Churches starting to face facts on boarding schools

[TexasTowelie]

Red Cloud Indian School is taking the lead among Christian-run schools in coming to terms with its assimilationist past.

The Jesuits have given Red Cloud a $20,000 grant to help in the work, including conducting searches with ground-penetrating radar for unmarked graves, and have allocated $50,000 to hire an archivist for one year to examine the order’s boarding school history at its archives in St. Louis.

School leaders are also working with tribal representatives about searching the school grounds on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota for remains of students who died there.

“The Catholic Church needs to recognize that honesty, being forthright and vulnerable are far more powerful and more healing than being reticent, restrictive and closed,” said Maka Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, executive director for Truth and Healing at Red Cloud Indian School.

Churches are joining the U.S. federal government in facing the often-brutal history of Native boarding schools, which forced children from their families into schools where they were often abused, underfed and used as virtual slave labor. Some died there without ever going home.

Read more: https://sourcenm.com/2022/01/13/churches-starting-to-face-facts-on-boarding-schools/

[Sherman A1]

1. Ahhhhhh, the Jesuits ..........

Finished a book recently on North St. Louis County regarding slavery in the region and guess what group featured prominently?

[abqtommy]

2. Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Was it The Jesuits? You betcha. The history of the Jesuits,

like the history of The Catholic church, is very revealing in explaining mass and unmarked
graves at "educational" institutions around the world operated by them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Jesus

Twenty thousand bucks here and fifty thousand bucks there is pocket change for
The Jesuits and The Catholic Church. In Canada the Indigenous people are still
waiting for reparations that the Catholic church gave lip service to.

[Sherman A1]

3. We have a winner!

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen it was the Jesuits who enslaved people and were so very charming to the folks at their educational institutions.

What a wonderful bunch of fellas..........

[WiVoter]

4. Thank You For Posting This, and Raising Awareness

I saw this on 60 Minutes recently, and it was devastating. As someone who teaches in a school with a majority of Native American Indian students, I appreciate it very much. The first step in healing is understanding, even if it is difficult. I am thankful the Secretary Haaland is involved and not only raising awareness, she is taking action, so long denied to the first Americans. again, thank you TexasTowelle.

&t=11s

[TexasTowelie]

5. You're welcome

and welcome to DU.

[WiVoter]

6. Thank You

[wnylib]

7. Canada has been at least admitting

to the damage of the abusive assimilation schools.

In the US the same things happened but the US has been in total denial until Secretary Haaland opened this period up for investigation. Native people in the US have the same stories to tell, but often the pain, embarrassment, and sense of shame from those experiences makes it difficult for them to come forward and talk about it, especially when nobody would acknowledge the truth of what they had to say.