Over 408 Indian Boarding Schools. Over 53 burial grounds with marked and unmarked graves of stolen children. In the United States. To read the article regarding the report, use the link at the bottom.
Some stolen children were as young as four years old. Taken by force from parents who were fit, because it was an easier way for our government to break up land parcels and also make a profit. This continues today, in some ways despite treaties, pacts and promises. An example is that children are taken into foster care and placed or adopted out to non tribal families, even though people from within the tribes are ready and waiting for them. Why? Because when a child is adopted outside of the tribe, they can be disinherited of their land and tribal monies, which revert to the US government.
Doing outreach in Seattle, we have met elders and middle-aged Americans who remember the black sedans coming to steal them. They remember going to schools, having their heads shaven, being told their parents didn’t love them. Some remember being able to escape through the back windows of their homes to avoid kidnap one or more times. The fallout of which is generational trauma.
We say populations have drug problems. We say the opioid crisis has ruined America. What we don’t do enough of is say, “Our policies that make all kind of people refugees in their own home lands, has done such damage that America looks ruined.”
As a rule, our nonprofit tries to stay focused on survival and opportunities for those experiencing homelessness. However, the things we need to say to give people hope, the things we need to say to inspire people to help, and the things that should be said about the root causes of strife in our country (and in our collective mental health) are not always the same.
In a recent conversation, I encouraged people to look at Seattle and those on the street through a kinder lens. My comments were met with anger and pain. Why? An undeniable system of inequitable punishment. The differences between how humans were treated during the early days of the crack epidemic and now are significant. Lock them up, ask no questions. Jail, not rehab. Take note: It didn’t solve what they thought it would. Now, people whose families were torn apart, first by the things that drive people to escapism/survival mode, second by the punishment for choosing drugs as a way to escape, still contend with pain. In fact, there are still people in jail for drugs that are now legal in the very state they remain jailed in. Their families continue to deal with loss and trauma, while seeing others gets a “pass” on the same crimes, hurts.
Things are not the same for everyone in the USA. These are things we know, just as we know a justice system is only as unbiased as those steering it. So, it’s not unbiased, at all. We saw that as the opioid epidemic took root and suddenly, people saw the struggle in faces they found more relatable. Suddenly, for some it was no longer “lock them up” but “help them”. Many began to push for reform of how we treat dependency diseases, while others continue to see the solution as locking people up. Lock them up, then release them to a world where people can still discriminate against hiring or renting housing to people with a record. And, if they don’t succeed with the extra hurdles? Lock them back up. Yes, it’s expensive to lock people up. Prison is also a multi-billion dollar labor industry. In fact, there are some major stores in the US known for selling things “made in America”, which don’t disclose that that often means made in nearly if nearly unpaid prison labor.
The reason that I am saying all of these things that people don’t want to hear is because I am tired. We are tired. Survival is an urgent and necessary step for individuals. It is the absolute minimum required for change. The problem is that by dealing with survival and individual needs alone, we can be capable of quietly ignoring the fact that we both help to create strife through trauma, through traps that once you fall into them are extremely difficult to get out of, and through ignoring the systemic diseases behind the diseases. Including that of unbalanced pay versus cost of living. That is one that trips people up whether they have perfect health and even education. In their case, we then have the trauma of the let down when you’ve made all the “right choices” but still fail to get the result of self sustainability. Why? Well, that final thing we’re not supposed to mention, along with ageism, racism, sexism, ableism, and classism is, nepotism.
Who you know matters. Which is why many a wise nonprofit censors commentary on root causes. Which makes sense. We don’t want to make anyone feel bad, guilty, powerless or any negative thing. It’s scary to discuss these things because we all hold some kind of pain. At best, it means dealing with the complexity of solving, well, humanity. At worst, it means we each have to look at what privileges we hold, and that is hard to do because being privileged doesn’t mean things are easy. It doesn’t mean we don’t still have to make the right choices. It just means that when we make it to the top of a mountain and look back, our stairs may have been grueling and steep, but they were stairs, not a slide coated in grease.
So. I’m sharing this and my thoughts on some of the layers of trauma that lead us to a place where we take turns pulling each other up, giving each other accurate information or maybe just a blanket, some coffee and the time of day. It’s a lot and most of us are dealing with something, whether it was family dysfunction or just bitterness over how hard we worked and how we didn’t have support in our own time of need.
The thing is, whatever we go through, however righteously we come by our own pain, bitterness is just letting what was once external abuse, take root in us and finish the job from the inside. It usually turns us into something closer to the very thing we dislike. The very thing that hurt(s) us. Which then goes into our mental health, and that is one of many slippery slides can take us right back down the mountain.
Things are complicated, but things CAN and DO change. We can change policies and do better individually and collectively, each time we learn something we didn’t know. We can view drug use and/or homelessness as the symptom, not the cause. We can’t undo the damage caused, but we can try to reduce doing more of it, so that future generations have more stairs than slides, and older generations have space between traumas to try to begin to heal.
It all starts with simplest, difficult thing: Truths we don’t want to hear. Like the ones in this report.
Sooner on ongoing fundraisers for survival gear, new volunteers, recipients and cool new products. Thank you for taking the time to read this and give consideration to a few of the many roots that make efforts like ours necessary.
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Link to Article on US Department of the Interior Indian Boarding Schools report: https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/interior-department-releases-indian-boarding-school-report ******
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