Indigenous activist details the horrors of American boarding schools

Brut America

"We knew that children didn't get to go home. They were missing."   This Indigenous activist spoke about the lasting impact of American boarding schools, after an investigation found evidence of at least 53 burial sites linked to these institutions ...

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00:00She was chained to a heater and beaten daily.

00:03We knew that children didn't get to go home.

00:15They were missing.

00:17We heard stories of such immense abuse that some of our elders can't hear from one of

00:26their sides of their head because they were hit.

00:30We know that one of our young girls was sent to the basement and she was chained to a heater

00:40and beaten daily.

00:43We know others hid so that they wouldn't receive the abuse.

01:02The feeling of knowing that I'm sitting here and I was a young girl who wanted to know

01:09the truth about the Tulalip boarding school.

01:13My house is almost on the boarding school.

01:16I can walk down the road and it's right there, yet no one wanted to speak of the pain and

01:24the torture.

01:25We knew there was a little jail cell.

01:27We knew that the basement was for where the kids were crying and wanting to go home.

01:33When we began to open these doors for our boarding school survivors to come forward

01:38and share their stories, I'm deeply concerned.

01:40I don't want to lose another elder.

01:43None of us do.

01:44These are our knowledge keepers.

01:47We've lost enough.

01:48One more loss of our loved one, of our elders, is sometimes too much and a lot of the times

01:56too unbearable.

01:59So that's where many of us are at across the nation, whether we live in remote villages

02:04in Alaska or in Native Hawaiian communities or Tulalip, anywhere in the United States

02:13if you're an indigenous person, you have felt the impacts.

02:17I wish I could speak my language and it breaks my heart that I can't communicate with some

02:23of our elders who do speak.

02:25This is the time right now where we can speak the truth, where we can honor our loved ones,

02:38where we can stand up and stand together.

02:41This is the time to honor our boarding school survivors, our relatives, and the children

02:46who are still asking those questions and wondering, where is my grandmother?

02:52Where is my auntie?

02:53What happened to our family?

02:55We deserve that answer.

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