Native Sun News: One boarding school survivor shares his story

Monday, August 1, 2011  

The following story was written and reported by Stephanie Woodard. All content © Native Sun News.

OMAHA, NEBRASKA –– The United Nations definition of genocide includes actions many would expect to see in such a statement, including killing and injuring members of the target population.

However, perhaps more surprising, the definition goes on to include “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

For Native Americans, this particular aspect of genocide included a century of mandated attendance at violent and repressive boarding schools, say Columbia University professor Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, Hunkpapa and Oglala Lakota, and Dr. Lemyra M. DeBruyn, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in their paper, “The American Indian Holocaust: Healing Historical Unresolved Grief.”

The two scholars connect social issues in today’s Native communities to the horrors of the schools. “Abusive behaviors, physical, sexual, emotional, were experienced and learned by American Indian children raised in [the school] settings,” they write.

The suffering then rolled forward through the generations, as the boarding-school survivors, in turn, raised their own children. Exacerbating this, say the scholars, are historical attacks on culture, language, family relationships, land base, and more, along with the disproportionately high rates of poverty, prejudice, crime, disease, and early death Native people suffer today.

For healing to take place, says human-rights activist O.J. Semans, Sicangu Lakota, people must be able to acknowledge and mourn their losses: “For too long, Native American Indians have had to shoulder their burdens and simply try to make it to the next day. We have those who cut themselves to try to relieve the mental pain; when that isn’t enough, they go beyond it to suicide. We must deal with the past, including the boarding school experience, if we are to move on.”

One recent summer day, Charles Baxter, Omaha, told himself, “This is the time to talk.” His boarding-school memories are below.

Baxter, a treaty and legal research specialist, an activist against tribal corruption, and a former counselor, points out that Native children were abused at institutions nationwide. News coverage of recent events – the South Dakota legislature changing the law in that state in a manner that hindered Native American lawsuits against the Church, along with the big monetary settlement between boarding-school survivors and Jesuits in the Northwest and Alaska – may give the impression that the harm was limited to these regions, according to Baxter.

“It wasn’t,” Baxter said. “It happened at all the boarding schools. And we can’t forget Indian children who went to BIA day schools; they were whipped and mistreated, too.”

BAXTER'S STORY
“When I’m walking alone in the country, I often think about my years at St. Augustine Indian Mission, on the Winnebago reservation, in Nebraska. I was sent there from my Omaha reservation in 1956 at age eight, removed after a few months, then returned in 1958. I especially remember being part of what they called a belt line. They lined up us boys with our legs apart and made another boy crawl through, while those of us who were standing beat him with straps. If we didn’t hit hard enough, we went through the line ourselves.

“I think about being hit, and the pain is as clear as if it happened yesterday. But most of all, I think about the boys I hit, and I feel so sorry. I remember some crying and begging us not to hit them so hard.

“Father Frank Hulsman, the villain who ran at St. Augustine at the time, had an assistant who helped hold boys so other students could hit them 10 times apiece with a rubber hose. Father Ralph, to his credit, refused to be part of this. The last person from our reservation who was whipped in this manner died a couple of years ago – nothing but a drunk his whole life. Our Native communities are full of alcoholics, thanks to what we suffered and what we were told to do to each other at the boarding schools.

“The nuns were terrors as well. Sister Domenica would slap us kids, beat us with her hickory pointer, and drag us by the ears. Humiliation was constant, especially for those who tried to run away. Their hair was cut off, and runaway girls were easy to spot, because they would enter the dining hall wearing scarves but would have to remove them and stand through dinner with their shaved heads bared. I finally left the school in 1959, at about the time my family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I grew up.

“Alcoholism and other problems in our communities didn’t start with my generation. My father went through the same turmoil at boarding school when he was a child, and like others his age, silently carried that burden. Because of his experience, he knew only whipping as a way to discipline his own kids. When I got to school and was whipped some more, this not only instilled a lot of anger in me, it reinforced the idea that this was the way adults related to children. So when I had kids of my own, I’d whip them, then later cry with them and make deals. I didn’t want to raise my kids the way my father raised us.

“I spent the better part of my adult life in prison and jails. When angered, I’d go into a blind rage, somewhat like an alcoholic blackout, and when it was over, another person would be hurt and I’d be headed back to jail. I’ve got scars and broken bones to show for it. I’ve also been through treatment for alcoholism a few times, which didn’t work.

“Finally, in 2002, I decided to make it work. I went to a therapist, who diagnosed me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and told me that almost all Indian people could be said to have PTSD. I believe it. That time, the therapy took a lot off my shoulders and helped me deal with my drinking, my family problems, and more.

“Now, at age 62, I need to go further, to bring out what happened in boarding school. I’ve thought about all this a lot, but never talked about it before. As children, we were tortured, and we were made to torture others. That’s the only word for it. This is a story that has to be told. When you lived it, you know how bad it was. Many of our young people today don’t realize what happened – why we seem like a defeated people. Why so many of us feel nothing will change, so why bother.

“I want our people to stand up and bear testimony to their experiences. It’s time for our people to heal.”

(Contact Stephanie Woodard at (718) 986-3571, swoodard2@gmail.com. Or visit www.huffingtonpost.com/stephanie-woodard)