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Photo: The Alaska Native Heritage Center’s new exhibit on the impact of government and religious boarding schools is part of a series that will also look at the education of Native children before and after the boarding school era. (Rhonda McBride)
As it marked its 25th Anniversary, the Alaska Native Heritage Center underwent a major facelift at its Anchorage campus this year, which included new galleries and museum exhibits.
One of the latest projects looks at the history of Native boarding schools in Alaska. As KNBA’s Rhonda McBride tells us, it’s a work in progress.
The Native Boarding School exhibit is the first installment in a series that explores the history of Alaska Native education.
It is stark and simple, but damning.
“There is a power in naming the evil.”
This Alaska map is the work of Sonya Kelliher-Combs, an Iñupiat and Athabascan artist. Each red thread represents a child that was abused by clergy. (Photo: Rhonda McBride)
Benjamin Jacuk is the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s director of Indigenous Research.
Over the past few years, he has been looking at the role of churches in boarding school abuse.
The centerpiece of the exhibit is a map of Alaska, with tiny red threads hanging from various villages.
Each represents a child abused by Catholic clergy.
Combined, they make a curtain of red across the state.
“There’s actually a difference in just talking about these things, but actually seeing it right there in front of you.”
Next to the map is a plaque with the names of more than a hundred priests and missionaries, acknowledged by the church as having credible claims of sexual abuse against them.
The exhibit is called “Education in Alaska: Disruptions in our teachings” and will be completed sometime next year.
Future installments will look backwards, beyond the boarding school era, long before missionaries and Bureau of Indian affairs teachers took over the education of Native children.
“Really this history of us and our relationship with ourselves each other and our environment is something that is millennias old, tens of thousands of years old.”
Jacuk says project will bring the history of Native education in Alaska full circle with exhibits that showcase how Native languages and cultures are being taught in schools today.
“We also have generations of ancestors who still walk with us today, teaching us who we are.”
Jacuk says to fully understand how to heal centuries of historical trauma , you have to understand how boarding schools systematically attempted to destroy the identity of Native children.
(Courtesy Nashke Native Games / Facebook)
A Native-owned game company is making resources to help Ojibwe language learners of all ages.
Kathleen Shannon has more.
Tony Drews — whose Native name is “Chi-Noodin,” meaning Big Wind — was struggling to engage students in learning Ojibwe culture and language, until he brought a board game into class.
That day led him to launch Nashke Native Games in 2023, which sells games that help teach Ojibwe lessons.
One is a Native spin on a 1920s-era stock market game.
The new version is based on the fur trade and players deal in important traditional Ojibwe goods such as maple sugar, beads, and wild rice.
“The funny thing about the word ‘miigwech’ is that it means ‘thank you’ in our language. And the word comes out of the fur trade era. So it was just a natural catalyst to use this game to talk about culture and language. And it was an absolute hit.”
Drews says that teaching language through joy, music, crafts and games increases retention by about 95%.
He’s currently working with Lakota leaders to create versions of his games with Lakota language and culture.
In his own family, Drews’s great grandmother exclusively spoke Ojibwe, his grandmother was sent to boarding school and his father only knows a couple Ojibwe words.
He says Ojibwe culture is baked into the language.
The games are designed for Native language learners of any level, Drews says, and for their non-Native neighbors and community members, as well.
This story was produced with original reporting by Amy Felegy with Arts Midwest.
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