For more than 100 years, the United States forced tens of thousands of Indigenous children into boarding schools aimed at erasing their cultures and identities.
For more than 100 years, the United States forced tens of thousands of Indigenous children into boarding schools to erase their cultures and Natives as people.
For Deb, these policies touched her own life. Her grandparents were stolen from their families, and many like them never returned home.
As Secretary of the Interior — the department that once ran the boarding school system — she launched the Indian Boarding School Initiative to shed light on these painful truths, a step forward on the long road toward healing. In a powerful op-ed for the Washington Post, Deb wrote:
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“My great-grandfather was taken to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Its founder coined the phrase “kill the Indian, and save the man,” which genuinely reflects the influences that framed these policies at the time.
My family’s story is not unlike that of many other Native American families in this country. We have a generation of lost or injured children who are now the lost or injured aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents of those who live today. I once spent time with my grandmother recording our history for a writing assignment in college. It was the first time I heard her speak candidly about how hard it was — about how a priest gathered the children from the village and put them on a train, and how she missed her family. She spoke of the loneliness she endured. We wept together. It was an exercise in healing for her and a profound lesson for me about the resilience of our people, and even more about how important it is to reclaim what those schools tried to take from our people.”
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To read the full op-ed and learn more about this tragic era in our history, click here.
In solidarity,
Team Deb
