Interior secretary hears from Arizona boarding school students

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Interior secretary hears from Arizona boarding school students

January 26, 2023

Clutching a neatly typed form, April Hioshiku Ignacio spoke about her family’s five-generation boarding school in India. According to her, in the late 19th century, Oodum children were en masse rounded up by U.S. Army soldiers, “Boots,” in a remote enclave established by the federal government to “civilize” Native children. I was taken to a regular school.

Ignacio told of his great-grandfather who was orphaned and eventually sent to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. The young man, who changed his name to José Ignacio, wrote a letter to the rancher he worked for and was finally able to return to the Southwest.

He then sent his children to the Tucson Indian School. There the children later described their abuse by the person in charge.

“My grandmother’s sister had her tongue slit to speak Odddamian,” said April Ignacio. “She had to sit at her desk for hours, her blood-stained saliva flooding her hands and her dress.”

Ignacio’s story was one of many told on Friday’s Road to Healing tour. 367 boarding schools It is run by the Indian Secretariat, later by the Indian Education Authority.

A series of hearing sessions led by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland bigger initiative Examining the troubled legacy of federal boarding schools and the policies that led to them.

“Our goal is to create opportunities for people to share their stories, but also to connect with their need for informed support around trauma and to foster lasting oral history collection.” Brian Newland, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, Arizona Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego, and Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Law Lewis.

Attended by approximately 200 people, the event was held at the Gila Crossing Community School in the Gila River Indian Community. The school he opened in 1899 and was replaced in 2019 by a new school facility built through a partnership with the Tribe and the Indian Department of Education.

Several tribe members provided personal memories or talked about how their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences shaped their family lives for the next generation.

“My mother never learned how to be a mother”

Nora Cherry’s mother, Ena Dodd, was first sent to Sherman Indian School in Riverside, California when she was seven or eight years old. She was then sent to the Phoenix Indian School. In the Luiseño Tribe, a mission in San Diego County He is the San of the Indians He is a member of his band Louis Ray He said it didn’t happen.

“It comes down to being separated from your parents as a child,” she said. She said her own family struggled with alcoholism and substance abuse.

“And I see that in my parenting,” Cherry said. You know I didn’t.”

In an exclusive interview with the Arizona Republic, Harland said the boarding school initiative was probably the project he was most proud of during his two years as the first Native American Chief Cabinet Secretary.

“I feel it’s such a big problem,” she said. Intergenerational trauma is something the tribe has been grappling with over her century. “I feel that work has had a profound impact on so many people, the relationships they have, and the way they live their daily lives.”

April Ignacio talked about her family heritage while telling the story of her great-grandfather. Today it is the capital of the Tohono Oddam Nation.

Deciding that their children needed a Western education to survive in the world, the Ignacios approached Sells’ school to educate them.

“But the Sells Agency school was set up for white children from the BIA and the Indian Health Agency,” she said. “So they had to send the kids to Tucson Indian School.”

“Our children had names”:New report outlines grim legacy of India’s boarding schools

Children were abused and injured there.

The Ignacio family survived the ordeal. Jose Tohono he became the first president of Oddham His Nation, and another relative became Oddham’s linguist. April Ignacio is the founder of the community action group Indivisible Tohono.

Pershlie Ami is a Hopi from Walpi village who attended Phoenix Indian School. She detailed how a Hopi man served time at the infamous Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary for refusing to send his children to boarding school.

“Can you imagine your child being ripped out of your arms?” Ami said.

But one thing she’s always wondered about is what happened to the kids who “went out.” These were arranged by school staff so that boarding school students could earn pocket money.

“People would just pick up their children and no one knew who they were,” she said.

Ami’s one and only outing ended in disaster. “When I was in seventh grade, my family took me to their house and asked me to pick up dog feces all over the house. Decided it needed to be addressed.

“I declined,” said Ami.

The family sent her back to school and received severe punishment. She was not allowed out again.

“I always wondered what happened to the other children,” she said. Was it just because we wanted to spend money?”

Next Steps on the “Path to Healing”

Haaland, whose grandparents were taken from her hometown in Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, and sent to boarding school, said the work to heal Indigenous peoples and their descendants from the impact of the school has not yet been completed. .

“But I hope that the healing brought about by the boarding school initiative will ultimately help a lot of people,” Harland said.

To aid in healing, trauma-savvy counselors were on hand to support those who had particular difficulty discussing their own or family experiences. , said the work to begin the healing process should give agencies an idea of what resources will be needed.

The interior secretary said she and her staff visited the Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center on Thursday to learn more about the history of the school, which was open from 1891 to 1990.