Dr. Samuel B. Torres and Stephen R. Curley: The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition's Work for Transformative Justice

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09/23/2022 Added

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Reckoning and Reconciliation in Education, Sept. 15, 2022. Samuel B. Torres and Stephen R. Curley from the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Title: "The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition's Work for Transformative Justice"

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[00:00:06.510]We have two amazing speakers today from the
[00:00:11.327]National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
[00:00:15.055]And so we have plenty of time for them,
[00:00:17.725]I wanna get started introducing them
[00:00:19.737]and feel free of course, to keep eating as you listen.
[00:00:24.030]So I really truly honored our speakers today.
[00:00:29.850]I've had the great blessing to get to know them,
[00:00:32.820]both Samuel Torres and Steven Curley,
[00:00:36.870]over the last several years through our share interest
[00:00:40.946]in exposing the history of,
[00:00:43.560]and working toward healing from Indian boarding schools.
[00:00:49.290]And so we're really delighted to have you today
[00:00:51.630]at the conference.
[00:00:54.360]Dr. Samuel Torres is the Deputy CEO of the
[00:00:57.960]National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
[00:01:01.110]or NABS is an easier way to say it.
[00:01:05.400]Dr. Torres first joined NNABSC in 2019,
[00:01:08.220]as the Director of Research and Programs
[00:01:11.010]where he led research teams on Indian boarding schools
[00:01:14.100]and Indian removal study,
[00:01:16.320]with the first nations Institute,
[00:01:19.140]at the University of Minnesota.
[00:01:21.281]And NABS is based in Minneapolis in the city of Minnesota.
[00:01:25.860]Dr. Torres has been coordinating with the
[00:01:28.140]U.S Department of the Interiors,
[00:01:29.470]Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative,
[00:01:31.680]which you'll probably hear more about soon.
[00:01:34.770]He has a doctorate of educational leadership
[00:01:37.260]for social justice from Loyola, Marymount University,
[00:01:41.430]and his work encompasses the impacts of colonization
[00:01:44.550]on historical and contemporary education methods.
[00:01:48.000]Particularly the legacy of Indian board schools.
[00:01:51.600]Dr. Torres is Mexica Nahua on his father's side,
[00:01:56.160]and Irish Scottish on his mother's side.
[00:01:59.130]In addition to learning and practicing Nahua language
[00:02:02.850]traditions in ceremony, he belongs Mexica
[00:02:06.045]leadership community in St. Paul, Minnesota.
[00:02:09.780]And Steven Curley is the Director of Digital Archives
[00:02:13.350]for NABS, and he's an enrolled citizen of the Dine,
[00:02:16.897]or Najavo nation.
[00:02:18.660]He began his tenure at NABS in 2019 also.
[00:02:24.180]He's a professional archivist
[00:02:25.830]who's committed to being of service to tribal community
[00:02:28.380]archives and museums.
[00:02:30.450]Through his work, he continues to reaffirm
[00:02:32.640]that tribal archives and its monuments
[00:02:35.610]to the traditional knowledge systems
[00:02:37.710]and old institutions,
[00:02:39.660]which will sustain the cultural memories of tribal peoples.
[00:02:44.008]Stephen holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology
[00:02:47.430]with a minor in American Indian Studies
[00:02:49.410]from the University of Arizona
[00:02:51.180]and a Master of Arts in Library and Information Science
[00:02:54.150]also from the University of Arizona.
[00:02:57.243]And he's got there (indistinct) on it.
[00:03:02.070]He's got a focus on archival practices and methodologies,
[00:03:05.880]and he has worked with tribal governments, groups,
[00:03:08.010]and communities regarding the development
[00:03:09.720]of cultural heritage institution services,
[00:03:12.090]programming, and information management capacities.
[00:03:16.920]So please join me in welcoming Dr. Torres,
[00:03:20.100]and Stephen Curley.
[00:03:22.034](audience applauding)
[00:03:35.969](Dr. Torres speaking foreign language)
[00:03:48.750]So hello and greeting to all of you today.
[00:03:53.184]My name is Samuel Torres or Sam for short,
[00:03:57.308]for those of you in the event, some time with before.
[00:04:03.186]I am Mexica Nahua,
[00:04:05.194]my family is originally (indistinct).
[00:04:07.958]Most of my relatives now live in Los Angeles
[00:04:10.620]where I was born and raised,
[00:04:12.450]particularly in Northeast,
[00:04:16.380]downtown LA area, in El Hills.
[00:04:20.400]I am the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of NABS
[00:04:24.519]and was hired for (indistinct) programs
[00:04:27.878]back when NABS was a little bit smaller
[00:04:30.480]than we are right now.
[00:04:31.890]NABS was formed in 2011.
[00:04:38.130]As largely as a mandate,
[00:04:41.370]a social political mandate
[00:04:43.860]certainly have pursuit of formation,
[00:04:45.510]the truth reconciliation commission
[00:04:47.130]and the settlement process in Canada,
[00:04:49.140]and the desire for such a process to happen,
[00:04:52.680]particularly of truth, accountability, justice,
[00:04:55.500]and human in the United States.
[00:04:57.342]As we know now,
[00:04:59.016]particularly because of not just the work that NABS has done
[00:05:01.535]in the past 10 years, over 10 years,
[00:05:04.740]but for many other tribal leaders, activists,
[00:05:08.520]or school survivors, descendants tribal nations,
[00:05:11.910]doing incredible work over the past several generations.
[00:05:16.470]So this is work that has not existed in the vacuum
[00:05:19.980]is a generational struggle.
[00:05:21.870]And one that's for what feels like,
[00:05:26.160]I think the first time
[00:05:27.810]the federal government starting to pay attention
[00:05:29.760]is really the national consciousness,
[00:05:31.470]the social political consciousness of the United States
[00:05:33.952]really starting to pay attention.
[00:05:34.890]So we are really occupying a very unique moment right now,
[00:05:38.010]and honored to be able to be here,
[00:05:40.140]to share some of our work with you,
[00:05:41.820]as well as some of the obstacles and the struggles
[00:05:45.459]that we see and really kind of,
[00:05:47.700]we'll finish up with a little bit of
[00:05:49.000]a call to action as well.
[00:05:50.743]I'm also incredibly honored to be here today
[00:05:53.463]with my colleague, Steve Curley.
[00:05:57.734]We were hired at the same time as Margaret mentioned.
[00:06:00.690]And we both kind of made this jump,
[00:06:03.570]leaving kinda our home lands from the, you know,
[00:06:07.560]the Southwest and moving to a place such as Minnesota,
[00:06:11.130]where it can feel like winter for half a year.
[00:06:13.710]So it's been a little bit of a
[00:06:16.873]struggle growing pain, quite a good struggle
[00:06:20.010]and working with Stephen has been
[00:06:24.254]an incredible journey getting (indistinct).
[00:06:29.138]Worked at NABS together.
[00:06:36.860]So I mentioned that when Steven and I came on board
[00:06:40.350]a few years ago, we were a very small team.
[00:06:42.478]We were a team of three,
[00:06:43.311]prior to that NABS was a team of one.
[00:06:45.330]It kind of fluctuated a little bit one, two, one, two,
[00:06:47.837]but we are now currently a team full time staff of nine.
[00:06:52.710]And we're bringing a board an archives assistant next month
[00:06:58.470]or in two months.
[00:06:59.303]So we're really excited to be able to continue
[00:07:00.924]to grow this work,
[00:07:02.070]to grow our partnerships and collaborations.
[00:07:04.620]Because we know that as a coalition, as a human coalition,
[00:07:09.703]that we need all of us as a collective society
[00:07:13.950]to be able to do this work as a community.
[00:07:22.830]So I'd like to set the context a little bit.
[00:07:26.186]I think sometimes it really helps to go into a little bit of
[00:07:28.227]the historical context and to be able to make the case for
[00:07:34.620]why this understudy period of American history,
[00:07:38.370]not just native history but American history,
[00:07:41.850]really requires a particularly critical inquiry
[00:07:47.700]and not just one that tends to be marginalized
[00:07:50.040]with all of the other annual heritage months,
[00:07:51.690]heritage weeks, you know,
[00:07:53.010]just very marginalized aspect and why we need to really
[00:07:56.453]dive in and critically examine that some of the impacts
[00:08:02.130]that are still being felt in our communities today,
[00:08:08.160]are generations old, generations long.
[00:08:10.440]We're gonna go into a little bit of a discussion today
[00:08:12.390]about intergenerational trauma, intergenerational wisdom,
[00:08:16.110]and why those are important contexts to form
[00:08:21.030]our critical consciousness that have enormous impacts
[00:08:25.080]in all of the work that each of us do.
[00:08:29.132]So I'll have to start by saying that Indian boarding
[00:08:30.810]school policies lasted for more than 150 years
[00:08:34.694]over the 19th and 20th centuries,
[00:08:36.240]and removed thousands of American Indian children from homes
[00:08:39.360]and (indistinct), Indian boarding school institutions
[00:08:42.030]sought to destroy native language and culture,
[00:08:44.400]ultimately attempting to dismantle native nations
[00:08:47.074]and enable the U.S government to obtain more Indian land.
[00:08:50.790]This would be effectuated by utilizing education
[00:08:53.010]as a weapon.
[00:08:54.600]Physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse,
[00:08:57.930]were all too common at these institutions.
[00:09:00.420]And this trauma continues to affect
[00:09:02.610]American Indian communities today.
[00:09:05.010]Despite the faring impacts the history and its impacts,
[00:09:07.890]two native people remain largely missing from U.S education
[00:09:10.800]curricula, dominant social and political discourse,
[00:09:13.767]and our persistently understudy
[00:09:15.390]by scholars and researchers.
[00:09:18.690]Historical narratives that are embedded within American
[00:09:21.060]exceptionalism, imperialism and white supremacy,
[00:09:23.850]all centuries long history on these lands
[00:09:26.730]that were brought and cultivated by sub colonists,
[00:09:29.760]the dominant narratives and ideals of U.S American society
[00:09:33.180]having proliferated from the deep origins,
[00:09:35.700]a mix of manifest destiny,
[00:09:38.100]the doctrine of discovery and Calvinist predestination
[00:09:41.730]have provoked the precedent conditions
[00:09:43.320]toward the native peoples of these lands.
[00:09:44.700]And (indistinct) in general shrouded in a culture
[00:09:48.780]of forgetting, packaged as U.S exceptionalism.
[00:09:54.180]One such armament of a culture of forgetting
[00:09:56.820]is assimilation.
[00:09:58.470]And we've been discussing this all day today.
[00:10:02.010]It's commitments to the erosion of identity,
[00:10:05.310]language, and culture.
[00:10:06.960]It is not difficult to see how such a culture could persist
[00:10:10.770]and amplify the myths of Euro American superiority
[00:10:14.010]privileging and preserving its own version of history,
[00:10:17.820]thereby guiding and developing a national consciousness
[00:10:22.080]toward an domestic culture.
[00:10:24.480]Ensibilizing indigenous and subter knowledges
[00:10:28.230]while justifying colonial consciousness of discovery,
[00:10:31.620]and destiny for settlers.
[00:10:42.630]The origin narratives and myths,
[00:10:44.700]common articulated and protected by the United States
[00:10:48.210]discovery, destiny, essentially white supremacy,
[00:10:52.350]fueled and compelled the political, cultural
[00:10:54.630]and social apparatus to seek to civilize
[00:10:59.280]native nations from their perspective
[00:11:01.440]to kill the Indian in them,
[00:11:03.090]to save the man as infamously uttered
[00:11:06.150]by the founder of Carla Richard Rads.
[00:11:09.540]We now know that these savior mentalities and sentiments
[00:11:13.680]were seen as actually quite philanthropic at the time,
[00:11:18.450]given a recent history and political strategic
[00:11:20.910]of military engagement and militia and embolism.
[00:11:24.600]The commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1889,
[00:11:27.990]John H. Overly, sought to save them from extermination,
[00:11:33.660]his enthusiasm for adopting a widespread
[00:11:36.660]boarding school movement,
[00:11:37.980]given the expansion goals of the late 19th century,
[00:11:42.960]emphasizing that he only...
[00:11:48.710]Emphasizing that the only alternative left is civilization,
[00:11:53.130]or annihilation, absorption, or extinction,
[00:11:56.760]such attitudes have been foundational
[00:11:59.160]to rationalizing and implementing (indistinct) periods
[00:12:02.250]of forced removal indoctrination,
[00:12:04.380]and brutal assimilation to obtain more and more Indian land.
[00:12:10.410]Assimilation oriented school was weaponized
[00:12:12.780]throughout much of the colonial period though
[00:12:14.880]it wasn't until the late 19th century
[00:12:16.983]that the federal government began system
[00:12:18.343]that has a comprehensive Indian education system
[00:12:22.110]whose sole purpose was according to President Grant,
[00:12:25.440]the civilization and the ultimate citizenship
[00:12:28.950]of the American Indian.
[00:12:34.350]In 1870, Grant's congress voted to expand
[00:12:37.530]the Indian education program
[00:12:39.420]ultimately paving the way for an expansion
[00:12:41.930]of boarding schools between 1819
[00:12:45.240]when the Indian civilization fund act was passed
[00:12:47.880]and shifted boarding school policy in the 1960s,
[00:12:50.700]when the federal government began transferring ownership
[00:12:53.190]of most of the schools to Indian nations,
[00:12:56.670]those that were left.
[00:12:58.260]The political economic and cultural status
[00:13:00.300]of American Indian nations changed dramatically.
[00:13:03.780]Originally, the stewards of 2.3 billion acres of land,
[00:13:08.430]now occupied by the United States.
[00:13:10.350]Native American land holding for reduced
[00:13:12.870]256 million acres by 1881.
[00:13:18.090]As a result of the general Longman act,
[00:13:20.250]the DAS act, only about 15 million acres remained by 1934.
[00:13:25.560]An additional 500,000 acres were seized
[00:13:28.320]by the federal government for the military use
[00:13:30.360]during world war II,
[00:13:31.800]and a series of various acts of Congress
[00:13:33.510]during the termination era of the 50s,
[00:13:36.450]was responsible for further land appropriation
[00:13:39.030]from over a hundred tribes bands and ranch.
[00:13:43.890]By 1955, indigenous land had to just 2.4%
[00:13:49.648]of its original size.
[00:13:53.760]Numerous (indistinct) examined periods
[00:13:56.190]of boarding school history,
[00:13:57.330]or the histories of the similar schools.
[00:13:58.980]But the impact interrogated this policy era
[00:14:01.770]and connected the actions of federal and church actors
[00:14:04.410]to the ongoing impacts to native people today.
[00:14:08.400]This is largely due to the fact that
[00:14:10.230]there is a fundamental social and political misunderstanding
[00:14:13.890]in this interpretation of this genocidal period
[00:14:16.680]of American history.
[00:14:18.270]They're continues to be an overwhelming miseducation
[00:14:21.780]and their of substantive critical examination
[00:14:25.500]of native history in schools, media,
[00:14:28.500]and the sociopolitical discourse in the U.S.
[00:14:31.243]Outside of native patients, their citizens,
[00:14:35.460]most folks in the U.S know very little this at all,
[00:14:39.510]of the forced removal and cultural genocide characteristic
[00:14:43.020]of federal Indian boarding schools.
[00:14:45.510]They knew even less before the findings of the mass burials
[00:14:49.423]in Camoos, Indian residential school in Canada in 2021,
[00:14:52.770]and the subsequent other institutions that we saw.
[00:14:59.400]One of the persistently stubborn obstacles of developing
[00:15:03.030]a comprehensive accounting of the boarding school policy era
[00:15:05.610]in the U.S, is that primary records in the schools
[00:15:08.370]were scattered across the nation in likely hundreds
[00:15:10.890]of different federal state church and private archives.
[00:15:15.420]Some records of single schools are beginning to be made
[00:15:18.330]accessible through individual digital archives,
[00:15:21.090]projects such as the Indian School Digital Reconciliation
[00:15:24.600]project and the Carla Indian School Digital Resource Center.
[00:15:28.770]Yet accessing large portions of these documents
[00:15:33.090]is still a sizable challenge.
[00:15:35.400]And there is currently no centralized location
[00:15:37.830]to search all boarding school records.
[00:15:40.770]This dirt of research and lack of attention
[00:15:43.020]to the sustainability and preservation of U.S
[00:15:45.720]Indian boarding school records marks a fundamental concern
[00:15:48.660]for putting forth a more complete historiography
[00:15:51.810]and holds possibilities for considerable impacts
[00:15:55.080]to calls for accountability, humanities research,
[00:15:59.340]healing work, and even more implications
[00:16:02.970]for education approaches from elementary school
[00:16:07.140]through all the way to higher education.
[00:16:10.967]Moreover, these archable records constitute
[00:16:13.650]an important source of American Indian history and policy
[00:16:17.160]and shared light on a longer history
[00:16:19.500]of removing children from their families
[00:16:21.810]throughout American history.
[00:16:23.700]A topic that will be certainly studied at increasing rates
[00:16:26.760]if its similar experience seeing when poor cases
[00:16:30.000]where native children are disproportionately removed
[00:16:32.370]from their families and placed in homes,
[00:16:34.260]outside their culture at astonishing rates.
[00:16:37.800]Despite the importance and necessity of (indistinct),
[00:16:41.160]native children are four times more likely
[00:16:43.680]to be placed in foster care than Caucasian
[00:16:46.440]slash white children.
[00:16:49.710]Though American Indian and Alaska native children
[00:16:51.780]make up just 1% of all children in the U.S,
[00:16:54.660]they constitute 2.6% of all children
[00:16:57.420]who are placed in foster care outside their homes.
[00:17:01.140]Similarly immigrant children at the Southern U.S border
[00:17:05.340]continue to be detained and separated at detention camps
[00:17:09.420]while just this summer, the president inviting a chief,
[00:17:12.240]the state goal of admitting 100,000 Korean refugees,
[00:17:16.110]including more than 20,000 Ukrainians
[00:17:18.930]that were processed in the U.S Mexico border.
[00:17:21.960]This contradiction clearly illuminates,
[00:17:24.540]the (indistinct) and contradictions
[00:17:27.120]of the federal policy guided by culture (indistinct).
[00:17:41.250]Boarding schools have provoked numerous historical
[00:17:43.170]and contemporary challenges to native people,
[00:17:45.090]particularly regarding the ability for native people
[00:17:47.670]to maintain their wellbeing,
[00:17:48.960]is to provide healthy environments
[00:17:50.910]for themselves and their descendants.
[00:17:53.040]Demonstrating these connections are an array
[00:17:54.960]of modern research inquiries,
[00:17:56.550]including recent insights about epigenetic transmission
[00:17:59.400]trauma responses through DNA,
[00:18:02.070]such insights validate traditional cultural knowledge
[00:18:05.160]and urge more culturally responsive and sustaining research
[00:18:08.040]methods, examining historical trauma in native communities.
[00:18:17.337]Not to be confused by traumatic experiences
[00:18:20.160]that are confined to the past,
[00:18:22.200]Dr. (indistinct) Brave Heart,
[00:18:24.690]defines historical trauma as the cumulates
[00:18:26.640]of emotional and psychological meaning across generations,
[00:18:30.120]including the lifespan,
[00:18:31.500]which emanates from massive group trauma.
[00:18:34.620]Our key distinction of historical trauma to that
[00:18:37.020]a post traumatic stress disorder
[00:18:39.000]is that the historical trauma has not ceased
[00:18:41.490]and is capable of being transferred intergenerationally.
[00:18:45.420]For native people,
[00:18:46.770]unresolved historical trauma certainly includes
[00:18:49.080]the boarding school period,
[00:18:50.640]but it also includes those initial moments of invasion
[00:18:53.430]brought about by set the colonialism, land theft,
[00:18:56.940]the creation of reservations, massacres and the so-called
[00:19:00.330]Indian horse, determination and relocation periods,
[00:19:04.710]among many others.
[00:19:06.180]Reflecting on the impacts of historical trauma,
[00:19:08.700]Dr. Brave Heart's reflection is worth
[00:19:10.680]stating here at length.
[00:19:12.487]"I think losing the land was the most traumatic.
[00:19:15.937]"I remember my dad talked about how they were treated,
[00:19:19.027]"some were shot, they were (indistinct).
[00:19:21.457]"So this happened in my great grandparents' generation
[00:19:23.617]"when they lost the Buffalo,
[00:19:25.357]"my grandparents' generation lost the land
[00:19:27.637]"and their livelihood, that's from generation to generation.
[00:19:31.657]"There are a lot of answers that I don't have
[00:19:34.429]"and a lot of questions that I do have,
[00:19:36.367]"and there's a lot of hurt inside me.
[00:19:38.377]"Some of these things happening over the years
[00:19:40.147]"are still happening today.
[00:19:41.947]"Like my grandparents,
[00:19:43.387]"my great grandparents had their children to schools.
[00:19:46.267]"I was moved, my brothers and sisters moved.
[00:19:50.947]"There's a big hole in my heart.
[00:19:52.507]"We see it happening to our grandchildren already.
[00:19:55.237]"Where does it stop?"
[00:19:58.200]There's deep value in confronting and understanding
[00:20:00.480]the truth in this history and the roots of this trauma,
[00:20:03.870]the absence of rigorous and meaningful narratives
[00:20:06.900]and their accompanying commitments to addressing root causes
[00:20:10.470]are not only underwhelming and unacceptable
[00:20:13.200]across the social and political discourse
[00:20:15.270]in the United States,
[00:20:16.320]but they contribute to this culture of forgetting
[00:20:18.467]and a campaign, a continued indigenous era.
[00:20:22.860]Tribal nations are presently saddled with the overwhelming
[00:20:25.320]social ills provoked by historical
[00:20:27.360]and intergenerational trauma.
[00:20:29.280]The possibilities of healing can bring about
[00:20:32.190]dramatic changes to the social, economic
[00:20:34.740]and political wellbeing of native patients.
[00:20:37.350]To name a few.
[00:20:38.490]Reimagining education and incorporating
[00:20:40.740]traditional knowledge, censoring our languages,
[00:20:45.690]environmental innovation and preservation,
[00:20:49.260]economic independence,
[00:20:50.610]and the resources necessary to undergrad
[00:20:52.650]the sustainability of the (indistinct)
[00:20:54.840]hold profound opportunities for healing
[00:20:56.790]intergenerational trauma that was see in our communities.
[00:21:01.860]Earlier this week,
[00:21:03.600]we held a webinar, a virtual event,
[00:21:06.488]is kind of the rage these days, kinda what we faced with,
[00:21:09.662]but we held that we could bring a lot of people together
[00:21:12.319]and it was really incredible.
[00:21:13.152]We invited several speakers to help us advocate
[00:21:16.350]for congressional action on a bill that we helped write
[00:21:20.220]and is now seeing, I think a lot of momentum,
[00:21:22.107]but we were starting to feel like we need
[00:21:25.350]more action kind of running at a time.
[00:21:30.240]It was a great event when we had,
[00:21:31.080]the Lieutenant governor of Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan,
[00:21:34.680]representative, Patrice David of Kansas,
[00:21:38.580]KHA chairman, Frank Life, Shawn Chief Ben Barnes,
[00:21:43.620]Dallas Goldto, among others.
[00:21:47.060]It was star studied lineup.
[00:21:49.980]It was really great.
[00:21:50.940]One thing that really struck me was the words from
[00:21:53.815]NIHB CEO of Stacy Boland.
[00:21:56.280]She was reflecting on the fact that the federal policy
[00:21:58.850]of boarding schools amounted to
[00:22:01.290]where she stated was a hundred years of funding
[00:22:03.150]and organization for the objective operation
[00:22:05.820]for American Indian,
[00:22:06.990]Alaska native and our native Hawaiian brothers and sisters.
[00:22:10.770]It can be argued that this policy has been in place
[00:22:13.410]for even longer.
[00:22:15.540]But that said, she mentioned that,
[00:22:18.847]"Maybe we need a 100 year policy of reversing the effects
[00:22:21.757]"of course with impacts."
[00:22:24.540]You know, I thought that was a really powerful statement.
[00:22:27.240]And in a still reminder that the intergenerational trauma
[00:22:30.210]that we face is not an easy pass to reckon with.
[00:22:34.470]That it's not really something that an oncology,
[00:22:39.330]a land acknowledgement even,
[00:22:41.040]a single payment or even a truth commission can solve.
[00:22:46.799]A commitment to healing will demand a commitment
[00:22:49.620]to a long road that must involve truth, justice,
[00:22:54.030]truth, justice and healing.
[00:22:59.970]Dr. Braveheart reminds us that healing is not only possible,
[00:23:03.960]but it is feasible,
[00:23:05.490]requiring attention for guiding principles.
[00:23:08.430]Approaches to healing historical trauma
[00:23:10.920]must necessarily involve; one, confronting the trauma,
[00:23:15.030]two, understanding the trauma,
[00:23:17.370]three, releasing the trauma,
[00:23:19.020]and four transcending the trauma.
[00:23:22.470]These are generational guiding principles here.
[00:23:24.780]These are not generally principles that can exist
[00:23:27.960]within the framework of a true commission,
[00:23:31.020]of a landing acknowledgement, of an apology.
[00:23:36.390]Though, this framework requires to offer
[00:23:38.610]a charitable pathway toward healing,
[00:23:41.160]it recognizes the harsh realities that the United States,
[00:23:44.370]in this instance, socially, culturally and politically,
[00:23:48.510]has yet to even scratch the surface,
[00:23:51.120]namely confronting the trauma.
[00:23:54.090]This is to say then that fundamental to individual
[00:23:57.420]and collective healing is confronting the truth in history,
[00:24:01.380]validating its effects and addressing its impacts.
[00:24:06.360]There's much that can be learned and applied
[00:24:08.610]from the experiences and observations
[00:24:10.530]from the Canadian truth and reconciliation process
[00:24:12.740]that sought to address the historical trauma
[00:24:16.380]by the Indian residential school system.
[00:24:18.810]Mind you, of federal project that was modeled
[00:24:21.210]after the United States.
[00:24:23.910]In 2010, a class action lawsuit prompted a settlement
[00:24:26.640]that created a commission that would gather
[00:24:28.680]survivor testimonies, our goal documents,
[00:24:30.810]and produce a multi-year investigation.
[00:24:35.310]It sought a national truth seeking process that has made
[00:24:38.070]a considerable impact on the national consciousness
[00:24:40.520]of the Canadian people.
[00:24:42.720]Continuing the pursuit of truth telling
[00:24:44.640]and the preservation of this history,
[00:24:46.230]the national center for truth and reconciliation
[00:24:48.720]hosted at the University of Minnesota,
[00:24:50.653]remains an important element and legacy
[00:24:53.040]of the Canadian TRC process.
[00:24:56.970]However, a critical shortcoming of this process
[00:24:59.790]has been the lack of appropriations
[00:25:01.830]designed for cemetery surveys and research
[00:25:04.230]to determine the location of native children
[00:25:06.420]who went missing or data while in these institutions,
[00:25:10.230]despite being requested by many.
[00:25:13.260]It is no surprise then that the government of Canada
[00:25:15.780]is now facing that another reckoning moment.
[00:25:18.600]Where cemetery survey results initiated
[00:25:21.870]and enacted by first nations
[00:25:23.820]are identifying previously undocumented deaths,
[00:25:27.090]burials and grave sites, from their own resources.
[00:25:31.950]The failure to financially support cemetery investigations
[00:25:35.850]along with other great treaty violations in Canada,
[00:25:38.910]such as pipelines and industrial logging,
[00:25:41.580]on first nations treaty land,
[00:25:43.290]as well as the treatment of water and land protectors
[00:25:45.450]for state law enforcement
[00:25:46.860]have once again prompted the slogan,
[00:25:48.960]reconciliation is dead.
[00:25:54.900]What is reconciliation,
[00:25:56.700]if justice efforts do not grasp the root of past injustices?
[00:26:01.950]Should reconciliation not only address the failure
[00:26:05.220]to honor tributes,
[00:26:06.810]but also returning land to indigenous people.
[00:26:10.380]Settle colonialism both structurally and epistemologically
[00:26:15.090]have greatly fractured the premise of reconciliation,
[00:26:18.750]given the massive social economic and political power
[00:26:22.170]asymmetry between indigenous nations and subtle states.
[00:26:26.250]Reconciliation can only take place when the impacts
[00:26:29.250]of structural and epistological colonialism
[00:26:32.400]are restored and transformed.
[00:26:35.520]Just as healing cannot meaningfully take place
[00:26:38.760]without justice.
[00:26:40.050]Reconciliation is unattainable without transforming
[00:26:43.590]root causes and sources of domination.
[00:26:46.080]And in some cases, dismantling systems of oppression.
[00:26:51.480]Only once that path is charted by truth,
[00:26:54.240]justice and healing can process of restoration
[00:26:56.820]be truly transformative.
[00:26:59.010]Century are focused on addressing root causes
[00:27:02.250]and comprehensive outcomes.
[00:27:04.860]Transformative justice needs to change
[00:27:06.900]inequity and power abuses within society,
[00:27:09.420]as well as those personally involved.
[00:27:12.030]The notion of transformative justice recognizes
[00:27:16.110]the need for survivor safety, healing, and agency,
[00:27:20.070]but also collective accountability and the transformation
[00:27:23.220]of the social conditions that perpetuate violence,
[00:27:25.950]such as systems of oppression and domination,
[00:27:29.370]collectively the interplay of truth, healing
[00:27:32.640]and transformative justice are necessary
[00:27:34.620]to meaningfully invite
[00:27:36.120]the very possibility of reconciliation.
[00:27:41.010]The concept of reconciliation is a powerful one.
[00:27:45.090]It invites the coming together of two groups
[00:27:49.410]with the intent to resolve injustices crimes and conflicts.
[00:27:55.170]It is not a destination,
[00:27:57.570]but a framework requiring a deliberate intent
[00:28:00.570]to repair that has been harmed,
[00:28:02.730]an examination of both needs,
[00:28:04.920]and an ongoing vigilance to ensure such restoration.
[00:28:09.990]Reconciliation as a justice framework
[00:28:12.600]is an ambitious and often ambiguous premise
[00:28:16.500]whose aims are threatened if approached superficially
[00:28:19.680]or without regard to systemic root causes.
[00:28:23.340]Truth and reconciliation conditions around the world,
[00:28:25.650]each in their own way,
[00:28:27.750]have forged a charitable path of intentions.
[00:28:30.510]Some more successful than others,
[00:28:32.220]they'll have offered various levels of vocabularies
[00:28:35.430]that we can learn from.
[00:28:37.620]The experiences of the Canadian main (indistinct),
[00:28:41.370]South Africa truth and reconciliation permissions
[00:28:44.160]among many others, all share similar calls, ongoing work,
[00:28:48.330]and vigilance in addressing systemic root causes.
[00:28:53.880]The experiences of past commissions inform us that
[00:28:56.340]reconciliation cannot be the first aim
[00:28:58.770]of resolving historical trauma,
[00:29:00.330]but a reflexive framework to work toward.
[00:29:03.960]They remind us of a essential issue and guided ethos
[00:29:07.710]that these processes are all faced with.
[00:29:10.950]That reconciliation often finds itself subsumed
[00:29:15.180]under efforts of charity and saviorism.
[00:29:20.310]This serves to evasively maneuver for guilt
[00:29:23.010]and dishonest impact.
[00:29:25.952]ETOP and Wayne Yang, warn of such several moves innocence.
[00:29:31.320]What they describe as,
[00:29:33.097]"Those strategies or positionings that attempt
[00:29:35.227]"to relieve the set of feelings built for responsibility
[00:29:38.677]"without giving up land or power or privilege,
[00:29:42.277]"without having much to change at all.
[00:29:47.737]"A particularly salient expression of which happens to be
[00:29:51.067]"a critique of (indistinct) decision,
[00:29:55.627]"rather the cultivation of critical consciousness
[00:29:57.877]"as a standard for decolonization,
[00:30:00.487]"yet another severed appropriation."
[00:30:02.640]And this is to say that (indistinct)
[00:30:04.860]shouldn't listened to there's many lessons
[00:30:07.545]that (indistinct) has to teach us.
[00:30:09.810]But the misinterpretation of conscious (indistinct)
[00:30:12.719]has to stand in colonization is extraordinary.
[00:30:21.000]Though (indistinct) pedagogy of the oppressed
[00:30:23.340]offers foundational achievements,
[00:30:25.230]and critical pedagogy and rigorously critiques
[00:30:27.480]the commitment of institutionalized schools
[00:30:29.630]to the political economy,
[00:30:31.560]this philosophies have though perhaps unwittingly
[00:30:34.320]encourage educators to position colonization
[00:30:37.410]as a metaphor for oppression,
[00:30:39.840]thereby denying indigenous politics and calls for justice
[00:30:43.230]in favor of critical consciousness and intellectualization.
[00:30:47.260]This is not to say that (indistinct)
[00:30:48.930]does not have its place.
[00:30:50.190]Indeed, it is essential.
[00:30:52.860]A critical consciousness of racism, sexual abuse,
[00:30:55.890]even genocide and subtle colonialism are imperative
[00:30:59.130]to contextualize and impacts of colonialism
[00:31:02.730]to native peoples and sub alternative in general.
[00:31:07.860]Rather the crucial distinction emerges
[00:31:09.720]with the pursuit of critical consciousness,
[00:31:12.120]creates distractions, diversions, and delays,
[00:31:16.050]that the lead set the feelings of guilt or responsibility
[00:31:19.440]and conceal the need to give up land, power or privilege.
[00:31:24.300]Contemporary examples of this are trending emergence of
[00:31:27.750]land acknowledgements and official apologies that neglect
[00:31:31.170]meaningful commitments to action
[00:31:33.000]and restoring disrupted like ways.
[00:31:35.697]And I appreciate the substance of critiques today about
[00:31:39.960]land acknowledgements that are devoid
[00:31:42.150]of commitments to action.
[00:31:46.680]The nature of this struggle unequivocally reveals
[00:31:48.810]the necessity for a fundamental deviation
[00:31:51.840]from Western approaches
[00:31:53.340]that have historically contemporaneously
[00:31:55.590]limited the voicing of indigenous voices and knowledges,
[00:31:58.800]and cosmologies, letting native people leave,
[00:32:02.880]hearing what they have to say,
[00:32:05.160]and supporting their struggle
[00:32:07.230]even if land, power or privilege
[00:32:09.600]is in consideration are essential places to start.
[00:32:14.160]In some of my previous work,
[00:32:16.050]I have proposed a framework,
[00:32:19.290]I've referred to as a decolonizing indigenous framework
[00:32:22.410]or decolonizing indigenous practices,
[00:32:24.960]for community educational context
[00:32:26.820]situating the following operational principles
[00:32:28.920]as a basis for engagement.
[00:32:31.890]One centering the indigenous voice
[00:32:33.900]and I have kind of like some nonacademic terminology
[00:32:38.520]that some of this can be like super heady.
[00:32:40.740]And for that, I apologize.
[00:32:42.030]It's always my intention to make things
[00:32:44.310]as accessible as possible.
[00:32:46.560]But I also find it important to be able to honor
[00:32:50.430]those other indigenous (indistinct) scholars that have
[00:32:53.220]done incredible labor, incredible work,
[00:32:55.404]to be able to call them into these discussion.
[00:32:58.188]So I'll reflect them in sort of,
[00:33:01.050]some other descriptions
[00:33:02.100]that hopefully are a bit more accessible.
[00:33:04.560]And this of course, I would say not just as the author
[00:33:08.340]of this framework is worth diving into at greater length
[00:33:11.712]and discussion.
[00:33:13.770]There's some resources that I can share with you
[00:33:15.634]a little bit later.
[00:33:17.287]Censoring the indigenous voice,
[00:33:19.740]what I like to call practicing true solidarity,
[00:33:22.410]naming the politics of coloniality or telling the truth
[00:33:25.020]about historical oppression.
[00:33:27.060]The mythologizing (indistinct) beliefs,
[00:33:29.730]really unmasking unchecked attitudes, implicit biases,
[00:33:33.510]and beliefs that perpetuate inequality.
[00:33:37.140]For epistomological disruptions
[00:33:39.270]or engaging dissident dispositions,
[00:33:42.360]of course, this is huge.
[00:33:43.800]We are required in call to go against the brain
[00:33:46.620]in so many of these institutionalized structures.
[00:33:49.650]And then five emancipatory rereads,
[00:33:53.580]or transforming hope as possibilities.
[00:33:56.490]And my hope in the different sense of the work
[00:34:00.149]of course is that, the quote from public rating
[00:34:04.646]in the slide before engages sort of a new kind of
[00:34:07.140]sensibility for what hope actually means, a true struggle,
[00:34:11.730]I hope we get this right.
[00:34:12.930]You know, the hope that allows us to stay active
[00:34:15.690]in this struggle and many others,
[00:34:20.490]This of course is not a hierarchical framework.
[00:34:23.010]This is not a step by step process.
[00:34:25.440]There's not a, what do I do to be better?
[00:34:29.250]This is a relational process.
[00:34:31.620]It's ground in place based epistemologies.
[00:34:36.390]It is an indigenous centered framework.
[00:34:39.360]And I think that in so many contexts,
[00:34:41.407]it can be a value in many instances,
[00:34:44.520]especially in tribal communities all over
[00:34:47.070]are already engaging in these methods.
[00:34:52.080]But that don't have credentials at the (indistinct),
[00:34:55.789]because that is the way the teachings that have been brought
[00:34:58.480]and taught and will continue to taught for generations.
[00:35:10.830]So the other mentioned framework,
[00:35:14.760]like I mentioned, has been great influenced
[00:35:16.590]by the lessons of some really incredible
[00:35:20.367]sub indigenous scholars, (indistinct),
[00:35:27.510]to name just a few.
[00:35:31.413]Each of them are deserving of further examination
[00:35:34.020]in their own rights.
[00:35:35.460]The ethos of the framework envisions a distinctive approach
[00:35:39.300]toward the restoration of our ways of living and being,
[00:35:42.000]and requires deliberate and conscious interrogation
[00:35:44.940]and disruption of values, beliefs,
[00:35:46.830]and assumptions of the west
[00:35:48.000]that open possibilities for reformulation
[00:35:51.060]of the way in which the histories,
[00:35:53.460]experiences and life ways of indigenous people
[00:35:56.520]are understood.
[00:36:00.630]Enacting decolonizing, indigenous practices
[00:36:03.480]requires the deconstruction and reimagination
[00:36:07.470]of conditions for meaningful and transformative
[00:36:09.780]social change to occur.
[00:36:12.420]According to (indistinct),
[00:36:14.700]the conflicts of deconstruction must be seen as catalyst,
[00:36:19.080]a stimulus that is fundamental to social transformation,
[00:36:22.200]and a major source of iteration.
[00:36:25.380]Spaces that are prepared in this way walk a path
[00:36:28.260]for reconciliation, though they do not seek reconciliation,
[00:36:32.490]they seek restoration.
[00:36:34.410]Reconciliation is possible
[00:36:35.970]but is dependent on how we tend to these crucial moments
[00:36:39.210]that require attention to truth, justice and healing.
[00:36:43.350]Consistent demands for the following,
[00:36:45.570]continue to be made by generations of people
[00:36:48.240]that have been afflicted by the traumatic legacy
[00:36:51.690]in boarding schools in the United States.
[00:36:55.140]Access to boarding schools documents, in church,
[00:36:57.660]government and private archives and collections,
[00:37:00.420]the examination of location of children
[00:37:03.420]in marks and unmarked grades, supporting school facilities,
[00:37:06.960]for instance, ground penetrating radar,
[00:37:09.180]magnetometry from other geophysical methods.
[00:37:12.300]The opportunity for survivors to offer testimony
[00:37:14.820]and culturally appropriate public hearings,
[00:37:17.640]educational and political apparatus that recognize
[00:37:20.790]and educate citizens of the history
[00:37:23.250]and impact boarding schools.
[00:37:25.530]The rights and resources to direct one's own healing,
[00:37:29.370]utilizing traditional or contemporary human methods,
[00:37:32.730]accountability of those who committed crimes,
[00:37:35.340]or covered up crimes,
[00:37:37.560]the restoration of language, culture, life, race, and land.
[00:37:42.900]Though not an exhausted list,
[00:37:44.610]each of these elements represent a general overview
[00:37:48.720]that require time and resources and likely generations.
[00:37:54.030]A truth and healing commission in the United States,
[00:37:56.820]holds the very possibility
[00:37:58.380]of generating substantive recommendations
[00:38:01.380]that address these elements.
[00:38:03.960]And before I invite,
[00:38:07.350]Steven Curley to come up and talk a little bit more
[00:38:10.290]about our work within the digital archives.
[00:38:18.960]I wanna share a current campaign that we have right now
[00:38:21.090]that really requires a lot of people power.
[00:38:24.150]And hopefully each one of you can engage with
[00:38:26.460]some resources that we have developed to help assist
[00:38:29.640]calling in congressional leaders
[00:38:31.380]so that we can bring this bill to the floor for a vote.
[00:38:34.770]We many co-sponsors in both the house and the Senate,
[00:38:39.810]and we're gonna need those bills to be passed in both houses
[00:38:43.560]before it gets sent to the president for signing.
[00:38:47.670]In this toolkit there are sample letters, sample scripts.
[00:38:55.170]I'm not gonna go through the whole thing,
[00:38:56.280]but I just wanna share with you how beautiful this is
[00:38:58.170]because one of our, you know,
[00:39:01.470]our creative director,
[00:39:02.850]who's been with us for a few months now,
[00:39:05.070]has been putting a lot of time and effort
[00:39:06.870]collaborating with each of us
[00:39:09.270]and putting these materials in a really
[00:39:11.580]easy to digest manner.
[00:39:13.650]So that all you gotta do is call congressional
[00:39:17.880]representatives and follow some of these, you know,
[00:39:21.030]there's some scripts here,
[00:39:22.710]there's letters and even social media.
[00:39:25.770]We need every media channel to be uplifting
[00:39:30.540]and bringing this issue to the attention
[00:39:34.470]of every congressional representative.
[00:39:37.890]We are running outta time after November, you know,
[00:39:40.350]we have to start over again.
[00:39:41.700]And if we do, we'll do what we need to,
[00:39:44.220]but we know that there is likely enough support.
[00:39:48.240]We've never encountered a congressional official
[00:39:51.180]that has not wanted to support in some way.
[00:39:54.360]There are some elements that
[00:39:57.510]some congressional or elected officials
[00:39:59.730]might have sticking points with,
[00:40:01.560]but these are conversations that need to be happening.
[00:40:05.040]We need these records to be accessed by tribal nations,
[00:40:08.610]their citizens, particularly board school survivors
[00:40:10.557]and descendants.
[00:40:12.360]And there are satellite efforts that are going on,
[00:40:15.930]but with the momentum and the sustainability factor
[00:40:19.530]that we're currently facing with,
[00:40:21.000]it's going to take generations for those records
[00:40:23.957]to be processed, with the commission
[00:40:25.470]that process will be basically incredibly.
[00:40:27.450]So that's why we need your support.
[00:40:30.150]So with that,
[00:40:33.510]I'll go ahead and invite my colleague, Steven Curley,
[00:40:36.900]to the front to share a little bit about
[00:40:38.580]what our collaborations
[00:40:42.120]with university of Nebraska, with Margaret and the team
[00:40:46.527]and looking at boarding digital archives
[00:40:48.810]as a really powerful way towards initiating
[00:40:51.240]healing and (indistinct) together.
[00:40:53.317]So, yeah, Stephen Curley, thank you.
[00:40:55.664](audience applauding)
[00:41:06.140]Yeah.
[00:41:07.042]So I'm gonna do my best to (indistinct)
[00:41:15.161]really overview (indistinct).
[00:41:19.530]Has been focused on for better part of decades past decade.
[00:41:24.179]So my part or role is really focused on (indistinct)
[00:41:28.410]and the location of (indistinct) and school institutions.
[00:41:32.760]And so it's a small part of the many facets
[00:41:38.972]that Sam had given you all already.
[00:41:42.023]But it's interconnected because
[00:41:44.478]it kinda informs our ability to,
[00:41:48.330]research informed ability to communicate
[00:41:52.380]educational opportunities with schools and, you know,
[00:41:56.760]developing the curriculum at the state level.
[00:42:01.680]And there's also healing too.
[00:42:03.207]There's healing work that's involved
[00:42:04.890]with engaging the records as well.
[00:42:08.160]And I won't really the labor of the fact that there's
[00:42:11.589](indistinct) amount of records that really tend to...
[00:42:16.410]Oops!
[00:42:18.300]Can we get the actual second page there.
[00:42:23.040]Thank yo very much.
[00:42:25.440]So there's 500 institutions (indistinct)
[00:42:33.979]497, excuse me,
[00:42:35.857]497 schools fall within sort of
[00:42:40.450]the classes of federally operated,
[00:42:43.140]but there's also church operated institutions that
[00:42:46.590]housed children within this sort of
[00:42:49.200]educational similar structure.
[00:42:55.650]Yeah, great.
[00:43:01.170]So one of the things I wanted to say real quick is that
[00:43:06.090]archivist like myself, there's really two or three truths.
[00:43:11.400]I'm trying to go to the third one.
[00:43:15.420]The first one is really the fact that these records
[00:43:20.880]they're written from a certain point of view, right?
[00:43:23.100]So they're created to fulfill this function
[00:43:28.050]of assimilating children,
[00:43:30.690]and again, to the (indistinct)
[00:43:32.450]of disrupting native communities
[00:43:34.980]and anything that we call indigenous (indistinct)
[00:43:38.820]all disrupted.
[00:43:40.380]The second thing is that,
[00:43:45.930]the records are all housed in various locations
[00:43:50.640]throughout the U.S.
[00:43:52.080]And so it's very hard to sort of identifying locate
[00:43:55.140]those dispersed collection that
[00:43:58.269](indistinct) have control over.
[00:44:00.535]But like I said before,
[00:44:02.260]a lot are in federal repositories,
[00:44:04.920]like the national archives,
[00:44:07.500]the general Indian visual reconciliation project
[00:44:12.300]knows very incredible how difficult it is
[00:44:15.900]to try to locate and identify interest first records
[00:44:19.710]that relate to children who attended (indistinct).
[00:44:22.680]So we actually (indistinct).
[00:44:31.047]That project to essentially throw all of that cataloged data
[00:44:37.830]into a system that we're calling
[00:44:39.240]the boarding school digital archives.
[00:44:42.840]And so the idea is to really have that centralized
[00:44:47.109]sort of authoritative center
[00:44:49.403]for the school records situation.
[00:44:51.930]And so the (indistinct) school,
[00:44:53.830]which was just one of those 408 schools
[00:45:00.315]sort of introduce that institution
[00:45:03.360]and association with all these other institutions records.
[00:45:07.140]It's the idea is to really have this ecosystem of data
[00:45:12.110]in this ecosystem of information through informing itself.
[00:45:17.670]And so the third thing is that,
[00:45:21.660]research isn't really just research to (indistinct).
[00:45:26.610]It's a lot of the records or records of trauma.
[00:45:31.970]So like Sam mentioned,
[00:45:33.746]there's a variety of misconduct, abuses,
[00:45:39.270]things like that were administered on children.
[00:45:42.120]And so the overarching theme
[00:45:47.430]of wanting to engage these records is to have
[00:45:50.380]a healing sort of modalities and healing opportunities
[00:45:55.830]for a community specifically to
[00:45:58.470]really start the process of knowing what happened,
[00:46:01.500]gives us really sort the first point of
[00:46:07.770]kind of (indistinct) to this past essentially.
[00:46:10.440]So this video is actually housed
[00:46:15.169]in the national invoice for digital archives.
[00:46:18.480]It's a system, like I said,
[00:46:20.490]that we're leveraging to secure these records.
[00:46:22.890]It's a system that is gonna be launched later next year.
[00:46:27.960]So it's one, a presentation platform,
[00:46:32.010]two, it's an aggregation sort of system.
[00:46:36.120]And three, it's really an opportunity for tribes
[00:46:39.450]to tell their own histories
[00:46:41.687]in relation to that whole school experience.
[00:46:43.740]So that's kind the final point that I really wanna make is,
[00:46:50.157]the records say one thing,
[00:46:53.460]communities didn't have a response period,
[00:46:56.159]as well as forwarding this history.
[00:46:58.751]I wanna play this video real quick.
[00:47:03.911]It was a very nice place to be,
[00:47:06.898]many children wanted to stay there,
[00:47:09.030]I think a lot of parents wanted their children
[00:47:11.220]to come home,
[00:47:12.690]but even now I know from stories
[00:47:17.880]that my grandma told me when she did speak
[00:47:20.614]of her boarding school experiences,
[00:47:23.310]that it wasn't a place where it was fun
[00:47:25.650]and games and had to learn.
[00:47:28.304]It was more like you looked most of the time,
[00:47:30.660]hard labor and you school was just part-time,
[00:47:34.980]and that was it.
[00:47:37.601]So it was hard on all our people,
[00:47:43.800]all those who attended school.
[00:47:45.850]Well, I would say it was
[00:47:49.140]forcibly transferring children or in some cases,
[00:47:53.280]kidnapping children by the U.S government
[00:47:56.793]or by the missionaries and Christian churches.
[00:48:00.720]That was to rip apart the families and extended families
[00:48:04.107]and was just another one of the policies for assimilation.
[00:48:08.430]I would say the
[00:48:11.010]systematic oppression genocide
[00:48:14.349]of what it meant be (indistinct).
[00:48:17.234]The history of indigenous boarding school learning
[00:48:20.383]is a global wide phenomenon.
[00:48:22.260]And most people in dominant boarding society
[00:48:26.130]have absolutely no idea really the bright of the scope,
[00:48:32.310]that boarding schools, that residential schools,
[00:48:34.473]that these forms of educational and (indistinct)
[00:48:37.020]really have on native equals.
[00:48:40.140]That is something that obviously
[00:48:42.000]within the colonial framework is deliberately not taught.
[00:48:44.940]It's deliberately kept silenced
[00:48:47.130]because it's a black stain, right?
[00:48:49.260]It's a shameful part of the great myth
[00:48:52.230]of American manifest destiny.
[00:48:54.210]Indigenous boarding schools were not to turn out
[00:48:57.300]native people who could be enormously successful
[00:48:59.910]within the spectrum of colonial society
[00:49:02.280]or what was deemed successful by dominant peoples.
[00:49:05.940]It was designed to create a lower class working cast system
[00:49:11.040]with native people serving at the lowest rum of that ladder.
[00:49:16.140]Well, there's the history of that
[00:49:20.010]and what was done
[00:49:21.963]that definitely affected us emotionally.
[00:49:24.270]My mom was forcibly transferred to (indistinct).
[00:49:27.360]She had to go and couldn't come back until
[00:49:31.530]she come back at summertime.
[00:49:34.138]So she was given permission to come back.
[00:49:38.160]It was hard experience for my mom to be there,
[00:49:41.940]even though she didn't thought much about it,
[00:49:44.423]but it was being poorly unfamiliar place
[00:49:48.180]taken away from everything that is,
[00:49:50.670]from the parents, from brothers and sisters
[00:49:55.290]and their aunts and uncle, all the relatives.
[00:49:57.994]And then all the other elders of people in the community
[00:50:01.166]being separated.
[00:50:02.485]Growing up in my household,
[00:50:04.174]we didn't have a work a little bit.
[00:50:06.795]I started to be more aware of
[00:50:09.472]and we were in generation that was really (indistinct).
[00:50:12.770]We knew that my great grandparents had gone
[00:50:14.577]and although they didn't really share stories
[00:50:17.834]by the time I came around,
[00:50:22.762]it was a more openness discussion (indistinct).
[00:50:26.043]From my understanding,
[00:50:26.876]the way I see my grandparents experience
[00:50:28.575]with boarding school was,
[00:50:30.959]just a part of that was simulation and
[00:50:36.112]something that they didn't wanna participate in.
[00:50:37.960]Something that wasn't their choice or their parents' choice.
[00:50:41.125]And however they tried to make it sound
[00:50:43.949]that's something they were forced into.
[00:50:45.990]And so then they finally (indistinct).
[00:50:49.620]Yeah, my great grandparents, my grandma, my mom, me,
[00:50:54.570]four generations there.
[00:50:57.840]My great grandparents were fluent.
[00:51:00.210]My grandma could understand it.
[00:51:02.536]My mom didn't know a thing
[00:51:04.287]other than random words here and there.
[00:51:06.905]But then me, I'm wondering why.
[00:51:09.637]So how I conceptualize is like within two generations
[00:51:12.730]is the most (indistinct) a language could have lost.
[00:51:16.414]It was very much, these boarding schools existed.
[00:51:19.260]These places existed.
[00:51:20.790]Here are the things that happened at these places.
[00:51:23.400]Here are these subsequent results of language loss,
[00:51:28.110]cultural loss, intergeneration trauma.
[00:51:30.870]But the actual real stories that come down to my family
[00:51:34.740]are something that I had to really find and dig
[00:51:38.580]as adult to really (indistinct) point.
[00:51:41.520]What happened to my grandparents (indistinct).
[00:51:46.590]I feel like my grandparents didn't talk about
[00:51:48.420]boarding schools because
[00:51:50.202]it was a traumatic experience for them.
[00:51:52.400]It wasn't something that they really wanted to dwell on.
[00:51:57.000]But also I think that from their generation,
[00:52:00.810]they were taught not to talk.
[00:52:03.194]They were taught not to (indistinct).
[00:52:07.470]And the effects that it have on people,
[00:52:09.819]I think that it's something I can very easily look back
[00:52:12.986]at now, family community and see the effects of that.
[00:52:18.120]There's that internals (indistinct),
[00:52:25.050]but also the external.
[00:52:27.546]I think that they learned the circle on the base
[00:52:29.696]while they're at boarding school
[00:52:32.070]that they in turn carried on
[00:52:34.173]with how they raised their children
[00:52:36.570]rather than raising children in a traditional way
[00:52:39.950]that they were safer and cherished and never abused,
[00:52:44.539]that (indistinct),
[00:52:48.840]and how formal done physical abuses,
[00:52:52.980]emotional abuses, neglect, part of how that just redundant.
[00:53:00.727]As long as we continue to allow
[00:53:04.830]current dynamic of our land being held by colonizers,
[00:53:08.790]there will never be justice
[00:53:11.370]for those children who were murdered there,
[00:53:13.017]and also the survivors who got out,
[00:53:15.188]normally the descendants of people
[00:53:16.758]who had to deal with that trauma.
[00:53:19.013]In fact healing a trauma contingent
[00:53:20.876]is not what the federal government says or what it feels,
[00:53:24.973]fully healed.
[00:53:26.478]'Cause any form of reconciliation in healing,
[00:53:30.090]one (indistinct) that acknowledgement that,
[00:53:32.787]but two, the land back,
[00:53:36.990]or land reclamation.
[00:53:39.120]In my opinion, again, as one person,
[00:53:42.570]that ownership of these sites needs to go back
[00:53:45.840]to the native peoples
[00:53:47.190]to whom they originally belonged, right?
[00:53:49.260]Prior to conquest.
[00:53:51.540]But control over what is going to be done
[00:53:53.880]with these grave sites, with these boarding schools,
[00:53:56.220]with the land to base it on,
[00:53:58.230]is also solely a choice of the native people
[00:54:01.500]who have their ancestors buried there.
[00:54:04.350]It doesn't actually belong to anywhere else.
[00:54:07.110]If they wanna turn into genocide memorials, excellent.
[00:54:10.500]If they wanna turn into museums
[00:54:12.240]discussing the horrors and atrocities
[00:54:14.430]perpetrated there, great.
[00:54:16.320]If they wanna burn it the ground, that's (indistinct).
[00:54:22.200]But that kind of thing comes with land return.
[00:54:25.933]That the only way we're ever going get justice
[00:54:28.228]for those children is land return.
[00:54:31.590]And that's something that's probably
[00:54:33.000]could be very, very beyond what we're ever gonna see for us.
[00:54:37.140]If we're going to heal,
[00:54:38.070]if we're going feel attracting to before this,
[00:54:42.870]that is something that we have to do from their selves
[00:54:46.440]and not depend on the federal government
[00:54:49.620]or the churches to try and fix it.
[00:54:52.826]'Cause they broke so how can they fix it?
[00:54:54.840]We know that those traumas carried forward
[00:54:58.680]every generation, unless we resolve them,
[00:55:00.960]unless we address them.
[00:55:03.060]So a lot of healing needs to occur.
[00:55:06.960]We know there's still a lot of kind of dysfunction
[00:55:10.920]in the way that we raise our children, for example,
[00:55:13.560]we know that there was corporal punishment
[00:55:15.540]in those boarding schools.
[00:55:17.250]So if we come to understand that that's not our way,
[00:55:20.580]and where that comes from, that helps our human process.
[00:55:24.679]Every time we have trauma,
[00:55:29.193]every time we have negative experiences,
[00:55:33.990]if we don't address that on a personal level,
[00:55:39.930]it affects us the rest of our life,
[00:55:42.360]where we get at by these incentives.
[00:55:47.400]Residential boarding schools are genocide
[00:55:51.852]and this knowledge ought to be taught in the schools.
[00:55:56.253]It is part of our share history of all people
[00:56:00.407]who claim these citizens of the United States of America.
[00:56:04.800]Thank you very much.
[00:56:06.406](speaking foreign language)
[00:56:25.066](audience applauding)
[00:56:33.125]So I think I'm gonna close it out
[00:56:35.509]for our part and think we look into other things, but,
[00:56:42.298]if you have any questions, please follow up with us.
[00:56:44.550]There's a lot of differences or elements that
[00:56:46.470]we just didn't have time to get into
[00:56:48.270]that we have a lot to say about.
[00:56:51.480]And so I wanted to say one thing about this video is that,
[00:56:55.353]the video was a byproduct of many byproducts
[00:56:59.220]of this project that we just recently fulfilled
[00:57:02.250]through sort of human center.
[00:57:04.590]And the idea was to have their sort of be this
[00:57:08.771]almost like a cohort,
[00:57:09.990]this path of community members with the community
[00:57:14.010]who actually historically (indistinct)
[00:57:18.220]attended Pipestone attended schools.
[00:57:23.610]But really getting the record
[00:57:28.140]that was relevant to their communities at Pipestone,
[00:57:31.479]into their hands,
[00:57:33.206]and to have them also be equipped with
[00:57:37.410]standard research skills
[00:57:39.480]and to be able to have opportunities to really
[00:57:43.200]investigate what it is that they wanted to investigate,
[00:57:45.853]that could be a period of things.
[00:57:47.951]It could have been genealogy.
[00:57:48.890]It could have been focusing on the cemeteries
[00:57:52.410]or aspects that the closer to ask questions about now.
[00:57:58.140]But a lot of what they're interested in
[00:58:02.280]was genealogy and really sort of,
[00:58:05.823]they sort of some ways that they connected essentially.
[00:58:10.560]And as they were also engaging with records,
[00:58:15.540]they were creating sort of narratives about
[00:58:18.060]what (indistinct) research healing aspects,
[00:58:22.350]to (indistinct) itself.
[00:58:25.320]And so there were also very gracious enough
[00:58:28.740]to want to communicate
[00:58:30.293]that to this broader general public as well.
[00:58:34.349]That's what you see (indistinct).
[00:58:37.124]So thank you very much for being here and listening.
[00:58:41.600]As I said, thank you all for being here.
[00:58:44.407]Thank you.
[00:58:45.253](audience applauding)

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Dr. Samuel B. Torres and Stephen R. Curley: The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition's Work for Transformative Justice

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