First of three parts
The United States just has celebrated another Fourth of July Independence Day. We celebrated the day with familiar songs, about the land of the free with loud and many beautiful displays of fireworks.
We give thanks and recognition to the many individuals who have sacrificed their lives so that we can enjoy a peaceful existence and enjoy our celebrations.
However, peace has a price and generation after generation has paid the price, often with blood and tears. Joe Nelson of the The Press Enterprise in California tells us of the Federal probe of Native American boarding schools. Here is his report.
“Among the crumbling ruins of the former St. Boniface Indian Industrial School in Banning, Calif. is a fenced enclosure where broken, weathered, and worn grave markers lie. A white, wooden, cross looms over the cemetery, where the remains of more than a dozen Indigenous children remain buried and forgotten.
“Nestled against a hillside, it is a somber reminder of the atrocities that once occurred there.
‘“Those of us who grew up on Indian reservations, we heard about St. Boniface. My grandmother was sent to Boniface. They were forbidden to speak their language and practice their culture. It’s a dark part of history,’ said James Ramos, a California State assemblyman, historian, and former chairman and member of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.
“These types of programs were started by the Federal government in 1819, but they ran … all the way up early until the 1970s. Think about that for a minute.”
Investigation begins
“Ramos and other tribal leaders across southern California hailed the June 22 announcement by secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland that her department was launching a federal investigation of more than 350 Indian boarding schools nationwide that operated under the government’s cultural assimilation program in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
“Haaland, the first American Indian to serve as a U.S. cabinet secretary, announced the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative during her remarks at the National Congress of American Indians’ midyear conference.
“The boarding schools were an extension of the Catholic mission system. The federal government funded and oversaw the schools and the Catholic church ran them as a means to subjugate and culturally assimilate Indigenous children by forcibly removing them from their families and suppressing their American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian, identities, languages, and beliefs.
“Ten of the former boarding schools that will be investigated are in California, including two in Riverside County, Sherman Indian High School (formerly Sherman Institute) in Riverside and St. Boniface Indian Industrial School on Gilman Street, west of Eighth Street, in Banning, Calif..
“Sherman is one of only four remaining Indian boarding schools in the country still operated by the Federal government. The other three are in Oregon, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.
Grim discoveries
“Weeks before Haaland’s announcement, the remains of 215 Indigenous children were discovered at a former boarding school in British Columbia, Canada. June 24, two days after Haaland announced her Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, the skeletal remains of at least 600 individuals were discovered at the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, Canada. The school operated from 1899 to 1997 and is the site of the Cowessess First Nation.
Continued at thevoice.us/secretary-of-interior-deb-haaland-assists-in-probe