The Lasting Trauma of Quaker Indigenous Boarding Schools
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- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2024
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Filming and Editing by Christopher Cuthrell
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Transcript:
One Dakota woman, Zitkala-Sa, was taken to a Quaker boarding school in Indiana at age eight. She talks about what she lost in order to get to, what she called, the “white man's papers.” Through her schooling, she was awarded certificates and graduation papers. But what she lost was her relationship with the natural world, her relationship with her mother, with her community, her connection to Spirit. And she writes about that with such pain. I think most Quakers still don't know our history as participants in this enterprise of forced assimilation of native people. And so the first thing that we have to do is learn the truth.
My name is Paula Palmer and I use she/her pronouns. I'm a member of the Boulder meeting, which is part of Intermountain Yearly Meeting, and I live outside of Boulder in a little town called Lewisville, which is in the homeland of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute Peoples. The indigenous people of this country experienced many traumas, beginning with the arrival of Europeans on these shores. The boarding school experience was particularly traumatic for the children, who were taken away from their families -- intentionally separated from their parents and grandparents and communities. And so you can imagine the trauma that they experienced, not only by being physically separated, but by being told that everything about their lives was somehow wrong and that they needed to change everything. From their names to their clothes to their hair.
As they left the schools, they faced another really difficult challenge. As they tried, if they tried, to assimilate as they were taught to do, they were never going to be completely accepted as equals. In a racist society dominated by white European Americans. Many of them had lost so much of their indigenous identity by missing those years of growing up in their families and learning the dances and the stories and the songs and the skills of their people. It was very difficult for many of them to return to their families, into their communities and feel at home there. Trauma is passed from generation to generation.
As they grew up and started having children, they experienced their parents as being not genuinely affectionate and loving because they had not experienced that themselves as children. They didn't really know how to be in a family, how to create a family, how to be affectionate to their children. Their children grew up lacking that care and comfort and sense of being loved in their own families. And they usually were not taught the indigenous language that their parents had lost in the years that they were not allowed to speak their language in the boarding schools. That generation grows up also feeling that something is missing. One generation after another, that sense of despair is passed down and it can it can be experienced as: persistent poverty, violence, alcoholism.
Friends sometimes ask me, “well, how could Quakers have done this? Didn't Quakers at that time see that of God in indigenous people?” I think they did see that of God in individuals. What they didn't see was the intrinsic value of indigenous cultures as a whole. And that's because they were blinded by white supremacy. They were they were blinded by their certainty that their way of life was superior.
What can we do now is not something that we ourselves can answer alone. We can only really answer that through dialog with Indigenous people. Being in touch. Reaching out. Meeting Native people where they are. Learning from them. Participating in their activities. Supporting their work in the communities. Their aspirations. And learning through those relationships. Learning through friendships. One thing that Quakers can do, and that is really important to do, is to support this legislation for creating a Truth and Healing Commission. And FCNL, the Friends Committee on National Legislation makes it so easy for us to do that, to contact our senators and representatives. So that's something that we immediately need to do as individuals and as our meetings.
Another thing I think that is a direct acknowledgment that the Quaker Indigenous schools attempted to annihilate indigenous languages...
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The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
![Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools [FULL DOCUMENTARY]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/-OtfBPE4u1U/mqdefault.jpg)
![Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools [FULL DOCUMENTARY]](/img/tr.png)
"Blinded by their sense of superiority." Something we're still struggling with.
Thank you for being honest about the past, and caring
Well said. Thank you for speaking truth with clarity. Reconciliation is not between us as First Nations peoples and settler lineage but the reconciliation that must happen for transformational change is to do as you have done, to speak truth of what is wrong and why and to reconcile with God.
Wow. I didn't even know this happened...however, this would be a much more meaningful video with some indigenous voices. What is their participation in this legislation? In a certain sense, establishing a listening comission also confers a legislated responsibility on native peoples affected to speak. Is this really their responsibility? Is this a responsibility they want?
Well obviously they can't speak for themselves and need us to speak for them, right?
/S
100% agree
Thank you so much Paula for this video and your ongoing work! Our Meeting is so pleased to have connected with your Right Relations work and we will continue to support you, Quaker Peace Teams, FCNL, and our local native neighbors!
Thank you for this video. It did a good job of briefly presenting the basics of the history and highlighting the long-lasting impacts that these Quaker Boarding Schools have had and continue to have. I appreciated the queries and suggestions for action and connecting with organizations working on this issue and also the effort to name and remember a specific person affected by this. I do see some comments wondering why indigenous voices are not included or why a white person is presenting this information. Speaking from lessons learned from conversations with BIPOC activists on being helpful to change, we have to remember that there is a difference between speaking out of place/for a population and amplifying/helping a cause. Educational videos like this one are so important to spreading the word and getting other people to care and be involved. In order for long lasting change to happen, the burden of teaching white people about this kind of history cannot just be placed on the people who are affected. If you feel called in to know more or help, learn directly from the indigenous led boardingschoolhealing organization discussed in and linked below the video.
I neglected to say that 1. I recognize as a first nation person, and 2. I am a Quaker and was educated at the Friends school Hobart Tasmania.
I've followed through in writing to my US representatives in Congress and the Senate. FCNL makes it so seamless. Thank you for this video.
Lord Jesus break down my pride to ever put myself above anyone else. Make me meek and humble inside amen
Yes, Quakers were one of the many groups asked by the federal government and, in many cases, tribal leaders to educate Native American children once ranchers, railroads, and other unscrupulous capitalist forces and tribal warfare made their previous ways of life impossible. Abuses were certainly too often commonplace in such schools generally, but to single out Friends as being especially malevolent and minimally benevolent in this regard doesn’t seem supported by evidence.
As one Osage Friend recently asked: “What alternative was there to these policies?
Grant's Peace Policy was called that for a reason. In that day and time, Quakers pursued and advocated policies that, painful as they often were in terms of unforeseen consequances, represented an opportunity for survival for Native peoples. When the alternative was war and genocide and since Friends often were responding to requests from Native American elders and leaders, it is unfair and inaccurate to label them as tools of the US government and its policy of cultural eradication. Quakers keenly felt the injustices that were perpetrated upon Native Americans by unscrupulous whites. My question, ‘What would others have had Friends do differently in such dire circumstances?’’
History is multifaceted. If you view it entirely from one way or the other, you will miss something.
I think that silence is so pure how it adapts adjusts to react respond to embrace every manner, nature and transition caused by traumas, poverty disease conflicts mind body soul environments that, God presence abiding as eternal love, perfect and absolute does not deviate from being the one in control and this perfectly responsible for what our quality of life is every species concerned. Being exposed to free libraries is an epitomizing capitalists icon. A superior resource to measure oneself up to the world said to suffer by and then be given freedom space time to negotiate their innate values of mind body soul to resolve or at least a democratic viable consensus. I approach much of this with keen interest; to nullify any adulterous connotation knowing love eternal perfect absolute unconditional prepared us in silence for it's pleasure. Some die by animals rage or car rage or animal vs herbs as food or lack thereof. Love freely if there were no new presence continues obviously to give freedom to return it how you prefer.
Silent competition to reflect the nature of between God's love and our craving attentions is absolutely exclusive and fit for his entertainment.
Wanna sell?
Let my people go.
Sure
He said, "Done"
Damnit, my Quaker kin! 😣
Hopefully the Quakers involved in this believed they were helping her. Most importantly I hope God forgave them if what they did was wrong in His eyes. They thought assimilation would make their life easier.
It was by its very definition "Genocide", the whites knew exactly what they were doing and were extremely brutal to the children both physically and emotionally. In 2022, Native tribes and government officials discovered the bodies of more than 1,000 children on the grounds of former Indian boarding schools in Canada if there is a God then I hope he punishes them for the children they killed.
@@rooster1012Assimilation is actually an example of ethnocide. The people are not completely wiped out, instead their culture is. Still very devastating.
Really? As Quakers it is reliant on us to seek and/or ask the government to enroll in an effort to undo a “wrong”. It is not the underlying meaning of Quakerism to empower or to require others to act on Gods behalf.
Of course the Quaker evangelism channel is recommending the heartfelt confession of (comparative to other denominations tiny) colonial abuses introduced with pronouns… classic Quakerism. If only meeting for worship didn’t make me so bored… hopefully I’ll mature into it 😅
no - not superiority- they thought they were helping== have you read the Journals of the Quakers who ran the Boarding schools-- you can't judge them, you were't there== this is an example of your Superiority that you can judge and condem someone who cannot speak for themselves=== They were not allowed to speak their language like the Russians living in the Ukraine could not speak there language- will you speak out about that???
An issue that concerns indigenous people. Here's a white woman to tell us all about it!
What do you mean? She is taking accountability and supporting pro indigenous legislation.
Sorry Morna, you're the racist here.
It’s a problem I’m sure the video makers were conscious of… if I know Quakers it’s probably based on who is clerk of the committee tasked with investigating complicity in the schools program. There were quotations from victims and in time I’m sure video footage of indigenous victim voices will be available should the victims want that
We need to think of what the alternative lifestyle would have been for the natives not given these chances, a life of squalor, and possibly servitude. The days of living, one with nature were well gone. If you ever need a comparison then please tale a look at what was happening to the Australian natives at the same place in time, and still is.
I feel so uncomfortable with this comment. In a racist society how can one possibly know the experiences of people without listening to their experiences? Was it better or was it worse? Only the people who experienced it can choose.
I recognize as a first generation Australian who was also born a quaker, Until recently we had no recognition as citizens and simply did not exist in law, our children were forcibly removed and taken and placed in on missions, and government run settlements, where men and women were used as slave labour. My race the Palawa were shall we call it integrated by sealers who kidnapped women to use as sex slaves etc. To my knowledge there are no full blooded Palawa left. I am sorry to have upset you, but for many First World Peoples an education would be sheer bliss, even in a boarding school.@@michelecraig9658
The Australians had the same kind of cultural genocide program.
It may not have the same import for those in the US but the word “natives” is redolent with racist overtones from an English perspective
@@minui8758I used that term only because I am not familiar with your terminology, here in Australia we are called first nation people, my apologies if I have offended any one.