Remembering Native American victims of US schools

September 28, 2021 | ATLANTA 

Recent media reports, a public education campaign, and the announcement of an investigation by the U.S. Department of the Interior have cast renewed light on one of the most shameful practices in the deplorable treatment of the Indigenous people of North America by European colonists across 500 years. This was the forcing of thousands of Native American boys and girls into “Indian boarding schools” in a deliberate attempt to separate them from their families and cultures. 

Disturbing new reports from both Canada and the U.S. indicate that, in some cases, large numbers of the young people died in school custody without notice to families and were buried in mass schoolyard graves. Some of these burials have been documented internally in boarding school records, but others have not. 

While authorized and primarily funded by government, some of these schools were also sponsored or operated by religious organizations, including several with Methodist affiliations. Some Methodists and their institutions shared and promoted the sentiment that Indigenous people must be “Christianized” and then “civilized” to be regarded as human beings, or as stated by prominent proponents, “Kill the Indian and save the man.” 

Read more at this link.