Keynote: Addressing the Native American boarding school legacy will ‘take all of us’

By Rebecca Omastiak The Catholic Spirit

Samuel Torres invited those listening to his keynote talk on the history of Native American boarding schools during the Tekakwitha Conference “to widen the circle.”

Addressing the effects of Native boarding schools — which includes a legacy of forced assimilation and abuse — “is going to take all of us,” a collective effort from people of every race, faith and nation, said Torres, deputy chief executive officer of the Minneapolis-based nonprofit National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS). “This is not simply a Native issue, it’s a human issue.”

Torres — who grew up in a Catholic household and is Mexica-Nahua on his father’s side and Irish Scottish on his mother’s side — acknowledged that the Native boarding school legacy has “deep roots on these lands” and that “harm is not confined to the past.” Wounds are present and they’re deep, Torres said, and he encouraged a framework of restorative justice to heal the wounds and combat a “culture of forgetting.”

During his talk July 21 at a Bloomington hotel, Torres suggested a healing framework presented by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart — president of the Takini Institute, associate professor of psychiatry, and the director of Native American and Disparities work involves co-owning and helping run The Sioux Chef in Minneapolis, which includes a restaurant dedicated to Indigenous foods and the nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems.

An author, international speaker and digital content creator who lives in Apple Valley, James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw, spoke about insights to wisdom and healthful living he gained while learning and helping create a dictionary of the Ojibwe language.

Research at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico: First, confront the trauma. Second, understand the trauma. Third, release the trauma. Fourth, transcend the trauma.

Torres said efforts along this pathway of healing have “just started.”

He said requests from Natives have included: The collection of, and access to, dispersed Native boarding school records; burial site examination using Indigenous techniques and funding to support those efforts; support for Native boarding school survivors to offer their testimony; resources so survivors can direct their own healing; education on Native boarding schools and their impact to be included in school curricula; accountability as Native boarding school information comes to light; and the restoration of land, culture and lifeways.

Jody Roy is Ojibwe and originally from Canada, from Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nation. She currently lives in Chicago and is the director of the St. Kateri Center in that city.

Reflecting on the keynote talk, Roy, 45, said, “The truth has to be told in order for anything to happen. We can’t heal if our stories and truth are not heard. What is there to reconcile and heal about if we’re not aware of it?”

Roy said she comes “from a line of residential school survivors.” She said a non-blood relative of hers who “was like an uncle” in that he was taken in and raised by her grandparents was “a deacon and he was a residential school survivor.” Though he died a few years ago, Roy said, “I wonder how he could have been an ally for others with similar experience(s)” and how she herself might “try to bring that healing for our people also.”

Ojibwe words with complex structures and multiple but interconnected interpretations brought him to understand the sacred nature of relationships with people and nature fed by humility, respect and love, said Vukelich Kaagegaabaw, a descendant of Turtle Mountain who has written a book about his adventures with language titled “The Seven Generations and the Seven Grandfather Teachings.”

In his homily at Mass in the auditorium, which was celebrated in English with hymns sung in

The annual Tekakwitha Conference presents opportunities for those gathered to celebrate “local Native culture” as well as the “unique subsection” of Native Catholic culture, said conference co-chair Michele Hakala-Beeksma, a member of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and a member of St. Lawrence in Duluth.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Gathering for Healing Through Living Waters,” and as Hakala-Beeksma and co-chair Shawn Phillips — director and pastoral minister of Gichitwaa Kateri in Minneapolis and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office of Indian Ministry — indicated, healing from the personal and intergenerational trauma experienced at, and as a result of, boarding schools was central to the conference.

Torres has been working with NABS since 2019. Founded in 2012, NABS consists of more than 780 Native and non-Native members and organizations “committed to boarding school healing” through national strategies to increase public awareness of the United States Boarding School Policy of 1869 and its aftermath.

A U.S. Department of the Interior report released last year indicated Native boarding schools — many of them operated by various religious orders — sought to forcibly assimilate Native children to adopt western practices and a Christian way of life, separating children from their families and suppressing Native language and culture.

The U.S. adopted a Native boarding school policy through measures such as the Indian Civilization Act Fund of 1819 and the Peace Policy of 1869, according to NABS.

Such policies sought “Indian territorial dispossession and Indian assimilation, including through education,” the DOI report stated. Torres, during his talk, said it was a process of “utilizing education as a weapon.”

Ojibwe and English, importance of elders thanked those gathered Church and teach things “I couldn’t help the world this weekend, us to celebrate grandparents archbishop said of Day for Grandparents realized, you’ve taught and respect for family.”

The DOI reports roughly 400 Native boarding operated between 1819 received support or institution or organization, infrastructure and personnel.” have come from “Tribal those based on cessions United States,” the Per DOI research, boarding schools included with English names; discouraging the use and cultural practices; groups to perform military was part of boarding were often enforced DOI report states. The on the Federal Indian investigation’s initial Federal Indian boarding 500 American Indian, Hawaiian child deaths.”

NABS has been continuing tool — called the National Digital Archive — to for information on boarding schools. According project seeks to make survivors and their

An online list at ctah roughly 87 Catholic-run in the United States in Minnesota — was group of archivists, members.

The list includes were affiliated with were among 21 total