To Open The Sky

By now, the general outlines of the history of aboriginal peoples in the New World — First Nations in Canada, Native Americans and Eskimos in the United States, the Toltecs, Aztecs, Maya, and Incas in Mexico and Central & South America1 — are well known. That history does little honor to the successors of the Europeans who supplanted them. It is a nearly unbroken sequence of extermination, broken treaties, and subjugation.

What is less well known, however, is how much of this dishonorable treatment continues in the present day. It was an unpleasant discovery for me to learn that in certain states the children of Native Americans are still being removed from their parents and placed with white families on dubious legal grounds. I had thought this practice had ended by the middle of the twentieth century, if not before.

In Canada, First Nations peoples apparently are treated even worse. Many women have been attacked with relative impunity, and children are still subject to forced placement in the Residential Schools program, which endeavors to snuff out their traditional cultures and languages.

Indigenous Peoples' Day

United States President Joe Biden signed a proclamation on 8 October 2021 designating the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples' Day. He was the first U.S. president to formally recognize this national holiday, which replaces Columbus Day. This culminates a trend of long standing in the U.S. as various states and cities have been honoring a similar holiday since at least 1989. Recognition of the abuses carried out at boarding schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs also has a long history. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition was incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit in June 2012 under the laws of the Navajo Nation. Deb Haaland, first Native American Secretary of the Interior, announced federal investigations into these abuses in June of 2021.

"The Interior Department will address the inter-generational impact of Indian boarding schools to shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be," said Secretary Haaland in June 2021. "I know that this process will be long and difficult. I know that this process will be painful. It won't undo the heartbreak and loss we feel. But only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that we're all proud to embrace." – Deb Haaland, speaking on 22 June 2021

And throughout the New World, from Nunavut south to the tip of Tierra del Fuego, aboriginal peoples are treated as second-class citizens.2 They receive substandard educations, lower-wage jobs, inadequate health care, deficient legal protections.

Paradigm Shift

But the picture is not one of unrelieved gloom. Here in the United States, Native Americans have received partial justice thanks to reforms in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and gambling casinos have enriched some tribes. Reservations are generally safe and peaceful, although their sovereignty is limited. Canada is now the front line of change. The October 19th election may sweep away the dominance of Steven Harper's conservative government, which not only has neglected the problems of the First Nations but muzzled environmental scientists and ignored the need to cut back on fossil-fuel extraction.

A new commitment to change has sprung up among First Nations activists. The trend is no better exemplified than by Ashley Callingbull-Burnham, who in August 2015 won the Mrs. Universe competition and is using her position to advance the cause of redressing First Nations grievances. She is young and inexperienced, but I believe she will make a difference.

Mistreatment Persists

In March, 2019, Smithsonian magazine reported on the REDress Project.3 The dresses, hung on trees near the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, memorialize the many native women who are murdered or go missing every year. Their obscurity makes the number hard to estimate, but in 2016 5,712 American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing.

Institutional neglect and bigotry are complicating factors. Case in point: On 14 January 2020, Andrea Circle Bear (aka Andrea High Bear), a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, was sentenced to 26 months in prison for maintaining a drug-involved premises. She was immediately remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals service. Being eight months pregnant and having a history of five previous C-section births, she was flown to the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Fort Worth, Texas. There she got sick and died of COVID-19.4

America's Jails and prisons are effectively incubators for any communicable disease, and COVID-19 is unusual only because of its virulence. But whatever the cause, when people die needlessly in the custody of the U.S. prison system, something is wrong with the prison system.5 This case may bring a bit more attention to the problem.

This week, the Interior Department released a new report on the boarding school system for Native Americans in the U.S. Announced by Debra Haaland, the first Native American Secretary of the Interior, the 106-page report details the ways residential schools stripped Native American children of their languages, their customs, and in too many cases their very lives.

At verious times between 1819 and 1969, there were 408 boarding schools in 37 states. Native American children were taken from their parents and housed at these schools. The goal was to reshape them in the mold of European Americans. To this end they were given haircuts, English names, and military-style uniforms to wear. They were forbidden to use their own languages or practice their religions. And the report notes the discovery of 50 graveyards, marked or unmarked, at the schools.

These rules were enforced by punishments including whipping, withholding food, and solitary confinement.

Deborah Parker, CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, said, “After generations, we still do not know how many children attended, how many children died, and/or how many children were permanently scarred for life because of these federal institutions.”

The Interior Department said much more work remains to be done. It plans to release a second, more comprehensive report.