Seattle Continues Healing ‘Deep Wounds’ With Boarding School Resolution

Museum of History & Industry, Seattle; All Rights ReservedStarting in the middle of the 19th century, church groups and the U.S. government set up boarding schools for Natives. Here, children from many tribes were taught how to speak English and how to make a living. They were separated from their elders, and were discouraged from learning tribal traditions and language. This photo by U.P. Hadley shows the buildings and students at the Industrial Boarding School on the Puyallup Reservation between 1880 and 1889. The school opened in 1860. During the 1880s, a number of new buildings were added, and the school grew from 125 to about 200 students.
Museum of History & Industry, Seattle; All Rights Reserved
Starting in the middle of the 19th century, church groups and the U.S. government set up boarding schools for Natives. Here, children from many tribes were taught how to speak English and how to make a living. They were separated from their elders, and were discouraged from learning tribal traditions and language. This photo by U.P. Hadley shows the buildings and students at the Industrial Boarding School on the Puyallup Reservation between 1880 and 1889. The school opened in 1860. During the 1880s, a number of new buildings were added, and the school grew from 125 to about 200 students.

 

By Richard Walker, Indian Country Today, 10/20/15

 

“If it be admitted that education affords the true solution to the Indian problem, then it must be admitted that the boarding school is the very key to the situation,” Indian School Superintendent John B. Riley wrote in an 1886 reportto the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

“Only by complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents can he be satisfactorily educated.”

Such was the prevailing attitude of Indian Affairs agents during the federal boarding-school era: That America’s First Peoples were a problem to be dealt with, that America’s Manifest Destiny required Indigenous Peoples to be remolded and assimilated into the mainstream—even if it meant forcibly removing children from their families.

It wasn’t until 1978—118 years after the establishment of the first American Indian boarding school—that Native American parents gained the legal right, with the passing of the Indian Child Welfare Act, to deny their children’s placement in off-reservation schools.

“Some Native American parents saw boarding school education for what it was intended to be—the total destruction of Indian culture,” the American Indian Relief Council reported on its website. “Resentment of the boarding schools was most severe because the schools broke the most sacred and fundamental of all human ties, the parent-child bond.”

On October 12, council members in one of the largest cities in the U.S. took a step toward helping to heal the wounds from the boarding school era.

The City Council of Seattle, Washington, approved a resolution“acknowledging the various harms and ongoing historical and inter-generational traumas impacting American Indian, First Nations, and Alaskan Natives for the forcible removal of Indian children and subsequent abuse and neglect resulting from the United States’ American Indian Boarding School Policy during the 19th and 20th Centuries …”

The resolution calls on the United States to examine its human rights record and to work with American Indian and Alaskan Native peoples “in efforts of reconciliation in addressing the impacts of historical trauma, language and cultural loss, and alleged genocide.”

“The supposed goal [of the boarding schools] was to ‘Kill the Indian, save the man,’ which is tantamount to cultural genocide,” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant told LastRealIndians.com. “The resolution will give city officials the opportunity to acknowledge and help heal the deep wounds opened up by the boarding school policy. It is also another step toward getting the city to take real action to address the poverty, oppression, and marginalization that the community faces to this day.”

The resolution was drafted by Matt Remle, Lakota, with support from Seattle lawyer Gabe Galanda, Round Valley Indian Tribes; Seattle Arts Commissioner Tracy Rector, Seminole; the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition; the Native American Rights Fund, and other members of Seattle’s Native community. The resolution was sponsored legislatively by Sawant.

The resolution vote took place on Seattle’s second annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The day included a rally and march to Seattle City Hall, drumming and songs, a keynote address by Winona LaDuke, Ojibwe, and a celebration at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center.

During the boarding school era, “roughly 100,000 American Indian children ages 5-18 were stripped from their homes and placed in remote boarding schools,” Remle wrote on LastRealIndians.com. “Native languages, spirituality and customs were outlawed, physical and sexual violence was rampant.”

It’s a subject known all too well by the First Peoples of the Seattle area. Seattle, named for the mid-1800s leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples, is the largest city in a state with 29 federally recognized Native nations. The first American Indian boarding school in the United States was established at the Yakama Nation in eastern Washington in 1860; the Tulalip Mission School, operated by the Catholic Church, was established three years earlier and was the first contract school for Native American children.

In her book, Tulalip, From My Heart, Harriette Shelton Dover (1904-1991) wrote of harsh discipline, poor diet and inadequate care, of tuberculosis and pneumonia and childhood deaths.

RELATED: From the Heart: Tulalip History and Memoir Is a Walk Back in Time

Helma Ward, Makah, told Carolyn J. Marr, an anthropologist and photographs librarian at the Museum of History and Industryin Seattle, “Two of our girls ran away … but they got caught. They tied their legs up, tied their hands behind their backs, put them in the middle of the hallway so that if they fell, fell asleep or something, the matron would hear them and she’d get out there and whip them and make them stand up again.”

“They were not allowed to speak their language there,” Inez Bill, Tulalip, told KING 5 News, Seattle, of her grandparents’ boarding school experience. “When you lose your language, you lose your culture. It left our people scarred.”

Fast forward to today: The children and grandchildren of those who were forced to attend boarding schools and were banned from speaking their languages have taken control of their own children’s education, are showing that their culture has an important role in education and that it can build bridges of understanding in communities.

Almost 65,000 students in Washington identify as Native American or Alaskan Native, according to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. OSPI’s Office of Native Education was created in the mid-1960s to help Native students achieve their education goals and meet state standards. The office provides resources and training to help educators and families meet the needs of Native students, builds curriculum in Native languages and about Native culture and history, and works to increase the number of Native educators.

Eight Native nations operate their own schools in Washington, according to the state Superintendent of Public Instruction. School districts near reservations have liaisons to the Native American community and/or partnerships with a local Native nation’s education department. Earlier this year, the state legislature mandated the inclusion of Native American history, culture and governance in the curriculum of local public schools.

During its heyday, the American Indian Heritage Early College High School in Seattle had a 100 percent graduation rate, and all graduates went on to college. The Urban Native Education Alliance is lobbying to have the school reestablished in the new Robert Eagle Staff Middle School, named for the late principal of Indian Heritage and under construction at the site of the former school.

The Suquamish Tribe operates and funds Chief Kitsap Academy, a high-tech, culturally based high school that is part of the Early College High School network. According to the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, only four of 10 of North Kitsap School District schools and programs met Adequate Yearly Progress goals in reading and math proficiency in 2014—one of those was Chief Kitsap Academy. Students use the latest technology, but are also exposed to cultural teachings and study the Lushootseed language. The school is open to Native and non-Native students.

Northwest Indian Collegehas grown from a school of aquaculture to a four-year college with six satellite campuses in two states. It offers four undergraduate degrees, nine associate’s degrees, three certificate programs, and five other study programs. The University of Washingtonand The Evergreen State Collegehave longhouses that serve as places of gathering and sharing as well as teaching.

 

A totem at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington. (Google Plus/NWIC)
A totem at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington. (Google Plus/NWIC)

 

Eaonhawinon Patricia Allen, a University of Washington graduate and community organizer in Seattle, spoke at Seattle City Hall before the City Council’s vote. She later wrote on LastRealIndians.comthat the boarding school era “was one of the last actions made to complete colonization and … to wash the Native identity out of Natives. But I am here to tell you this, and so will my future children: We still survived and are starting the process of healing.”

Canada established a Truth and Reconciliation Commissionto prepare a complete historical record on the policies and operations of residential schools; complete a public report, including recommendations to the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement; and establish a national research center that will be a lasting resource about the Indian Residential Schools legacy in Canada. The commission is reaching out to the public in national and community events, and honoring residential schools survivors in a lasting manner. It is also examining the number and cause of deaths, illnesses, and disappearances of children, and documenting the location of burial sites.

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/10/20/seattle-continues-healing-deep-wounds-boarding-school-resolution-162138

Tribes Helping Tribes

Katie Jones and Jennifer Cordova-James among a heap of donations gathered for Pine Ridge Reservation residents.Photo/Kim Kalliber
Katie Jones and Jennifer Cordova-James among hundreds of donation items gathered for Pine Ridge Reservation residents.
Photo/Kim Kalliber

 

by Kim Kalliber, Tulalip News

The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota is the second largest Native American reservation in the United States, and also one of the poorest. The unemployment rate hovers around 85-90 percent.

According to re-member.org, “Tribal Government records show 38,000 enrolled members living on Pine Ridge Reservation. The poverty on Pine Ridge can be described in no other terms than third world. It is common to find homes overcrowded, as those with homes take in whoever needs a roof over their heads. Many homes are without running water, and without sewer.”

Winters in South Dakota can be brutal, with temperatures dropping below zero. Without a source of heat and proper clothing, many people, especially elders and children, are at risk.

Perhaps most unfortunate is the suicide rate. At 150 percent, it is higher than the national average. Life expectancy for men is only 48 years old and for women it is only 52 years.

It was a discussion by two Northwest Indian College students about suicide that sparked an idea, an idea that became a movement.

Amy Wallette and Jennifer Cordova-James, decided to take action in offering aid to residents of Pine Ridge.  With the help of Northwest Indian College Tulalip Site Manager Jessica Reyes and Assistant Manger Katie Jones, a plan was formed, including a donation drive and transportation to South Dakota. Referred to as the ‘Tribes Helping Tribes’ movement, this small group of determined folks gathered dozens of bags and boxes of much-needed donation items in less than a week.

Wallette, who has family in South Dakota, said, “I wanted to make a difference and I felt this was my calling.”

Donations included blankets, clothing, food, diapers and toys.

On October 16, the two students drove the items to Spokane, Washington, where they met volunteer, Gail Lesperance, who then continued the journey to Pine Ridge. Another volunteer, Robin Hamm, traveled with a U-Haul full of donations from Denver, Colorado and arrived in Pine Ridge on Monday, October 19.

 

Amy Wallette and Jennifer Cordova-James met with a group of volunteers in Spokane, Washington. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Cordova-James
Amy Wallette and Jennifer Cordova-James met with a group of volunteers in Spokane, Washington.
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Cordova-James

 

“The stories and ideas we have been exchanging back and forth are phenomenal. It all started with just a few boxes. And now they are taking U-Haul’s to the Pine Ridge Reservation,” said Cordova-James at the meeting in Spokane. “These humble women opened their homes to us. The Pine Ridge community will be doing a give-away and honor suicide victims and families. This is mind-blowing! Thank you to all for being a part of this ‘Tribes Helping Tribes’ movement.”

The group has plans to make this an annual donation event. There is also a GoFundMe page devoted to raising money to help the volunteers travel to and from South Dakota to deliver donations.

 

 

Jennifer, Katie and Jessica give special thanks to Amy Wallette. We raise our hands up to you, for your good heart and soul, thank you

Amy, Jennifer, Katie and Jessica wish to thank the following:

Thank you for your support and donations

  • Gail Lesperance
  • Shasta Cano-Martin
  • Robin Hamm &Family
  • Leslie Wallette
  • Annie & Tony L’amere
  • Antique Jinkies Spokane Store-Casey
  • Kiefer Hoover
  •  Northwest Indian College (Tulalip Site)
  • Amy Wallette & Brookelynn Stich
  • Maddy Krygier
  • Jess Reyes
  • Chryss & Abel ‘Paco’ James
  • Katie Lancaster-Jones
  • Saundra Yung-Wagner
  • Jennifer Cordova-James & Venelin Barbov
  • Kyle & Levi Collum
  • Louie Pablo
  • Tulalip First Nations Snowboarding Team
  • Vicki Hill
  • Leaha & Richard Brisbois
  • Sunny Na’ta’ne ‘Tawnie’ Miles
  • Bercier Family
  • Lesley Dinsmore Miles
  • Teen Challenge Recovery Center
  • Deborah Parker
  • Mike the Neighbor (Church of Body of Christ)
  • Willa Mclean
  •  Lynda Jensen
  • Annie & Alan Enick
  • Oceanna Isabella Alday
  • Ashley Tiedman
  • Jane Cameron
  • Melissa ‘Missy’Bumgarner
  • Amanda Lynn
  • Marlita Baldeagle
  • Ernest & Lola Wallette (Elders)
  • Vashti Candace Williams
  • Yvette Jealouss
  • Desiree Lesperance
  • Lynn Hawthorne

 

Thank you to all the communities that participated and contributed

  • Spokane community
  • Lummi Nation community
  • Tulalip Tribes community
  • Blaine & Bellingham community
  • Marysville community
  • Denver, Colorado community
  • Turtle Mountain community
  • Coeurd’alene, Idaho community
  • Arizona community
  • California community

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nisqually Tribe Taking Chinook Into Protective Custody

By: Northwest Treaty Tribes

 

Chinook born in the Nisqually River are being taken into protective custody by the Nisqually Indian Tribe.

The tribe is trapping and spawning natural-origin chinook this fall because so few have returned in recent years. Instead of passing naturally produced chinook above a tribally operated weir, the tribe will truck them to its nearby Kalama Creek Hatchery.

“We’re seeing a sharp decline of natural-origin chinook returning to the river, so we want to make sure these fish are as successful as they can be,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the tribe.

At Kalama Creek, the fish are being spawned by hand. Their offspring will be released into the river next spring.

To make sure some chinook spawn in the wild, the tribe will release up to 600 adult hatchery-produced chinook into the upper watershed. That way, even more naturally produced chinook will leave the river next year.

“The genetic difference between natural and hatchery-origin chinook on the Nisqually is small,” Troutt said. All of the chinook in the river are descendants from an imported hatchery stock planted decades ago.

The native chinook stock was killed off in the 1960s in large part due to poor hydroelectric practices that left the river dry for months at a time.

Five years ago, the tribe began closely managing the mix of natural and hatchery-spawned fish in the river to help mitigate hatchery influence on the stock.

“Our goal is to let the natural habitat, instead of the hatchery environment, drive adaptation of the stock,” Troutt said. “By mixing in natural-origin fish at the hatchery, we bring in better genetic traits to improve salmon productivity. This means more fish for everyone.”

Recent declines in chinook productivity because of poor ocean conditions drove this year’s drastic action. “Instead of bringing in just a few, we need to bring in every single natural fish we can to protect them,” Troutt said.

Native Lives Matter, Too

Arianna Vairo
Arianna Vairo

By Lydia Millet, NY Times, Opinion Pages

IN August 2010 John T. Williams, a homeless woodcarver of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribe who made his living selling his work near the Pike Place market in Seattle, was shot four times by a police officer within seconds of failing to drop the knife and piece of cedar he was carrying (Mr. Williams had mental health problems and was deaf in one ear). He died; the folding knife was found closed on the ground. The young police officer who shot Mr. Williams resigned, but he never faced criminal charges, even though the Seattle Police Department’s Firearms Review Board called the shooting unjustified. 

In South Dakota in 2013, a police officer used his Taser to shock an 8-year-old, 70-pound Rosebud Sioux girl holding a knife; the force of the shock hurled her against a wall. After an investigation, the officer’s actions were deemed appropriate.

That same year 18-year-old Mah-hi-vist (Red Bird) Goodblanket of the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes was killed by the police in his parents’ home in Oklahoma just before Christmas. They’d called 911 because their son was having a violent episode after a misunderstanding with his girlfriend. Before the police entered their home Red Bird’s father begged them, “Please, don’t shoot my son.” A few minutes later, the parents would count seven bullet holes in their son’s body — one in the back of his head. The exact narrative of the incident, which fittingly took place in Custer County, is in dispute.

In November 2014, also in Oklahoma, Christina Tahhahwah of the Comanche tribe died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Fellow inmates claim that jail guards shocked her with a Taser for refusing to stop singing Comanche hymns.

In December 2014, one day after attending a #NativeLivesMatter rally against police violence, Allen Locke, a 30-year-old Lakota man, was shot dead by the police in South Dakota. Mr. Locke had been holding a steak knife at the time he was hit by up to five bullets; the shooting was deemed justified a month later.

Most recently, in July, a 24-year-old Lakota mother of two named Sarah Lee Circle Bear died in a South Dakota jail of a methamphetamine overdose. Her death, which involved a two-hour time lapse between the first signs of physical distress and her transport to a hospital, got almost no national media attention.

All the victims were Native Americans, and they’re just a small sample of a systemic problem. American Indians are more likely than any other racial group to be killed by the police, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, which studied police killings from 1999 to 2011 (the rate was determined as a percentage of total population). But apart from media outlets like Indian Country Today, almost no attention is paid to this pattern of violence against already devastated peoples.

When it comes to American Indians, mainstream America suffers from willful blindness. Of all the episodes of police violence listed above, only the killings of Mr. Williams and Mr. Goodblanket received significant news coverage outside Indian circles, the latter only in an article for CNN.com by the Oglala Lakota journalist and activist Simon Moya-Smith. The Williams shooting, which was the subject of public outcry, was covered by a major local news site, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, as well as by The New York Times.

One reason for Indian invisibility in the media may be low numbers; Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the country now total about three million, or 5.2 million if you include mixed-race individuals, compared with about 45 million African-Americans. Perhaps equally important, their population densities off the reservation tend to be low. They have a small urban presence; New York, with about 112,000, and Los Angeles, with about 54,000, rank first and second among cities with American Indian populations. Phoenix, Oklahoma City and Anchorage come next. About one-fifth of American Indians still live on reservations.

Economic and health statistics, as well as police-violence statistics, shed light on the pressures on American Indian communities and individuals: Indian youths have the highest suicide rate of any United States ethnic group. Adolescent women have suicide rates four times the rate of white women in the same age group. Indians suffer from an infant mortality rate 60 percent higher than that of Caucasians, a 50 percent higher AIDS rate, and a rate of accidental death (including car crashes) more than twice that of the general population.

At the root of much of this is economic inequality: Indians are the poorest people in the United States, with a poverty rate in 2013 that was about twice the national average at 29.2 percent — meaning almost one in three Indians lives in poverty. So it doesn’t come as a complete shock that members of these disadvantaged communities encounter law enforcement more often than, say, middle-class whites. But the rate at which native people die as a result of those encounters is nonetheless deeply disturbing: Though “single-race” Indians make up slightly less than 1 percent of the population, they account for nearly 2 percent of police killings.

There are many complexities surrounding Native American interaction with the dominant culture, whose Declaration of Independence refers to them as “merciless Indian Savages” and whose history of mass killings has taken a staggering social toll. But the fact is that today’s avoidable tragedies of oppressed Indian lives and troubled deaths remain far too often in the shadows.

At this moment, when black Americans are speaking up against systemic police violence, and their message is finally being carried by virtually every major news source, it’s time we also pay attention to a less visible but similarly targeted minority: the people who lived here for many thousands of years before this country was founded, and who also have an unalienable right to respect and justice.

‘Walk of Strength’ marks Marysville Pilchuck shooting milestone

 

By Rikki King, The Herald

 

MARYSVILLE — A community event is planned for the one-year milestone of the shootings at Marysville Pilchuck High School.

The event, called A Walk of Strength, will start at 9 a.m. Oct. 24 and will include a walk around the campus. The plan includes inviting people to plant red and white tulip bulbs as they “come together and reflect,” according to a news release.

The details are being coordinated by the city, the school district and the Tulalip Tribes.

“An unimaginable event occurred in our community last year that changed lives forever,” schools Superintendent Becky Berg said in the release. “But it does not define us.”

The walk is meant to be a safe and supportive way to remember together, Mayor Jon Nehring said. Tribal Chairman Mel Sheldon described each step as a symbol for healing and moving forward.

They’ve set up a website, www.mtunited.org, and a Facebook page called “Marysville/Tulalip United.”

T-shirts with the logo and “#MPstronger” branding are expected to go on sale at www.mpmemorial.org.

Oct. 24 will mark one year since a freshman at Marysville Pilchuck High School invited a group of friends to sit together in the main cafeteria. He shot five of them, four of whom were fatally wounded. He then took his own life.

 

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Tulalip Lady Hawks outmatched by Grace Academy, lose 0-3

By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News Hawks-volleyball-2

 

The (3-6) Tulalip Lady Hawks volleyball team traveled to Grace Academy on Friday, October 16, to face the (6-2) Eagles. It was the third straight road game for Tulalip and second time this season they’d play the Eagles. Their first match was played in Tulalip and was a 0-3 defeat for the Hawks.

In the 1st game of the match, the Lady Hawks were unable to match the intensity of the Eagles and lost a very quickly played game 13-25. In the 2nd game, the Lady Hawks upped their play and matched the Eagles point for point early-on. With an 8-8 tie game, the Eagles started to pull-away and went on to win the game 19-25.

It was in the 3rd game where the team from Tulalip displayed the competitive spirit we are accustomed to seeing. They came out firing on all cylinders, taking a 5-1 lead, extending it to 8-2, and then making it 14-5; forcing Grace Academy to take the first timeout of the match.  Tulalip was playing as a team and doing a commendable job of hustling to earn every one of their points. Following the timeout, Tulalip continued to dig in and maintain their lead. They were leading 23-16, only needed to score 2 point more to win and force a 4th game. However, Grace Academy wouldn’t make it that easy and they called another timeout to adjust their serving game strategy.

 

Hawks-volleyball-1

 

Following another timeout, Grace Academy scored 5 straight points, 3 of them were on aces, to close the Tulalip lead to 23-21. The Lady Hawks called a timeout of their own to calm their nerves and make a couple substitutions. The Eagles scored 2 more points to tie the game at 23-23. The tension was in the air with both teams really wanting to win this game. Both team refused to give in and they matched each other point for point to a 25-25 standstill. Normally the winner is the first to 25 points, but you have to win by 2, so this was basically like an overtime. First to claim a 2 point lead would win the game. The next two points scored by each team was very quickly countered by their opponent, keeping the game tied at 27-27. The Lady Hawks were running, diving, and hit the floor on numerous occasions to salvage every point, but unfortunately it just wasn’t enough on this night. They gave up another ace to the Eagles, followed by an unforced error that resulted in a 27-29 loss and a 0-3 match defeat.

Indian Health Services Releases Long-Awaited Update to Policy on Emergency Contraception

ACLU Calls for strong enforcement to ensure access for women

 

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

 

Washington, DC — The American Civil Liberties Union today commends Indian Health Services (IHS) for issuing an updated policy to ensure that Native American women can obtain Plan B emergency contraception at IHS facilities.

The update comes more than two years after a federal court ordered the FDA to approve Plan B One- Step as an over-the-counter drug for women of all ages (without a prescription), and more than five years after Native American women first reported that IHS facilities were failing to provide the women they serve adequate and appropriate access to emergency contraception.

“The updated policy IHS released today is a long overdue and important step toward ensuring that Native American women  have equal access to emergency contraceptive care,” said ACLU Legislative Counsel Georgeanne Usova. “The policy must now be rigorously enforced so that every woman who relies on IHS for her health care can walk into an IHS pharmacy and obtain the services she needs and to which she is legally entitled.”

An investigation by Sen. Barbara Boxer’s staff earlier this year found repeated examples of IHS pharmacies’ failure to comply with the up-to-date FDA guidelines, and a separate survey conducted by the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center last year found similar results.  Some pharmacies surveyed did not offer emergency contraception at all; others required a prescription; and others wouldn’t provide it to women based on their age.

For some Native American women, if emergency contraception is unavailable at their IHS facility, the next alternative may be hundreds of miles away.  However, emergency contraception is most effective the sooner it is taken, with effectiveness decreasing every 12 hours.  The distance and potentially insurmountable transportation costs make timely access to emergency contraception difficult, if not impossible, for many women.

In addition, statistics show that more than one in three Native women will be raped in their lifetime — more than double the rate reported by women of all other races. A woman who is sexually assaulted and relies on IHS may not be able to take necessary steps to prevent a pregnancy that occurs as the result of rape.

The updated policy can be found at: https://www.ihs.gov/IHM/index.cfm?module=dsp_ihm_pc_p1c15