Karen Twain and John Tapogna
Twain is interim president and chief executive officer of Children’s Institute. Tapogna is board chair of Children’s Institute and president of ECONorthwest.
The past several months have brought the painful history of Indian residential schools in North America into plain sight. Recently, we’ve learned of unmarked graves at several residential schools in Canada, many of them belonging to children, and know that similar sites exist in the United States – including here in Oregon. Work has already begun to identify unmarked graves found at the longest-running residential school to have operated in Oregon, the Chemawa Indian School in Salem.
These are heart-wrenching and shocking discoveries, but the findings only confirm what many Indigenous people across North America have known for generations – that the longstanding practice of separating Indigenous children from their families and “educating” them in these boarding schools was not just cruel but also deadly.
At the end of June, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced a formal investigation of the impact of these schools in the U.S., noting that “only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that we’re all proud to embrace.” We applaud this decision and welcome an accounting of Chemawa, its historical treatment of children and investigation into burial sites as part of this effort.
We do this in part because we understand that the past is here with us right now, affecting the lives of children and families everywhere. And we do this because building a more equitable future requires that we address and attempt to reverse the harm that past practices have caused.
We can’t do that without understanding the brutal history of residential schools. In Canada, a six-year investigation found that the country’s approach to assimilating Indigenous people constituted cultural genocide. That investigation documented physical abuse, rape, malnutrition and other atrocities suffered by thousands of children over a period of 150 years, from the 1840s to the 1990s.
These kinds of schools operated throughout Canada and the United States. In the U.S., their existence stemmed from the concept of the “Indian problem” which predates the founding of the country. George Washington believed the solution was to civilize Native Americans. Andrew Jackson believed in having them removed, signing the Indian Removal Act to force Native Americans off their lands and move west.
By the late 1800s, however, as white settlers sought more land and the nation expanded west, Indian removal became forced assimilation, a government backed policy of cultural elimination that lasted until the 1950s. More than 350 Indian boarding schools operated in the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. These government-funded schools, many of them run by Christian churches, worked toward assimilation by forcibly placing children into educational settings rife with abuse and neglect.
In Oregon, the Chemawa Indian School forced many children into education settings designed for linguistic and cultural erasure, destroying Indigenous heritage, families, and society. Children emerged from these schools deeply traumatized, affecting generations of families and communities.
Today, as we work to create and fund public systems for children and their families, we must do so with an understanding that our systems were built on oppression, destruction and white supremacy; they reinforce inequality across educational, health, socioeconomic and racial lines. Because of this, many of these systems now fail our children, families, and communities, and it is our responsibility to seek normative change grounded in equity, human rights and justice.
In decision making, representation matters, and it is most effective when we understand the impact of history on today’s young children and their families. Let’s take the time to understand the impact of the Chemawa Indian School on the state so we can truly create a future where children thrive.
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August 04, 2021 at 08:16PM
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Opinion: Investigating Chemawa’s past a critical step for building a healthier future - OregonLive
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