Millulax County, Minnesota – The U.S. Department of the Interior is rounding up a “Road to Healing” tour. Ojibwa’s Mill Lux Band hosted the event on June 3, making it the tour’s seventh stop.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary of State Brian Newland began their trip on July 9, 2022 at the Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma.
The school first opened its doors to Native American students in 1875 and is still open to Native American students today. Riverside is intertribal, meaning that multiple tribes participate.
Places visited so far include Pelston, Michigan, Rosebud Indian Reservation, Gila River Indian Community and Navajo Nation, Arizona, and Tulalip Reservation, Washington.
The tour is part of the Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School initiative. A report on this effort determined that personal visits to communities were the best way to collect data and facilitate healing.
These schools operated from 1819 until the 1970s, forcibly separating children from their families and assimilating them.
Survivors and their descendants have emerged to tell their stories.
Harland and those in the room were sometimes moved to tears when they heard about the abuse and trauma experienced by Native American children. Some people never get a chance to heal and leave scars that last a lifetime.
In an interview with NPR, Harland said the lack of Native Americans in leadership roles is deterring the problem. “Representation is important,” Harland said. “That’s one of the reasons why it felt important to me to raise this issue.”
According to Harland, the trauma that has been passed down through the generations of Native American families remains.
She argued that trauma exists when looking at family relationships, addiction, poverty, health disparities, and lack of economic development in these communities.
“We should value every community in this country,” she said. “So bring all these things to light. It will make us a better nation.”
The spoken word has been collected and will be preserved and used for further research by this initiative.
Those who tell their stories will be recorded in history.
In Indigenous communities, wakes and remembrance walks are often used to remember those who have not returned from boarding school. So far, burial sites have been found at about 53 former boarding schools.
This effort will explore this issue further.
Mvskoke Media will continue to follow the Ministry of Interior’s initiative for federal boarding schools.
Personal stories and descriptions of Native American families with boarding school survivors can still be submitted by emailing roadtohealing@ios.doi.gov.
