Alaska lawmakers support push to investigate, document forced assimilation in boarding schools 

Jan Bronson of Anchorage and Cathy Walling of Fairbanks, representing nan Alaska Friends Conference, apologize to Alaska Native communities for nan boarding schools it ran successful Alaska and nan United States. The apology took spot astatine Sayéik Gastineau simple school, nan erstwhile tract of a Quaker ngo schoolhouse successful Juneau, during Orange Shirt Day, Sept. 30, 2022. (Photo by Lisa Phu/Alaska Beacon)

Alaska lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to support a national connection that would analyse and archive nan forced assimilation of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children successful government-funded boarding schools.

House Joint Resolution 17 acknowledges nan trauma Indian boarding schools inflicted connected Indigenous communities successful Alaska and crossed nan country, said nan bill’s sponsor, Rep. CJ McCormick, D-Bethel. There were much than 100 government-funded, church-run Alaska Native boarding schools successful Alaska from nan precocious 1800s done nan 1960s, according to research presented by his agency and nan Alaska Native Heritage Center. They separated young children from their families and forcibly immersed them successful Euro-American traditions and nan English language.

McCormick said nan bequest of maltreatment and intergenerational trauma continues to haunt Alaskans and requires acknowledgement.

“I deliberation a batch of my colleagues were honestly benignant of taken aback by nan grade of these atrocities,” he said and described really investigation and grounds changed their minds.

The Senate unanimously approved nan solution and it had overwhelming support successful nan House. Rep. David Eastman, R-Wasilla, was nan lone ballot against it.

The solution puts Alaska lawmakers successful support of a U.S. Senate measure that would nonstop a national committee to stitchery grounds of assimilation practices and quality authorities violations successful nan nation’s boarding schools for Indigenous children. Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has led nan bipartisan effort with U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, successful Washington, D.C. It has 32 cosponsors.

Callan Chythlook-Sifsof, unit who worked connected nan measure for McCormick’s office, shared that her grandfather and astir of nan elders successful her family attended nan Aleknagik Mission School successful Southwest Alaska, wherever she is from. She noted that nan buildings and memories are present, but mostly unacknowledged successful charismatic records.

“This is simply a arena I’ve known astir my full life. And I tin conscionable look crossed nan reservoir and look astatine nan Mission School,” Chythlook-Sifsof said.

While first-person accounts of boarding schoolhouse abuses are becoming much common, charismatic archiving is scarce. The solution supports a alteration that tin thief Alaskans heal, explained Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, who carried nan measure successful nan Senate.

“The deficiency of broad archiving of this play limits our expertise to reside intergenerational trauma caused by nan policies that supported nan national Indian boarding schoolhouse system,” he said.

He said nan solution “is a measurement towards addressing a trauma that is threaded done our organization and our Alaskan culture.”

Notable Alaskans who knowledgeable boarding schoolhouse abuses said retired astir their experiences successful committee meetings pinch lawmakers this year. Rosita Worl, wide known arsenic nan president of Sealaska Heritage Institute, nan nonprofit limb of Sealaska Corp., and arsenic a organization leader successful Southeast Alaska, shared the story of really she was taken from her location successful Petersburg and taken to an orphanage and Alaska Native boarding schoolhouse successful Haines, without nan knowledge of her family members. She said she was bullied for speaking Tlingít alternatively of English and tearfully confirmed that intersexual maltreatment took spot there.

“Another representation that haunts maine is seeing girls who are almost comatose. They would locomotion without ever talking aliases smiling. They would locomotion for illustration zombies. I often wondered what happened to them, for 1 time I would spot them and past nan adjacent time I wouldn’t,” she said.

Worl recalled being rented retired by nan Haines House for various jobs arsenic an underage, unpaid laborer. She said connected bully days her grandparents would “rent” her and return her berry picking alternatively of forcing her to work.

Walkie Charles, now nan head of nan Alaska Native Language Center astatine nan University of Alaska Fairbanks, recounted being stripped of his sanction and reidentified by a number astatine Wrangell Institute wherever he was taken for boarding school. “The kids successful nan procreation earlier maine were truthful hit up that upon their return location to their communities, they either couldn’t speak their bosom connection anymore, aliases refused to, because they were ashamed capable to take nan connection of our oppressors,” he said.

Charles now teaches Yup’ik, nan connection nan boarding schoolhouse tried to erase.

New research

Even arsenic nan solution moved done nan legislative process, researchers recovered archiving that reinforces nan memories of boarding schoolhouse survivors.

Alaska Native Heritage Center Indigenous Researcher Benjamin Jacuk offered lawmakers a history of Alaska Native boarding schools successful nan state, and grounds of abuses that took spot successful them. He said Alaska was “ground zero” for nationalist boarding schoolhouse policies.

“There is not 1 Alaskan Native live coming who has not been straight aliases indirectly affected by this history,” he said. “It still walks pinch us.”

Last Monday he said he recovered grounds of nan unpaid labour Worl recounted successful erstwhile testimony.

“We really recovered contracts, which they would person parents — who astatine nan clip did not cognize English — sign, that are branded arsenic ‘indentured servanthood children,’ from infants to 14 years old,” he said. “Making nan speech not only astir assimilation, but besides for each intents and purposes, slavery.”

Jacuk said that revealing nan darker truths of maltreatment wrong nan state’s boarding schools is basal to moving forward.

“In bid to understand what treatment moreover looks like, we first request to cognize nan truth,” he said. “And erstwhile we understand nan truth, and we’re capable to really show it, it brings treatment to not only nan group that are present today, aliases moreover nan adjacent generation, but besides that to bring treatment to nan stories of those who came earlier america who are ne'er capable to show their story.”