Opinion: Symposium focuses on Boarding School Healing

Tuesday, May 17, 2011  

"“I was beaten with a leather strap from my ankles up to my back [for attempting to run away]. I can remember how the ex-sergeant, [turned priest,] would still wear his army boots under his robe . . . he almost beat me to death.” “A few years later . . . my little sister was raped.”

These heavy words came from Tim Giago, an American Indian boarding school survivor, at the Boarding School Healing Symposium held at the University of Colorado Law School on May 14 – 15. Giago spoke with great openness on the truly life changing education he endured during his ten years at a Catholic Indian mission boarding school in South Dakota in the 1940s. Rosemarry Gibbons, another member of the Symposium, shared her award-winning film, A Century of Genocide. The film is a short, yet powerful documentary on how Indian Residential Schools became a haven for institutionalized sexual abuse. Saa Hiil Thut [Gerry Oleman], narrator of A Century of Genocide, also offered personal accounts on the destruction boarding school had on his spirit, his life, and his family.

While finding the bravery to talk about what happened in schools established by our Nation’s churches and government is insurmountably difficult, individuals involved in the Symposium are doing even more than talking about it – they’re doing something about it. The Boarding School Healing Symposium Planning Committee established a mission devoted to solving the problems the boarding schools created, which include suicide, alcoholism, sexual abuse, drug addiction, violence, parenting issues, loss of culture, extinction of native languages, and a multi-generational gap in custom and way of life.

The Boarding School Healing Symposium brought together approximately 36 individuals from many different states and countries that have been working with, writing about, or working toward the resolution of issues arising from the Boarding School Policy, a federal policy themed “Kill the Indian, save the man.” This group was comprised of lawyers, educators, social workers, boarding school survivors, native elders, film makers, and many other advocates."

Get the Story:
Lisa R. Shellenberger: American Indian Boarding Schools: Resolving the Issues They Left Behind (Smith, Shelton & Ragona Blog 5/17)