Indian Residential Schools in the United States and Canada: Uncovering the Hidden History and Trauma

This is my masters thesis from 2017 for completion of my MA in Social Justice from Kilns College. I welcome any questions or feedback. There is much more I hope to do with this information and this paper was just a starting point for me. I have so much more to learn and understand but I share this in the hopes of raising awareness, providing education, and starting a much-needed conversation about this topic and related ones as discussed in the paper. As an ally my hope is to stand beside those who have survived these traumas, and others, and allow their words and stories to be heard. These are not my personal experiences but it is our shared history and as such it is important we know it and understand it. If the formatting on this blog is a little weird, I apologize. This was the best way for me to share it and if you would like an email of the formatted paper, please let me know and I'll share it that way.

Fort Simcoe.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION                                                                                                     2

PART I – FORT SIMCOE                                                                                         4

PART II – INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS                                                   6

Section A - The Civilization Fund Act of 1819                                                         6

Section B - Assimilation Through Education                                                             7

Section C - School Styles                                                                                           9

PART III – FATHER WILBUR AND THE FORT SIMCOE SCHOOL               13

PART IV – SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS                                                              17

PART V – CARLISLE ERA                                                                                                 20

PART VI – FOOD AND HEALTH AT THE SCHOOLS                                       24

PART VII – STERILIZATIONS AND OTHER CRIMES                                                 26

PART VIII – ORIGINS OF ANTI-INDIAN POLICIES                                        32

Section A - "Discovery" of the New World                                                               32

Section B - Doctrine of Discovery                                                                             35

Section C - Indian Acts of the 1800s - 1900s                                                                        38

Section D - Manifest Destiny                                                                                     41

PART IX – ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND APOLOGIES                                 42

PART X – WHAT NOW?                                                                                         47

APPENDIX                                                                                                                53

BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                                                                     55

Introduction

            From the 1860s until the 1990s, there had been in operation across the United States and Canada hundreds of Indian residential/boarding schools (IRS).[1] These schools are not what one might think of a school being today. Far from it. These institutions were created with several outcomes in mind, the primary one being the forced assimilation of Indians into white society and the complete destruction of Indian culture. The only choices given to Native Americans were to assimilate or perish, which many did. In order to accomplish this plan, children were eventually forcibly removed from their homes, some as young as 3 years old, and placed in institutions that were far away from the influence of their families and communities. It was believed that if the children were taken early enough, the memory of their home lives and ways of living could be circumvented by the education provided in the schools and they would not revert to their savage and pagan ways, thereby eradicating the Indian culture that had not yet been completely eliminated by the devastating wars and violence of the previous 300 or so years. Children were considered the easiest to train and also the easiest to capture and force into the schools. There was also the hope that the children, once thoroughly immersed and indoctrinated with the teachings of the schools, would, upon returning home, be able to bring with them that education and carry some measure of influence in bringing about further change within their communities.

            These institutions were funded by the United States (U.S.) and Canadian governments but run almost entirely by church denominations. The denomination running a school was determined by the area and reservation to which that denomination was assigned.[2] Some of the churches involved include the Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Quaker, Methodist, Anglican, Episcopal, Unitarian Universalist, and The United Church.

            The last Canadian IRS of this nature to close was the Gordon Residential School in Saskatchewan and it closed in 1996.[3] There are several of the schools still in operation in the U.S., though their style of teaching and the education provided in them has changed to actually benefit the Native Americans who attend, and are often run by the tribes instead of the government and churches.

            The history of IRSs in the U.S. and Canada is a long and painful one but more than that it is an often hidden, ignored, and denied history that has caused unimaginable trauma for generations of indigenous peoples across the continent; and it has gone on since the early 1860s. However, the horrors inflicted on the indigenous people in what is now North, Central, and South America actually started in the late 1400s with the landing of Columbus on what is now the island of Hispaniola.

            While our focus is primarily on the U.S. and the first Indian boarding school to open at Fort Simcoe, in order to fully grasp the broad scope of these atrocities, we must also look at the Canadian history of IRSs since available documentation of these crimes in Canada far exceeds anything found in the U.S. to date. Canada adopted the same IRS policies that had begun in the U.S. and the information uncovered there is widely considered to be similar to what was happening in the schools in the U.S.

            Before 2015, I knew nothing of this history and was shocked to uncover it. I was even more surprised to find out that the location of the first Indian boarding school in the U.S. was only about an hour away from where I live in Yakima, Washington, at Fort Simcoe on the Yakama Nation reservation in south-central Washington State.[4] My research into these schools and the history that led up to them has been eye-opening, heartbreaking, and life-changing. I have sought to share the personal stories that were shared with me with accuracy and sensitivity. The idea that I knew nothing about this and that it happened, at least in part, during my lifetime, motivated me to want to learn as much as I could about this history and share my research with others. Everyone I asked about the schools had never heard of them either. This is not an easy or comfortable history to discuss but if we have any hopes of ever overcoming the racism that this country was largely founded on and continues to oppress and marginalize people of color to this day, this ugly history must be acknowledged. I hope this project will serve to shed some light on this dark history and educate those of us who have been ignorant of the extent of suffering our Native brothers and sisters have endured for so long.  

PART I - Fort Simcoe

            In 1855 the Yakama Nation treaty was signed between the U.S. government and fourteen tribes and bands that would become known as the Yakama Nation.[5] The treaty laid out the boundaries of the Yakama reservation as well as the lands that were ceded to the government, gave them fishing, hunting, and gathering rights, promised two schools would be built, furnished, and employed with teachers, and several other items laid out in the eleven articles of the treaty.[6]

            Shortly after the creation of the Yakama Nation Reservation, Fort Simcoe was constructed on the reservation in 1856. The fort is in a peaceful location, sitting on 200 acres of land in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. At its creation it was ideally located for the military to manage areas north of The Dalles, Oregon, to Ellensburg, Spokane, and beyond. The site was chosen for its northern location but also due to its popular use by local Native Americans as a meeting ground that they called Mool Mool which means "bubbling water," and for the trees and freshwater springs that are found on the land, making it an ideal location for a military outpost.

            The fort was used for roughly 3 years until 1859 when it was abandoned by the military and turned over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for use as an Indian agency. In 1861 while it was under management of the BIA, James H. Wilbur, a Methodist minister, started the Fort Simcoe School, which was in operation until 1922 when it finally closed and students of the school began to attend public schools. In 1956, after many years of neglect, the site was turned into a state park.[7]

            The park is currently well groomed with large lawns and numerous trees providing abundant shade to any visitors, as well has having a picnic area and a small interpretive center. There are five original buildings still standing that have been kept in good condition or restored and several that have been reconstructed in the original style of the buildings. Depending on the day of a visit, some of the buildings are open and one can see the interiors and get a better view of the rooms that are set up like a residence of that time period, complete with a few mannequins dressed in period clothing, tables set with dinnerware, bedrooms ready for sleeping, kitchens full of dishes and pans, and so on. One of the blockhouses toward the end of the officers' row was a jail when it was a fort and also used later for much the same purpose but the occupants were Native American children. There are 2 marked graves on the grounds, one for a Captain Nathan Olney, Indian agent, and one for a 2nd Lieutenant Ruffin Thomson, who served as a clerk at the agency for a short time.

            The grounds and buildings in particular are set up to emphasize and glorify its short time as a military post, while all but ignoring its roughly sixty-year history as an Indian boarding school. It is precisely this history that is deserving of not only acknowledgement but also significant study and documentation, as well as reflection and commemoration.

PART II – Indian Residential Schools

Section A - The Civilization Fund Act of 1819

            In the 1800s, the various reservations that were being formed or were already existing were assigned to different religious denominations to "civilize the savages," as Corey Greaves, a Yakama Nation member recalls.[8] The Yakima area was split between the Methodist and the Presbyterians, hence the Methodist minister who would be the first superintendent of the mission school at Ft. Simcoe. This school would be an on-reservation boarding school, one of three general styles of institutions for Indians that were experimented with by the U.S. and Canadian governments.

            There are numerous acts and laws that were passed by both governments over the centuries that have directly contributed to the past and present state of Native American nations and peoples and were instrumental in developing the policies that dictate white-Indian relations today. These polices reveal the intense racism and greed that were the driving forces behind nearly all the interactions indigenous people had with the governments and often with the churches, as well. In 1819, the Civilization Fund Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, paving the way for the creation of what would become the IRS system. It states:

For the purpose of providing against the further decline and final extinction of the Indian tribes . . . and for introducing among them the habits and arts of civilization, the President of the United States shall be, and he is hereby authorized, in every case where he shall judge improvement in the habits and condition of such Indians practicable, and that the means of instruction can be introduced with their own consent, to employ the capable persons of good moral character, to instruct them in the mode of agriculture suited to their situation; and for teaching their children in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and performing such other duties.[9]

This Act set the stage for the government to work with churches, the "persons of good moral character" mentioned in it, to provide the education they found to be acceptable. It also set aside funds to pay for the education. The education the churches valued was basic reading, writing, and math, as well as domestic work and agricultural training. These schools were intended to continue the process of forced assimilation and/or eradication of Indians that the government had practiced for centuries, only now it was being attempted through industrial schools instead of on a battlefield, though the results would be largely similar.

Section B - Assimilation through Education

            The schools were designed for forced assimilation and the complete indoctrination of Indian children into white culture. At school they would be taught the English language, white religion which was any denomination of Christianity, white social customs, and acceptable job skills which included domestic work such as sewing, cleaning, and cooking for girls, and farming, blacksmithing, and milling for boys. These skills were taught in order to prepare them for an agricultural lifestyle, as opposed to their traditional nomadic ones, and to work basic jobs for white families and farms, not to actually equip them to survive on their own or to raise them up as highly skilled and educated people and thereby contributing members of society. It was thought that even these minimal skills would be the most an Indian could undertake as they were seen as inferior, lazy and incapable of attaining a high level of education or competence. The underlying foundation of racism that stemmed from false doctrine and flawed science from centuries before was at play here and would continue to be the driving force for these institutions.[10]

            Another intention of the schools became producing goods such as lumber, produce, clothing, bedding, and many other such items that could be sold in local communities or used on the campus. The children were expected to earn their keep and often spent half of the day in the classroom and the other half working in the fields or in domestic work. Much of the food that was grown was not actually for consumption by the children who frequently suffered from malnutrition, some to the point of starvation, but was eaten by the staff or sold in the community. Some of the schools more closely resembled work camps than schools, with students being worked long hours cutting trees, farming, sewing, and cleaning, receiving no compensation for their work and only a minimal education that was well below standard.[11]

Section C - School Styles

            There would eventually be three widely practiced models of Indian schools spread across North America. The first style was a day school often located on a reservation designed to provide education and training during the school day with the kids returning home in the evenings and on weekends. This style, while highly prevalent to begin with, would not remain the norm. The point of these schools became to remove the children from the negative influences of their families and communities who were considered "savage," "barbarous," and all around unacceptable, and the day schools failed to fully break the ties between the children and their families. They soon gave way to the second and third styles of schools.[12]

            The second style was the boarding school style where the children were sent during the school week, only returning home on weekends, holidays, and over longer breaks. These were often off-reservation, though some were still on reservation land as Ft. Simcoe would be. These schools were designed to work against the traditionally nomadic lifestyles of many tribes. While the parents and other members of the community would traditionally follow the seasons to various locations for fishing, hunting, and berry-gathering, the schools would remain in one place, forcing the parents who had any hope of maintaining any type of relationship with their children to try to stay close to the schools, becoming less nomadic and more sedentary. This served the purpose of forcing the parents to take up the agricultural lifestyle the whites promoted. Children being allowed to return home after classes or being in close proximity to their communities was still proving counterproductive to the attempts to remove the children from the very influences found to be so dangerous and backward, giving way to yet another more aggressive style of school.[13]

            The third style of schooling was the off-reservation school in which children were forced to attend, in some cases, year-round, with minimal to no contact with family throughout the year, sometimes for years on end. These schools were often many miles away from the reservation and the children’s homes. Some students were taken hundreds of miles across the country to schools and lands they had never been to. With the children now being fully excluded from the negative influences of their families, they could then be more completely broken and indoctrinated with white religion, culture, and training. It was intentionally nearly impossible for parents or relatives to visit their children at these schools. Even if they had had sufficient means to visit their children, the pass system that was implemented worked to keep them on their reservations regardless of means.

            The pass system required Indians to get permission to leave the reservation for any reason and punishment for any unauthorized leaves, essentially keeping them as prisoners on the land they had been forced onto. This practice turned the already oppressive reservation system into something more akin to internment camps.[14] With the pass system in place, requests to leave the reservation to visit their children were easily and regularly denied. [15] This system was largely done away with in the U.S. by the passing of the Citizenship Act in 1924 which made U.S. citizens of all Indians who weren't already citizens, thereby granting them the same rights as other citizens, such as the freedom to come and go from their lands as they chose, at least in theory.[16]

            Attendance in the IRSs became mandatory in Canada in 1884 with an amendment to the 1876 Indian Act, found in section 137, stating,

Such regulations . . . may provide for the arrest and conveyance to school, and detention there, of truant children and of children who are prevented by their parents or guardians from attending: and such regulations may provide for the punishment, upon summary conviction, by fine or imprisonment, or both, of parents and guardians, or persons having the charge of children, who, fail, refuse or neglect such children to attend school."[17]

A similar act with similar language was implemented in the U.S. when, in 1893, an amendment was made to the Indian Appropriations Act from 1882.[18] These policies would remain in effect until the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, allowing for the change in education policies for Native Americans.

            The deliberate forced removal of children from their native group and the placement of them under the care of whites where the express purpose was to rid them of their Indian culture and identity embodies three of the five definitions of genocide. Most people think of mass killings of people groups based on their ethnicity, religion, nationality, or race as the only definition of genocide, recalling the Holocaust where millions of Jews and other groups were killed or perhaps the Rwandan genocide in 1994 where over a million Tutsi were slaughtered in about 100 days. That is one part of it but the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide has a broader definition that frequently is unrecognized and actually defines five items that are considered genocide.[19] They are, "(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." There is overwhelming evidence that every single definition found here was perpetuated against Native children in these schools.

            Even though this convention was ratified by the UN in 1948 and enacted into international law by 1951, the U.S. didn't ratify the Convention until forty years later, making it the 98th out of 132 countries to do so. In November of 1988, President Reagan ratified it but only did so with two qualifications and with five uniquely and limiting interpreted meanings of some parts of the treaty. The United States is the only country out of 132 to have a reservation in regards to the definition of genocide as set forth in this convention.[20]

PART III - Father Wilbur and the Fort Simcoe School

            Methodist preacher, James H. Wilbur opened the school at Fort Simcoe in 1861. He had come to know the Yakamas after the 1855 treaty and had great empathy and compassion for them and their situation which was greatly reduced after this treaty was signed. He was a large man in both height and weight, an intimidating presence, and was known to tackle his ministry and labor with enthusiasm. He had been a circuit rider before he came to settle at Ft. Simcoe so by the time he became the minister and superintendant there, he was well known throughout the area. His reputation as being an honest and hard-working man endeared him to those he met and allowed him to befriend local Natives who were unaccustomed to white men dealing honestly with them. Almost all of their dealings with whites up to this point had shown them to be dishonest, deceitful, and dangerous. In Wilbur they soon found one they could trust, which earned him the title "Father" Wilbur. He never carried a gun and believed that most differences could be resolved through discussion or, if necessary, his fists.

            In the first annual report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1862, the Indian agent A. Bancroft says regarding the schools, that there were seventeen boys and three girls in attendance, ranging in age from nine to twenty-one years old. They were provided with food and clothing and were required to work in the fields as well as in the classroom, and they were reportedly learning quickly. The students were allowed to go home to visit their families and then return to the school. Wilbur's wife Lucretia taught the girls domestic tasks such as "how to card wool, spin, knit, and how to cut and make garments for themselves and families."[21] When the agency was instructed to stop feeding and clothing the children, Agent Bancroft reported that that policy was a nearly complete failure, stating, "There is a desire on the part of many of the Indians to send their children to school, and yet it is impossible for them to do so while their homes are many miles away from the agency, and there is no provision made for their subsistence here," reminding the commissioner of the treaty which had promised the maintenance of the schools and provisions for the students.[22] This directive was soon reversed as a report by teacher W. Wright, says, "In many respects the condition of the boys and girls attending school has improved. Being provided with comfortable clothing and quarters, and taught to work, they are contracting the habits of industry, neatness, and cleanliness."[23]

            In an addition to this report, Wilbur said, "A portion of each day was spent in teaching them all kinds of useful work upon the reservation, so as to prepare them in maturity of years properly and profitably to pursue the various avocations of life. The girls were taught to do all they were capably of doing to make them useful to themselves and others." It was not only the children who were being taught but also adult Indian men and women, "so as to adopt the habits and customs of the whites." In further reports there is extensive coverage of the work done at the school by the children, specifically, in regards to their labor.  

            Shortly after he had taken this job, Wilbur was expelled from the reservation and his post by the Indian agent who he disagreed with and who the Indians had many grievances against. Wilbur decided to go directly to President Lincoln to make his case for the fair treatment of the Yakama people. He reportedly rode his horse across the country to meet with Lincoln and was granted an audience. He succeeded in making his case so well that he became the Indian agent for Central Washington, a post he would take up as soon as he returned to the fort in 1864.[24] Before long the fort was flourishing with mills, fields, and gardens, allowing for the agency to be self-supporting. Under James Wilbur's tenure the Indian Agency at Ft. Simcoe was relatively peaceful.

            The 1865 report by Wilbur lists the names and ages of the students, revealing the practice of assigning white or Christian names to students, with names such as Daniel Boon, Abe Lincoln, Mark and Luke for males, and Ellen Grant, Mary Ann, and Elizabeth Spencer for females.[25] This is a practice that would be taken to extremes in later years in other schools with names being done away with altogether and only numbers for students used.[26]

            The annual reports that had to be submitted to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs detail a great deal about activities on the reservation and at the school, as well as revealing many of the commonly held beliefs about Indians that were prevalent during this time. Wilbur's reports showed a great deal of respect and admiration for the Indians he was working with but reports from other agents' revealed other sentiments. The report submitted by L. Beach in 1868 says, "I think they acquire knowledge as rapidly and retain it as well as white children," but then he goes on to speak of his opposition to their traditional communal lifestyle which is seen as inhuman and uncivilized:

I am satisfied that there is nothing that could be done that would tend so much to civilize as well as Christianize the Indian as to give him a small tract of land and let him realize that he is a man and that he must depend upon his own exertions to procure a livelihood. This would serve to break up his tribal relations; it would create a desire for agricultural implements, a permanent house instead of the bark shanty and a thousand other wants of the civilized man, thereby inducing him to become an inhabitant of one locality rather than a wanderer seeking a precarious living by the chase as his forefathers have done for centuries before.[27]

These sorts of writings about the incivility of Indians were the norm. The plan to solve the "Indian problem" by teaching them to farm and settle in one place was endemic to agencies across the country, regardless of the local agents' feelings toward the Indians.[28] Even Wilbur who was very fond of his charges and seemed to treat them fairly and honestly, still exhibited this mindset as seen in an 1871 annual report he submitted (see Appendix 1 for specific section of report).[29] His affection for and belief in their humanity and ability is evident but so was his prejudice. He wasn't the only Indian agent or preacher to seem to care more about the Indians as people than as mere brutes, though that belief was certainly the minority. Wilbur served as the Indian Agent and minister at the fort for about twenty years, an unusually long period of time for an agent, retiring in 1882 at the age of 71. His saying, "The plough and the Bible, with the influence growing out of both are worth more upon an Indian reservation to secure permanent peace than a thousand soldiers with their glistening sabres [sic] and their prancing steeds,"[30] was well known and his desire to deal honestly if sternly with both whites and Native Americans left quite a legacy at Ft. Simcoe, one which was not carried on by successive agents. The condition of the school and the students declined after Wilbur left, with high turnover of agents and superintendents. From the time he retired till the school closed in 1922, there were eleven more agents who were employed at the agency.

            Agent Robert Milroy who directly followed Wilbur, acting as agent from 1882-1885, had no such affection for his charges, stating in his reports, "Indian children can learn and absorb nothing from their ignorant parents but barbarism," and, "In short, they are not elaborate or laborious brainworkers by inheritance or otherwise, and must muscle-workers…[to] earn their bread by the sweat of their faces for generations to come,"[31]  yet another reflection the widespread prejudicial beliefs about Native Americans. In 1889, after reports that, "two children died from the effects of the blows inflicted upon them by the superintendent . . . Motzer [had] whipped their children with a heavy rawhide or riding whip… beating them until their flesh was black and blue," superintendent Samuel Motzer turned in his resignation.[32] The response by the acting commissioner read, "In view of the cruel punishment inflicted on the Indian children by Samuel Motzer, Superintendant of the Yakima Agency School, W.T., his resignation… should not be accepted… enter his name on the records as dismissed from the service."[33]

PART IV - School Recollections

            Wallace Strong, PhD, is a Yakama Nation member whose mother attended the mission school at Fort Simcoe.[34] She was born in 1917 or 1918 and only attended the mission school for a short time since the school closed in 1922. She would have been very young indeed when she attended. She was not taken by force to the school, as others elsewhere were, but she was sent there by her parents. His recollections of her sharing about her time at the school reveal better treatment here than at many institutions that would be built around the country later. There was corporal punishment by way of the strap, as was the norm for that time period in public schools as well, though much of the discipline they received at the IRS was for speaking their language. She was made on at least one occasion to hold a bar of soap in her mouth until it started foaming as punishment for speaking her language. Many other children elsewhere suffered much worse abuse for these kinds of infractions. Strong recalls also receiving punishment at the public school he attended for speaking his language.

            He said that his mother felt that if they could handle the punishment, the education was worth it. She greatly valued education and instilled that value in her 15 children, all of whom graduated high school, with Wallace going on to obtain his Master’s degree from Western Washington University and his PhD from the University of Illinois. Upon completion of that degree, he returned to the Yakima valley to take a position at Yakima Valley Community College where he would develop and head the ethnic studies department starting in 1998. He wrote several curriculums for this department that he used throughout his tenure there and after twenty years of running that department, he hopes to retire next year.

            Strong recollects his mother telling that the children were able to eat the food they were helping produce at the school. His mother was taught to do can food and she was happy to learn that skill since it was one that could be used at home. Indeed, Strong recalls their cellar was continually full of a variety of canned foods during his youth. Overall, he says, the students who attended this school and were taught farming and domestic skills were happy for the training because it was useful for them and their families. She told them some of the teachers were nice and some were not. They were subject to being paddled, strapped, whipped, and slapped. Some students who couldn't adapt dropped out and were not forced to return despite the laws requiring school attendance. The students were allowed to play sports, which was fun. It seems as though the high levels of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse found at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools was minimal here, at least when Wilbur was there, though many records and personal histories have not yet been collected and those accounts may tell a different story.

            While his mother learning to can food was a positive experience for her and her family, not everyone had the same positive experience. Corey Greaves, whose mother went to the school, discussed the way in which kids at the schools were forced to learn one task, and that one task was the only one they were taught in school, year after year. They may have learned to do that one task really well, but they didn't learn how to do any of the other chores, which created problems when they were adults and didn't have the necessary skills to run a home effectively. In sharing about the skills that were taught at the schools and about the roles in Yakama culture that were destroyed with the boarding schools, he explains,

One thing that was an integral part of Yakama culture, can't say that it is anymore, that's part of the brokenness, everyone had roles to be played and not everyone knew the same thing. In some ways learning to clean the bathroom was a role. Some were healers, fisherman, hunters, teachers. Everybody functioned within their role . . . you went where you wanted to learn and that was a role so everyone participated. Now enter boarding school and they completely destroyed that, from even outside the boarding school the Indian allotment act, pieces of land which was such a foreign concept to now you're gonna learn how to make a wagon wheel, learn English . . . nobody wanted to learn . . . this way that has been the western school system that has been a complete failure for Indian people, highest dropout rate in western hemisphere. I attribute it to where is our roles to help our people. The Western system is about I and me. Another thing that came out of boarding schools is the destruction of roles. Where are our men? Where do you see them as leaders? Hard to find these days. How many houses are fatherless houses and I think it ties into the destruction boarding schools caused in destroying the roles. Hebrews say that people without a vision die. If you don't know who you are or what your role is in your community? What do you do? You drink. It's been destructive.[35]

He said that in speaking to some elders, they said that even though the wars were bad, the schools were far more destructive to them. He then went on to offer a unique insight into the alcoholism that often plagues Native American communities. He explains,

I think we owe a great debt to the drunk Indian 'cause it was during the boarding school times when they started to drink when their children got taken away. You didn’t know where they went or if they were gonna come back, pain was too great so you go to drinking. . . You won't let me be who I am and I'm not gonna be who you want me to be, so I'll just become nothing, and they swallowed down language, and swallowed down culture, and swallowed down all this knowledge and I think when they came through on the other side those who were able to find their way back and become clean and sober, they were able to regurgitate all that stuff back; they saved our language, they saved the culture, they saved the knowledge of how to gather the cedar root and make the baskets and all those things. We owe a great debt to them.[36]

There is no doubt that alcoholism is one of the social problems facing Native American communities but it is a symptom of a much bigger problem, one that is frequently unrecognized by outsiders who fail to understand the origin of the problem. 

PART V – Carlisle Era

            As discussed previously, Ft. Simcoe flourished during Father Wilbur's tenure, and as the first IRS in the U.S. one might think that this school should have served as the example for how to run other schools effectively. That was not the case. Rather, his leadership and action at the school stands in stark contrast to his successors as well as the hundreds of schools that would follow.

            The schools themselves were often located in abandoned military locations like Ft. Simcoe, with officers’ quarters, stock houses, residence dorms, dining halls, parade grounds, etc. They were not designed to imitate a typical family structure but rather a militaristic lifestyle that was dictated by strictly regimented schedules, complete with marching, drilling, whistles and bells for every change in activity. There was an almost complete lack of any loving human contact from those running the schools and severe punishments doled out for the slightest of transgressions, real or imagined. Bev Sellars, award-winning author, Xat' sūll chief, and third-generation survivor of an IRS, says the staff "were not there to make sure everyone's rights were respected. They were not there to respect the kids or teach positive social skills. They were simply there to herd the kids around. The only emotion that seemed to be acceptable for them to express was anger but, if we kids got caught angry and fighting, then we were punished with the strap. Violence for violence. It really was a breeding ground for dysfunction."[37] The dysfunction that stemmed from experiences at these schools is evident in Native American communities across the continent.

            By 1893, attendance was mandatory for Indian children in the U.S. When families refused to send their children to the schools, as they often did, especially after they began to see what the schools were doing to their families and communities, the children were taken from them by force through threats of imprisonment, reduced rations, and any number of ways in which the BIA could induce the forfeiture of the children. With the passing of U.S. code 25 in 1893, Indian agents were not required to get the permission of the parents to take the kids to school, and were in fact encouraged to get them to the institutions by any means necessary. "Make all needful rules and regulations for its conduct, and the placing of Indian youth therein: Provided further, That the consent of parents, guardians, or next of kin shall not be required to place Indian youth in said school."[38] As stated earlier, another code also authorized the withholding of rations and annuities to induce parents to send their kids to school.[39] The schools were paid by the number of students they had so it was important for them to maintain those numbers, even if it meant the forcible removal of children from their homes that were hundreds of miles away from the school location and the return of those who ran away from the schools.

            Some parents were also forced to sign over their parental rights to the institutions, unbeknownst to the children, and possibly many of the parents, who didn't understand why they were being taken away and may have only learned of this practice as adults.[40] As American Indians were all considered wards of the state according to the 1831 ruling in the case of The Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, it was an easy step to assign guardianship to the white people running the institutions.[41] The conditions on the reservations became so bad that some parents chose to send their children to the schools knowing they would at least be fed and sheltered, whereas if they kept them home, they may not be able to provide even those basic necessities. Their choice, when there was any mirage of one, was no choice at all.

            Upon arrival at the schools, the children were subjected to immediate and traumatizing changes. This was in addition to the trauma of being forcibly removed from the only homes they had ever known. Everything signifying their culture, their whole identity, was now forbidden. Their hair was cut short, their native-style clothes were replaced with military-style uniforms for the boys or Victorian dress for the girls, and the use of their language was strictly forbidden. Most of the children did not know any English to begin with. Any use of the only language they knew resulted in extreme abuses designed to prevent them from speaking their own language and maintaining that tie to their home and culture.[42] They were also given or made to choose new names, generally white names of American heroes or biblical names. The schools were run like military camps, especially after Captain Richard Pratt became involved in the school system.

            Richard H. Pratt, a captain in the U.S. army, was rewarded for his running of an education program for imprisoned Indians at Ft. Marion in Florida by being allowed to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He firmly believed assimilation through education was the best option for civilizing the Indians. He ran this school like a prison, a familiar practice for him. While he has been attributed with first using the term "racism," he is far more infamous for his statement, “Kill the Indian, save the man,” which comes from his personal philosophy that he championed throughout his tenure at the school and became the philosophy used in other institutions.[43] In a speech from a convention in 1892, he proclaimed,

A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man. . . we have not yet fully learned our lesson nor completed our work; nor will we have done so until there is throughout all of our communities the most unequivocal and complete acceptance of our own doctrines, both national and religious.[44]

This was the foundation of Carlisle and many schools modeled after it. Pratt believed that separation of the different races-for surely the different ethnicities indicated various races, not mere variations with the human race-was not the answer to the "Indian problem." Rather, they should be forcibly assimilated into white society and would then gain the benefits of such contact, eventually abandoning their culture for the white one. "I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under, holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked."[45] His ideology was widely accepted and found a welcoming audience with his fellow white Americans who held the same beliefs he did. At Carlisle he also started the program of “farming out” the students.[46] This was a program where students were sent to live with and work for white families for extended periods of time, generally over the summer break when they would usually go home. This was a further attempt to fully incorporate them into white society and instill in them their subservient position in that society, as well as validate his philosophies.  

It is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. We, left in the surroundings of civilization, grow to possess a civilized language, life, and purpose. Transfer the infant white to the savage surroundings, he will grow to possess a savage language, superstition, and habit. Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit . . . when we allow him the freedom of association and the developing influences of social contact—then the Indian will quickly demonstrate that he can be truly civilized, and he himself will solve the question of what to do with the Indian.[47]

This program was used in several schools with minimal degrees of success.

PART VI – Food and Health at the Schools

            The quality of food in many of the schools was extremely poor with moldy and rotten food being a regular occurrence. In her book, They Called Me Number One, Bev Sellars relates her experiences at the St. Josephs Mission School in British Columbia where she attended from age seven in 1962 until 1967. Among the many things she was taught at the school, shame for her language and culture was a primary one and one that impacted her throughout her life. "I learned that speaking my mind or questioning anything would only get me into trouble."[48] This teaching was so ingrained in her that she often suffered abuses as an adult when she was too afraid to speak up for herself or question the status quo. She worked hard to overcome these beliefs, even becoming chief of her tribe.

            Recalling the food at the school she says, "We felt hungry all the time . . . the food got so bad we just couldn't eat any of it. Instead of throwing out the rotten morning mush, the cook . . .  mixed it with the soup at lunch. We couldn't eat that, so the mushy soup was mixed with the supper. This went on for a couple days before the mess got so bad it just had to be thrown out."[49] She said the food was just as bad when her mother and grandmother went there. Her grandmother recalled that meals at the school during her time usually consisted of a "piece of bread dipped in tallow and mush with no sugar or milk" for breakfast, and, "For lunch they got broth with bits of toast floating around . . . For supper they got meat, which was rotten a lot of the time, boiled together with potatoes."[50] On one occasion after refusing to eat some rotten meat her grandmother was locked in the attic for two weeks. Of course, the staff ate good food that wasn't rotten and if any of the students were caught stealing an apple or something they would be beaten with the strap or some other similar punishment.

            Needless to say, this type of food is inadequate for anyone of any age, let alone growing children who are being worked hard in the fields and forests and on campus. Many children suffered from malnutrition. Not only was the quality of food in many Indian schools of this poor quality, there were food experiments done on students in some of the schools.[51]

            Sellars also relates many abuses in addition to the poor food supply, including being ridiculed by nuns and other students, getting strapped for wetting the bed or any other minor infractions, being forced to kneel for a long stretches of time in one place, getting hit with a ruler, and being called racist and derogatory names, all on a regular basis.[52] Some of the abuse the children suffered at the hands of the nuns and priests resulted in the need for a doctor but since there was no doctor on site, children were either sent to their bed until they recovered or, if the kids were too sick, they might be sent hundreds of miles away to the nearest hospital. Sellars says that "In my mother's and grandmother’s time, though, sick kids were sent home to die."[53] While there were reports of sexual abuse at this school and some of the priests were later taken to court for that, she escaped without suffering that abuse. Despite the horrible treatment she and hundreds of others endured at this school, she does recall some good things like getting to watch movies and play sports and the occasional act of kindness by someone.

PART VII – Sterilizations and Other Crimes

            In addition to food experiments that were done on some students, there were also sterilizations that were performed, as allowed by the 1928 Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act and the 1933 Sexual Sterilization Act in British Columbia. These acts allowed the Eugenics Board to sterilize people without their consent or knowledge who were living in any government-run institution, including the IRSs.[54] This was a deliberate act by the government of "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group," a clear example of genocide according to Article two, section D, which Canada ratified in 1952, becoming the 40th country to do so.[55] These acts were in place until 1972 and 1979 respectively when they were repealed, though some reports suggest the practice continued for several more years.[56] The U.S. also performed sterilizations on Native women.

            Unfortunately, the repealing of these acts and the signing of the Convention on Genocide did not stop this practice in Canada. As recently as 2016, after several reports of forced tubal ligations being performed on indigenous women in Saskatoon, an independent investigation revealed numerous cases of forced procedures.[57] The effects these sterilizations had on indigenous women were profound and long-lasting, including, "A lost sense of womanhood. Failed relationships. Diminished prospects for new ones. Depression. Numbing self-destructive behaviours. [sic] Addiction."[58] They also reported a mistrust of medical staff and most hadn't gone in to see a doctor since this had happened. Who could blame them?

            The food experiments and sterilizations, in addition to the other abuses already mentioned only begin to paint the picture of the atrocities committed at these institutions that affected the lives of generations and hundreds of thousands of indigenous people. Rampant throughout the entire system were widespread abuses too numerous to cover here but we must include a few more.

            As early as 1891 medical reports in Canada were showing high death rates due in large part to tuberculosis and other diseases which ran rampant in poorly ventilated school buildings where sick children were often housed with healthy children, spreading the disease unnecessarily and quickly. A report by Dr. George Orton submitted to the federal government in the 1890s reporting high levels of deaths due to TB was ignored. According to an analysis by Paul Hackett, University of Saskatchewan, Dr. Orton was assigned to the Clandeboye Agency in Manitoba and reported poor diet and an absence of ventilation as two of the contributing causes to the TB rates and consequent death rates. They report he even offered to sell the Indian Affairs a ventilation system he had invented to minimize the spread of this disease but like his report, this too was rejected.[59]

            The survival rates for these schools on average was 50 percent. That is a staggering statistic but what is just as surprising is that these high death rates were not hidden, at least not early on. Dr. Peter Bryce was a Canadian doctor who worked for the federal government as Chief Medical Officer starting in 1904. In 1907 he released a report, now known as The Bryce Report, to Parliament and the churches detailing the poor conditions and high death rates at the Canadian IRSs.[60] In his very thorough and detailed report, he noted,

that of a total of 1,537 pupils reported upon nearly 25 per cent are dead, of one school with an absolutely accurate statement, 69 per cent of ex-pupils are dead, and that everywhere the almost invariable cause of death given is tuberculosis . . . It is apparent that...the old-fashioned buildings, their very varied and imperfect methods of heating and an almost complete lack of knowledge of the meaning of ventilation and of methods for accomplishing it in the different schools, that are responsible for this most serious condition which has been demonstrated and which demands for immediate remedy . . . We have created a situation so dangerous to health that I was often surprised that the results were not even worse than they have been shown statistically to be.[61]

Duncan Campbell Scott, a Canadian writer and administrator who was head of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913-1932 and specifically in charge of the IRSs in Canada was well known for his assimilationist policies that correlated with Pratt's policies. In response to The Bryce Report, he said, "It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this does not justify a change in the policy of this Department which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem."[62] He showed no concern over this report or any others that may have been submitted as his primary concern was money and his secondary one was assimilation, no matter the human cost. He was quoted as saying in 1913, "It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the education, which they had received therein."[63] The knowledge of the deaths and abuses at the schools at the highest levels of the department are evident, as is their disregard for the children in the institutions. Evidence uncovered later would reveal deliberate actions on the part of governments and churches to cover up their knowledge of the crimes as well as their direct involvement in carrying out these crimes and many others.[64]

            The Meriam Report in 1928 revealed the numerous problems of these schools and recommended many changes in regards to Indian affairs. This report led to the 1934 Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) that advocated for the shift from private schools to community schools for Indian children and "aimed at decreasing federal control of American Indian affairs and increasing Indian self-government and responsibility."[65] Even though this Act passed in 1934 and many Native American children were able to attend public schools, the height of the IRSs in the U.S. didn't peak until the 1970s.

            The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), created in June, 2008, to address the IRS system, concluded that in the earliest years of the schools the death rates were 1 in 2. In later years, the odds of a child dying in one of the schools was higher than the odds of a Canadian dying while serving in WWII, about one in 25. When children weren't murdered outright, they died by the thousands from diseases such as TB and influenza, combined with "neglect, abuse, lack of food, isolation from family and badly constructed buildings . . . A lawyer who conducted a review in 1907 told the government, 'Doing nothing to obviate the preventable causes of death, brings the Department within unpleasant nearness to the charge of manslaughter.'"[66]

            There is an abundance of evidence regarding the sexual abuse of the students by the priests, nuns, and other administrators, most of which went unpunished or ignored by the churches who were running the schools and employing the predators. There is also evidence that churches knew of the abuse and would relocate the abusers in order to avoid detection. It has been estimated that 1 in 5 children were sexually abused at the schools.[67] Thousands of victims have come forward and named thousands of their abusers though it seems little has been done to hold these predators accountable for their crimes.[68] The rape of the girls by the male staff in the schools sometimes led to pregnancies. This abuse then led to the deaths of even more children, through forced abortions or murder of the babies, and even the girls if they threatened to report the abuse as the visible evidence of their crimes had to be hidden.[69] In recent years there have been some lawsuits against various church organizations with some resulting in settlements for the survivors.[70] Other cases have been dismissed with no positive outcomes. Much of the abuse that took place at the schools went unreported, whether it was suffered at the hands of staff or other students, due in large part to the reports being ignored and/or more abuse being inflicted upon anyone reporting the abuse.

            The numbers of students who died at the schools as a direct result of abuse, neglect, malnutrition and starvation, disease, suicide and murder may never be known, but the numbers are in the thousands if not tens of thousands. With an estimated 150,000 students being sent to the schools in Canada alone and with reported death rates of 50 percent on average in some areas, it’s hard to imagine the numbers being less than 50-75,000. The Canadian TRC findings note at least 6000 documented deaths at the schools with likely many more yet to be reported or discovered.[71] It has also been reported that the government stopped recording the number of deaths in Ottawa in 1920 after a report detailing the high mortality rates in the schools was released. The author of that report was subsequently fired.[72] These numbers do not include the children sent home to die or ones that may have died as a result of running away and dying of exposure in attempts to escape the abuse.

            Many of the schools had cemeteries on the campus and there have been mass and unmarked graves found in some locations. An approved request by the Northern Arapaho tribe submitted in January 2016 to have the remains of three boys, Little Plume, Little Chief, and Horse, who died at Carlisle and were buried on the Carlisle campus be returned to their family homes in Wyoming is currently underway. The remains disinterred from the site that supposedly held Little Plume has revealed the remains from two other children, but not those of Little Plume.[73] They have yet to determine where his remains are or whose remains they did find. The manner in which bodies were buried or disposed of is yet another example of their disposability. It comes as no surprise, then, that there was as little care taken in burying them as there was in educating them and keeping them alive.

            The reports in Canada reveal an unbelievably effective policy of destruction and extermination of the First Nations lives, identities, and culture. The intention to destroy these people is well documented and the reports revealing the horrors endured continue to surface. The compilation of research and documentation in the U.S. is still in the early stages and when or if the information is centralized, it may very well reveal higher mortality and abuse rates.

PART VIII - Origins of Anti-Indian Policies

Section A - "Discovery" of the New World

            The knowledge that these crimes have taken place recently as deliberate government policies is hard to comprehend. In order to understand how hundreds of these schools came to exist and operate in the U.S. and Canada for over 100 years, one just needs to look back through the history of interactions between white settlers, conquerors, and militaries and indigenous people. Most people have heard of the so-called Indian “wars” that took place from the time white people arrived on this continent in the late 1400s and lasted until the late 1800s. Millions of indigenous people of all ages and ethnicities who had lived on the land for millennia were brutally slaughtered at the hands of greedy, deceitful, white settlers and soldiers who were frequently rewarded for their brutality and genocidal acts. In their search for gold and paradise, no action against indigenous populations was too violent. Their goal became wiping out entire populations through disease, starvation and/or war in order to gain control of the land and the natural resources such as gold, oil, and fertile land they "discovered." In taking control of flourishing gardens and fields, they had little knowledge or ability to maintain the incredible agricultural systems and communities that had been created by the native people and soon squandered what they acquired. The people who had been living here for thousands of years before Europeans arrived were consigned to certain death or, if they survived the slaughters, slavery and poverty on reservations.

            The various remaining native tribes and nations were forced through threats of destruction to sign treaties that pushed them onto small areas of land where they could be controlled and further eradicated through disease, starvation, and violence. The signing of the treaties by the Native peoples was nothing short of coercion and fraud as they were given no choice but to sign or face certain death. Many of the treaties were forced upon them by white men who had no intention of honoring the treaties but merely used them as a means to lull the Indians into a false sense of minimal security before unleashing increased destruction and depredation upon them. The Council of State in Virginia advised that, ". . . when the Indians "grow secure uppon the treatie, [sic] we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, & cutt downe theire Corne. [sic]"[74] Signing these treaties, as they would soon discover, was no guarantee of their survival. 

            History is told by the conquerors and as such, it is their version of events as relayed by their historians and writers that is told. This most often results in a very narrow view of history, and in this case, one that glorifies the military successes of a brutal fledgling government and ignores the rights, value, and struggles of the indigenous peoples. By and large the stories found in history books are of epic "battles" when the whites defeated Indians and "massacres" on the occasion when Indians defeated the whites. The stories tell of the power of the armies and vigilantes that "settled" and "conquered" the land, and the brave settlers surviving in a foreign wilderness by their strength and courage. They do not speak honestly or accurately of the genocide committed for centuries against the indigenous people who were already living on the land whose numbers were reduced by more than 90 percent in many cases. Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii and an American historian, David E. Stannard, writing in American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World, reports that, “the total extermination of many American Indian peoples and the near-extinction of others, in numbers that eventually totaled close to 100,000,000."[75]

            The history of Hispaniola, where Columbus first set his feet in the "New World" in 1492 and where the genocide of the native people started the centuries of murder and destruction that would follow, is a perfect example of the level of decimation white men wreaked on the darker skinned indigenous people they met. Prof. Stannard painstakingly covers the atrocities committed against indigenous people on what would become Hispaniola, stating that, "By 1496 . . . the population of Hispaniola had fallen from eight million to between four and five million. By 1508 it was down to less than a hundred thousand. By 1518 it numbered less than twenty thousand. And by 1535 . . . 'for all practical purposes, the native population was extinct.'"[76] Eight million men, women and children were killed through disease and violence in less than 40 years time. To put these statistics in another context, he states, "Of all the horrific genocides that have occurred in the twentieth century against Armenians, Jews, Gypsies, Ibos, Bengalis, Timorese, Kampucheans, Ugandans, and more, none has come close to destroying this many - or this great a proportion - of wholly innocent people."[77] This was just the beginning. What happened on Hispaniola would become the pattern for indigenous people wherever they were to be found by Europeans.

Section B - Doctrine of Discovery

            The depth and breadth of the ideology and practices that were in place to allow for the complete decimation of indigenous peoples by those professing to faith in the God of the Bible is incomprehensible without a closer examination of the Doctrine of Discovery (DOD). It is certain the history of prejudice and racism against anyone not considered to be "white," a political construction generally having far more to do with the wealth of males of European descent than with one's actual skin color, was in existence well before this time period.[78]

            The Roman Catholic Pope, leader of the church, who held great power during the 1400s, and apparently long afterward, frequently issued papal bulls on various topics, similar to laws created by governments today. A papal bull, being considered the most important document issued by the Pope was taken as gospel and the law of the land. There are three specific papal bulls that are the foundation of the DOD.

            The first one, Dum Diversas issued in 1452, by Pope Nicholas V gave permission to Alfonso V of Portugal to conquer the Saracens, Pagans, and more, stating:

We grant to you full and free power . . . to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens and pagans, and other infidels and other enemies of Christ . . . and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude, and to apply and appropriate realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, possessions and goods of this kind to you and your use and your successors the Kings of Portugal.[79]

This edict laid the foundation for the conquering and enslaving any people who were considered enemies of Christ wherever they were to be found and the taking over of their possessions, lands, everything, and it was to be done in the name of God as decreed by the Pope.

            The second one was Romanus Pontifex of 1454 written by the same pope to Alfonso V of Portugal again as a follow up to the Dum Diversas, reiterating the call to enslave any enemies of Christ. In addition to the repeated permission to take over all Saracen and Pagan lands, goods, and peoples, the Romanus Pontifex states that the Lord will aid them in their conquests: "This we believe will more certainly come to pass, through the aid of the Lord."[80] Pope Alfonso V's call to subdue, destroy or enslave all enemies of Christ was done under the belief that God would help them do it.

            The third papal bull issued in 1493, Inter Caetera, by Pope Alexander VI to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, sectioned up the new world. Any lands discovered on one side of the line were given to Spain and any discoveries on the other side were given to Portugal. This was due in part to the return of Christopher Columbus to Spain having already "discovered" lands Spain wanted to claim and who is named in this bull as a man worthy of seeking out and conquering these unknown lands and claiming them for God and king and bringing the Catholic faith to the inhabitants of these lands.[81]

            As is evidenced by the actions of Columbus and other explorers of the time, these papal bulls and all the theologies and beliefs set out in them were prevalent and powerful rules of law that were taken seriously and went unquestioned by the majority of the population. They set about "discovering" and conquering lands and the natives, viewed as enemies of the church, wherever they found them, claiming lands, slaughtering millions, and taking survivors as slaves for whichever country they had allegiance to. From the late 1400s on, the belief in the righteousness of their cause and the superiority of their ethnicity and faith, white men brought unimaginable destruction to thousands of ethnic groups and millions of people, laying the groundwork for future generations to do the same. These edicts gave them the moral and legal justification for the worst genocidal acts this world has yet known and did so on the basis of having God-given rights to do so. Their complete misunderstanding and misuse of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which promotes non-violence and non-retaliation, love of neighbors and love of enemies, has had a devastating effect not only on indigenous peoples but also on anyone else viewed as anything but white by whoever has determined its latest definition.

            Fast forward to 1823, hundreds of years after Columbus first set foot on any land in the "new world" and innumerable wars against indigenous people had taken place, when Chief Justice Marshall enshrines the DOD into U.S. law. By this time, this doctrine was already an integral foundation of the still-expanding U.S. even if it hadn't been explicitly spelled out as such. Marshall changed this in his ruling in the case of Johnson v. McIntosh, a case dealing with the purchase of Indian lands by white people. In his lengthy summary on the matter of land ownership and in reference to the DOD set out in the papal bulls of the 1400s, Marshall details the validity of the DOD in U.S. law (see Appendix 2 for text).[82] Essentially this case justified the ways in which white people took over the land that was occupied by native peoples through policies and beliefs that were derived from papal bulls issued from 1452-1493. Through this ruling, the land the Indians had lived on for generations now belonged to another country, though they had some right to occupy the land.

            The papal bulls and this court case irrevocably set the course for the treatment of indigenous peoples throughout the "New World" and still play a role in the current treatment of Native Americans and the land. These policies have dictated and promoted the racism and prejudice shown to Africans, Asians, Mexicans, and anyone else of color in the U.S. and around the world to this day.

Section C - Indian Acts of the 1800s-1900s

            The Indian Acts of the 1800s and 1900s would continue to direct the governments’ treatment of Native Americans and perpetuate the genocide they had begun in the 1400s. Former President Andrew Jackson was well known for his anti-Indian sentiments, evident in the attacks and battles he led in the southern states in the early 1800s. He was largely responsible for the takeover of millions of acres of lands in the South previously belonging to Creek and Seminole Indian nations, among others, and forcing them out through war and eviction. He became the President of the U.S. in 1829 and remained in office until 1837. Shortly after his election he enacted into law the Indian Removal Act in 1830, further realizing his agenda of controlling Indian lands by forcing out the Indians. This Act allowed the President to negotiate the "exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi."[83] What couldn't be taken by physical force was then taken by this act and any treaties signed with Indian nations.

            The next important piece of legislation was the Supreme Court case The Cherokee Nation vs. the State of Georgia in 1831. In this case, the Cherokee Nation was seeking an injunction against the state of Georgia, "to restrain the state of Georgia from the execution of certain laws of that state, which, as is alleged, go directly to annihilate the Cherokee as a political society, and to seize for the use of Georgia, the lands of the nation which have been assured to them by the United States, in solemn treaties repeatedly made and still in force."[84] The Cherokee were fighting to maintain the lands that had been given to them through treaty but was being threatened by whites and their greed for the land and the gold that had been found there. The conclusion of the case as stated by Chief Justice Marshall, reads in part,

They occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of their will, which must take effect in point of possession, when their right of possession ceases. Meanwhile, they are in a state of pupilage; their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian. They look to our government for protection: rely upon its kindness and its power; appeal to it for relief to their wants; and address the president as their great father . . . the majority is of opinion, that an Indian tribe or nation within the United States is not a foreign state, in the sense of the constitution, and cannot maintain an action in the courts of the United States.[85]

The injunction was denied and Indians were consigned as wards of the state with little power to control the fate of themselves or their lands, leaving them at the mercy of the government. However, a year later in 1832 the case of Worcester v. Georgia determined that indeed the Cherokee nation and other Indian nations were sovereign nations (see Appendix 3 for text).[86] While the court case from the year prior was reversed by this one, the treatment of Native American tribes and peoples as wards of the state remained in effect and affects them still. President Jackson ignored this reversal and proceeded to order the expulsion of thousands of Cherokee people from their land to land in Oklahoma in what became known as the Trail of Tears. Jackson's arrogance in purposely defying the Supreme Court ruling granting Indian nations sovereignty was indicative of his beliefs about and actions toward Indians and set an ugly and dangerous precedent for the future treatment of Indians. Several other Indian nations and thousands of people of all ages were subsequently subjected to the same forcible removal and made to walk hundreds of miles from their ancestral homelands to foreign lands designated as reservations for them by the government. Thousands of them died along the way.

            This creation of reservations set up a system of apartheid, separating whites from indigenous peoples, and allowing for the disparate treatment of the latter group. As a result of this legislation and others, there are currently 562 Indian reservations in 34 of the 50 states in America, with 229 of those in Alaska. These numbers do not include Native American tribes that remain unrecognized by the federal government. The size of these reservations encompass roughly 2.3% of their original land base.[87] In Canada there are 634 First Nation reserves.[88] They have been scattered across this land for more than a century now and have seemingly become a normal state of affairs for Native Americans as well as European Americans, one that goes unquestioned and misunderstood by most white people.

            Some of the communities on these reservations are living in the kind of poverty white people only think happens in so-called third world countries, in places like Africa or Southeast Asia. They are ignorant of the fact that there are Native Americans living without access to reliable basics such as electricity and clean running water and it's happening in their own backyard.[89] The rates of suicide, alcoholism, and violence often seen in these communities are higher than with any other demographic or ethnicity and yet their struggles are often ignored or ridiculed and seen as self-induced. There is and has been a blame-the-victim mentality in regards to Native Americans which can be traced back at least to the first explorers of the land who had free reign to treat them as helpless, worthless pagans deserving of whatever treatment the settlers wanted to unleash on them. They were expected to take the abuse that was heaped upon them without question as the white settlers were "civilized Christians" and knew what was best for these helpless child-like natives. Any negative effects they might suffer would be their own fault for not recognizing the supremacy of white people. The absurdity of this mindset would be laughable if it had not been the foundation for the crime of colonialism that determined the life or death and mistreatment of millions and millions of people the world over who became victims of these lies and who continue to suffer the consequences of actions taken based on these false doctrines.

Section D - Manifest Destiny

            Along with the DOD and the Indian acts discussed above, the idea of manifest destiny combined to further perpetuate the beliefs that paved the way for IRSs. The term "manifest destiny" was first written in an issue of United States Magazine and Democratic Review by Editor John O'Sullivan in 1845, but only became popularized when he used the term again in an article in the New York Morning News in December of that year. In the second article he stated more explicitly, in regards to taking control of the Oregon territory that, "that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”[90] The belief that it was their moral God-given right to take control of whatever lands they came across and desired gave even more incentive to those who sought control of the entire continent and justified their taking of it by force. This is still a mentality that affects white-Indian relations today.

            Between the DOD and manifest destiny, the fate of the indigenous people found in the U.S. was destined to be a wretched one. What the murderous genocidal acts of the 15th through the 19th century couldn't eradicate, the genocide in the form of forced assimilation through education attempted to complete.

PART IX - Apologies and Acknowledgment

            Native Americans have long been made to feel as if the treatment they have endured is their own fault, that they are less than human, and what they have survived was something they deserved. The answer to how someone overcomes such a traumatic and devastating past as an individual and as a nation may be as varied as the number of individuals who have survived this history, but one thing is certain: if there is no acknowledgement by the government and the church denominations who were involved in this genocidal system of wrongdoing then there is no cause for the trauma to end and the possibility of healing is greatly reduced. These crimes must be acknowledged. Knowing that many of the problems they struggle with, as survivors of the schools and the history leading up to them are not their fault would go a long way toward healing and restoration. Concurrently, if perpetrators don't believe that they are doing something wrong they are bound to continue that behavior.

            Canada has made far greater strides than the U.S. in seeking the truth of this legacy within their own past, though much more remains to be done. The Canadian government has acknowledged and apologized for what happened with the schools and set up a truth and reconciliation commission which concluded in December 2015, providing 94 calls to action.[91] The U.S. government, in stark contrast to its northern neighbor, has not acknowledged the crimes it has promoted and committed for centuries against indigenous people whether through wars and conquest or through the schools.

            In 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law an official apology to Indian tribes. It is about half a page long and is tucked away on page 45 out of 67 pages of a weapons appropriation bill, public law 111–118, SEC. 8113. It was done without ceremony behind closed doors without any Native American leaders, elders, or other tribal members present.[92] When this bill was first introduced by Senator Sam Brownback, it was far more lengthy and specific, acknowledging that the U.S.

. . . forced Indian tribes and their citizens to move away from their traditional homelands and onto federally established and controlled reservations . . . many Native Peoples suffered and perished (1) during the execution of the official Federal Government policy of forced removal, including the infamous Trail of Tears and Long Walk; (2) during bloody armed confrontations and massacres, such as the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 and the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890; and (3) on numerous Indian reservations . . .  the Federal Government condemned the traditions, beliefs, and customs of Native Peoples and endeavored to assimilate them . . . and the forcible removal of Native children from their families to faraway boarding schools where their Native practices and languages were degraded and forbidden . . . officials of the Federal Government and private United States citizens harmed Native Peoples by the unlawful acquisition of recognized tribal land and the theft of tribal resources and assets from recognized tribal land . . . the policies of the Federal Government toward Indian tribes and the breaking of covenants with Indian tribes have contributed to the severe social ills and economic troubles in many Native communities today.[93]

While his resolution was roughly six pages long, what ended up in the weapons bill was a watered down, vague, nonspecific mere fraction of his intended bill. Nothing in the bill that was signed by the President took any responsibility on the part of the government for its role in these atrocities, nor did it actually apologize to any specific Indian tribes, offering a general apology on "behalf of the American people." It is disappointing to note that there was a press release issued about the weapons bill but there was no mention or acknowledgement of the apology in any form, nor were any Native American tribes notified of the apology.[94] Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center and a Potawatomi Nation member, responded, 

You might think that something would be announced, that something would be said about it. After all, they're apologizing to Native Americans, and yet, I don't know that people have really heard about it. What kind of an apology is it when they don't tell the people they are apologizing to? For an apology to have any meaning at all, you do have to tell the people you're apologizing to. I have had my doubts on whether this is a true or meaningful apology, and this silence seems to speak very loudly on that point.[95]

By comparison, in 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a very public and televised statement of apology in the Canadian parliament on behalf of the Canadian government specifically to survivors of the Indian residential schools.[96] There were many indigenous people and leaders present, including Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, representing 633 indigenous communities in Canada.[97]

            In December 2016, at the height of the violence and population swell at the camps at Standing Rock, ND, former Army First Lieutenant and peace activist, Wes Clark Jr., had two intentions in self-deploying to Standing Rock. In addition to calling up 4,000 veterans to go to Standing Rock to defend the peaceful water protectors protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline who were being attacked by military, police, and private security firms in what amounted to massive human rights abuses, he also came with the secondary intention of offering an apology to the Native people. In speaking directly to the many Native American leaders and people that came to Standing Rock, Clark Jr. offered an honest, personal, emotional, and humble apology, saying,

Many of us, me particularly, are from the units that have hurt you over the many years. We came. We fought you. We took your land. We signed treaties that we broke. We stole minerals from your sacred hills. We blasted the faces of our presidents onto your sacred mountain. Then we took still more land and then we took your children and then we tried to take your language and we tried to eliminate your language that God gave you, and the Creator gave you. We didn’t respect you, we polluted your Earth, we’ve hurt you in so many ways but we’ve come to say that we are sorry. We are at your service and we beg for your forgiveness.[98]

Many Native leaders and elders who were there accepted the apology, including Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Phyllis Young, Faith Spotted Eagle, Jon Eagle Sr., Paula Horne, Ivan Looking Horse, Chief Leonard Crow Dog, and many others. This is what an apology should start out as looking like, not tucked into another weapons appropriations bill done behind closed doors.

            Even though the U.S. government has not acknowledged or apologized for the crimes of these schools, several of the church denominations who were involved in the running of the schools have. In 1993 the Anglican Church in Canada apologized for its role in the IRSs.[99] In 1998, the United Church of Canada apologized and was later actively involved in the TRC.[100] In 2001, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, one segment of the Catholic Church, apologized.[101] In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI apologized to Canadians for the church's role in the schools.[102] In the U.S., in 2012, the United Methodist Church held an Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous People service.[103] The Presbyterian Church apologized to Alaskan Indians and American Indians for its role in the schools in 2016.[104] The city council of Seattle, WA, passed resolution 31621 in 2015 acknowledging the crimes committed in the schools and calling for the U.S. "to examine its human rights record and to work with American Indian and Alaskan Native peoples in efforts of reconciliation in addressing the impacts of historical trauma, language and cultural loss, and alleged genocide.”[105] These apologies have been done publicly and spoken directly to various indigenous groups. They have also frequently included points of action for the churches to work to prevent further oppression of indigenous people, to educate their congregations, and to work with indigenous peoples to help them find healing.

PART X - What Now?

            The centuries of trauma that has been inflicted on indigenous peoples in the North, Central, and South Americas is truly incredible in the worst way. It's a miracle any of them survived the policies of destruction created specifically for their eradication. Their survival shows not only their humanity, something denied them for far too long, but also their strength, resilience, adaptability, courage, and wisdom, as well as their continued vulnerability and oppression.

            Native Americans make up roughly 0.9% of the American population and in Canada, First Nations represent 2.6% of the population, and yet they all suffer at much higher rates than non-Natives. [106] Intergenerational trauma, defined as the, "Exposure of an earlier generation to a traumatic event that continues to affect the subsequent generations," has affected Native communities and left them with higher levels of health and social issues than most other ethnicities.[107] They are reported to have higher rates of alcoholism, diabetes, tuberculosis, domestic violence, incarceration (38% higher than the national average, four times the rate of white men and six times the rate of white women, U.S. numbers[108]), and deaths than any other minority group, often by a wide margin. Deaths of Native Americans at the hands of law enforcement is more likely than any other group.[109] In the U.S., suicide among Natives Americans is 62% higher and is the second leading cause of death in Native American youths from 15-24 years old.[110] In Canada, suicide is the leading cause of death up to age 44, and in some communities the suicide rates are 11 times the national average.[111]

            Rates of Native American children in foster care are 1.6 times what is considered average and "Native American children make up a greater proportion of children in foster care than in the general population."[112] In 2008 a report released in Canada showed that Aboriginal kids made up 51% of kids in foster care in British Columbia, while only making up 8% of the population.[113] As late as 2015 in South Dakota, home to some of the poorest reservations in the country, more than 80% of Native American children were still being forcibly removed from their homes by the hundreds every year and placed with mainly white foster families with their parents rarely being allowed to tell their side of the situation.[114] These children make up 13.8% of the child population in the state but make up 56.3% of children in foster care.[115] This continued forcible removal of Native children by the government was done not only in direct violation of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which was passed with the design of keeping Native families together and ending the practice of forcing Native children into IRSs or white homes, but it is also an example of ongoing genocide being committed.[116]

            These are well documented statistics but they are rarely if ever heard of in the media, yet another way in which the dominant society deliberately oppresses indigenous people. Even in the midst of current conversations and tensions about racial disparity in this country, the inclusion of Native Americans and their struggles against white supremacy is widely absent.

            Prior to European contact, suicide, domestic violence, alcoholism, and poor health statistics were relatively unheard of. These problems were introduced into these communities by Europeans and/or have materialized as a result of the ongoing oppression and violence they have faced. There is a direct correlation between the IRSs and many of these statistics. Men and women who were raised in these schools were never taught how to create a family or to be parents. Rupert Ross, attorney and author, explains, "The combination of childhood trauma and emotional numbing is, in my view, one of the most important legacies of residential school. . . Parents cannot teach what they never learned, and they cannot demonstrate what they have never experienced."[117] Their coping mechanism became to self-numb through substance abuse and violent behavior. All they learned was strict discipline, violence, and shame about their identity. If they survived these schools and became parents, they lacked adequate skills to build a strong healthy family or community. Children of IRS survivors who never went to these schools often have higher rates of social problems than the survivors themselves.

            Matthew War Bonnet is a Lakota from South Dakota who attended school at St. Francis Indian Mission School from the age of 6 until 8th grade, going 10 1/2 months out of the year. As an adult survivor, he had the opportunity to confront one of the abusive priests from his school years. He said he wanted them to take responsibility for their actions, tell what happened, create spaces for healing and learning, and to teach Native students their history. He felt that if the priests would acknowledge what they did, that would bring some healing.[118] Not everyone who survived the schools has had nor will have the opportunity to confront their abusers as War Bonnet was able to do but, hopefully, the U.S. will one day work to find the truth and create the space for survivors to share their stories in a meaningful way.

            How does a group of people who have been so traumatized for generations and who still face a great deal of oppression and marginalization overcome this painful history and begin to thrive? There isn't just one answer and each survivor may offer a different one, but there are a few suggestions that many survivors agree would contribute positively to their healing and equal treatment.

            Firstly, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the crimes committed against them in the schools by those responsible for initiating and carrying out those crimes, namely the governments and the churches. Without any acknowledgement of wrongdoing, there is little possibility the crimes will actually cease for if there is no belief that any wrongs were committed or are ongoing, there is no reason to stop or prevent those practices. We would no more expect a person suffering a violent attack to forgive the attacker and begin healing while the attack was ongoing than we should expect Native peoples to be able to find healing and wholeness while crimes are still being committed against them. One only needs to scour the news to find current examples of ongoing crimes against Native people. Indigenous people, especially those who went to an IRS, were made to believe in their inferiority and inhumanity, that their inadequacies were their own doing and that the abuses heaped upon them were their own fault. An acknowledgement that the policies and beliefs were wrong and that they did not bring this upon themselves is vastly important.

            Secondly, an official apology for the crimes committed would greatly contribute to the process of healing. A heartfelt, honest, specific public apology offered humbly and directly to Native people that acknowledges wrongdoing and the intent to discontinue harmful practices would be significant. Apologizing and seeking forgiveness for wrongdoing are central teachings of the Christian faith and as such, should be one every Christian church that has been involved in any way with these schools should be anxious to do.

            Thirdly, there should be a national educational campaign of truth-telling which includes survivors input and stories. As ironic as it may be, education is crucial to understanding this history and contributing to any possible healing for our Native American brothers and sisters. Their experiences and histories are important and need to be shared and taught. This has been a largely hidden history that many people have never heard of but is one that everyone needs to be educated on. "While living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in which is a product of that past."[119] This has not just been their history, it has been all of ours, as well.

            Other suggestions for addressing this painful history include ensuring the federal government maintains its responsibilities to provide adequate funding to Native tribes that allow for access to mental health and treatment facilities which can provide therapy for survivors, family members, and the community as a whole and reparations for these crimes. While doing little to alleviate the emotional and psychological pain that has been inflicted reparations would benefit the communities, some of which, as mentioned above, are living in extreme poverty. This is by no means an exhaustive list but it is a starting point.

            If we remain ignorant of this past and therefore ignorant of its effect on the present, we are directly contributing to the continual infliction of trauma. “The only way to wake up from our complacency is to come face-to-face with those who are paying the price for our unjust ways of living.”[120] Whatever the steps forward look like, they must begin, first and foremost, with meeting, listening to and learning from our Native American brothers and sisters and acknowledging what has happened.

APPENDIX

Appendix 1 - Text from a letter James H. Wilbur wrote in 1871 to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

“I have known the common sentiment of the country regarding the Indian race as doomed to extermination; that it expects no high results from the appliances of the Indian bureau, in the way of ameliorating either the moral or material condition of the race. So deeply seated and universal is this feeling that it is useless to try to make anything of an Indian more than an ignorant savage; that all direct and positive endeavor to instruct and benefit him is scouted as a vain and foolish attempt; and out of this feeling grows a tacit justification in the minds of Indian officers not only, but in the mind of the country generally of that loose and inefficient, not to say, dishonest way of conducting the Indian service which has brought it into great desrepute. [sic] The argument is, if the Indian will be savage in spite of the most faithful and honest appliances of the means appropriated for his benefit then it were as well to divert these means to the political and personal advantage of those to whom they are instructed. . . I have always taken direct and practical issue with this popular heresy. I believe, and always have believed, in the manhood of the Indian and in the possibility of elevating him to a high state of civilization. The fact that the government service has so generally failed in his improvement is no mystery to me. Looking at the question from a Christian standpoint, I cannot see how the result could have been different from what we see it; nor do I find the failure chargeable to anything inherent in Indian character. True, he is ignorant, treacherous and crule [sic] by nature; he is destitute of moral character; he is poor in every respect. He needs everything that enters into the comforts of civilization but his first great want in character. Failing to give him character all material gifts but hasten his degradation and render his future destruction more positive and complete.”

"Indian Agent Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1871," James H. Wilbur, Indian Agent to Gen. T. J. McKenny, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, WA territory, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA.

Appendix 2 - Original text from 1823 Johnson and Graham's Lessee v. William McIntosh

Not only has the practice of all civilized nations been in conformity with this doctrine, but the whole theory of their titles to lands in America, rests upon the hypothesis, that the Indians had no right of soil as sovereign, independent states. Discovery is the foundation of title, in European nations, and this overlooks all proprietary rights in the natives. . . According to every theory of property, the Indians had no individual rights to land; nor had they any collectively, or in their national capacity; for the lands occupied by each tribe were not used by them in such a manner as to prevent their being appropriated by a people of cultivators. All the proprietary rights of civilized nations on this continent are founded on this principle. The right derived from discovery and conquest, can rest on no other basis; and all existing titles depend on the fundamental title of the crown by discovery. The title of the crown (as representing the nation) passed to the colonists by charters, which were absolute grants of the soil; and it was a first principle in colonial law, that all titles must be derived from the crown. . . But, as they were all in pursuit of nearly the same object, it was necessary, in order to avoid conflicting settlements, and consequent war with each other, to establish a principle, which all should acknowledge as the law by which the right of acquisition, which they all asserted, should be regulated as between themselves. This principle was, that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession. . . While the different nations of Europe respected the right of the natives, as occupants, they asserted the ultimate dominion to be in themselves; and claimed and exercised, as a consequence of this ultimate dominion, a power to grant the soil, while yet in possession of the natives. These grants have been understood by all, to convey a title to the grantees, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy. . . The history of America, from its discovery to the present day, proves, we think, the universal recognition of these principles. . . The same principle continued to be recognised. [sic] The charter granted to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in 1578, authorizes him to discover and take possession of such remote, heathen, and barbarous lands, as were not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people. . . The United States, then, have unequivocally acceded to that great and broad rule by which its civilized inhabitants now hold this country. They hold, and assert in themselves, the title by which it was acquired. They maintain, as all others have maintained, that discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or by conquest. . . Conquest gives a title which the Courts of the conqueror cannot deny

JOHNSON and GRAHAM'S Lessee v. WILLIAM M'INTOSH. 21 U.S. 543 (8 Wheat. 543, 5 L.Ed. 681), Decided: March 10, 1823, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/21/543.

Appendix 3 - Original text from Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 6 Pet. 515 (1832).

The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves, or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress. The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation is, by our Constitution and laws, vested in the Government of the United States… The very fact of repeated treaties with them recognizes [sic] it, and the settled doctrine of the law of nations is that a weaker power does not surrender its independence -- its right to self-government -- by associating with a stronger and taking protection . . . the United States of America acknowledge the said Cherokee Nation to be a sovereign nation, authorized [sic] to govern themselves, and all persons who have settled within their territory, free from any right of legislative interference by the several states composing the United States of America in reference to acts done within their own territory, and by which treaties the whole of the territory now occupied by the Cherokee Nation on the east of the Mississippi has been solemnly guarantied to them, all of which treaties are existing treaties at this day, and in full force.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/31/515/case.html.

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Pratt, Richard H. "The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites." In National Conference of Charities and Correction: Bulletins and schedules: Pamphlet box., 45-58. Boston: Press of Geo. H. Ellis. Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, Denver, CO. Vol. 1-33. 1892. Accessed July 27, 2017. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hl3txl;view=1up;seq=69;size=75.

Puxley, Chinta. "How many First Nations kids died in residential schools? Justice Murray Sinclair says Canada needs answers." Thestar.com. May 31, 2015. Accessed April 9, 2017. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/31/how-many-first-nations-kids-died-in-residential-schools-justice-murray-sinclair-says-canada-needs-answers.html.

Saunders, Doug. "Residential schools, reserves and Canada's crime against humanity." The Globe and Mail. June 06, 2015. Accessed May 23, 2017. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/commissions-report-puts-canada-on-brink-of-a-historic-reckoning/article24825565/.

Schwartz, Daniel. "Residential school students had same odds of dying as soldiers in WW II." CBCnews. June 03, 2015. Accessed August 13, 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-by-the-numbers-1.3096185.

Sellars, Bev. They Called Me Number One Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School. New York: Talonbooks, 2013.

Shulman, Michael and Jesse Tahirali. "Suicide among Canada's First Nations: Key numbers," CTVNews. 2016. Accessed August 15, 2017. http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/suicide-among-canada-s-first-nations-key-numbers-1.2854899.

Smith, Andrea. Indigenous Peoples and Boarding Schools: A Comparative Study. United Nations Report. May 29, 2009. Accessed May 21, 2017. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/E_C_19_2009_crp1.pdf.

Smith, Bob, and Bill Phipps. "1986 Apology to First Nations Peoples." Address, The United Church of Canada 31st General Council. 1986. Accessed July 29, 2017.  http://www.united-church.ca/social-action/justice-initiatives/apologies.

Smith, James. Away From Their Barbarous Influences: the Yakama Boarding School at Fort Simcoe. Toppenish, WA: Yakama Nation Cultural Heritage Center and Museum, 1993.

Stannard, David E. American holocaust: the conquest of the New World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Star Editorial Board. "Saskatchewan sterilizations shame the nation: Editorial." Thestar.com. July 30, 2017. Accessed August 13, 2017. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2017/07/30/saskatchewan-sterilizations-shame-the-nation-editorial.html.

"Sterilization Policy." Inclusion BC. Accessed August 13, 2017. http://www.inclusionbc.org/about-us/social-policy-positions/sterilization.

Sullivan, Laura. "Native American Tribes Win Child Welfare Case In South Dakota." NPR. March 31, 2015. Accessed August 17, 2017. http://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/396636927/native-american-tribes-win-child-welfare-case-in-south-dakota.

Suzuki, David. "This First Nation Is Still Under Boil-Water Advisory After 21 Years." EcoWatch. February 20, 2017. Accessed April 14, 2017. https://www.ecowatch.com/suzuki-first-nation-water-advisory-2262953532.html.

Taliman, Valerie. "Veterans Ask for Forgiveness and Healing in Standing Rock." Indian Country Media Network. December 7, 2016. Accessed August 14, 2017. Https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/veterans/veterans-ask-forgiveness-and-healing-standing-rock/.

Troian, Martha. "Indian residential schools: 5,300 alleged abusers located by Ottawa." CBCnews. February 02, 2016. Accessed August 16, 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/residential-school-alleged-abusers-iap-1.3422770.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action. Report. 2012. http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf.

UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. December 9, 1948. United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 78, p. 277. Accessed March 12, 2017. http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3ac0.html.

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Walker, Francis A. The Indian Question. Boston, MA: James R. Osgood and Company, 1874, 77-78. Accessed June 11, 2017. https://ia600701.us.archive.org/18/items/indianquestion00walk/indianquestion00walk_bw.pdf.

Walker, Richard. "Seattle Continues Healing ‘Deep Wounds’ With Boarding School Resolution." Indian Country Today. October 20, 2015. Accessed February 15, 2016. https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/seattle-continues-healing-deep-wounds-with-boarding-school-resolution/.

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---

[1] They are called Indian residential schools in Canada and Indian boarding schools in the U.S. For the purpose of this paper, I generally use the residential school term to cover both as it is a more distinct term. I use the terms Indian, Native American, Native, First Nations and indigenous peoples throughout the paper interchangeably. Wherever possible I use the term Native American or Native when not referring directly to specific language used. First Nations is a term frequently used in Canada. The term "Indian" is often used by sources I interviewed and as such does not appear to be offensive. I also use the term indigenous people to refer to people who were here before Europeans arrived.

[2] Andrea Smith, Indigenous Peoples and Boarding Schools: A Comparative Study, United Nations Report, May 29, 2009, accessed May 21, 2017, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/E_C_19_2009_crp1.pdf.

[3] CBC News, "A timeline of residential schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission," CBCnews, 2014, accessed August 13, 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-timeline-of-residential-schools-the-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-1.724434.

[4] Northern Plains Reservation Aid, "History and Culture Boarding Schools," Northern Plains Reservation Aid, accessed August 13, 2017, http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_hist_boardingschools.

[5] The fourteen tribes and bands that signed the treaty are the Yakama, Palouis, Pisquouse, Wenatchsahpam, Klikatat, Klingquit, Kow-was-say-ee, Li-was, Skin-pha, Wish-ham, Shyiks, Ocehchotes, Ka-milt-pha, and Se-ap-Cat. I use the spelling Yakama whenever possible as that is the current spelling of the tribe. They officially changed the spelling in mid 1990s from Yakima.

[6] "Yakama Nation History: Yakama Nation Treaty of 1855," Yakima Nation, accessed July 18, 2017, https://www.fws.gov/pacific/ea/tribal/treaties/Yakima.pdf.

[7] James Smith, Away From Their Barbarous Influences: the Yakama Boarding School at Fort Simcoe, Toppenish, WA, Yakama Nation Cultural Heritage Center and Museum, 1993. The school was later named Wilbur School after Father Wilbur.

[8] Corey Greaves interview by author, Wapato, WA, 2017.

[9] The Civilization Fund Act of 1819, accessed July 17, 2017, http://www.memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage.

[10] A. Smith, Indigenous Peoples and Boarding Schools.

[11] Doug Saunders, “Residential schools, reserves and Canada’s crime against humanity,” The Globe and Mail, June 5, 2015, accessed May 23, 2017,  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/commissions-report-puts-canada-on-brink-of-a-historic-reckoning/article24825565/.

[12] James H. Wilbur, “Indian Agent Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” September 1, 1876, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA. “The day-schools, where the children live with their parents, are a total failure in every instance that has come under my observation for the last sixteen years.”

[13] Carolyn Marr, "Assimilation Through Education: Indian Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest," University of Washington Libraries, 2000, accessed August 5, 2017, http://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/marr.html.

[14] Francis A. Walker, The Indian Question, Boston, MA, James R. Osgood and Company, 1874, 77-78, accessed June 11, 2017, https://ia600701.us.archive.org/18/items/indianquestion00walk/indianquestion00walk_bw.pdf.

[15] E. J. Brooks, "Circular No. 43 Civilization," March 10, 1880, Relander Collection, Yakima Valley Library, Yakima, WA.

[16] In Canada, the pass system was a policy that was never actually passed into law but was used from the mid-1880s until the 1940s which required First Nations people to obtain a pass to leave their reserves for any reason. It was proposed by Hayter Reed, Indian Agent, in 1885, saying, "No rebel Indians should be allowed off the Reserves without a pass signed by an I.D. official. The dangers of complications with white men will thus be lessened & by preserving a knowledge of individual movements any inclination to petty depredations may be checked by the facility of apprehending those who commit such offences.” Bob Joseph, "Indian Act and the Pass System," Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., blog, June 23, 2015, accessed July 10, 2017, https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/indian-act-and-the-pass-system.

[17] The Indian Act, “Chapter 43,” 1876, accessed July 20, 2017,

http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/301/ic/cdc/aboriginaldocs/stat/pdf/Ia1886.pdf, originally from https://hallnjean2.wordpress.com/chronology-after-the-resistance-1870-1871-2/re-making-metis-treaty-scrip-and-the-indian-acts-2/5-the-indian-act/#_edn37.

[18] US Codes: Indians, “Chapter 7—Education of Indians: USC 283: Regulations for withholding rations for nonattendance at schools,” March 3, 1893, accessed July 20, 2017, http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:25%20section:283%20edition:prelim#sourcecredit.

[19] UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December 9, 1948, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 78, p. 277, accessed March 12, 2017, http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html. Many people use the term “cultural genocide” to refer to what happened with these schools as if it wasn’t genocide but to do so minimizes the crimes, does a huge disservice to this history, and works to invalidate the true nature of these practices. It was nothing less than genocide and should be named as such.

[20] Jim Fussell, "Declarations and Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," Prevent Genocide International, October 25, 2000, accessed August 14, 2017, http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/reservations/.

[21] A. Bancroft, "Indian Agency Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1862 G8," September 1, 1862, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA.

[22] Ibid.

[23] William Wright, "Indian Agency Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1864 No 1L," June 30, 1864, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA.

[24] J. Wilbur, "Indian Agency Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1865 No 7," July 22, 1865, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA. Most Indian agents were assigned to posts from the military, not the clergy.

[25] W. Wright, "Indian Agency Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1865 No 7a," June 30, 1865, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA.

[26] L. Beach, "Indian Agent Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1868," June 30, 1868, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA.

[27] Ibid.

[28] The "Indian problem" was more than just one issue. White settlers wanted Indian land and the refusal of Indians to easily give up their land was part of this problem. Another part of the problem was how to force the Indians to assimilate into white society or disappear. It also referred to the backwardness and pagan lifestyles of Indians as they were viewed by whites.

[29] J. Wilbur, "Indian Agent Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs," 1871, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA.

[30] J. Wilbur, "Indian Agent Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs," June 30, 1867, Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima, WA.

[31] J. Smith, Away From Their Barbarous Influences.

[32] Ibid.

[33] R. Belt, "Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs," May 27, 1889, Relander Collection, Yakima Valley Library, Yakima, WA.

[34] Wallace Strong, PhD, interview with the author, June 28, 2017.

[35] Corey Greaves interview by author, Wapato, WA, June 1, 2017.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School, New York, Talonbooks, 2013, 112.

[38] US Codes: Indians, "Chapter 7--Education of Indians:  USC 302: Indian Reform School, rules and regulations, consent of parents for placing youth in reform school," March 3, 1893, accessed June 25, 2017, http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title25/ chapter7&edition=prelim, emphasis mine..

[39] Ibid, "USC 283: Regulations for withholding rations for nonattendance at schools."

[40] Mark DeWolf, "I Went to an Indian Residential School, and My Father was the Principal," National Post, April 04, 2014, accessed June 27, 2017, https://waynekspear.com/2014/04/04/mark-dewolf.

[41] Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, U.S. Supreme Court, March 18, 1831, accessed July 20, 2017, https://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Curriculum%20Packets/Treaties%20&%20Reservations/Documents/Cherokee_Nation_v_Georgia.pdf.

[42] This practice was so effective in traumatizing children when they used their language that many survivors forgot their languages and/or refused to speak it even as adults or to teach it to their children who might suffer the same abuse. This has contributed to the loss of many Native languages, though there are some language revitalization programs being used in some areas to bring back the languages and the knowledge they hold.

[43] Gene Demby, "The Ugly, Fascinating History Of The Word 'Racism'," NPR, January 06, 2014, accessed July 7, 2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/05/260006815/the-ugly-fascinating-history-of-the-word-racism.

[44] Richard H. Pratt, "The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites," 1892, accessed July 27, 2017, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hl3txl;view=1up;seq=69;size=75.

[45] Demby, "The Ugly, Fascinating History."

[46] Northern Plains Reservation Aid, "History and Culture Boarding Schools." Also called the "outing system."

[47] Pratt, "The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites."

[48] Sellars, They Called Me Number One, 37.

[49] Ibid, 58.

[50] Ibid, 59-60.

[51] Ian Mosby, Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952, Report, May 2013, Histoire sociale / Social History, 145-72, accessed July 7, 2017, http://www.ianmosby.ca/administering-colonial-science.

[52] Sellars, They Called Me Number One, 43.

[53] Ibid, 62.

[54] "Sterilization Policy," Inclusion BC, accessed August 13, 2017, http://www.inclusionbc.org/about-us/social-policy-positions/sterilization.

[55] "Canada & the UN: Conventions and Treaties," Canadian Civil Liberties Association, May 17, 2016, accessed March 3, 2017, https://ccla.org/canada-the-un.

[56] Jana Grekul, "A well-oiled machine: Alberta's Eugenics program, 1928-1972," Alberta History, 2011, accessed June 3, 2017, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=264270506.

[57] Meaghan Craig, "Saskatoon Health Region releases report into unwanted tubal ligation procedures," Global News, July 28, 2017, accessed July 31, 2017, http://globalnews.ca/news/3630619/saskatoon-health-region-apology-aboriginal-mothers-women-tubal-ligation.

[58] Star Editorial Board, "Saskatchewan sterilizations shame the nation: Editorial," Thestar.com, 2017, accessed August 13, 2017, https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2017/07/30/saskatchewan-sterilizations-shame-the-nation-editorial.html.

[59] Paul Hackett, "The Legacy of TB in Canada’s Residential Schools The Importance of Looking Back," Report, accessed July 14, 2017, https://votremaisonsaine.ca/document.doc?id=2332.

[60] First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada, Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce: A Story of Courage, 2016, accessed July 17, 2017, https://fncaringsociety.com/sites/default/files/Dr.%20Peter%20Henderson%20Bryce%20Information%20Sheet.pdf.

[61] Bryce H. Henderson, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, Ottowa, Ottowa Governement Printing Bureau, 1907, 18-19.

[62] First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada, Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce.  Emphasis mine.

[63] Daniel Schwartz, "Residential school students had same odds of dying as soldiers in WWII," CBCnews, June 03, 2015, accessed August 13, 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-by-the-numbers-1.3096185.

[64] Kevin D. Annett, Unrepentant: Disrobing the Emperor, Winchester, U.K., O Books, 2010.

[65] "Indian Reorganization Act," Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed August 13, 2017, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-Reorganization-Act.

[66] Schwartz, "Residential school students."

[67] Tim Naumetz, "One in five students suffered sexual abuse at residential schools, figures indicate," The Globe and Mail, April 09, 2009, accessed August 16, 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/one-in-five-students-suffered-sexual-abuse-at-residential-schools-figures-indicate/article20440061/.

[68] Martha Troian, "Indian residential schools: 5,300 alleged abusers located by Ottawa," CBCnews, February 02, 2016, accessed August 16, 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/residential-school-alleged-abusers-iap-1.3422770.

[69] Ruth Hopkins, "Sexual Trauma: One Legacy of the Boarding School Era -Ruth Hopkins," Last Real Indians, March 25, 2013, accessed August 14, 2017, http://lastrealindians.com/sexual-trauma-one-legacy-of-the-boarding-school-era-ruth-hopkins/.

[70] Naumetz, "One in five students suffered sexual abuse."

[71] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Report, 2012, accessed March 5, 2017, http://nctr.ca/reports.php.

[72] Chinta Puxley, "How many First Nations kids died in residential schools? Justice Murray Sinclair says Canada needs answers," Thestar.com, May 31, 2015, accessed April 9, 2017, https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/31/how-many-first-nations-kids-died-in-residential-schools-justice-murray-sinclair-says-canada-needs-answers.html.

[73] Jeff Gammage, "Where is Little Plume? Indian boy's remains a mystery," Philly.com, August 14, 2017, accessed August 16, 2017, http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/carlisle-indian-school-little-plume-northern-arapaho-20170814.html.

[74] David E. Stannard, American holocaust: the conquest of the New World, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2006, 106.

[75] Ibid, 150-151.

[76] Ibid, 74-75.

[77] Ibid, 75.

[78] Pliny's Natural History from 77-79AD is widely credited for spreading the beliefs about the inferiority of non-European people.

[79] Pope Nicholas V, Dum Diversas, June 18, 1452, Blog, accessed May 6, 2017, http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.de/2011/02/dum-diversas-english-translation.html.

[80] Pope Nicholas V, Romanus Pontifex, 1454, accessed May 5, 2017, https://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/indig-romanus-pontifex.html. Emphasis mine.

[81] Pope Alexander VI, The Bull Inter Caetera, May 4, 1493, accessed May 6, 2017, http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/indig-inter-caetera.html.

[82] Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. William M'Intosh, U.S. Supreme Court, March 10, 1823, accessed June 5, 2017, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/21/543.

[83] Indian Removal Act, 21st Cong., 411, 1830, accessed June 20, 2017, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=004/llsl004.db&recNum=458.

[84] Cherokee Nation vs. The State of Georgia.

[85] Ibid, Emphasis mine.

[86] Worcester v. Georgia, U.S. Supreme Court, 31 U.S. 6 Pet. 515, 1832, accessed June 22, 2017, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/31/515/case.html.

[87] Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Indigenous people’s history of the United States. Boston, MA, Beacon, 2015, 12.

NCAI, An Introduction to Indian Nations in the United States, NCAI, accessed June 23, 2017, http://www.ncai.org/about-tribes/indians_101.pdf.

[88] "First Nations," The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed August 7, 2017, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/first-nations/.

[89] David Suzuki, "This First Nation Is Still Under Boil-Water Advisory After 21 Years," EcoWatch, February 20, 2017, accessed April 13, 2017, https://www.ecowatch.com/suzuki-first-nation-water-advisory-2262953532.html.

[90] James A. Broderick and Jill A. Broderick, "July, 1845 – John L. O’Sullivan Advises Americans of Their ‘Manifest Destiny’," Legal Legacy, Blog, July 11, 2014, accessed June 2, 2017, https://legallegacy.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/july-1845-john-l-osullivan-advises-americans-of-their-manifest-destiny/.

[91] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action, Report, 2012, accessed September 29, 2016, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf.

[92] Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, Public Law 111-118, 111th Congress, [December 19, 2009]: H.R. 3326, accessed July 20, 2017, https://www.congress.gov/111/plaws/publ118/PLAW-111publ118.pdf.

[93] Res. S. J. RES. 14 , 111th Congress, 1st sess., April 30, 2009, accessed July 20, 2017, https://www.congress.gov/111/bills/sjres14/BILLS-111sjres14is.pdf.

[94] Rob Capriccioso, "A sorry saga: Obama signs Native American apology resolution; fails to draw attention to it," Staging ILRC, January 13, 2010, accessed August 14, 2017, http://indianlaw.org/node/529.

[95] Ibid.

[96] Stephen Harper, "Statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools," Government of Canada; Indian and Northern Affairs Canada; Communications Branch, September 15, 2010, accessed August 12, 2016, http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649.

[97] DeNeen L. Brown, "Canadian Government Apologizes For Abuse of Indigenous People," The Washington Post, June 12, 2008, accessed August 14, 2017, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/11/AR2008061100419.html.

[98] Valerie Taliman, "Veterans Ask for Forgiveness and Healing in Standing Rock," Indian Country Media Network, December 7, 2016, accessed August 14, 2017, https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/veterans/veterans-ask-forgiveness-and-healing-standing-rock/.

[99] Michael Peers, "The Apology - A message from the Primate, Archbishop Michael Peers, to the National Native Convocation," Address, National Native Convocation, Ontario, Minaki, August 06, 1993, accessed July 29, 2017, http://www.anglican.ca/tr/apology/english/.

[100] Bob Smith, and Bill Phipps, "1986 Apology to First Nations Peoples," Address, The United Church of Canada 31st General Council, 1986, accessed July 29, 2017, http://www.united-church.ca/social-action/justice-initiatives/apologies.

[101] Doug Crosby, OMI, "The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate An Apology to the First Nations of Canada," Address, Oblate Conference of Canada, Canada, 2001, accessed August 5, 2017, http://caid.ca/MisOblMarImmApo2001.pdf.

[102] The Associated Press, "Canadian Indians get apology from pontiff," NewsOK.com, April 30, 2009, accessed August 15, 2017, http://newsok.com/article/3365504.

[103] "Act of Repentance Toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous People," Proceedings of The United Methodist General Conference, Tampa Convention Center, Tampa, FL, April 27, 2012, accessed July 29, 2017, http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/gc2012-starting-along-the-path-of-repentance.

[104] Lisa Demer, "Presbyterian Church apologizes at AFN for boarding school abuses," Alaska Dispatch News, October 24, 2016, accessed May 9, 2017, https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2016/10/22/presbyterian-church-apologizes-for-boarding-school-abuses-as-afn-wraps-up-its-convention/.

[105] Richard Walker, "Seattle Continues Healing ‘Deep Wounds’ With Boarding School Resolution," Indian Country Today, October 20, 2015, accessed February 15, 2017, https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/seattle-continues-healing-deep-wounds-with-boarding-school-resolution/.

[106] "Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: First Nations People, Métis and Inuit," Census Program, 2016, accessed August 17, 2017, http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-011-x/99-011-x2011001-eng.cfm. Métis comprised 1.4%, and Inuit 0.2%.

NCAI, "Indian Country Demographics," 2017, accessed August 2, 2017, http://www.ncai.org/about-tribes/demographics.

[107] Iva GreyWolf, PhD, "Out of the Darkness," Proceedings of APA Division 35 Mid -Winter EC Meeting, Seattle, WA, accessed June 29, 2017, http://www.apadivisions.org/division-35/sections/section-six/american-indian-intergenerational-trauma.pdf.

[108] Jake Flanagin, "Native Americans are the unseen victims of a broken US justice system," Quartz, 2015, accessed August 15, 2017, https://qz.com/392342/native-americans-are-the-unseen-victims-of-a-broken-us-justice-system/.

[109] Ibid. In Canada, the suicide rates are 5-6 times higher.

Michael Shulman and Jesse Tahirali, "Suicide among Canada's First Nations: Key numbers," CTVNews, 2016, accessed August 15, 2017, http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/suicide-among-canada-s-first-nations-key-numbers-1.2854899.

[110] NCAI, "Indian Country Demographics."

[111] "Indigenous Suicide Prevention," Centre for Suicide Prevention, accessed August 10, 2017, https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/indigenous-suicide-prevention/.

[112] "American Indian Children Overrepresented in Nation's Foster Care System, New Report Finds," The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2007, accessed August 15, 2017, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases/2007/11/19/american-indian-children-overrepresented-in-nations-foster-care-system-new-report-finds.

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[114] Laura Sullivan, "Native American Tribes Win Child Welfare Case In South Dakota," NPR, 2015, accessed August 17, 2017, http://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/396636927/native-american-tribes-win-child-welfare-case-in-south-dakota.

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