US to revisit the history of high schools living: Deb Haaland | Human Rights Issues
The Secretary of the Interior has set up an investigation into US events over the past 150 years to destroy their own race and culture.
The federal government will investigate how it monitored Native American schools in the past and tried to “reveal the truth about human mortality and the long-term consequences” of institutions, which in recent decades forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities, the US Secretary of State Deb Haaland announced Tuesday.
Unprecedented work will include writing and reviewing decades to identify past schools, locating identified and potential sites for burial in nearby or adjacent schools, and disclosing the names and ethnic groups of students, he said.
“In order to address the birth defects in Indian boarding schools and to promote spiritual and psychological healing in our community, we need to address the challenges that have not been mentioned in the past no matter how difficult they may be,” Haaland said.
One of the Laguna Pueblo tribes in New Mexico and the first American to serve as Cabinet secretary, Haaland made the remarks in a speech to members of the National Congress of Indian Indians at a group meeting.
He also said that this will be long, difficult and painful and will not end the heartache and loss that many families endure.
Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the United States established laws and regulations to establish and support Indian schools locally. For more than 150 years, Indian children were taken from their communities and forced to go to boarding schools.
Haaland spoke of the government’s efforts to eradicate racism, language and culture and how the past has continued to be marked by prolonged frustration, violence and violence, premature death, mental disorders and drug abuse.
The program of the recent discovery of the remains of children buried in a former Canadian high school home has grown the interest of the legacy in Canada and the US.
In Canada, more than 150,000 Children of the first type were required to attend state-sponsored Christian schools as part of a community education program. They were forced to convert to Christianity and were not allowed to speak in their own language. Many were beaten and insulted, and up to 6,000 died.
After reading about unknown graves in Canada, Haaland cited his family’s story in a recent article published by the Washington Post.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland set up an investigation in the US after reading reports from an unknown Canadian cemetery that preserved the remains of 215 Indian children [File: Evan Vucci/AP Photo]
Haaland wrote that he was “made up of these dangerous shared ideas” and also described how his “grandmother was robbed of their families” at the age of eight.
He also cited figures from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which said that by 1926, more than 80 percent of children of traditional school age went to boarding schools run by the state or religious organizations. In addition to providing support and information, the partnership has been working on additional research in US boarding schools and deaths that many say are in high demand.
Home Affairs officials said that in addition to trying to explain the deaths in the dormitories, they would work to protect the burial grounds associated with the schools and consult with the tribes on how to do so in honor of families and communities.
As part of this work, the final staff report for the organization is to be born on April 1, 2022.
Haaland in his remarks described the story of how his grandmother was put on a train by other children in her village and sent to a boarding school. He further added that many families have been victims of harassment for a long time by the “black history” of the agencies and that the agency has a responsibility to restore the status quo.
“We need to uncover the realities of human death and the aftermath of these schools,” he said.
