Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Millions of dollars have been committed to documenting the stories of Native boarding school survivors.
Their voices have long been a priority for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
SDPB’s C.J. Keene has more.
The U.S. Interior Department has announced a partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities to make sure the oral history from boarding school survivors isn’t forgotten.
The partnership includes a $4 million fund to pay for research and educational programming sharing stories of boarding school abuse victims.
Haaland visited the Rosebud Reservation in October to talk with survivors.
Arlouine Kingman is the executive director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairmans Association. While she says she appreciates Haaland’s actions, listening to survivors is long overdue.
“She’s made a point of taking time to go and hold community forums to listen to people who were in those boarding schools. I happened to go to the one at Rosebud, and I tell you I was crying with some of these people who told their stories.”
Kingman says these forums are alleviating some of the trauma.
“This one woman, she had been in the boarding school, and she told how even today she’s still got trauma from that. She said it was sort of a healing for her – to be able to voice this and see there’s some healing taking place now.”
She says she hopes this money is used to continue healing in that vein – to reclaim what was taken.
“The main thing is when they were raised in the boarding school, it took their culture, their values from them, so they did not grow up in a family where they were taught to share with one another or taught to take care of one another. They grew up without those family virtues we all instill in our children as they grow up – and that’s the great harm.”
Dorian Hale, 3, marches through the mud outside his family home in Shiprock, NM on Feb. 1, 2023. His mother is happy to watch him grow after partaking in a study that helps families with nutrition. (Photo: Emma VandenEinde/KUNC)
Haaland says the goal of the project is to rebuild bonds between native communities and the federal government and ensure future generations will learn from the boarding school era.
Tribal communities have historically had a hard time getting clean drinking water. And that affects children’s health.
Emma VandenEinde of the Mountain West News Bureau shares the experience of one family in Shiprock, NM.
This is Dorian. He’s playing in the mud outside his family’s hogan, a one room home, on the Navajo Nation.
He loves playing with cars. His favorite is the “Cars” movie character Lightning McQueen.
Rontel Hale, his mother, says he’s growing well for a three-year-old.
“When I would go to his appointments, they would always tell me, like, he’s going to grow over six foot two inches.”
But health professionals say not every kid on the Navajo Nation – an area as big as West Virginia – is growing healthy and strong like Dorian.
Thousands of families lack access to clean, drinking water due to a legacy of neglect by the U.S. government.
They either have to haul water from community wells or drive for hours to the nearest store.
“If water is so hard to access, then what is a replacement? And so for a lot of communities, sometimes it was those sugary beverages.”
That’s Renee Goldtooth-Halwood.
She works for the Notah Begay The Third Foundation, a Native children’s health group.
She says sugary drinks like Gatorade or even Arizona Tea are cheaper and more accessible for Native communities.
This has staggering effects for children.
The foundation reports that more than 85% of Navajo kids have at least one sugary drink a day. And these numbers apply to many other pueblos and reservations.
“And we also had another statistic that said that…this is the first time that children will not outlive their parents. That’s scary.”
Hale knew these beverages can contribute to obesity and diabetes – conditions that are disproportionately high among Indigenous youth.
Her desire to keep Dorian healthy only grew after he was born.
“Your mentality is like more like, oh, is he okay? Is he, am I doing stuff right? It’s more different when you have like your own baby.”
This story was supported by The Water Desk, an initiative from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. Tune in for Part Two to hear how some organizations want to help.
Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our newsletter today.
