Speaker 1: I have no delicious friends. And welcome to Who Did
Speaker 1: What Now? The history podcast that is not your history
Speaker 1: class with me your host Katie Charlewood, History Harlotte and
Speaker 1: reader of books. You know, I really need to work
Speaker 1: on my VoiceCare because, like I mean, I've got my
Speaker 1: throat coat tea, you know, I have my little strep
Speaker 1: souls and stuff. But my goodness, I really strained my
Speaker 1: voice a lot. Like this time I was in Dublin
Speaker 1: from my friend show The Fabulous, the Amazing, the Astounding
Speaker 1: Doctor Zmiel Luise James. So I was there to see
Speaker 1: her Kinky History the egg Planter, and my goodness, I
Speaker 1: was thrilled to see her and so In and Chris
Speaker 1: again and I got to meet Eggie the Eggplant and
Speaker 1: it was it was a very fun time. Now Esmey
Speaker 1: is so talented. Like we went to dinner and my
Speaker 1: friend Shawna joined us, and it was such a good
Speaker 1: show and so many mutuals were there, Like I even
Speaker 1: got my own Panto moment where somebody went that's Katie
Speaker 1: Charlwood and the first and percent and went, oh no
Speaker 1: it isn't. I was just like, oh, yes, it is TDA.
Speaker 1: Although someone at one point thought I was like doctor
Speaker 1: Kate Lester, and I was like, listen, I'll take the compliment.
Speaker 1: And then I said it to someone else and they
Speaker 1: were like, well, I've never seen the two of you
Speaker 1: in the same room at the same time. It's like,
Speaker 1: ohs I just two historians with curly hair and regional accents.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, but I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Katie,
Speaker 1: quite your jibbel jabbel in fact me, in fact you,
Speaker 1: I will. But first we've got to get our source on.
Speaker 1: Our sources are my people. The Zoo by Luther standing Bear,
Speaker 1: American Indian Stories by z It Calla, Saw Indian school
Speaker 1: Days by Basil Johnston, Resistance and Renewal by Celia Haig Brown,
Speaker 1: Building the Bravelton by Daniel Moretti, Legholts and buck Woodward,
Speaker 1: Unspeakable by doctor Gwyn Atchid and Eileen Horn. Education and
Speaker 1: Extinction by David Wallace Adams and I also and Boarding
Speaker 1: School Healing dot Org. I was hitting comfortably good, then
Speaker 1: let's begin. By the time the children reached the school grounds,
Speaker 1: it was nightfall. They were led towards an open door
Speaker 1: where bright lights flooded. The children trembled Exhausted, they lined up,
Speaker 1: their photos taken. Then they were stripped of their clothes
Speaker 1: and any belonging that reminded them of home. At seven
Speaker 1: years old, she kicked and screamed, scratching and clawing at
Speaker 1: the hands that dragged her across the hard wooden boards.
Speaker 1: She fought as they carried her down the stairs. She
Speaker 1: threw her body, convulsing, attempting to escape, but she was
Speaker 1: still tied to the wooden chair, not so tight she
Speaker 1: could barely feel her hands. The cold blades of the
Speaker 1: scissors against her neck, the sharp soud as they gnawed
Speaker 1: through her braids, hacking away is She fought against those blades.
Speaker 1: Within moments, the braid that had taken years to grow
Speaker 1: lay at her feet, a silent reminder that every child
Speaker 1: brought through those doors was expected to leave something behind.
Speaker 1: It's July twenty twenty six, a time of recording and
Speaker 1: time of release. Now. July twenty six is the two
Speaker 1: hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Continental Congress approving the
Speaker 1: Final Worlding on the Declaration of Independence. So it's also
Speaker 1: Bipop Mental Health Awareness Month. And yes, I am aware
Speaker 1: of the irony of this being shared by the human
Speaker 1: equivalent of a mayonnaise wonderbred sandwich. Which is why when
Speaker 1: I talk about history, especially history relating to other nations
Speaker 1: and cultures and ethnic groups, it's usually because white people
Speaker 1: did some stuff, really, really any good. And it's like,
Speaker 1: when I was doing the Black History Month, someone said
Speaker 1: that it's not black history, it's white history regarding black people,
Speaker 1: and they're not wrong. And this month I'm going to
Speaker 1: be spending it talking about how the ussay the country,
Speaker 1: the society, the culture, how it exists, how it came
Speaker 1: to be. And I know I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: able to cover everything, but it would be a disservice
Speaker 1: to talk about the history of the country and not
Speaker 1: cover the people used to get it there and the
Speaker 1: effect that I had on them. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: be discussing systemic abuse, racial violence, colonialism, racism. It is
Speaker 1: not going to be pleasant, it's not going to be gentle.
Speaker 1: And if you think that this might be too much,
Speaker 1: if you think this is going to be very difficult
Speaker 1: for your listen now it's going to be too heavy,
Speaker 1: I understand, and it might be time to exit stage
Speaker 1: left and we will catch you next time, because today
Speaker 1: I'm talking about inherited wounds, indigenous boarding schools, and historical trauma.
Speaker 1: Throughout this episode, I'll probably be using many out of
Speaker 1: date terms in quotes and such for historical accuracy when necessary. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not pleasant, but we have to understand how people
Speaker 1: were treated at the time, and I'm going to try
Speaker 1: and be as considerate as I can. But I'm not
Speaker 1: going to hide what history did, because there's enough people
Speaker 1: trying to do that already. And you might be wondering
Speaker 1: what is historical trauma? And I'm glad you asked, because
Speaker 1: I will tell you. Historical trauma is a multi generational
Speaker 1: trauma experienced by a specific cultural, racial, or ethnic group.
Speaker 1: It is the build up of emotional and psychological wounding
Speaker 1: of that group across generations, starting from massive population level
Speaker 1: traumatic events like colonization, slavery, or genocide, and descendants may
Speaker 1: exhibit trauma related symptoms without having lived through the original event.
Speaker 1: It can manifest as survivor guilt, unresolved grief, and a
Speaker 1: deep rooted distrust in authorities and institutions. And there are
Speaker 1: other disparities like higher rates of depression and cardiovascular disease.
Speaker 1: And we see this through so many cultures and groups,
Speaker 1: Holocaust survivals, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Gottamore, the Nakba,
Speaker 1: the Black community in the USA, the Trail of Tears,
Speaker 1: and of course the indigenous boarding schools. Sometimes you'll see
Speaker 1: them called the Indian boarding schools or residential schools. The
Speaker 1: terms will move around depending on the era. The question
Speaker 1: is how did government run boarding schools aimed at assimilation,
Speaker 1: reshape indigenous identity, family systems, and mental health across generations.
Speaker 1: History doesn't exist in a vacuum, so let's slip into
Speaker 1: some context. In the fifteenth century, several small European countries
Speaker 1: decided they wanted more I mean, I say countries. A
Speaker 1: lot of it was monarchies and empires. I'm actually going
Speaker 1: to go back a little bit further. Actually, so the
Speaker 1: medieval way, which predates this, people didn't swear fealty to land.
Speaker 1: It was to a king, which is why a king
Speaker 1: of one country, say England, would have ownership of parts
Speaker 1: of France like Cali, because you weren't connected to the land,
Speaker 1: you were connected to the ruler. And our idea of
Speaker 1: geography is fairly new historically speaking, because geography is political,
Speaker 1: like that's how the bodes exist. Areas would be like
Speaker 1: under the control of different rulers, and it was the
Speaker 1: rulers who people had their allegiance to, not necessarily the country.
Speaker 1: And in the early modern period these countries they knew
Speaker 1: if our lands existed, and in a combination of fomo
Speaker 1: and rivalry, they set out to discover lands, establish trade routes,
Speaker 1: and fill up the privy pus because like a lot
Speaker 1: of these countries were consistently fighting each other and as
Speaker 1: such they needed money to fund all the wars, and
Speaker 1: so they're very much into this idea of ownership convened
Speaker 1: with the concept that religion mattered modern race. But we
Speaker 1: will get to that another day. The Portuguese started colonizing
Speaker 1: the American continent, as did the Spanish, the French, the Dutch,
Speaker 1: and of course the British. Between them, they had alliances
Speaker 1: and wars and trade deals, and it did provide us
Speaker 1: with pirates, which is the fun part of all of
Speaker 1: this history. However, the rest of it not really great. Otherwise.
Speaker 1: The Spanish were colonizing so well that England was impressed,
Speaker 1: and so they tried to colonize North America based on
Speaker 1: what they called the Spanish model. The English established a
Speaker 1: colony of Roanoke that mysteriously disappeared after being abandoned for
Speaker 1: several years and no one actually looking for the colonists,
Speaker 1: even though they had left a forwarding address. We know
Speaker 1: where they went. They joined tribes, the one that it
Speaker 1: was just over there, a tribe that mysteriously, you know,
Speaker 1: years later, had all of these blonde haired, blue eyed
Speaker 1: children who were using European tools. And they're like, I
Speaker 1: wonder how this happened. G whiz, rub those little gray
Speaker 1: cells together and figure it out. So they tried other colonies.
Speaker 1: There was the cubid colony Newfoundland, which failed, and there
Speaker 1: was also the Problem Colony in Maine, and then finally
Speaker 1: the first permanent colony, Jamestown. Now, people who don't know
Speaker 1: their history, they will try and tell you that this
Speaker 1: was a flourishing colony from the get go and it
Speaker 1: didn't have any issues whatsoever. But it struggled so much
Speaker 1: so that the colonists resorted to cannibalizing a teenage girl.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't as if they just you know, cooked
Speaker 1: her and cot up. They found tooth marks, human tooth
Speaker 1: marks on her skull, like they gnawed at her. They
Speaker 1: probably sucked the marrow from her bones. The colonists were
Speaker 1: also aided massively by the Powatan Confederacy. They provided food,
Speaker 1: They showed them how to survive on the land, They
Speaker 1: helped them with shelter, They traded with them, like, they
Speaker 1: had a lot of help just to get through like
Speaker 1: the first winter and things like. There was so much
Speaker 1: help by the indigenous people because that's just what they did,
Speaker 1: you know, And the settlers, yeah, took it off for granted,
Speaker 1: because the settlers believed that they could claim land and
Speaker 1: basically pushed out native people, thus causing tensions. This led
Speaker 1: to disputes, arguments, and wars. When information returned home about
Speaker 1: how the colony was doing so well, more money was
Speaker 1: thrust into colonies by their various governments and rulers and businessmen.
Speaker 1: More colonists became entitled. As a result, you had territorial
Speaker 1: expansion with regions like New France, New Spain, New Netherlands,
Speaker 1: New Sweden. There were Russian colonies and English colonies, and yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time they were also fighting each other. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the thirteen British colonies unified and became the United States.
Speaker 1: Followed by the Revolutionary War or the War of Independence,
Speaker 1: dependent on how you call it. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of factors in this, you know, that led to this
Speaker 1: War of Independence, this Revolutionary War, including the banning of
Speaker 1: the Transatlantic slave trade, the fact that Britain wanted a
Speaker 1: boundary line along the Appalachian Mountains to leave the Indigenous
Speaker 1: people on one side and the British colonies on the other.
Speaker 1: And you know, the colonies wanted to expand they wanted
Speaker 1: to continue doing that. And you know, also that whole
Speaker 1: thing about taxes. But they all played a part. But
Speaker 1: like you find that certain people have a habit of
Speaker 1: just screaming taxation with a representation, and it's like that's
Speaker 1: not the whole story. That's like one third of this.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they weren't super into taxes either. Where the
Speaker 1: United States formed and the Treaty of Paris signed in
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty three, the Indigenous people were treated like persona
Speaker 1: non grata and faced marginalization and displacement, ignored by the
Speaker 1: new US government. Ignored by the US government. Their ancestral
Speaker 1: homelands were claimed as spoils of war, with white settlement
Speaker 1: pushing westward. So when I say ancestral, I mean ancestral,
Speaker 1: like there's like Blackfoot remains going back at least eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand years, so yeah, they've been there for a while.
Speaker 1: The aftermath of the war brought treaties and landlass. Because
Speaker 1: many tribes had aligned with the British, the US treated
Speaker 1: them like conquered enemies. Has caused the rapid expansion of
Speaker 1: American territory and forced tribes to surrender huge tracks of
Speaker 1: land through bullshit treaties that were not only coercive, but
Speaker 1: were often backed on. Like they backtracked on these treaties,
Speaker 1: they were worth the paper they were written in. The
Speaker 1: displacement led to inter tribal wars and resistance, and then,
Speaker 1: of course, the policies. Official US policies of assimilation and
Speaker 1: forced removal were established, with treaties designed to try and
Speaker 1: form indigenous economies into century European style agriculture. Say, the
Speaker 1: federal government had no intention of letting Indigenous people continue
Speaker 1: to live their lives according to their own cultures, spirituality
Speaker 1: or economies. They had to be snuffed out and americanized.
Speaker 1: This was about forcing assimilation. Kill the Indian, save the man.
Speaker 1: The federal government wanted to strip Indigenous children of their
Speaker 1: culture and heritage, but they needed to ensure that they
Speaker 1: had little or nothing to return to. A series of
Speaker 1: acts were passed. The Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: authorized by President Andrew Jackson to negotiate with southern tribes
Speaker 1: for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River,
Speaker 1: which triggered the Trail of Tears. It was effectively a
Speaker 1: death march. The Fourteenth Amendment of eighteen sixty eight stated
Speaker 1: that anyone born on American soil was an American citizen. However,
Speaker 1: this was deemed not to apply to the Indigenous people
Speaker 1: of America. The DAWs Act of eighteen eighty seven dismantled
Speaker 1: communal tribal land ownership, bringing it down into small allotments,
Speaker 1: allowing the government to confiscate and sell over ninety million
Speaker 1: acres of surplus tribal land to non native settlers. The
Speaker 1: Curtiss Act of eighteen ninety eight abolished tribal courts and governments,
Speaker 1: forcing tribes to comply with federal laws. It was divide
Speaker 1: and conquer. Between all this, the European settlers had spread
Speaker 1: disease amongst Indigenous people It is estimated that fifty five
Speaker 1: to one hundred million Indigenous people lost their lives as
Speaker 1: a result of contracting colonizer diseases. The federal government wanted
Speaker 1: assimilation and so the utilized missionaries, which are typically at
Speaker 1: the forefront of colonization. It is often used as like
Speaker 1: a socially acceptable way of colonizing people. The Indian Civilization
Speaker 1: Fund Act was a ten thousand dollars annual fund to
Speaker 1: subsidize missionaries operational costs on or near reservations, to teach
Speaker 1: the three hours reading, writing, rithmetic, and to assimilate Native
Speaker 1: Americans into Euro American society. So these were spread all
Speaker 1: across the country into all of the reservations, and then
Speaker 1: other establishments were built or established. This used to be
Speaker 1: in army barracks, but the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School
Speaker 1: was established in eighteen seventy nine. It was off reservation
Speaker 1: to ensure separation from culture and society. Such schools will
Speaker 1: be set up across the country. The Indian Boarding school
Speaker 1: system systematically removed Indigenous youth from reservations to schools across
Speaker 1: the country, schools where traditional clothing were forbidden, as was
Speaker 1: the mother tongue, only English was spoken to ensure assimilation.
Speaker 1: This system lasted more than a century and had devastating
Speaker 1: effects on generations of Indigenous people. To clarify that number,
Speaker 1: over five hundred and twenty six government funded and church
Speaker 1: run Indian boarding schools operated across thirty eight states between
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen and in nineteen sixty. On the sixth of
Speaker 1: October eighteen seventy nine, the first Indigenous children were brought
Speaker 1: to the Carlisle School, many of whom were taken from
Speaker 1: families in the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kaiwa, and Lakota reservations.
Speaker 1: Around seven eight hundred children from more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty distinct cultures would attend the school over its
Speaker 1: nearly forty year run. Children hauled there by boats and trains,
Speaker 1: sometimes traveling for days with the military escorts. The goal
Speaker 1: was to get them to unlearned it in his culture
Speaker 1: and absorb Euro American culture. Children were often grouped with
Speaker 1: others who had different religious beliefs and languages, forcing them
Speaker 1: to rely on English to communicate. Children removed from their families,
Speaker 1: their language taken, their traditional clothing replaced with wool military
Speaker 1: style uniforms for the boys and high collared Victorian dresses
Speaker 1: for the girls. They bathed in kerosene. Their family belongings
Speaker 1: were removed. They couldn't keep jewelry, medicine bags, or ceremonial rattles.
Speaker 1: The boys had their hair cut short and the girls
Speaker 1: their hair. Their hair was chopped up to a bob.
Speaker 1: And it is someone who's not exactly privy to Indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures and practices. I mean, they're not a monolith sough
Speaker 1: there's many, but hair cutting is often used as a
Speaker 1: form of abuse and control, Like we see this across
Speaker 1: you know, abusive relationships and and for the dehumanizing of victims,
Speaker 1: like it was something that you see over and over again.
Speaker 1: But it's even harsher when you understand how important hair
Speaker 1: is too Indigenous people. I was listening to an interview
Speaker 1: of survivor and he explained that they only cut their
Speaker 1: hair when they suffered a great loss, like a parent
Speaker 1: or grandparent dying, and so cutting off their hair was
Speaker 1: used to bully the children into think that effectively, your
Speaker 1: parents are dead. You know, you were dead to your parents.
Speaker 1: They didn't love or want them anymore. They were cut
Speaker 1: off from that. The children also lost their names to
Speaker 1: wipe out their tribal identities, because instead of simply translating
Speaker 1: a name into English like Zinkozo Win yellowbird, and womble
Speaker 1: Kleska spotted ego, they changed to things like Peter, Henry
Speaker 1: and Susan. They wanted to wipe out every part of
Speaker 1: their indigenous culture. As a vocational school, on top of
Speaker 1: the three as, the children were taught European trades like bricklaying, carpentry, cobbling,
Speaker 1: and smithing, or at least the boys, well the girls
Speaker 1: were trained in domestic work like sewing, laundry, and cooking.
Speaker 1: They marched in military precision, and they were forced to
Speaker 1: play American sports like They even created an American football
Speaker 1: team to use as propaganda to show like, oh look
Speaker 1: at how good they will a similating but punishments at
Speaker 1: Carlisle were often corporal punishment. I mean that was very
Speaker 1: common for the day. Corporal punishment was the way of it,
Speaker 1: but you could receive a lashing hard labor dietary restrictions.
Speaker 1: Boys could be laid over a barrel and beaten with
Speaker 1: a whip. Children could be put in a box of
Speaker 1: shame or a box of sin, and they were forced
Speaker 1: into solitary confinement. Girls as young as eight or nine
Speaker 1: would huddle into bed together in the hope that they
Speaker 1: would not get raped. In their beds. They would often
Speaker 1: hold their bladder to prevent themselves from going to the
Speaker 1: toilet because they were terrified that if they roamed any
Speaker 1: of the halls at night that they were going to
Speaker 1: get raped and molested and assaulted. Around two hundred children
Speaker 1: died and were buried on the cemetery on campus. You
Speaker 1: know what. Actually, there was one school I was reading
Speaker 1: about where a young boy he would leave at night
Speaker 1: and go into the forest on the grounds, like every
Speaker 1: night he would climb out and he would just go
Speaker 1: amongst the stars. When he was caught, they boarded up
Speaker 1: his window, denying him even moonlight. With the Carlisle School,
Speaker 1: they really wanted to hammer home the assimilation and so
Speaker 1: created the outing system so that the indigenous children would
Speaker 1: stay with white families out with school terms so like
Speaker 1: the summer, thus keeping them away from their homelands and
Speaker 1: their culture. But it was also a way to use
Speaker 1: the children as free labor. The Carlile School was the
Speaker 1: only off reservation school built in the East all the
Speaker 1: rest of them were in the West. Now this was
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, and a lot, if not all, of the
Speaker 1: other schools based themselves on the Carlyle model. Richard Henry
Speaker 1: Pratt Connell Richard Henry Pratt set up the Carlile School
Speaker 1: on the same principle as a prison, and he is
Speaker 1: coded as saying the only good Indian is a dead one.
Speaker 1: Both in and out of the schools, the children were
Speaker 1: subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Food and medical
Speaker 1: attention was often used as a form of punishment, so
Speaker 1: kids got sick a lot. It's also like the way
Speaker 1: they're designed, because they're in dorms, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: perfect breeding ground for you know, illness and disease to spread.
Speaker 1: And so between the abuse and the lack of general care,
Speaker 1: disease was rife these schools. Children died of pneumonia, tuberculosis, trachoma,
Speaker 1: flew the measles. Parents were rarely informed if their children
Speaker 1: died at the school, and often their bodies were dumped
Speaker 1: in unmarked graves. Some would be lucky to have a
Speaker 1: marked grave, some would be lucky to have a coffin.
Speaker 1: There's an assumption that different forms of knowledge are bad
Speaker 1: or lesser, like the skill of oral storytelling, understanding spiritual practices,
Speaker 1: fluency and indigenous languages, and then of course land based
Speaker 1: knowledge systems. I'm trying to figure out if I can
Speaker 1: put this in a modern perspective. It's like demanding people
Speaker 1: know all of the capital cities of the world, but
Speaker 1: dismiss them for being able to know the right amount
Speaker 1: of ingredients to using a cake recipe by eye, or
Speaker 1: like you know, some people can look at a plant
Speaker 1: and just know what it is, Like they can look
Speaker 1: at the sky and understand that the weather's going to change,
Speaker 1: like people who know songs and stories and inherited skills,
Speaker 1: and it's all just stripped away. One of the things
Speaker 1: they would do is they would take photos of the children,
Speaker 1: like as they arrived with the long hair and in
Speaker 1: their moccasins and other gear, and then they would have
Speaker 1: a photo of them after they will headshield, little uniform on,
Speaker 1: and they would use these photos to just like promote
Speaker 1: just how good assimilation was going. Look, we can do it. Oh,
Speaker 1: and it's all it's like they're completely ignoring the trauma
Speaker 1: that they are putting these children through. There's this idea
Speaker 1: that you're helping when all you're doing is cutting down.
Speaker 1: And this trauma isn't individual, it's collective, it's community. It's
Speaker 1: all being attacked. And children at these schools, they were
Speaker 1: torn down to be rebuilt in the American way, and
Speaker 1: parents didn't have a choice. By eighteen ninety three, the
Speaker 1: threat of removing food like starving communities that was on
Speaker 1: the agenda, Like that was a tool they used, like
Speaker 1: the Secretary of the Interior could withhold rations and funding
Speaker 1: to Indigenous people if they did not allow their children
Speaker 1: to be taken from them. If you do not allow
Speaker 1: us to take your children from you and raise them
Speaker 1: in a different culture, with a different language, and to
Speaker 1: give them a different way of life, we're going to
Speaker 1: starve you. We're going to make sure you die out
Speaker 1: one way or the other. These communities were wholly reliant
Speaker 1: on rations because all the other options were taken. They
Speaker 1: were all taken from them. The manner of agriculture they did,
Speaker 1: the way that they hunted the indigenous hunting practices because
Speaker 1: a lot of it was migratory based, and because the
Speaker 1: US government hunted down the food source to ensure that
Speaker 1: Indigenous people would starve, to ensure that the indigenous people
Speaker 1: were reliant on the federal government. They did this deliberately.
Speaker 1: They did this so that they could control and abuse children.
Speaker 1: Some people resisted. They taught their children hide and seek
Speaker 1: games for when the colonizers came round to steal them.
Speaker 1: Many would hide their kids and men. I think it
Speaker 1: was the Hoping Nation. They were sent to Alcatraz for
Speaker 1: trying to stop their children being taken by the colonizers.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the army would come right if people were resisting.
Speaker 1: At the schools, children who resisted were bullied and abused.
Speaker 1: Some children would run away, and like, these are children
Speaker 1: who are miles upon miles away from home, Like there
Speaker 1: were Native people of Alaska and Hawaii that were in
Speaker 1: these schools. So they took them for him as far
Speaker 1: as they could. They're all over And when you remember
Speaker 1: you have all of these schools in the West and
Speaker 1: America as a land mass, it's fucking massive. It's huge,
Speaker 1: and these children are running desperate. There's one story I
Speaker 1: remember about a group of boys escaping because because the
Speaker 1: way the schools were designed, you know, it sort of
Speaker 1: creates circular abuse within it, and so there's circular cyclical abuse,
Speaker 1: and so the children would leave they'd escape, and they did,
Speaker 1: and they're quite young. They end up in hot Springs,
Speaker 1: like they managed to get like they hitch, like they
Speaker 1: get out. People just like sure, we'll take you this far.
Speaker 1: And they come across this one cop who lets them
Speaker 1: sleep in the jail overnight to protect them because it's cold,
Speaker 1: because winter is coming. There's snow, and like they stay
Speaker 1: there and then they continue on in the snow, they
Speaker 1: make it back to their mother's home. So it's like
Speaker 1: they were one of the few that weren't so far away.
Speaker 1: So they get there, They get back to their home,
Speaker 1: back to their mother's house, and they're there for a
Speaker 1: few days. Then their auntie shows up, who brings them
Speaker 1: back to the school. Now, whether this was we have
Speaker 1: to take them back because otherwise we're going to be punished,
Speaker 1: or whether this was this is for the betterment of them,
Speaker 1: they have to go. Either way, it's a good option.
Speaker 1: But they were brought back to the school. In the
Speaker 1: schools themselves, a bounty was offered when kids ran away,
Speaker 1: so basically students like got treats or or privileges if
Speaker 1: they ratted out or caught someone who'd run away like
Speaker 1: this creates a divine amongst the children. And sometimes when
Speaker 1: a child was returned, their face would be smelled with
Speaker 1: paint and they would have a basically a Native coseplay,
Speaker 1: a mock up, pretend joke version of Native American like
Speaker 1: tribal outfit. It would be thrown upon them. They'd have
Speaker 1: a sign saying that they tried to run away, and
Speaker 1: then they would be ridiculed, mocked, and just bullied. Assimilated
Speaker 1: children were conditioned in the Euro American way, and so
Speaker 1: when they did return to the reservations, they didn't fit
Speaker 1: in anymore. They were alienated with cultural barriers, practices, they
Speaker 1: no longer recognized, language lost, and they struggled. They didn't
Speaker 1: respect the elders the way they should. The connection to
Speaker 1: their families were severed or broken. Some were so used
Speaker 1: to the Anglo way of life because for some children
Speaker 1: they were away from five years old and they didn't
Speaker 1: return until they were nearly twenty. Their childhood the live
Speaker 1: was taken and changed, the rug pulled out from under
Speaker 1: their feet, and yeah, some were so used to the
Speaker 1: Anglo way of things that they wanted to do things
Speaker 1: that way. They were to implement changes and have things
Speaker 1: done their way. But This obviously was met with pushback
Speaker 1: from the community. Then some were so conditioned that when
Speaker 1: they were turned home, they were disgusted by their own families,
Speaker 1: how their hair was long and their face wasn't scrubbed
Speaker 1: clean to high hell. Bemused by cultural practices, what should
Speaker 1: have been home was now very much the other. But
Speaker 1: some Indigenous children used the angle education to their advantage
Speaker 1: and became activists aimed at helping their people. Many tribes
Speaker 1: worked to keep languages and practices alive even though the
Speaker 1: government was trying to eradicate them. Families maintained cultural identity
Speaker 1: outside institutions, and oral history, because it could not be arrested,
Speaker 1: played a major role in indigenous cultures surviving. In nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight, the US government reported findings that children were abused, overworked,
Speaker 1: and underfed. By the nineteen thirties, when Americans learned how
Speaker 1: children were being treated, most off reservation schools closed down,
Speaker 1: but the bodern school system didn't end when children returned home.
Speaker 1: For many, this marked the start of acquieter form of disruption,
Speaker 1: one that would echo through generations. Trauma wasn't just confined
Speaker 1: to one person's lifetime. It passed through families and communities.
Speaker 1: See primary and secondary socialization set you up. They create
Speaker 1: the environment and have a massive effect on who you
Speaker 1: are going to be, how you view the world, your faith,
Speaker 1: your belief systems, your culture, all of this, it's all
Speaker 1: shaped by it. Your primary socialization is your family. Secondary
Speaker 1: is outwith that, it's your community, and it's your skill.
Speaker 1: For most of us, anyway, and these children, they were
Speaker 1: taken from their community, they were taken from their families,
Speaker 1: and so much was taken from them. Your language is
Speaker 1: taken from you. You don't express in the same way.
Speaker 1: Language isn't just the words you speak. It's like when
Speaker 1: we say how there's a Japanese word for when your
Speaker 1: mouth is lonely, you know you eat because your mouth
Speaker 1: is lonely, or chaldenfraud, which is the German word for
Speaker 1: the feeling you get when you realize like other people
Speaker 1: have their own emotions, feelings and stuff like that. There
Speaker 1: are expressions that exist, there are ways that we communicate,
Speaker 1: and they all exist through different languages. There are tones
Speaker 1: and intonations and all of these that come together. It's
Speaker 1: not just about the words. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's not just it's not what you said, it's
Speaker 1: how you said it, but it's very much so, and
Speaker 1: so you're not communicating with your people the same way.
Speaker 1: The parenting patterns are disrupted, as is cultural continuity. The
Speaker 1: way that you learn things, the way that you do things.
Speaker 1: You learn by example when you're raised in your family,
Speaker 1: and if you're shown how to cook, for example, you
Speaker 1: see the way that you know your mother makes. You
Speaker 1: know what, I'm going to use my own mum as
Speaker 1: an example. My mum makes these homemade sausage rolls, Like
Speaker 1: she mixes all the seasoning for the sausage meat. You know,
Speaker 1: she like adds stuff to the pastry. And so that's
Speaker 1: how I make sausage rolls. It's like there are desserts
Speaker 1: I make the way my granmate them. There are ways
Speaker 1: that I clean or organize my kitchen. My mum can
Speaker 1: come into any house I've ever lived in, and we'll
Speaker 1: know exactly where the tea towls are kept, because I
Speaker 1: keep the tea towels the same place she always kept them.
Speaker 1: She knows how I organize my cutlery drawer because that's
Speaker 1: how her cutlery drawer was always organized. You know, there
Speaker 1: are ways that we learn to do things. There are
Speaker 1: ways that we learn to live our lives and the
Speaker 1: environment within, and this is taken. The songs and lullabies
Speaker 1: we sing our children, they'll not passed on because they're taken.
Speaker 1: A barrier has been placed between parent and child, community
Speaker 1: and school. Remember these schools, children are punished for speaking
Speaker 1: in the language. They were removed from traditional models of
Speaker 1: parenting and kinship, and most of all, they were taught
Speaker 1: to suppress emotion and affection because that's not just the
Speaker 1: Euro American way, that was the Christian way for a
Speaker 1: long time. The only emotions you're allowed to feel are
Speaker 1: shame and guilt, and the law of these schools were
Speaker 1: run by mission rates. As an adult, some survival struggled
Speaker 1: to express affection in ways that they hadn't been shown,
Speaker 1: and they were discouraged from traditional child weearing practices, so
Speaker 1: that wasn't getting passed on either, and this created a
Speaker 1: ripple effect, a chasm with children of survivals growing up
Speaker 1: in emotionally fragmented environments because of forced disruption. The loss
Speaker 1: of language shall have some families without any fluent speakers
Speaker 1: at all, and a sense of missing knowledge and cultural
Speaker 1: distance and melgers across generations, so many survivors, they didn't
Speaker 1: speak about their experiences for decades. Silence was a survival strategy.
Speaker 1: It's not avoidance, it was just how to make it through.
Speaker 1: But unspoken trauma shapes family environments. The internalizing leads to
Speaker 1: emotional distance and we have difficulty prossessing things like grief
Speaker 1: and the patterns of resilience coexist with the unresolved pain.
Speaker 1: Silence itself becomes part of what is inherited, not just
Speaker 1: the trauma alone, but the coping mechanisms that go with it.
Speaker 1: And many of these children come home with PTSD, so
Speaker 1: many of them not only from the environment but also
Speaker 1: the abuse. And remember, they will have been told consistently
Speaker 1: that everything about their indigenous heritage in culture and spiritual practices,
Speaker 1: everything about that is wrong. That is what they will
Speaker 1: have been forced to listen to every day. So of course,
Speaker 1: then after everything they've gone through, there was this huge
Speaker 1: distrust between these communities and the non native authorities because
Speaker 1: of everything they did. Everything they did to these children
Speaker 1: and the community survivors and their families. This trauma leads
Speaker 1: to what has led to higher rates of depression substance abuse,
Speaker 1: which is a coping mechanism, stress leading to cardiovascular disease,
Speaker 1: and then the rate of suicide. All is a result
Speaker 1: of these schools. Thousands of children were taken from their
Speaker 1: homes and placed into these schools. They suffered, and generations
Speaker 1: after them suffered. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna scroll
Speaker 1: back a little bit. Actually, the thing about missing knowledge
Speaker 1: and how people feel like part of their heritage, their
Speaker 1: culture is missing. So many European Americans, they talk about
Speaker 1: their Scottish heritage or their Irish heritage, very rarely British
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, even though that's you know, just from
Speaker 1: one of the British colonies. Chances are, but there's this
Speaker 1: longing for this connection to your heritage, and you want
Speaker 1: to know that you're connected to this this version of
Speaker 1: Irish culture, Scottish culture, all this stuff that existed, however
Speaker 1: many years ago. But I mean, our culture has evolved. However,
Speaker 1: this culture, these cultures, there's there's hundreds of them. Indigenous
Speaker 1: people are not a monolith. But for a lot of
Speaker 1: these cultures, some tribes were completely wiped out. Some had
Speaker 1: no way to pass on their practices. Their language was lost,
Speaker 1: their spiritual practices were lost, they didn't get a chance
Speaker 1: to evolve in the same way, to grow and flourish
Speaker 1: because your federal government cut them off at the root.
Speaker 1: Now you should be fighting and demanding more investigation, more research,
Speaker 1: funding for research for Indigenous people and their lives across
Speaker 1: your country because you don't get to grasp at a
Speaker 1: long lost herientage while denying the people who you stole else. Listen,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go off in the run. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: go off and I ran, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop.
Speaker 1: But like, there is still a lack of funding and
Speaker 1: reservations today, but many Indigenous people, many communities are fighting
Speaker 1: and working to proclaim their cultural roles, rebuilding language and
Speaker 1: younger generations especially, you know, they're reconnecting with traditions and identity.
Speaker 1: They basically said, fuck this where Game of Soldiers were
Speaker 1: taking it back. If you are a European American, you
Speaker 1: should be helping with this funding. You should be fighting
Speaker 1: for it. But like, I don't want to hear any
Speaker 1: nonsense about oh well, my family came over during the
Speaker 1: family Yeah, and the Choctaw Nation sent money back to
Speaker 1: Ireland to help people, even though they themselves were struggling
Speaker 1: and suffering. The boarding school era did not only take
Speaker 1: children from families, had reshaped how families would relate to
Speaker 1: each other for generations. And yet within that disruption, memory,
Speaker 1: language reclamation, and the determination to restore that what was
Speaker 1: taken persists. Although many Indigenous boarding schools closed by the
Speaker 1: late twentieth century, which is like you'd think it would
Speaker 1: have chilled over the last, you know, a few years,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen hundred there were twenty thousand children there.
Speaker 1: Twenty five years later that was over sixty thousand. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, survivals increasingly shared these experiences, publicly challenging
Speaker 1: the propaganda that these schools were benevolent institutions. Their testimony
Speaker 1: revealed widespread physical punishment, emotional abuse, neglect, forced labor, and
Speaker 1: systematic suppression of Indigenous culture and languages. In recent day,
Speaker 1: tribal nations, historians, and governments have undertaken efforts to document
Speaker 1: the full scope of the system, as they should. Archival
Speaker 1: records have identified hundreds of federal schools, while investigators have
Speaker 1: uncovered evidence of unmarked burial sites at some former school locations.
Speaker 1: Many tribal nations have also worked to preserve survivor testimonies
Speaker 1: through oral history projects, ensuring first hand accounts become part
Speaker 1: of the historical record. The residential schools are often overlooked
Speaker 1: in history because they're viewed through very eurocentric lens, like
Speaker 1: it's viewed as, oh, but we're actually helping them, not
Speaker 1: you destroyed the nations. You destroyed them, You didn't help them.
Speaker 1: You tried to put a square peg in a round
Speaker 1: hole in your surprised that in order to do that
Speaker 1: you had to chop at it and whittle it down
Speaker 1: to make it fit the forced idea. But it being
Speaker 1: the European way or the Christian way that necessarily makes
Speaker 1: it better. As absolute ballocks, thousands of children suffered, generations
Speaker 1: suffered in some pale and steel males will still pat
Speaker 1: themselves in the back with it. But look, they're civilized now, right,
Speaker 1: which is such a horrible way to be, and people
Speaker 1: are still suffering. It wasn't until what was it nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty four that Indigenous people were actually considered American citizens,
Speaker 1: that they were legally American citizens, And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight where the Indian Child Wealth for Act
Speaker 1: was passed by Congress and President Jimmy Carter, but it
Speaker 1: finally gave Native American parents the legal right to refuse
Speaker 1: their child's placement in a school, which after years and
Speaker 1: years of investigations and evidence of all of the years
Speaker 1: of abuse that was happening in these schools. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: unsurprisingly this led to a lot of these schools closing
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties. There are very few off
Speaker 1: reservations boarding schools that still exist. There are still a
Speaker 1: couple and a lot of these former schools. The ones
Speaker 1: that still exist, the Carlisle School, I think, is back
Speaker 1: being a barracks again. But a lot of these institutions
Speaker 1: have been taken over by Indigenous communities. Now. I know
Speaker 1: the President Joe Biden did give an official apology from
Speaker 1: the government to Indigenous people to what happened in those
Speaker 1: boarding skills, but it's something and I'm not one to
Speaker 1: say whether an apology is enough. An apology to me
Speaker 1: is always the starting point. It is the acknowledgment of
Speaker 1: the crime. It is the acknowledgment of the abuse. It's
Speaker 1: the acknowledgment of the trauma that was forced upon the people,
Speaker 1: and the investigations they need to continue because there are
Speaker 1: still hundreds of missing children. There were hundreds unaccounted for
Speaker 1: those who went to the schools and never returned, with
Speaker 1: no information at all regarding their whereabouts, and that needs
Speaker 1: to be found out. Hundreds of children disappeared in federal
Speaker 1: establishments and so many families lost their children, well, their
Speaker 1: children were stolen and they never found out what happened
Speaker 1: to them. Communities were fractured, and even the people who
Speaker 1: did return, they came back fractured. Communities were still suffering
Speaker 1: as a direct result of what happened in these schools.
Speaker 1: America was built on the bones of its victims. And
Speaker 1: so ends my tale on the indigenous boarding schools. Thank
Speaker 1: you all for listening to inherited winds, because that's what
Speaker 1: it is to scar that goes so deep, that cuts
Speaker 1: their generations, it bleeds into the next person. And I
Speaker 1: know someone will say, you know, scars don't bleed, but
Speaker 1: that's not the point. It shouldn't. But the act itself,
Speaker 1: it was designed to cut people off and what it
Speaker 1: did is cut through right. It is by block b
Speaker 1: IPOC Mental Health Awareness Month, that is, Black, Indigenous and
Speaker 1: People of color Mental Health Awareness Month. There are lots
Speaker 1: of great resources and I know into healthcare is different
Speaker 1: in various countries, and I have an international audience, but
Speaker 1: for my American listeners, there is a really good toolkit
Speaker 1: on Mentalhealthamerica dot org. It's in English and it is
Speaker 1: in Spanish. I'm going to put the link in the
Speaker 1: show notes down below. If it's of any use to you,
Speaker 1: please utilize it. If anyone who is commenting on on
Speaker 1: the episode, if you have anything to share, if there
Speaker 1: are resources that you feel will be beneficial to people
Speaker 1: listening to this episode, please do share. Mu's all do
Speaker 1: a little bit to help each other. And yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to say a like in review because I
Speaker 1: just feel distasteful. What I'm gonna do is now move
Speaker 1: on to recommendation time for watching. I know I've done
Speaker 1: it before and I know I'll probably do it again.
Speaker 1: But North of North, North of North, when's my second
Speaker 1: season coming? It is? It is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: shows that I've seen in a long time. Like it's
Speaker 1: so and also it was robbed at like the was
Speaker 1: it the Emmys? What was the one? There was an
Speaker 1: award show and it lost costume design. How it's amazing,
Speaker 1: It's amazing, Like how do you not not? I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get angry about it. But North of North, where's my
Speaker 1: second season? Okay, come on, Netflix, do something now. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go on the opposite end. I've gone from
Speaker 1: something kind of joyful to something depressing. So the USA
Speaker 1: was the not only place that had the residential schools.
Speaker 1: Canada had them too, and it was also vile, and
Speaker 1: I will be talking about them at another time when
Speaker 1: I do my Canadian history, but I'm not there yet.
Speaker 1: So USA this month. Worry about the rest later. There
Speaker 1: is a podcast called Keeper Island. It's Keeper. It's k
Speaker 1: U p e R, but I think it's pronounced Keeper
Speaker 1: because that's how the hosts pronounced it, so I'm sticking
Speaker 1: to that. It is a it is a podcast. It
Speaker 1: is on the Keeper Island Residential School and it is horrific.
Speaker 1: It is a very good lesson. It's just a very
Speaker 1: hard lesson. And for reading The Bone Thief by Vanessa
Speaker 1: Lily because I like my murder mysteries, okay, and I
Speaker 1: make no apologies for it, but that is everything I
Speaker 1: have shared today. Oh actually, actually, if you if you
Speaker 1: follow people online, follow show me your mask. They're on TikTok,
Speaker 1: I think Instagram and thread. They have what I can
Speaker 1: only describe as wonderful opinions regarding the Orcus and some
Speaker 1: of the could artwork too, So follow them. And with that, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bide you. I do. Oh actually, somebody said,
Speaker 1: do you means like goodbye forever, and I'm like, listen,
Speaker 1: I know it's fine. Okay, it's fine. Don't worry about it,
Speaker 1: because I'm also gonna say au revoir arios avuiti, then
Speaker 1: my friends, bye bye,