QuakerSpeak | The Lasting Trauma of Quaker Indigenous Boarding Schools @Quakerspeak | Uploaded November 2023 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
LEARN MORE:
friendspeaceteams.org/trr
boardingschoolhealing.org
youtu.be/doYRrXjooo0
fcnl.org/issues/native-americans
QuakerSpeak will resume February 15th, 2024.
SUPPORT QuakerSpeak with a donation! quakerspeak.com/donate
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
Filming and Editing by Christopher Cuthrell
___
Transcript:
One Dakota woman, Zitkala-Sa, was taken to a Quaker boarding school in Indiana at age eight. She talks about what she lost in order to get to, what she called, the “white man's papers.” Through her schooling, she was awarded certificates and graduation papers. But what she lost was her relationship with the natural world, her relationship with her mother, with her community, her connection to Spirit. And she writes about that with such pain. I think most Quakers still don't know our history as participants in this enterprise of forced assimilation of native people. And so the first thing that we have to do is learn the truth.
My name is Paula Palmer and I use she/her pronouns. I'm a member of the Boulder meeting, which is part of Intermountain Yearly Meeting, and I live outside of Boulder in a little town called Lewisville, which is in the homeland of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute Peoples. The indigenous people of this country experienced many traumas, beginning with the arrival of Europeans on these shores. The boarding school experience was particularly traumatic for the children, who were taken away from their families -- intentionally separated from their parents and grandparents and communities. And so you can imagine the trauma that they experienced, not only by being physically separated, but by being told that everything about their lives was somehow wrong and that they needed to change everything. From their names to their clothes to their hair.
As they left the schools, they faced another really difficult challenge. As they tried, if they tried, to assimilate as they were taught to do, they were never going to be completely accepted as equals. In a racist society dominated by white European Americans. Many of them had lost so much of their indigenous identity by missing those years of growing up in their families and learning the dances and the stories and the songs and the skills of their people. It was very difficult for many of them to return to their families, into their communities and feel at home there. Trauma is passed from generation to generation.
As they grew up and started having children, they experienced their parents as being not genuinely affectionate and loving because they had not experienced that themselves as children. They didn't really know how to be in a family, how to create a family, how to be affectionate to their children. Their children grew up lacking that care and comfort and sense of being loved in their own families. And they usually were not taught the indigenous language that their parents had lost in the years that they were not allowed to speak their language in the boarding schools. That generation grows up also feeling that something is missing. One generation after another, that sense of despair is passed down and it can it can be experienced as: persistent poverty, violence, alcoholism.
Friends sometimes ask me, “well, how could Quakers have done this? Didn't Quakers at that time see that of God in indigenous people?” I think they did see that of God in individuals. What they didn't see was the intrinsic value of indigenous cultures as a whole. And that's because they were blinded by white supremacy. They were they were blinded by their certainty that their way of life was superior.
What can we do now is not something that we ourselves can answer alone. We can only really answer that through dialog with Indigenous people. Being in touch. Reaching out. Meeting Native people where they are. Learning from them. Participating in their activities. Supporting their work in the communities. Their aspirations. And learning through those relationships. Learning through friendships. One thing that Quakers can do, and that is really important to do, is to support this legislation for creating a Truth and Healing Commission. And FCNL, the Friends Committee on National Legislation makes it so easy for us to do that, to contact our senators and representatives. So that's something that we immediately need to do as individuals and as our meetings.
Another thing I think that is a direct acknowledgment that the Quaker Indigenous schools attempted to annihilate indigenous languages...
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
LEARN MORE:
friendspeaceteams.org/trr
boardingschoolhealing.org
youtu.be/doYRrXjooo0
fcnl.org/issues/native-americans
QuakerSpeak will resume February 15th, 2024.
SUPPORT QuakerSpeak with a donation! quakerspeak.com/donate
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
Filming and Editing by Christopher Cuthrell
___
Transcript:
One Dakota woman, Zitkala-Sa, was taken to a Quaker boarding school in Indiana at age eight. She talks about what she lost in order to get to, what she called, the “white man's papers.” Through her schooling, she was awarded certificates and graduation papers. But what she lost was her relationship with the natural world, her relationship with her mother, with her community, her connection to Spirit. And she writes about that with such pain. I think most Quakers still don't know our history as participants in this enterprise of forced assimilation of native people. And so the first thing that we have to do is learn the truth.
My name is Paula Palmer and I use she/her pronouns. I'm a member of the Boulder meeting, which is part of Intermountain Yearly Meeting, and I live outside of Boulder in a little town called Lewisville, which is in the homeland of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute Peoples. The indigenous people of this country experienced many traumas, beginning with the arrival of Europeans on these shores. The boarding school experience was particularly traumatic for the children, who were taken away from their families -- intentionally separated from their parents and grandparents and communities. And so you can imagine the trauma that they experienced, not only by being physically separated, but by being told that everything about their lives was somehow wrong and that they needed to change everything. From their names to their clothes to their hair.
As they left the schools, they faced another really difficult challenge. As they tried, if they tried, to assimilate as they were taught to do, they were never going to be completely accepted as equals. In a racist society dominated by white European Americans. Many of them had lost so much of their indigenous identity by missing those years of growing up in their families and learning the dances and the stories and the songs and the skills of their people. It was very difficult for many of them to return to their families, into their communities and feel at home there. Trauma is passed from generation to generation.
As they grew up and started having children, they experienced their parents as being not genuinely affectionate and loving because they had not experienced that themselves as children. They didn't really know how to be in a family, how to create a family, how to be affectionate to their children. Their children grew up lacking that care and comfort and sense of being loved in their own families. And they usually were not taught the indigenous language that their parents had lost in the years that they were not allowed to speak their language in the boarding schools. That generation grows up also feeling that something is missing. One generation after another, that sense of despair is passed down and it can it can be experienced as: persistent poverty, violence, alcoholism.
Friends sometimes ask me, “well, how could Quakers have done this? Didn't Quakers at that time see that of God in indigenous people?” I think they did see that of God in individuals. What they didn't see was the intrinsic value of indigenous cultures as a whole. And that's because they were blinded by white supremacy. They were they were blinded by their certainty that their way of life was superior.
What can we do now is not something that we ourselves can answer alone. We can only really answer that through dialog with Indigenous people. Being in touch. Reaching out. Meeting Native people where they are. Learning from them. Participating in their activities. Supporting their work in the communities. Their aspirations. And learning through those relationships. Learning through friendships. One thing that Quakers can do, and that is really important to do, is to support this legislation for creating a Truth and Healing Commission. And FCNL, the Friends Committee on National Legislation makes it so easy for us to do that, to contact our senators and representatives. So that's something that we immediately need to do as individuals and as our meetings.
Another thing I think that is a direct acknowledgment that the Quaker Indigenous schools attempted to annihilate indigenous languages...
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
