By Kimee Wind-Hummingbird
July 9, 2022 marked the beginning of the Department of the Interior’s “Road to Healing” Tour. The Tour is a follow-up to the Department’s recently released “Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report,” which documents the scope of the boarding school system and outlines the social, religious, and policy context in which it took shape. Because it is based on archival government documents, the report is history as told by government representatives, not by the Indigenous people who experienced the system’s abuses.
While reading the report, I could count on one hand the items of new information that I learned. Unfortunately, many of us have heard these heartbreaking stories from family members and other survivors for years. What was new information to me was how well documented the horrific treatment of our relatives has always been. It is disturbing to read how government leaders all the way back to Thomas Jefferson knew the conditions our children were being housed in and the measures being taken to break up our families and force our children to assimilate into U.S. culture. The report makes it obvious that government officials across different eras of history considered this abuse of our children an easier and cheaper way of destroying Tribes and taking our land than killing us.
But the report doesn’t include the voices of boarding school survivors. That’s where Secretary Haaland’s “Road to Healing” Tour comes in. The Tour is designed to give voice to survivors’ accounts.
The Tour’s first stop was Riverside Boarding School in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Riverside, which opened in 1871, is still in operation today, though it is no longer operated for the purposes it was designed for. Today it is home to youth from many different Tribal Nations who attend the school for a variety of different reasons. It felt appropriate to launch the Tour at Riverside, since it is one of the oldest boarding schools still operating, and since Oklahoma—where I live—has the shameful distinction of having been home to 76 Indian boarding schools, more than any other state.
Riverside Indian School, 1901
As a Muscogee citizen with Cherokee descendancy who was raised on the Muscogee reservation and spent 22 years working in the child and family services programs of my two Nations, I know firsthand how the effort to “kill the Indian and save the man” devastated our communities and peoples. Three generations of my Muscogee/Cherokee family attended boarding schools. My sister and I were the first ones in roughly 100 years to be spared, but that doesn’t mean the losses have been healed. I have seen the ripple effects of the traumas my great-grandparents, grandparents, and my father experienced when they were taken away from their families and forced to attend schools far away from their homes.
When I heard the Tour would come to Oklahoma and survivors would tell their stories, I knew I had to attend. Being there was important to me. My life’s work has been serving the families of my communities. Our elders, the wisdom keepers of our communities, would be speaking, and they needed support. They needed to feel comfort and surrounded by love as they shared their stories. I hoped to offer that in whatever way I could.
I invited my father to drive to Anadarko with me. He declined. I knew why he declined, even though he did not put it into words. I knew the experience would be painful for him. I didn’t press him. Throughout my life, I have watched my father cope with the challenges rooted in having attended boarding schools and not being raised with his siblings. His path—which started with rebuilding lost connections to family and his former self—has been ever-changing, and his achievements have been hard-won. Today he proudly serves the Veterans of our Nation as part of our Tribal Cabinet.
I made the nearly three-hour drive to Riverside alone and in silence. I never drive anywhere without listening to music or podcasts, but on that day, I felt that I had to mentally prepare for the heaviness I was headed toward. I thought about all of those beautiful, courageous community members who were making a special effort to show up and share their stories of endurance. I felt grateful to them, and I prayed they would find peace and calmness after sharing. Some of them would likely be telling their stories out loud for the first time in their lives.
Almost everyone talked about how they were treated upon first entering their school, how they had their hair cut and then had an unidentified burning liquid poured over their scalp. Some thought the liquid was kerosene. Everyone talked about how badly it burned their skin and eyes. Many spoke of the powerlessness they felt, how they were abused and treated with no regard for their safety or wellbeing. Several talked about how, when summer break came, they were sent to live on local farms as forced laborers for non-Indian families.
Another common theme was separation from siblings. Children were removed from their homes without an attempt to keep siblings together. These speakers mourned the years of family life, of bonding with siblings, that they will never get back.
Some were taken away as children and never again saw their family homes. Some talked about the loss of language and the shame they still feel—like many of us—at not being able to speak their own language.
It would be impossible to overemphasize how chilling it was to hear these stories one after another, as person after person stood up to share the truth of their experiences. To hear each survivor and honor their internal feelings with the empathy they deserved was a challenge, more so as their inflections of rage, anger, and sadness accumulated. The sense of loss they conveyed, the pain in many of the voices—these things hit me hard, in spite of what I already knew about the heartbreaking system they were talking about. It overwhelmed me. So many have endured that pain in silence for so long.
Ending the silence is necessary and long overdue. I am grateful to Secretary Haaland for instituting the Boarding School Initiative, and I appreciate the importance of including the voices of survivors. I believe this is a necessary step in the journey toward healing.
I also worry about how individual survivors are doing after having shared their stories. As with any disclosure of traumatic experiences, there are bound to be aftereffects. These aftereffects may include positive feelings of having connected with others and of releasing tensions that have been buried for too long. But the aftereffects might be destabilizing, too.
There were mental health professionals onsite at Riverside, but are the people who spoke being supported now that they are back to their everyday lives? Also, what should we be doing to support our communities as these stories begin to see the light of day all at once? I think about the cumulative force of all those stories I heard at Riverside, and I wonder what happens when you multiply the stories in community after community across the country.
Other types of revelations are coming, as well. We already know that US Indian Boarding Schools had burial sites on their campuses. Part of the Initiative’s mission is to identify and repatriate the remains of the unknown number of children who did not survive their “education.” In the initial report, the government authors make clear that they expect the number of burial site discoveries to increase as the investigation proceeds.
I returned home from Anadarko in silence, the same way I had come. But on the return trip, I tried to keep in mind the bravery of those people who had shared their stories. None of us would be here today without their bravery. We will all need that bravery in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
Kimee Wind-Hummingbird, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation with Cherokee descendancy, joined the NNCTC in 2021 after 22 years serving youth and families in the child and family programs of her two tribal nations. In addition to extensive supervisory experience and expertise on the Indian Child Welfare Act, she has trained and consulted with both tribal and non-tribal stakeholders, including judges, attorneys, state child welfare agencies, tribal child welfare agencies, and other service providers. Her focus across all of her professional activities has been keeping indigenous families connected to their tribe, culture, and community.
This post is the second in a series that the NNCTC is publishing to coincide with the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative’s activities. We highly recommend that you read the Initiative’s introductory report here.
These topics are painful and may cause distress. If you feel yourself in need of continued support, please reach out for help. Do so in whatever way feels most appropriate to you: traditional healing, talking to someone you know and trust, getting connected to mental health services, or calling or texting 988. Please know that there are many people across Indian Country who share your pain.