The Department of the Interior has located 53 cemeteries and mass graves
It took Joe Biden to appoint the first Native American as secretary of the interior for the United States government to face the task of bringing justice to the Indians of his country. The first report on boarding schools dedicated to “civilizing” the children of “savages” reveals that between 1819 and 1869 alone, more than 400 federal schools were opened for the “assimilation of Indians” and a thousand more were subsidized.
For Home Secretary Deb Haaland, it’s a personal matter. Her parents were among those children dragged to boarding schools where they had their hair cut, dressed in military-style uniforms, forbidden to speak their language, and made into forced labor. It is known that the Indian customs were removed with sticks and some even the red skin. The first volume, of what is anticipated to be a lengthy investigation, documents the existence of at least 53 cemeteries, some of them without any signage. In other words, simple mass graves into which the bodies of those children between the ages of 8 and 20 were thrown. Those who survived were returned to the family in a state unrecognizable to their parents.
The documentation of these abuses and the identification of new graves is part of the recommendations made by the deputy to the secretary of the interior, Bryan Newland, in the report that seems to be the tip of the iceberg. The interior secretary herself has promised to start a long tour of all the Indian reservations that remain in the country over the next year to “heal together.” In fact, this Thursday the first assembly took place to decide whether to establish a truth commission to bring to light the traumatic past and offer justice to the descendants of those “civilized” children by force.
The trail of those human rights violations was camouflaged for 150 years by calling them “orphans,” but Deborah Parker, president of the National Coalition to Heal Native American Boarding Schools, reminded Wednesday that that was not the case. “Our children had parents, they had a family, they had a language and a culture,” she said through tears during the presentation of the report. The federal government forced Indian families who did not want to send their children to boarding schools to do so by withholding food rations necessary for their subsistence, “even those promised in the treaties signed with the Indian nations,” Newland acknowledged in the report. In some cases they were even taken away by force, as happened with the children of Indio Geronimo at the end of the war with the Apaches.
Navajos, Cherokees, Seminoles… Little by little they were disappearing, “because if you want to end a culture, the first thing you do is prevent new generations from knowing it,” Parker explained. According to the Secretary of the Interior, “there is not a single Native American in the United States who has not been affected by these policies.” His job will be to investigate their magnitude and find a formula to offer reparations to alleviate that dark legacy. Depressions, alcoholism, violence, health problems… The consequences have led the Native American tribes to poverty and marginalization for generations. In Alaska, for example, they represent 18% of the population but 40% of those who go through the criminal justice system.
Haaland assured that President Biden supports his crusade to do justice to his people. His initiative will have seven million dollars available this year, endowed by Congress, to continue the investigation of the mass graves and begin the list of those who passed through those boarding schools, based on the tribes to which they belonged.
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