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The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is continuing to call on U.S. lawmakers to create a commission to research and bring to light the troubled history of U.S. Indian boarding schools.
Legislation has been introduced and passed in a Senate committee and is waiting for House action, says the coalition’s CEO Deborah Parker.
“It’s much needed to help us tell the story, help us understand what happened to our Native American children in U.S. boarding schools. And we deserve, America deserves, not only Native Americans, but students, but people, any human being who is living today deserves to understand the truth about what happened in the United States.”
Parker says they’re seeking records from not only the government, but from churches.
“We know these schools, the churches, religious institutions took amazing records. So where are they? And we know parents are still looking for children to this day, their relatives who never came home. Most of the parents are no longer with us, but there are elders who have brothers and sisters, siblings, cousins who never made it home from the boarding school. So they are missing. We’re trying to help families locate their loved ones…we still know our communities have, we have broken systems within our communities because we don’t know where our loved ones are.”
Parker was an attendee at the White House Tribal Nations Summit held this month in Washington, D.C., where Vice President Kamala Harris said she is committed, along with President Joe Biden, to speaking truth about the horrors of Indian boarding schools, and she says they’re committed to efforts to heal intergenerational trauma.
Whaling is at the center of life for the residents of Utqiagvik. From whaling boats parked in front yards to this handmade whale figurine, fashioned from baleen, there are signs all over that this community is deeply connected to the whale. (Photo: Emily Schwing)
According to folklore, Santa has a workshop in the Arctic. But, so do the Indigenous people who live in Alaska’s Northernmost community.
As Emily Schwing reports, Iñupiat artists and creators have been making jewelry and tools essential to their life near the North Pole for generations.
Inside the traditional room at the Iñupiat Heritage Center in the heart of Utqiagvik, industrial tools rumble, buzz, and whirr.
“I mean, yeah this whole place is so useful for everybody, this is called a traditional room for a purpose.
James Patkotak sits hunched over a workbench.
He learned to make jewelry with natural materials from his father.
“I’m making a… right now this is a grizzly bear claw and I’m attaching a walrus tusk ivory on top of it.”
Skin sewers and whaling crews also come here to build the boats for the community’s spring and fall whale hunts.
Colleen Lemen says it’s one of the few spaces large enough to build an umiaq.
She was the Director of the Inupiat Heritage Center for nearly half a decade.
“A skin boat is a large boat that needs to be created in a large enough space so that once the skins are sewed together, those skins are draped over that wooden frame.”
In rural Alaska, large workspaces are hard to come by and so are heavy and expensive industrial tools, but they are required for work that happens here.
Richard Taalak keeps a photo of his father hanging above the workbench where he crafts his ulus. He says he has lots of memories, good and bad. “He got me started on this and I appreciate that,” he said. (Photo: Emily Schwing)
Richard Taalak carves handles from caribou antler for his rounded-bladed ulus, a traditional knife found in most Alaska Native households.
“It’s a piece of equipment for our people that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years and I’m going to continue this. I really am.”
His father’s picture hangs by his workbench as a reminder of the long-lasting traditions many artists carry on from their elders this far north.
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