How many times will this ideologically driven narrative of the much abused noble savage be repeated! To demand reparations?
Look what the administration of the 46th President produced! Interestingly, the underlying government report is not about sexual abuse nor the catholic church at all. It is about e.g. unmarked burial sites.
What is apparently not mentioned that it has been known or decades that some catholic priests to have committed sexual abuse etc. in other countries. This is not specific to native Americans.
What is perhaps also not mentioned is what did the native Americans do about it?
How did other such boarding schools compare?
I don't mean to diminish any of the abuses or mistreatments suffered by native Americans. Sexual abuse of any children should never happen and if it happens it should be prosecuted. The idea to school native American children was well intended.
Caveat: I did not read the underlying Washington Compost article.
"A devastating, meticulously reported Washington Post [compost] article reveals new details of the extent of the sexual abuse in Catholic-run Native American schools in the U.S.
120+ priests, sisters, and brothers who worked at 22 boarding schools dating back to the 1890s were later accused of sexually abusing Native American children, according to the must-read article.
Most of the assaults happened in the 1950s and 1960s and “involved more than 1,000 children.”
Deborah Parker, chief executive of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, called the church-run boarding schools “a national crime scene.”
History: The U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Native American children to 500+ boarding schools across the country from 1819 to 1969.
The boarding school system fostered “rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse” of the children, per a U.S. Department of the Interior 2022 report. "
From the news release:
"Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland today released Volume 1 of the investigative report called for as part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a comprehensive effort to address the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies. This report lays the groundwork for the continued work of the Interior Department to address the intergenerational trauma created by historical federal Indian boarding school policies.
This investigative report is a significant step by the federal government to comprehensively address the facts and consequences of its federal Indian boarding school policies—implemented for more than a century and a half—resulting in the twin goals of cultural assimilation and territorial dispossession of Indigenous peoples through the forced removal and relocation of their children. It reflects an extensive and first-ever inventory of federally operated schools, including profiles and maps.
The investigation found that from 1819 to 1969, the federal Indian boarding school system consisted of 408 federal schools across 37 states or then territories, including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii. The investigation identified marked or unmarked burial sites at approximately 53 different schools across the school system. As the investigation continues, the Department expects the number of identified burial sites to increase. ..."
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