“More work is needed to chronicle these abuses and the historic wrongs that sought to eradicate tribes, tribal languages and tribal cultures, and to identify the children who were stolen from their families before vanishing into this system,” Martin said.

In a statement Thursday, San Manuel Chairwoman Lynn Valbuena said the tribe and other Indigenous communities contend with the tragic experiences of the federal boarding school system to the present day.

“This Department of Interior report substantiates what we have known for generations, that this Nation cannot confine these traumas to a foregone era,” Valbuena said. “We are encouraged to see that this report holds that healing and reconciliation must include ongoing restoration of our Native languages and customs that were almost lost to us.”

Survivor testimony

Klein recalled huddling under scratchy wool Army blankets at Fort Totten as she was preyed upon by the matron’s son.

“I remember being afraid to sleep at night, fearful of the matron’s son who walked the halls at night using a flashlight to spot me in bed,” said Klein, her voice trembling as she spoke during Thursday’s hearing. “He touched me like no child should ever be touched.”

And, like many other Indigenous girls brought to the boarding schools, Klein remembers her long hair being cut short like a boy’s, then fine-combed with kerosene because it was assumed she had head lice. It earned her the name “Butch” by her peers at the school.

Deborah Parker, CEO for the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, or NABS, which has been assisting the federal government in its investigation, said in addition to sexual abuse, students were often placed in solitary confinement and made to discipline each other with gauntlets or leather straps.

And, of course, children died.

“Children were beaten to death,” said Parker, a member of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington. She said death was so prevalent that cemeteries were created on school grounds.

“For the voices of those that have never had the chance to return home, for those that were forever changed by this extreme cruelty, for those that were chained to basement radiators, for those that were sexually abused, told to wash up and to return to the marching lines, for those that were told that they would be forgotten, we are here to remind you to remember these children,” Parker said.

The Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples did not vote on Davids’ bill Thursday. It will be accepting written testimony until May 26, said Jennifer Blevins, spokeswoman for NABS.