OPINION: Alaska’s place in Indigenous history

As leaders at the Department of the Interior and descendants of federal Indian boarding school survivors, we entered our roles in the Biden-Harris administration with a determined commitment to address the U.S. government’s horrific wrongs of the past. At the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona last month, we joined elders, survivors and their children as President Joe Biden issued the first-ever apology to Indian Country for the federal government’s role in this horrific legacy. This moment was nothing short of historic, and Alaska played an important role.

Three years ago, our Department launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a first-of-its-kind commitment from the federal government to acknowledge and investigate the enduring legacy of federal Indian boarding schools. The initiative’s investigative report detailed the scale and scope of these schools and affirmed a loud and unequivocal truth: that the federal government isolated children from their families and stole from them the languages, cultures, and traditions foundational to Native people.

While this history is known and felt throughout Indian Country, its painful memory has been largely washed from our history books. For over 150 years, the federal government operated 417 institutions across 37 states or then-territories in conjunction with religious institutions, where at least 18,624 children as young as four years old – torn from their families and stripped of their languages, traditional clothes, cultures, lifeways, and even their hair – were forcibly sent. In Alaska alone, there were 22.

Native American history is American history, and we must own, reckon with, and heal from our past if we are to build a stronger, more resilient future for each of us. That includes sharing and bearing our own scars for the world. For over a year, we traveled on “The Road to Healing” – a yearlong tour of 12 visits throughout Indian Country, including to the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage – that gave survivors and descendants an opportunity to share their boarding school experiences and the painful aftermath those schools left behind.

During our visit, survivors and descendants shared their harrowing experiences of abuse and neglect – many for the first time publicly – under the most egregious conditions. Together, we wept, we remembered and we healed. To those of you who shared your stories, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Your experiences and those of your loved ones are part of the fabric of our work.

Our investigative report included a list of recommendations to support a path to healing the nation. The report’s first recommendation was an acknowledgment and apology from the federal government. That the president took this step is a demonstration of the impact of the Indigenous people who, through this painful but necessary work, shared their stories guided by a sense of duty to honor the sacrifices of our ancestors. We were proud to join him for his first visit to Indian Country and a moment that cemented a turning point in our nation’s reckoning with this shameful chapter of our history. While we can never rewrite our past, we can ensure that it is never forgotten.

Now, in response to the report’s sixth recommendation, we are advancing collaborative efforts with our partners – including the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Mellon Foundation – to create an oral collection of first-person narratives from boarding school survivors. We are finalizing agreements between the Department, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and the Library of Congress, to explore how those oral histories can best become part of upcoming and far-reaching educational resources such as online, traveling and long-term exhibitions that will share the history and legacy of the federal Indian boarding school system with the world.

One of the most common requests we heard over and over on “The Road to Healing” was to restore Native languages. In response, we have strengthened grant programs like the Living Languages Grant Program. And, alongside the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, we are developing a 10-year National Plan for Native language preservation – guided by Tribal leaders and Native language teachers – which will be released soon. Some of this work is already underway at current boarding schools, run by Tribes or the Bureau of Indian Education. These schools operate without assimilationist intentions or practices and instead focus on culturally specific and tailored programs as part of a holistic approach to the mental, physical, religious and cultural aspects of Native learners.

We recognize that this work will never truly be over – that Native peoples in Alaska and across our nation will continue to reckon with the deep-seated pain and intergenerational trauma that has proliferated from the boarding school era. Our work isn’t finished. But, with President Biden’s apology – and with the federal government’s continued commitment to addressing this history – we can heal people in Tribal communities and heal our nation’s relationship with Indian Tribes. We can build a United States that supports each of us. Together, we can heal our shared scars while building a future where everyone can thrive.

Deb Haaland serves as Secretary of the Interior. Bryan Newland is the federal Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.

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