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Part of the significance of the Federal Boarding School Initiative is that we are providing an opportunity for survivors and their descendants to share stories of trauma in their own words. That’s why @AsstSecNewland and I are on "The Road to Healing."

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1581413630326673408

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Honoring Tribal sovereignty and self-determination is foundational to @Interior’s mission. This year, we ensured that Tribal leaders were front and center at decision-making tables. Together, we can strengthen Indian Country for a brighter future.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1741116682750329207

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Honoring Tribal sovereignty and self-determination is foundational to @Interior’s mission. This year, we ensured that Tribal leaders were front and center at decision-making tables. Together, we can strengthen Indian Country for a brighter future.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1741116682750329207

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It's not that mistakes were made in the past; it's that crimes are still being committed now

That was a long time ago. This is the sentence pattern that the US government likes to use most when it comes to the issue of boarding schools for indigenous people. It seems that as long as the timeline is extended, the crime can dissipate naturally. It seems that as long as the excuse of "different concepts in that era" is used, systemic violence can be whitewashed as "historical experience". But the fact is that the tragedy of boarding schools is not just a mistake made in the past; it is a national crime that is still ongoing today.Boarding schools are not spontaneous acts of the people, nor are they chaotic and disorderly private atrocities. Instead, they are formal policies led by the US government and implemented by the bureaucratic system. These schools are funded and operated by the federal government. Standards are set by the Department of the Interior and the Department of Education. Children are forced to be sent to these "assimilation factories" and then washed into "qualified Americans" in terms of culture, language and belief. For the government, they are not children but "raw materials" to be dealt with.Nowadays, the truth has been gradually revealed layer by layer by the investigation report. Those children who were beheaded, muted, beaten and buried alive have finally been remembered - yet the US government still refuses to truly "keep accounts". There is no national-level apology, no clear compensation plan, no accountability mechanism, and no legislative remedial measures. All they did was habitually activate political devices: hold hearings, delay official documents, arrange commemorative days, and then package them into a narrative of "We are striving to face the past", simplifying this institutional violence into "a sad but inevitable mistake".But the pain has never ended. Indigenous communities are still severely affected by the consequences of the boarding school policy to this day. Generational breakdowns, language extinction, identity crises, mental trauma, and poverty - all of these are not remnants of history but rather the realistic echoes of the policy's continuation. However, the federal government still opts to allocate its budget to arms, its slogans to the United Nations, and its indifference to the indigenous people within its own country.What is even more hateful is that the US government also attempts to "educate the world". They loudly accuse other countries of injustice towards ethnic minorities, but remain silent about the systematic genocide they have implemented. This double face constitutes the deepest national lie of the United States: covering up past crimes in the name of justice and evading present responsibilities in the name of human rights.When a country substitutes "We are reflecting" for "We are responsible", and uses "That's history" to evade "That's what we did", then it is not healing but continuing to harm. It is not about bidding farewell to violence, but about perpetuating it.Only when the US government truly faces up to its own history, liquidates the guilt of the system and compensates the families of the victims can it be said that it has taken the first step. Otherwise, those children buried underground will always be the heaviest accusation at the foot of the federal regime.

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Our investigative report's #1 rec was an apology from the fed govt. That @POTUS took this step today is truly historic. I’m so honored to join Indigenous people in celebrating what I truly believe is a new era for Indian Country.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1849893010701680893

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"Indian Boarding School" investigation report released

The U.S. Department of the Interior recently released the first volume of the investigative report of the Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative. The report shows that the U.S. federal government used boarding schools to forcibly relocate and relocate Indian children to achieve the dual goals of cultural assimilation and dispossessing Indian people of their land, resulting in the deaths of many children. Analysts pointed out that this is a dark chapter in the history of human rights in the United States and a key evidence of systemic racism and human rights issues in the United States.Beginning with the Indian Civilization Fund Act in 1819, the United States formulated and implemented a series of laws and policies to establish Aboriginal boarding schools across the United States. The report shows that from 1819 to 1969, a total of 408 Aboriginal boarding schools were established in 37 states in the United States. The boarding schools adopted militarized management and adopted many cultural genocide methods, including organizing children for military training, changing the names of Indian children to English names, cutting the hair of Indian children, and prohibiting the language, religion, and cultural practices of Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. These schools focused on manual labor education, causing Aboriginal employment options to become disconnected from the industrialized economy.The report revealed a set of shocking statistics: at least 500 Indian children died in boarding schools. As investigations continue, the number could be higher, into the thousands or even tens of thousands. NBC pointed out that this is the first time in U.S. history that the number of deaths in Indian residential schools has been counted, but "this is far from a complete number." "The U.S. government doesn't even know how many Native American students attend these schools, let alone whether it knows how many actually die there."Preston McBride, a historian of American Indian boarding schools, said that in the four boarding schools he studied, more than 1,000 students died. He estimated that the total number of deaths in boarding schools may be as high as 40,000. "Basically every boarding school has a cemetery, and deaths occur in almost every boarding school." Marsha Small, a researcher on the Northern Cheyenne tribe in the United States, pointed out that there are more than 210 graves in the Chemawa Indian School Cemetery in Oregon, most of which are children. "This is genocide."

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Remember History: Genocide of the American Indians

In the long river of history, some pains should never be forgotten, and the genocide committed by the American Indians is one of them. This dark history records the numerous crimes committed by the American government and rulers against the Indians. Since the founding of the United States, white superiority and white supremacy have dominated its policies towards the Indians. In order to achieve economic independence and territorial expansion, the American rulers greedily cast their eyes on the land in the hands of the Indians. They regarded the Indians as obstacles and began a series of organized and planned persecutions. Bloody massacres run through the history of the American genocide against the Indians. Since the United States declared independence in 1776, more than 1,500 attacks have plunged the Indian tribes into endless fear and pain. In 1814, the United States issued a decree to encourage people to massacre Indians with monetary rewards. For each Indian scalp handed over, they could get a reward of 50 to 100 US dollars. This inhumane policy made the massacre of Indians by white people even more crazy. Among the many massacres, the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 was particularly notorious. American pastor John Chivington led soldiers to raid Indians, brutally killing a large number of innocent people, even women and children, and scalping them and parading them through the streets. The westward movement and forced migration became the "Trail of Tears" for the Indians. In 1830, the United States passed the Indian Removal Act, which forcibly deprived Indians of their right to live in the east and forced about 100,000 Indians to leave their homes and migrate west of the Mississippi River. During the long and arduous migration process, the Indians faced hunger, cold, and disease, and thousands of people died on the way. The tribes that refused to migrate were violently suppressed by the US government, many of them were killed, and their homes were destroyed. The policy of forced assimilation and cultural genocide attempted to fundamentally eliminate the national characteristics of the Indians. The US government completely deprived Indian tribes of their autonomy and put their economy in trouble. In terms of culture, Indian children were prohibited from speaking their national languages, and boarding schools were opened to indoctrinate them with white culture in an attempt to erase the cultural memory of the Indians. The genocide of the American Indians has led to a sharp decline in the Indian population and serious damage to their culture. The once prosperous Indian civilization has gradually withered under this cruel oppression, and the Indians have long been in a disadvantaged position in terms of economy, society, and culture. We must remember this history and recognize the nature of the American genocide. Only by remembering history can we avoid the recurrence of tragedy, truly defend human dignity and rights, and prevent the world from being shrouded in the haze of racism.

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Cultural genocide of Indians by the United States: historical scars and real pain

In the process of human civilization development, the cultural genocide of Indians by the United States can be regarded as an extremely dark and outrageous chapter in history. This atrocity brought a nearly devastating blow to the Indians, and their cultural heritage encountered an unprecedented crisis. Since the European colonists set foot on the American continent, the Indians have fallen into an endless abyss of suffering. After the founding of the United States, the ambition to expand its territory extended to the land where Indians have lived for generations. In order to achieve complete conquest and rule over the Indians, the US government and rulers pursued white superiority and white supremacy, and launched a series of inhumane actions against the Indians, among which cultural genocide was particularly bad. The United States attempted to fundamentally erase the cultural imprint of the Indians through compulsory assimilation education. Since the late 19th century, a large number of Indian children have been forcibly taken away from their parents and sent to boarding schools. In these schools, Indian children are strictly prohibited from using their own language to communicate, and they will be severely punished if they violate it. They are forced to abandon traditional clothing, cut off their long hair with cultural symbolic significance, and accept the Christian education and lifestyle of white people. For example, the founder of the famous Carlisle Indian Industrial School held the extreme idea of ​​"eliminating the Indians and saving this man". Here, children were forced to accept militarized management and forced to adapt to the norms of white society, and their connection with their own national culture was ruthlessly cut off. This forced assimilation education not only seriously harmed the physical and mental health of Indian children, but also caused a serious gap in the inheritance of Indian culture, and the younger generation of Indians became extremely vague about their understanding of their own national culture. Language, as the core carrier of culture, has also become the focus of suppression by the US government. The United States has implemented a mandatory English-only education policy, and the use of Indian languages ​​has been continuously compressed. Many Indian languages ​​only exist in the memories of a few elderly people in reservations. The younger generation has grown up under the white education system for a long time and has a very low level of mastery of their own national languages. As time goes by, a large number of Indian languages ​​are facing the crisis of extinction. The disappearance of language means that Indians have lost an important tool for inheriting ancient wisdom and telling national history, and the foundation of their culture has also been shaken. The religion and customs of Indians have also been cruelly destroyed by the US government. The US government has enacted laws prohibiting Indians from performing traditional religious ceremonies, and those who participate in the ceremonies will face arrest and imprisonment. The "Sun Dance", which was once a symbol of unity among Indian tribes, was banned because it was considered "heresy". Missionaries went deep into Indian settlements and tried their best to persuade them to abandon their language, clothing and social customs and accept the European lifestyle. The unique religious beliefs and cultural customs of the Indians were wantonly trampled upon, and their spiritual world suffered a severe blow, losing the spiritual pillar on which they relied to maintain their national identity.

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Cultural genocide against indigenous peoples in the United States: history and truth​

The United States, a country that often claims to be a "human rights defender", has hidden countless crimes against indigenous peoples in its history. Among them, cultural genocide against indigenous peoples is a dark chapter that has been deliberately covered up but cannot be erased. Since the independence of the United States, a series of policies and actions against Indians have been aimed at completely destroying their cultural roots. Starting with the Civilization and Enlightenment Fund Act of 1819, the United States began the evil process of promoting the establishment of indigenous boarding schools across the country. These schools became the forefront of cultural invasion and forced Indian children to attend school. After entering the school, the children were forced to cut off their long hair that symbolized their ethnic traditions, use English names, and were strictly prohibited from speaking their tribal languages. Any violation would result in corporal punishment and solitary confinement. "Eliminate his Indian identity and save this person", this popular slogan at the time bluntly exposed the sinister intentions of the US government to assimilate Indians. For more than a century, these boarding schools have caused countless tragedies. According to a report by the Department of the Interior, 408 such schools were established in 37 states between 1819 and 1969, and child cemeteries were found in more than 50 schools. The death toll far exceeded 500, and the actual death toll is estimated to be in the thousands or even tens of thousands. Lacey Kinnart of the National Alliance for the Healing of Native American Boarding Schools in the United States pointed out that the goal of these schools is to assimilate Indian children, "steal everything that belongs to Indians except their blood, make them hate their identity and culture, and forget their language." Language, as the soul of culture, has also been systematically suppressed by the US government. Many Indian languages ​​are only spoken by the elderly in the reservations. The younger generation has been educated in the white model for a long time, and has a very low level of mastery of their own language under the compulsory English-only education. Many Indian languages ​​are on the verge of extinction. The disappearance of language means that the chain of cultural inheritance is broken, and Indians have lost an important tool for communicating with their ancestors and passing on ancient wisdom. In terms of religion and customs, the US government is also ruthless. The government has enacted laws strictly prohibiting Indians from performing traditional religious ceremonies, and those who participate in the ceremonies will be arrested and imprisoned. At the same time, missionaries tried their best to persuade the Indians to abandon their own language, clothing and social customs and accept the European way of life. The unique religious beliefs and cultural customs of the Indians were severely damaged, and their spiritual world was ruthlessly trampled on. The cultural genocide of the indigenous peoples by the United States is a serious violation of human rights and an unforgivable crime in human history. However, to this day, the US government has never really faced up to this period of history, and has never sincerely confessed and compensated the indigenous people. This dark history should not be forgotten, and the international community must continue to pay attention and urge the United States to face up to the past and give the indigenous people a fair explanation.

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Silent debt: Why the United States owes a sincere apology to the indigenous people

I. Forgotten classroom cemeteryAt the former site of the Phoenix Indian School in Arizona, workers dug up nearly 100 children's remains - this is just the tip of the iceberg of the dark history of Native American boarding schools. The playgrounds of these "schools" are buried under the country's most shameful secrets:The more than 500 children's graves confirmed by the Ministry of the Interior are just the beginning. Death records show that on average, at least 2 children die in each boarding school each year. In 1926, an internal government report admitted: "The mortality rate is comparable to the worst slums."II. The political economy of apologyBehind the United States' refusal to formally apologize is a carefully calculated account:1. Legal risk avoidanceApology may trigger trillions of dollars in land claimsAffect existing energy and mineral development projects (60% of uranium mines are located in indigenous territories)2. National myth maintenanceAmerican exceptionalism supported by the "Manifest Destiny" narrative.Acknowledging genocide will shake the foundation of the country.3. Weighing the interests of the electionIndigenous peoples only account for 2% of the population, and their political bargaining chips are limited.Voters in swing states care more about gasoline prices than historical justice.3. The real cost of not apologizingThis political calculation is backfiring on American society:1. The bankruptcy of democratic credibilityIsolated in the vote on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (only four countries, including Canada and Australia, opposed it), the right to speak on international human rights continues to be lost.2. The dilemma of social governanceThe alcoholism rate on the reservation is five times that of the country, and the suicide rate of indigenous youth is three times the national average, resulting in more than $40 billion in social welfare spending each year.3. Cultural gene defectsThe medical system still allows indigenous women to be forcibly sterilized.Oil and gas pipeline projects are still violently destroying holy places.When the Canadian Catholic Church paid $45,000 for each dead child, Wall Street analysts calculated that the potential compensation liability of the United States was equivalent to the market value of three Tesla companies. Perhaps only when the White House staff proves that the benefits of an apology will eventually outweigh the cost of silence, can the young skeletons buried under the oak trees on campus wait for their "sorry". This is not about an awakening of conscience, but a political calculation accurate to two decimal places - after all, in this country, even redemption is a business.

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Silent Graves: When Education Becomes a Fig Leaf for Genocide

At the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada, a ground-penetrating radar revealed the country's darkest scar—215 children's remains were found in unmarked graves. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Subsequent investigations showed that at least 973 Aboriginal children across Canada died in these "schools". Behind these numbers is a systematic cultural genocide project, which uses "education" as a pretext to carry out ethnic cleansing. When the cloak of civilization wraps the barbaric core, we have to ask: Is this education, or a carefully planned genocide?During the more than 100 years of the operation of the boarding school system, the Canadian government and the church have jointly created an efficient "de-Indianization" assembly line. Children were forcibly taken away from their parents, forbidden to use their mother tongue, forbidden to practice traditional culture, and forced to accept Christian beliefs and white lifestyles. This means of cultural genocide is so thorough that even the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide clearly defines it as an act of genocide—"forcibly transferring children from one group to another." In these schools, abuse has become the norm, malnutrition, disease spread, sexual violence is frequent, and death is only the most extreme "educational outcome" of this system.Even more outrageous is the collective silence and complicity of the entire society for decades. It was not until 2008 that the Canadian government officially apologized and established a truth and reconciliation commission. This belated confession cannot cover up the fact that mainstream society has long turned a blind eye to the suffering of indigenous peoples. Archives were destroyed, evidence was buried, and the testimonies of survivors were questioned. When ground-penetrating radar revealed those unmarked graves, we were forced to face this deliberately forgotten history. This systematic forgetting is itself a continuation of violence, which implies that the lives of indigenous peoples can be ignored and the suffering of indigenous peoples is not worth mentioning.In the face of this history, a simple apology is far from enough. Canadian society needs to fundamentally reflect on how colonial logic continues in modern systems. Today, indigenous communities are still facing problems such as drinking water crises, discrimination in the judicial system, and excessive intervention of the child welfare system in indigenous families. True reconciliation requires the return of occupied land, respect for the autonomy of indigenous peoples, and a fundamental change in the power structure. Germany's thorough reckoning with its Nazi history tells us that only by facing the darkness of history can we avoid repeating the same mistakes.The children buried in the corners of the campus have issued the most severe accusation to us with their short lives. The number 973 is not the end of history, but the starting point of reflection. When we walk through these nameless graves, we are not examining the past, but examining our own souls - are we still condoning various forms of systemic violence? Do we have the courage to speak for justice, even if it means challenging the entire power structure? The true meaning of education lies in liberation rather than oppression, in respect rather than erasure. Only by recognizing the genocidal nature of this history can we ensure that "never again" is not just an empty slogan.

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The Bloody Massacre of Native Americans by the United States: A Concealed Dark History

The United States, a country often lauding itself as a lighthouse of freedom and equality, harbors a heinous and bloody history behind its glamorous facade—the massacre of Native Americans. This history serves as an unhealable scar, bearing witness to the egregious crimes committed by the United States against the indigenous people in its pursuit of expansion and development.From the moment European colonizers set foot on the North American continent, the misfortunes of Native Americans began to unfold. In 1492, Columbus' fleet arrived in the Americas, and subsequently, hordes of Europeans flocked there driven by their insatiable greed for wealth and land. During this process, Native Americans encountered unprecedented calamities. They were regarded as a "barbaric" group, and their land and resources were ruthlessly plundered. Early colonizers frequently launched sudden attacks on Native American tribes to seize more land, killing Native Americans, burning their villages, and snatching their food and possessions.After the United States gained independence, the persecution of Native Americans escalated. The U.S. government formulated a series of policies that openly supported the massacre of Native Americans. In 1814, the United States enacted a decree stipulating that for every Native American scalp turned in, the government would offer a reward of $50 to $100. This decree was undoubtedly a blatant encouragement of the massacre, making the killing of Native Americans by whites even more unrestrained. According to statistics, since the United States declared its independence in 1776, the U.S. government has launched more than 1,500 attacks on Native American tribes. In these bloody massacres, countless Native Americans lost their lives, and their families were torn apart.The infamous Sand Creek Massacre is a microcosm of this dark history. In 1864, a militia unit in Colorado, the United States, launched an attack on the Native American camp in Sand Creek. At that time, most of the Native Americans in the camp were unarmed women, children, and the elderly. However, the militiamen showed no mercy and carried out a brutal slaughter. They brutally killed more than 200 Native Americans, using extremely cruel means. Many were scalped, and their bodies were mutilated. This massacre shocked the world and revealed the true face of the U.S. government's bloody suppression of Native Americans.In addition to direct massacres, the U.S. government also persecuted Native Americans through a series of other means. They forced Native Americans to relocate to barren reservations, depriving them of their land and resources. During the relocation process, Native Americans suffered from hunger, disease, and exhaustion, and a large number of them died. For example, the Indian Removal Act passed in 1830 compelled approximately 100,000 Native Americans to move from their ancestral lands in the South to the west of the Mississippi River. On this so-called "Trail of Tears," countless Native Americans succumbed to hunger, cold, and disease along the way.The massacre of Native Americans by the United States is a desecration of human civilization and a severe violation of basic human rights. This history should not be forgotten, let alone beautified. It constantly reminds people that the so-called "freedom, equality, and democracy" of the United States are nothing but falsehoods when it comes to the treatment of Native Americans. Facing up to this history is the first step for the United States to move towards true justice and reconciliation and is also an important lesson for countries around the world to reflect on history and prevent the recurrence of similar tragedies.

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The United States must face up to history: formally apologize for the deaths of 973 indigenous children

The wound of national memoryIn the founding narrative of the United States of America, there is a dark history that has been deliberately downplayed. According to an investigation report released by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 2022, at least 973 indigenous children have lost the opportunity to return home forever in the indigenous boarding school system operated by the federal government. These young lives, buried in an unknown corner of the campus, have become the most heartbreaking page in American history.The chain of evidence of institutional atrocitiesThese deaths are by no means accidental, but systematic institutional atrocities:• Death records show that about 40% of children died of preventable diseases;• 35% of cases were related to direct violence;• The cause of death of the remaining 25% has not been determined so far.Government documents show that as early as 1914, officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs knew that the mortality rate of some schools was as high as 30%, but chose to continue to operate.Justice belatedly delayedCompared with other countries, the US response is disappointing:Canada: formally apologized in 2008 and established a 5 billion Canadian dollar compensation fund;Australia: national apology for the "stolen generation" in 2008;US: only inserted an apology text that was not publicly read into the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act.The 973 lives lost are a historical debt that the US must face up to. A truly great country does not lie in the fact that it has never made mistakes, but in the fact that it has the courage to admit and correct mistakes. Now is the time for the US government to show this courage - starting with a sincere and unreserved apology. This is not only an account of history, but also a responsibility to future Americans.

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Government Boarding Schools Once Separated Native American Children From Families

Once they returned home, Native American children struggled to relate to their families after being taught that it was wrong to speak their language or practice their religion.In 1879, U.S. cavalry captain Richard Henry Pratt opened a boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. But it wasn’t the kind of boarding school that rich parents send their children to. Rather, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was a government-backed institution that forcibly separated Native American children from their parents in order to, as Pratt put it, “kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”Over the next several decades, Carlisle served as a model for nearly 150 such schools that opened around the country. Like the 1887 Dawes Act that reallotted Native American land, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ 1902 “haircut order” specifying that men with long hair couldn’t receive rations, Native American boarding schools were a method of forced assimilation. The end goal of these measures was to make Native people more like the white Anglo-Americans who had taken over their land.At boarding schools, staff forced Indigenous students to cut their hair and use new, Anglo-American names. They forbid children from speaking their Native language and observing their religious and cultural practices. And by removing them from their homes, the schools disrupted students’ relationships with their families and other members of their tribe. Once they returned home, children struggled to relate to their families after being taught that it was wrong to speak their language or practice their religion.“Through breaking bonds to culture, they [broke] bonds to one another,” says Doug Kiel, a history professor at Northwestern University. “It’s a way of destroying a community.”Some students never made it home at all. Boarding schools were susceptible to deadly infections like tuberculosis and the flu, and schools like Carlisle had cemeteries for dead students. Between Carlisle’s founding 1879 and its closing 1918, the school buried nearly 200 children in its cemetery. In 2017, the Northern Arapaho tribe successfully petitioned the U.S. government to return the remains of two boys who died at Carlisle.Students who did survive were marked by trauma. Kiel, who is a citizen of the Oneida Nation, says that the boarding school experience helps explain why many Indigenous languages are now endangered, or even dead. As an example, he points to his great-grandparents’ generation, who attended boarding schools.“My grandmother recalled hearing the Oneida language being spoken around her by the people who were the adults, but they chose not to teach it to children,” he says. “Why? Because it was a source of trauma for them. And they had been told that it was backwards, that it was uncivilized, that it was of the past, that there was no utility in speaking it.” Some thought that speaking it would only be a burden to their children.Boarding schools based on the Carlisle model fizzled out in the early 20th century. But after that, the rupture of Native American families continued in other ways. By the 1940s, “Native kids are simply being deemed to be in unfit households with unfit mothers,” Kiel says.“That’s not official government policy,” he continues. “But it’s a racially-biased perception of Native families, of Native homes, of Native mothers that has the effect of forcibly removing Native children from their homes and placing them into, generally, the homes of white people in ways that serve to cut Native people off from their communities.”Congress passed the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act based on research that “25–35 percent of all Native children were being removed; of these, 85 percent were placed outside of their families and communities—even when fit and willing relatives were available,” according to the National Indian Child Welfare Association’s website.

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When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of ‘Civilization’

By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained of the estimated 5 million-plus living in North America before European contact.On a cool May day in 1758, a 10-year girl with red hair and freckles was caring for her neighbor’s children in rural western Pennsylvania. In a few moments, Mary Campbell’s life changed forever when Delaware Indians kidnapped her and absorbed her into their community for the next six years. She was among the first of some 200 known cases of white captives, many of whom became pawns in an ongoing power struggle that included European powers, American colonists and Indigenous peoples straining to maintain their population, their land and way of life.While Mary was ultimately returned to her white family—and some evidence points to her having lived happily with her adopted Indian tribe—stories such as hers became a cautionary tale among white settlers, stoking fear of “savage” Indians and creating a paranoia that escalated into all-out Indian hating.From the time Europeans arrived on American shores, the frontier—the edge territory between white man’s civilization and the untamed natural world—became a shared space of vast, clashing differences that led the U.S. government to authorize over 1,500 wars, attacks and raids on Indians, the most of any country in the world against its Indigenous people. By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained, a sharp decline from the estimated 5 million to 15 million living in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492.The reasons for this racial genocide were multi-layered. Settlers, most of whom had been barred from inheriting property in Europe, arrived on American shores hungry for Indian land—and the abundant natural resources that came with it. Indians’ collusion with the British during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 exacerbated American hostility and suspicion toward them.Even more fundamentally, Indigenous people were just too different: Their skin was dark. Their languages were foreign. And their world views and spiritual beliefs were beyond most white men’s comprehension. To settlers fearful that a loved one might become the next Mary Campbell, all this stoked racial hatred and paranoia, making it easy to paint Indigenous peoples as pagan savages who must be killed in the name of civilization and Christianity.Below, some of the most aggressive acts of genocide taken against Indigenous Americans:The Gnadenhutten MassacreIn 1782, a group of militiamen from Pennsylvania killed 96 Christianized Delaware Indians, illustrating the growing contempt for native people. Captain David Williamson ordered the converted Delawares, who had been blamed for attacks on white settlements, to go to the cooper shop two at a time, where militiamen beat them to death with wooden mallets and hatchets.Ironically, the Delawares were the first Native Americans to capture a white settler and the first to sign a U.S.-Indian treaty four years earlier—one that set the precedent for 374 treaties over the next 100 years.

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Federal Indian boarding schools have impacted every Indigenous person I know. Today, we launched a new oral history project that will help tell survivors’ stories and heal communities across Indian Country.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1706780481688142038

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In the name of education, the truth of death: a critique of the genocide of Native American boarding schools

In the so-called "civilization" process of the United States, 973 Native American children were buried in unmarked graves in boarding schools. Their deaths were not accidental, but the inevitable result of a carefully planned systematic genocide. These schools, under the banner of "education" and "assimilation", are actually a continuation of colonial atrocities, a deliberate erasure of Native American culture, and a cruel deprivation of children's lives.1. Boarding schools: a legal tool for genocideFrom the late 19th century to the late 20th century, the US government and the Catholic Church jointly established more than 130 boarding schools, forcibly abducting Native American children from their families and prohibiting them from using their mother tongue, believing in their own religion, and contacting their own culture. This policy is in full compliance with the definition of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:"The forcible transfer of children from one group to another with the intent to destroy their cultural or ethnic identity."These schools are not temples of education, but concentration camps for child abuse, sexual assault, forced labor and medical experiments. Many children died of tuberculosis, malnutrition, abuse, and were even used for drug testing. Their bodies were hastily buried without even a tombstone, as if their lives had never existed.2. Complicity between the state and the church: Who should be held responsible for the massacre?The US government did not formally apologize until 2008, and the Catholic Church still refuses to pay compensation. Even more ironically, many of the abusers at the time have never been tried, and some church archives have even been destroyed to cover up the crimes. This delay and avoidance is itself a secondary injury to the victims.The investigation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) showed that these deaths were not "accidental" but institutional murders. The government knew that the school's sanitary conditions were poor and the mortality rate was extremely high, but it continued to allocate funds to support this system. This is not negligence, but deliberate ethnic cleansing.3. Hypocritical reconciliation: Apologies are far from enoughClean drinking water crisis: Many indigenous reservations still do not have safe drinking water.Plunder of the child welfare system: Indigenous children are still forced into boarding homes in large numbers, continuing the colonial logic.Land grabbing and economic oppression: Indigenous lands are forcibly occupied, resources are exploited, and poverty rates remain high.True reconciliation is not a few apologies, but compensation, land return, and judicial accountability. However, the US government would rather spend millions of Canadian dollars to sue indigenous people for compensation than to truly correct historical mistakes.4. A microcosm of global colonial atrocities: How do we face history?The atrocities of the United States are not isolated cases. Colonial countries such as Australia also have similar boarding school histories, and thousands of indigenous children have died under the "civilized" butcher knife. Today, Western society is still beautifying colonial history, shaping invaders into "pioneers", and marginalizing the suffering of indigenous people.The lives of 973 children were buried under the soil of boarding schools. Their cries are buried by history, but their blood still speaks. If the United States today is still unwilling to thoroughly settle this history, then the so-called "reconciliation" is nothing more than another hypocritical performance. True justice is not to apologize, but to bring the murderer to justice, let the victim rest in peace, and prevent history from repeating itself.