1984: Thread

[grarpamp]

Government Indoctrination Camps Reprogrammed and Killed Native Americans,
today's camps are no different regarding govt's selected program code
being forcibly injected into all public school children...


US Government Admits It Used Schools As Tool To Erase Culture,
Seize Native American Land

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-admits-it-used-schools-to-erase-culture-as-tool-to-seize-native-american-land-federal-report_4474396.html
https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/inline-files/bsi_investigative_report_may_2022_508.pdf

Erasing culture, pulling children away from their parents, and
disregarding the emotional needs of children. These tactics could be
pulled from today’s headlines, but they are the tried-and-true
education policies the United States has admitted to using for 150
years as a tool to force the assimilation of Native Americans, and
specifically to acquire Indian territorial land.
U.S. School for Indians at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, 1891. (John C. H.
Grabill collection, Library of Congress)

This month, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) released a 106-page
report detailing how the U.S. federal government “applied systematic
militarized and identity-alteration methodologies in the Federal
Indian boarding school system to assimilate American Indian, Alaska
Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education.”

The BIA says the government used the education of children to “replace
the Indian’s culture with our own.” This, the report says, was
considered “the cheapest and safest way of subduing the Indians, of
providing a safe habitat for the country’s white inhabitants, of
helping the whites acquire desirable land, and of changing the
Indian’s economy so that he would be content with less land.”

The report was requested last year by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland,
a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico. She is the first
Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland speaks during a daily press
briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in
Washington on April 23, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Haaland asked for an investigation into the loss of lives and lasting
consequences of the Federal Indian boarding school system.

“This report shows for the first time that between 1819 and 1969, the
United States operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37
states [or then-territories], including 21 schools in Alaska and seven
schools in Hawaii,” Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of Indian
Affairs, wrote in a letter introducing the report.

Another report expanding the investigation is planned.

“The Federal Indian boarding school policy was intentionally targeted
… at children to assimilate them and, consequently, take their
territories,” Newland said.

The report makes recommendations for new funding and the
revitalization of tribal languages and cultural practices—a move
necessary, Newland said, to start the healing process.
Taken from Parents

Congress ended treaty-making with Indian tribes in 1871 and started
using statutes, executive orders, and agreements to regulate Indian
Affairs, the report says. Around that time, Congress enacted laws to
compel Indian parents to send their children to school and to
authorize the Secretary of the Interior to issue regulations to secure
the enrollment and regular attendance of eligible Indian children,
whom the government considered wards of the government.

“Many Indian families resisted the assault of the Federal Government
on their lives by refusing to send their children to school,” the 1969
Kennedy Report, quoted in the current report, said.

Under the Act of March 3, 1893, Congress authorized the Secretary of
Interior to withhold rations, including those guaranteed by treaties,
to Indian families whose children between ages 8-21 did not attend
schools. No school meant no money or food for the family.

“There is ample evidence in federal records demonstrating that the
United States coerced, induced, or compelled Indian children to enter
the Federal Indian boarding school system,” the report says.

The Department of Interior moved children to off-reservation boarding
schools without parental consent, often in distant states where
children endured “rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse;
disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care,” the
report says.
Ciricahua Apaches at the Carlisle Indian School, Penn., 1885 or 1886,
as they looked upon arrival at the School. (Library of Congress)

Once at boarding school, children were given English names and
clothing. Their hair was cut, and they were prevented from using their
native language, religion, and cultural practices. Children were
sorted into units to perform military drills; performed labor and were
subject to corporal punishment.

At the Kickapoo Boarding School in Kansas, when children ran away from
school, officials went looking for them and brought them back to
school where they faced “a whipping administered soundly and
prayerfully,” in front of other students to warn them not to flee, the
report says. This same school had children sleeping three to a bed.
The schools were typically overcrowded, the report shows.

The intent of all this was to permanently break family ties and
prevent students from returning to the reservations. The system
produced intergenerational trauma, the report says.

In 1886, the Haskell Institute in Kansas intentionally mixed Indian
children from 31 different tribes to disrupt tribal relations and
prevent Indian language use, the report says. The Department of
Interior intended school graduates from different tribes to
intermarry, so they would use English for their children’s mother
tongue. Affected tribes that year included the Apache, Arapaho,
Cheyenne, Cherokee, Chippewa, Comanche, Caddo, Delaware, Iowa, Kiowa,
Kickapoo, Kaw, Mojave, Muncie, Modoc, Miami, New York, Omaha, Ottawa,
Osage, Pawnee, Pottawatomie, Ponca, Peoria, Quapaw, Seneca, Sac and
Fox, Seminole, Shawnee, Sioux, and Wyandotte.
Lacking Education

Work done by children in these boarding schools would likely be a
violation of child labor laws in most states, said the 1928 Meriam
Report, prepared at the request of the then-Secretary of the Interior.

Focused on vocational training, the government adopted a half-time
plan, with students spending half the day in academic subjects and the
remaining time in work. They tended to farm animals, the report says,
and worked in lumbering, on the railroad, carpentry, blacksmithing,
fertilizing, irrigation system development, well-digging, making
furniture including mattresses, tables and chairs, cooking, laundry,
ironing services, and garment-making.

The 2022 report shows that, in 1857 at the Winnebago Manual Labor
Schools in Nebraska, the girls made 550 garments for themselves and
the boys attending the school, and 700 sacks for farm use. In 1903, a
report from the Mescalero Boarding School in New Mexico showed the
Mescalero Apache boys sawed over 70,000 feet of lumber, 40,000
shingles, and made more than 120,000 bricks.

Schools at the time said they could not afford to support operations
merely on the funds provided by Congress. Students had to handle these
chores to keep the places going. The report notes that this labor had
a monetary value.
Paid for With Money Meant for Indians

The schools were given operation money annually, but according to the
report, the federal government likely also used money held in tribal
trust accounts and proceeds of the sale tribal land to run the
schools.

“It is apparent that proceeds from cessions of Indian territories to
the United States through treaties—which were often signed under
duress—were used to fund the operation of Federal Indian boarding
schools. As a result, the United States’ assimilation policy, the
Federal Indian boarding school system, and the effort to acquire
Indian territories are connected,” the report says.

The United States government paid missionary church groups to run the
programs. It had contracts, the report says, with the American
Missionary Association of the Congregational Church, the Board of
Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, the Board of Home
Missions of the Presbyterian Church, the Bureau of Catholic Indian
Missions, and the Protestant Episcopal Church.

In some cases, the missionaries were given no education or training.
The government had no standards to follow or oversight over the
programs, the report shows.
Schools had Grave Sites
Gravestones of American Indians at the Carlisle Indian Cemetery where
children who died at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Penn.,
are buried. (Library of Congress)

Most schools don’t need a cemetery, but these schools did. An initial
investigation of 19 schools found over 500 student deaths.

“The intentional targeting and removal of … children to achieve the
goal of forced assimilation of Indian people was both traumatic and
violent,” the report says. “The department found hundreds of Indian
children died throughout the Federal Indian boarding school system and
it believes continued investigation will reveal the approximate number
of Indian children who died at these schools to be in the thousands or
tens of thousands.”

The department’s research has identified at least 53 different burial
sites across the school system; some marked, others unmarked or poorly
maintained.

“The deaths of Indian children while under the care of the federal
government, or federally-supported institutions, led to the breakup of
Indian families and the erosion of tribes,” the report says.

The department has been talking with tribal leaders to address
cultural concerns regarding the burial sites, including future
protection of burial sites and potential repatriation or disinterment
of remains. “The department will not make public the specific
locations of burial sites associated with the Federal Indian boarding
school system in order to protect against well-documented
grave-robbing, vandalism, and other disturbances to Indian burial
sites,” the report says.
Recommendations

The report makes recommendations including funding a full
investigation. Congress appropriated $7 million in new funds through
fiscal year 2022, through the Consolidated Appropriations Act. The
report asks to expand the investigation with continued funding for
fiscal year 2023.

It also suggests identifying surviving boarding school attendees, and
formally documenting their historical accounts and experiences,
including studying current impacts such as health status, including
substance abuse and violence.

It asks to protect details of gravesites from being made public under
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, by making
information exempt from Freedom of Information Act.

It also recommends the advancement of native language revitalization
by funding the development of programs supporting native language
revitalization in both Bureau of Indian Education funded schools, and
non-BIE schools.

The report calls for the promotion of Indian health research by
funding scientific studies on lasting health impacts.

And the report suggests recognizing the generations of children who
experienced the Federal Indian boarding school system with a federal
memorial.