Last of three parts
The second part is at thevoice.us/secretary-of-interior-deb-haaland-assists-in-probe
Joe Nelson of the The Press Enterprise in California tells us of the federal probe of Native American boarding schools
‘“The Interior Department will address the inter-generational impact of Indian boarding schools to shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be,’ Deb Haaland, U.S. Department of Interior secretary, said in a June 22 statement.
“Lengthy investigation
“Haaland, who is affiliated with the Pueblo of Laguna tribe in New Mexico, has directed her staff members to prepare a report giving details of available historical records of all the boarding schools and the cemeteries and/or burial sites at each school in preparation for future site work, which could include the exhumation and repatriation of Indian remains. The work will occur under the supervision of the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs.
“The Sherman Indian School Cemetery remains to this day, enclosed by a black wrought-iron fence and gate. It is off campus, at Indiana Avenue and November Drive, in Riverside, Calif..
“Many deaths
“All of the former boarding schools operated by the federal government had cemeteries,’ said Clifford Trafzer, a history professor at UC Riverside who specializes in American Indian history and has written several books on the subject, including one on Indian boarding schools.
“He said students were treated like slaves, forced into hard labor and exposed to dangerous working conditions. Some died in work-related accidents.
‘“Proving that any physical and/or sexual abuse occurred at St. Boniface, or any other boarding school for that matter, may hinge mainly on interviews with tribal members, who received that information as it was passed down through oral tradition,’ Trafzer said.
‘“We’ve all heard about this, but you’re not going to usually find that in the documents because who’s going to abuse a child and then write about it? The way we know about these abuses is though oral interviews,’ Trafzer said. ‘That’s what the secretary (of the interior) will do, and that will be extremely revealing.’
‘‘‘Kill the Indian, save the man’
“Ramos said Indigenous people long associate the purpose of the boarding schools with an infamous quote by Richard Henry Pratt: ‘Kill the Indian, save the man.’ Pratt was an American brigadier general and founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
‘“When you tell people that, some don’t believe it,’ Ramos said. ‘We have to ask ourselves: We’ve gone through civil rights marches and movements; how did we go through that knowing that these types of programs affected California’s first people and our Nation’s first people?’
“Trafzer said the federal government’s interviews with tribal members should be revealing.
‘“By ‘They will know these accounts of what happened to their mothers, their fathers, their aunts and uncles, it will provide new information that is only known by tribal people,’ Trafzer said. ‘You’re not going to find this information in documents at the National Archives or in church and government records. We’ve only just begun to learn things,”’ Nelson wrote.