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	Reparations for loss of language & culture brought on by Indian residential schools system by Nonprofit Quarterly, CBC, OHCHR, agencies   Aug. 2024   U.S. Federal Report outlines abuses at Native Boarding Schools, calls for Remedies, by Steve Dubb for The Nonprofit Quarterly.   "What they took from us… was a way of life, a way of medicines, a way of subsistence, a way of looking at our environment, looking at our universe". - Ione Quigley   In 2021, US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna), who is the first Native American ever to hold a federal cabinet post, called on her assistant secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland (Ojibwe) to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the history of federal “Indian Boarding Schools.” The final report resulting from that three-year study was published in July 2024.   As the Department of the Interior noted at the outset of Haaland’s call, the schools operated for over 150 years, beginning in 1819. These schools formed part of a federally backed “education” system in which Native American children were routinely pulled away from their parents, homes, and communities and sent to boarding schools to “assimilate them in Western culture” and cast aside their own—an explicit strategy of cultural genocide. Children would be separated from their parents for years.   As the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian details, “The children were forced to cut their hair and give up their traditional clothing. They had to give up their meaningful Native names and take English ones. They were not only taught to speak English but were punished for speaking their own languages. Their own traditional religious practices were forcibly replaced with Christianity. They were taught that their cultures were inferior.”   Infamously, Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, founder of a boarding school in 1879 in Carlisle, PA, said the goal was to “kill the Indian, save the man.”   The multiple harms and intergenerational trauma from boarding schools affect Native communities and Native people to this day.   Yet, outside of Indian Country, the history of these US boarding schools remains largely ignored. As Haaland wrote in a Washington Post op-ed at the time the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative was launched (and just three months after she became secretary), “The lasting and profound impacts of the federal government’s boarding school system have never been appropriately addressed.” Haaland added that her own “maternal grandparents were stolen from their families when they were only 8 years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture, and communities until they were 13.”   By itself, the report is just a starting point. Haaland readily concedes the point, saying that “the road to healing does not end with this report—it is just beginning.” Still, the report—and its findings—offer an important milestone in both documenting the extent of the harm and offers recommendations for remedies.   The report includes two volumes—one published in 2022 and the other published at the end of July 2024—both of which are a little over 100 pages long. Among the findings are the following:   Between 1819 and 1969, the federal Indian boarding school system consisted of 408 schools across 37 states or then-territories, including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 in Hawaiʻi; some schools had multiple sites, so the total number of school sites was 431.   Based on available records, there were at least 973 documented deaths of Native American children across the system. Debra Krol of the Arizona Republic, however, reports that these figures are “likely far less than the number of children who perished. Some burial sites contain human remains of multiple people or burials of people relocated from other sites.”   The study found 53 marked and 21 unmarked burial sites at 65 different school sites.   The report identifies by name 18,624 Native Americans who attended boarding schools but acknowledges that this is a small percentage of how many were affected. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition estimates that in 1925 alone, 60,889 Native children were enrolled in boarding schools—nearly 83 percent of all Native children of school age at the time.   An additional 1,025 other institutions (including day schools, sanitariums, asylums, orphanages, and stand-alone dormitories) were not formally part of the boarding school system, but the report indicates they were used to advance cultural assimilation goals.   The report also offers eight principal recommendations:   Issue a formal apology. Similar apologies were made in 2008 in Canada and Australia, but no such apology has occurred in the United States to date.   Invest in Native communities. Notably, as Mary Annette Pember and Stewart Huntington of ICT (formerly Indian Country Today) point out, the word “reparations” is notably absent from the report. It does recommend investments in community and individual healing, family preservation and reunification, violence prevention, Native education, and Indigenous language revitalization, but offers no financial recommendations about how much funding should be involved.   Build a national memorial to educate the public. Repatriate the remains of children who died at the boarding schools, including passing laws allowing for the reburial of remains.   Return boarding school sites to Native ownership (or at least, if federally owned, with Native land stewardship). This, as Huntington reports for ICT, marks an effort at land back; as Huntington points out, “it was often land—appropriated from Native nations—that provided the resources to operate the boarding schools.”   Tell the story of the federal boarding schools and make information available for both academic and nonacademic distribution. Invest in further research regarding present-day health and economic impacts.   Advance international relationships with other countries with similar experiences—such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—to exchange best practices regarding healing, repair, and redress.   A Canadian Contrast   As noted above, reparations were not among the recommendations. This contrasts with action taken in Canada, where there were 139 schools—one-third the number in the United States. From 2007 to 2015, Canada conducted a Truth and Reconciliation Commission study, which led to 94 calls to action (some have been implemented, many not).   In 2021, a mass grave was found at a boarding school in Kamloops, British Columbia, holding the remains of 215 Indigenous children, a development that shocked many Canadians even as it confirmed the suspicions of many Indigenous people. This led to further pressure on the government to follow through on the commitments from the 2015 truth and reconciliation report.   To date, Ian Austen of the New York Times reports that due to legal settlements, about $10 billion ($7.3 billion US dollars) in reparation payments have been made to Indigenous people in Canada for harm resulting from that nation’s boarding school system. An additional $23 billion (about $16.7 billion US dollars) in reparations in Canada has been provided for 300,000 Indigenous people harmed by a system that often placed Indigenous children in foster care rather than helping families stay together.   There remain many unanswered questions—including whether, and to what extent, the recommendations of the report will be implemented.   What’s next in the United States? Clearly, the federal report is an important acknowledgment by the federal government of horrific wrongdoing. Yet, in terms of addressing and remedying the harms, it’s but a small step. Newland, who headed the study team, echoes Haaland and acknowledges this, saying that “our shared work should mark the beginning of a long effort to heal our nation.”   There remain many unanswered questions—including whether, and to what extent, the recommendations of the report will be implemented.   There are some next steps planned. One is a $3.7 million oral history project, launched in 2023 and stewarded by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which, the report notes, will “focus on gathering first-person survivor narratives and establishing an oral history collection.”   Haaland told Krol that there is also an interagency effort being organized involving the federal Department of Health and Human Services and Education Department to develop a 10-year language revitalization strategy in Native communities. Newland also told Krol that the Native communities he met with have called for support for community-based, trauma-informed healing care.   For their part, Pember and Huntington for ICT interviewed about a half-dozen Native leaders for their responses. In Minneapolis, LeMoine LaPointe, a Sicangu Lakota elder, reflected the mixed sentiments of the people interviewed:   “This country has never addressed the horrendousness of the boarding school era. It’s hard to swallow the truth,” he said. LaPointe added that he hoped that Native Americans could lead the way forward to “a more positive and beneficial place.”   http://nonprofitquarterly.org/federal-report-outlines-abuses-at-native-boarding-schools-calls-for-remedies/ http://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/media_document/doi_federal_indian_boarding_school_initiative_investigative_report_vii_final_508_compliant.pdf http://narf.org/category/boarding-school-healing/ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/30/us/native-american-boarding-schools.html   * Mar. 2025   In tribal nations across the United States, leaders are scrambling to respond to a directive from President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to close more than a quarter of Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, which provide vital services to Indigenous communities.   “It’s a destabilizing action,” said Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of the American Indian. “I really have to think we have to assume the worst, unfortunately.”   In the many treaties the U.S. signed with tribal nations, it outlined several rights owed to them — like land rights and healthcare through departments established later, like Indian Health Services. Trust responsibilities are the legal and moral obligations the U.S. has to protect and uphold those rights.   http://www.ncai.org/news/ncai-testifies-before-the-house-appropriations-subcommittee-on-interior-environment-and-related-agencies http://www.ncai.org/news/tribal-organizations-urge-administration-to-respect-tribal-sovereignty-and-uphold-trust-and-treaty-obligations-amid-executive-actions   March 2023   The testimonies of survivors of Canada’s residential school system were appalling, a UN expert said today, urging the Government to fully implement recommendations of a 2015 truth commission to achieve meaningful reconciliation and accountability in the country.   “Canada must address the adverse impact of colonial legacies to achieve meaningful reconciliation and accountability for past crimes,” said Calí Tzay, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, in a statement at the end of a 10-day official visit to Canada.   “I was dismayed and saddened by the stories of survivors of Indian Residential Schools," the UN expert said.   Over 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were separated from their families and forced to attend the government-funded schools between the 1870s and 1997. In 2015, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission appointed by the Canadian government concluded that children were physically and sexually abused and died in the schools in numbers that may never be fully known.   Cali Tzay said the Commission’s Calls to Action should be fully implemented. “The full resolution of Indian Residential School claims is necessary to achieve true reconciliation, including for Catholic church-run institutions and residential schools established by provinces,” the UN expert said.   “Canada has made progress towards the promotion and protection of the rights of Indigenous Peoples since the visits of my predecessors,” he said, while pointing to many existing challenges that remain unaddressed.   "The negative legacies of residential schools are reflected in the child welfare system today. Despite comprising 7.7% of the Canadian population, over 53% of children in care are indigenous, up to 90% in some provinces", he said.   Cali Tzay said intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools and structural racial discrimination has led to a number of present-day human rights violations and abuses, including the current crisis concerning missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. It is estimated that Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be murdered or go missing than other women in Canada.   “The number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to increase," the expert said. The Special Rapporteur noted that most of the 231 Calls for Justice of the National Inquiry for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) and gender diverse people still remain to be implemented.   He called upon the Canadian Government to prevent and combat such violence as a matter of priority, by addressing the root causes of the MMIWG “epidemic”, including systemic racism and discrimination against Indigenous women and girls.   The Special Rapporteur also expressed concern that Indigenous Peoples have continued to be overrepresented in the criminal justice system.   “The situation of Indigenous women and gender diverse peoples is even more devastating as they represent half of the federal prison population,” Cali Tzay said. “Indigenous Peoples are often victims of racial profiling, arbitrary and discriminatory arrests, and disproportionate use of force by law enforcement personnel.”   Cali Tzay cited the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the Trans Mountain Pipeline projects to illustrate how activities of business corporations further contribute to human rights violations and abuses of Indigenous Peoples in provinces across Canada, including the criminalisation of human rights defenders.   “In many cases projects are developed without engaging in good faith consultations with Indigenous Peoples whose rights and interests are impacted, and without their consent,” the UN expert said.   “International human rights law entails a duty on the part of the State not only to refrain from violating human rights, but to exercise due diligence to prevent and protect individuals from abuse committed by non-State actors, such as business enterprises, including outside their territories,” he said.   The Special Rapporteur noted that Canada has embarked on an important journey towards reconciliation that must dismantle structural and systemic racism against Indigenous Peoples and respect Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination, lands, territories, and resources.   "Human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent, and all Indigenous Peoples should have equal rights and opportunities,” the Special Rapporteur said.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/canada-un-expert-decries-appalling-legacy-residential-schools-calls   Jan. 2023   Reparations for loss of language & culture brought on by Indian residential schools system. (CBC, agencies)   The Canadian government and 325 First Nations have agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit, seeking reparations for the loss of language and culture brought on by Indian residential school system.   The Government will pay CA$2.8 billion into a not-for-profit trust that will operate for 20 years to fund projects for Indigenous education, culture and language.   Starting in the early 19th century, the Canadian government forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families to take them to residential institutions under the church's administration.   The schools were meant to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Christian society, effectively stripping them of their identity, culture and language. The last school only shut down in the late 1990s.   The announced settlement is guided by what is called the Four Pillars, which the plaintiffs representing the Indigenous groups developed. They refer to reviving and protecting Indigenous languages, cultures, and heritage and ensuring the wellness of the Indigenous communities and their members.   "It has taken Canada far too long to own up to its history, own up to the genocide it committed and recognize the collective harm caused to our Nations by Residential Schools," said Garry Feschuk, an Indigenous leader who is one of the plaintiffs in the suit.   "It is time that Canada not only recognize this harm, but help undo it by walking with us. This settlement is a good first step," he added.   Another plaintiff, Chief Rosanne Casimir, said it would take "incredible efforts" to restore the "profound damage" caused to Indigenous languages and culture in over 100 years.   Between the late 1800s to the 1990s, nearly 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were sent by Canada's government to 139 residential schools run by the church as part of a failed policy of forced assimilation.   Many faced physical and sexual abuse at the hands of headmasters and teachers, while thousands are believed to have died because of neglect, malnutrition and disease.   Since 2021, hundreds of remains of Indigenous children in unmarked graves have been discovered at the sites of former schools, with the national truth and reconciliation commission decrying "cultural genocide."   During a trip to Canada last year, Catholic Pope Francis personally apologized for the horrors of Catholic Church-run Indigenous residential schools.   http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/residential-school-band-class-action-settlement-1.6722014 http://nctr.ca/ http://nctr.ca/records/reports/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/canada-un-expert-decries-appalling-legacy-residential-schools-calls http://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/29/the-childrens-graves-at-residential-schools-in-canada-evoke-the-massacres-of-indigenous-australians
	'The Settlers' depicts genocide of Chile's Indigenous people by Stefan Dege, Ferenc Gaal Deutsche Welle   Nearly 150 years after the genocide of the Selk'nam people of Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia, a new film recounts the horrors of the mass murders that went nearly unnoticed by the rest of the world.   One might be tempted to classify "The Settlers" as a "Western" film, but Galvez said he does not want it to be viewed as such. He called the genre in the 20th century an "active accomplice to the colonization process in the Americas."   "The Western was a propaganda genre that justified the slaughter of Indigenous peoples," Galvez said, adding that by turning murder into entertainment and portraying Indigenous peoples as villains "it was extremely racist."   The first Europeans reached Tierra del Fuego when the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the world for Spain in 1520. He named the archipelago at the southern tip of the continent "Land of Smoke" — a name later changed to "Land of Fire," likely because of the many campfires lit by Indigenous people along the coast.   The Selk'nam, also known as the Ona or Onawo people, were one of four indigenous tribes living in the area when the first Europeans arrived during this period.   Yet the Selk'nam, estimated to number about 4,000 in the last 1800s, had little contact with ethnic Europeans until settlers from Argentina, Chile and Europe arrived in the Tierra del Fuego around 1850. The sheep breeders, gold prospectors and farmers brought death to these Indigenous peoples, first through diseases they carried with them.   Then by openly persecuting the tribes. The ancestral hunting land of the Selk'nam was turned into large ranches, and the Selk'nam, having no concept of private property, hunted the sheep farmed there, believing them to be fair game.   Ranchers began to retaliate with the support of the Argentinian and Chilean governments, hiring bounty hunters to kill Selk'nam. This led to the tribe's almost complete demise.   The Selk'nam most probably arrived in Patagonia around 10,000 years ago. Like the other Indigenous peoples in the area, they defied the adverse living conditions of the archipelago's polar climate of blazing sun and Antarctic cold. They lived in small communities throughout the barren region.   The nomadic group did not build cities or leave behind monuments. Nor did they leave behind many artifacts — or any written language. It's mainly through historical photos and research reports written by individuals, such as missionary Martin Gusinde (1886-1969), that we know about their culture today.   Gusinde was sent to Chile by the Steyler Missionaries, a religious order within the Roman Catholic Church also known as the Society of the Divine Word. The Austrian priest and anthropologist undertook four research trips between 1918 and 1924 to document the life of the indigenous communities in the Tierra del Fuego.   Gusinde's photos, which show people participating in ceremonies and rituals, are now kept by the Anthropos Institute of the Steyler Missionaries in Sankt Augustin, Germany. "Gusinde was one of the first ethnologists who sought direct contact with the people he was studying," Anthropos Institute librarian Harald Grauer told DW in an interview.   Some Selk'nam were deported to Europe and paraded in "human zoos." As early as the 15th century, people were kidnapped in colonized areas and brought to Europe for show as "exotic" people. Such zoos were used to demonstrate the supposed "superiority" of European civilization.   By the 19th century, it had become a lucrative business, and Hamburg's Hagenbeck Zoo was the European leader in the human exhibition business. According to Hamburg colonialism researcher Jürgen Zimmerer, this dark page of European history still has not been properly addressed.   In September 2023, Chile's National Congress officially recognized the Selk'nam as one of the 11 original peoples of Chile. Their story is told in "The Settlers," which opens in cinemas on February 15.   Apr. 2023   'Human zoos': Hamburg, Lisbon and Brussels are just some of the European cities where racist ethnographic exhibitions were once frequent events. Today, there is still a reluctance to acknowledge the trauma they caused, writes Ferenc Gaal.   In colonial Europe, ethnological exhibitions of "exotic" people and "human zoos" were widespread. As early as the 15th century, people were kidnapped in colonized areas and brought to Europe for show. In the late 19th century, racist human displays became particularly lucrative. They were also used to demonstrate the supposed "superiority" of European civilization.   People from European colonies were lured to Europe under false pretenses and forced to work in degrading circumstances. They were often presented to onlookers as "savages" or cannibals.   Across Europe, there has been little official acknowledgement of the crimes of the colonial era, and there is still very little public awareness.   'Human zoos' in Hamburg   In 1874, the Hamburg merchant Carl Hagenbeck was one of the first to display humans alongside animals in zoos, and he quickly became a successful "ethnography showman." His Hagenbeck company, which still exists under the same name today and runs the main zoo in Hamburg, in northern Germany, made money with human exhibitions until the 1930s.   The historian Jürgen Zimmerer recently told German broadcaster NDR that in these zoos, people were shown in "an environment that was deliberately staged as being primitive."   The Hamburg zoo has since said that it is re-examining its past, but there is currently no indication highlighting that humans used to be displayed on the site or any attempt to commemorate them.   Portuguese World Exhibition in Lisbon   In Lisbon, the capital of another vast European colonial power, humans were also displayed in 1940 at the Portuguese World Exhibition. People were brought from colonized countries to live in an environment that had been built to simulate their supposed habitat. They were used as "indigenous extras" to confirm colonial stereotypes.   The Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar used the 1940 World Exhibition to glorify the colonial era and strengthen his own regime, and today the debate about Portugal's colonial past often centers on him.   But Elsa Peralta, a historian at Lisbon University, believes that this is inadequate: "The leading narrative of the democratic period is that the crimes of the colonial period were linked to the dictatorship," she said. "It does not reflect the long duration of Portugal's colonial history." Peralta added that even the commemorative plaque that pays tribute to the victims of the "human zoo" in the city's botanical gardens today referred explicitly to the Salazar period.   She pointed out that many Portuguese people remained unaware of the racist exhibitions but said that there had been a growing public debate about the country's colonial past in recent years, albeit at a slower pace than in other former colonial states. "Portuguese society is slowly waking up to this issue; it has not yet been dealt with," she noted.   In Belgium, which put people on display in a "human zoo" as late as 1958 at the Brussels World Fair, the debate about the country's colonial crimes has become particularly animated over the past few years.   The activist and anthropologist Stella Nyanchama Okemwa from the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) has criticized the use of exhibitions to explore this chapter of Belgium's past and commemorate its victims. She says that displaying pictures of ethnographic exhibitions can reproduce racist practices. "For me, it was 'human zoo' 2.0," she said. "It triggered a lot of trauma."   She thinks that it is imperative that Belgian society acknowledge the trauma of the colonial past but says that there seems to be little willingness to do so. According to a 2020 survey, half of the country thought that colonialism had had more positive consequences for Belgian Congo than negative ones.   In the 1950s and 1960s, the spread of film, television and mass tourism changed the way of viewing "exotic" people. "People no longer brought adventure into their own country, but could afford to travel after it," said historian Anne Dreesbach.   "People don't want to engage in this conversation because it will open Pandora's box," said Stella Nyanchama Okemwa.
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