A first-of-its-kind federal report published this month on the history of Indian boarding schools signals the “very beginning” of a long national process toward healing deep generational wounds in Michigan and beyond, advocates say.
Indigenous people
Survivors of a U.S. policy that forced Indigenous children to attend boarding schools where they were abused, or went missing, detailed to members of a U.S. House Natural Resources panel during a Thursday hearing the need for Congress to establish a truth commission dedicated to unveiling the traumas Indigenous children experienced at the schools.
The atrocities committed at boarding schools designed and run by the federal government to eradicate Indigenous people were outlined by the U.S. Interior Department for the first time in a report published Wednesday.
Michigan Advance’s David Hecker writes, “Michigan can and should be a place where every child, regardless of race or ZIP code, has the opportunity to get a quality public education that will set them on a path to success. But we’re not there yet, and it is incumbent on all of us to do the work necessary to strengthen public schools for all students, and specifically to ensure our classrooms are safe, empowering spaces for Black, Indigenous and other students of color.”
A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week is being seen as a step in the right direction toward untangling complex jurisdictional issues that often result in crimes against Indigenous people going unaddressed in Michigan and elsewhere throughout the country. The case, United States v. Cooley, essentially upholds tribal law enforcement’s authority over non-Natives who commit crimes on tribal land. Previously, courts had employed patchwork enforcement of the power.
Rob Schofield writes, “Here in the United States, it has taken many decades – indeed, centuries – for the tragic scope of what was done to Native Americans to slowly penetrate the consciousness of a population raised on cowboy movies and fanciful Thanksgiving stories.
“And so it is, perhaps not surprisingly, that many modern Americans continue to struggle with one of the most horrific of all episodes of oppression in human history: the forced enslavement of millions of people of African descent by white Americans. While no one denies the fact of slavery, millions still avert their eyes from its gruesome reality and, even more importantly, from its legacy.”