Indigenous Lives Matter Too
Read Time:2 Minute, 30 Second
That was the mindset under which the U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Native American children to attend “assimilation” boarding schools in the late 19th century. Decades later, those words—delivered in a speech by U.S. cavalry captain Richard Henry Pratt, who opened the first such school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania—have come to symbolize the brutality of the boarding school system.
Hate crimes, particularly against Native Americans, tend to be under-reported in comparison to hate crimes against other groups. You don’t have to go back a long way before finding the list too long to deal within a short article but it’s a long, long list including the actions of individuals and of our courts and legislatures and our military; a despicable list.
A black customer in some chain restaurant or coffee shop in some faceless Midwestern town has the cops called on him and we hear about it, but such things may be a daily occurrence for native Americans in many places. No I won’t go into the well-documented past or persecutions and outright slaughter or even the recent past and practices like voter suppression and the Termination policies that have the government no longer recognizing tribes and their legitimate claims and the services formerly granted to them. The facts are all available if not regularly presented to us by active institutions.
Sure, we have a long and ugly history of racism of all sorts, but I can’t think of any other groups subject to having their children removed and sent to boarding schools. From 1969–74, 25–34 percent of all Native American children were removed from their homes on a temporary or permanent basis and passed into the system of federal schooling, foster care, or adoption.
Some years ago I had a story related to me by a Lakota artist who escaped from an “Indian School” as a small child and walked over a hundred miles home. That school solicits me for money today. It has a religious affiliation.
As late as 2015, Pope Francis decided to elevate Junípero Serra, a priest who helped subjugate Indians in California, to sainthood. The 14th amendment notwithstanding, Members of many tribes had to apply for citizenship and it hasn’t been easy. Under the Burke Act, it could take up to 25 years and an approved commitment to the “civilized life.”
Hate crimes have been on the rise in the last couple of years and so has the news coverage, but coverage of crimes and persecutions against the indigenous people of America seem not to get the same attention. It’s time to address the hate culture and the “conservative” attitude that aids by ignoring and distracting such things. There is more of a crisis within our borders, in the heart of our country and in the hearts of our country than at the Southern border.
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Howard Zinn’s best selling book, A People’s History Of The United States, corroborates everything you say Glenn.
I seem to recall writing about this some time ago and it went down like a lead balloon.
Nice one Glenn. Spot on.
Lovely. Just lovely. You are a good man MR. Glenn. A good man.
Our treatment of Native Americans has been borderline genocide since the Europeans invaded this land. From the beginning they have been treated as if the land was ours and they were the interlopers. If we, or any other country, did the same thing today we would be labeled as war criminals. We cheated them out of land that was rightfully theirs after declaring war and unholy war upon an indigenous people. While there is not such thing as fighting a war fairly we stooped very low on that “fair” scale by making the Bison, the major food source for the plains tribes almost an extinct species. The ironic part of this is that we called them savages though the Native American peoples, for the most part, were far more civilized than were the White men that invaded their land.
Why am I not surprised that Serra was nominated for sainthood. The boarding schools represent a dark, and depressing time in America.