SIOUX CITY — A caravan bringing home the remains of nine Rosebud Sioux children, who died at a Pennsylvania boarding school more than a century ago, will stop in Sioux City Thursday.
Ten Native American children — nine from the South Dakota tribe and one from the Alaskan Aleut Tribe — were recently disinterred from a cemetery on the grounds of the Carlisle Barracks, which also houses the U.S. Army War College. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, which is also known as Sicangu Lakota, spent several years negotiating the repatriation of the children’s remains.
The cemetery contains more than 180 graves of students who attended the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School — a government-run boarding school for Native American children. This is the Army’s fourth disinterment project at the school in as many years.
“With the recent unearthing of our Native children’s bodies at boarding schools, this has been hard and emotional for all First Nations in the U.S. and Canada,” said Trisha Etringer, a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
Etringer is involved in organizing a community meal/prayer service at 8 p.m. Thursday at War Eagle Park in Sioux City. She said a fire will be lit at the park for anyone who wants to pay their respects before 8 p.m.
Ken Fisher,77-driving the bones of his 9 Lakota ancestors back home 2 Rosebud Sioux. Tribal Police officer for 36 yrs. Now deceased persons transport 4 FBI. “I don’t like to think about it too much. It’s all bad. We can’t bring them back-but we can bring them home.” Day 2 caravan pic.twitter.com/cLa7LlKqio
I have been learning a great deal from my friends at the Great Plains Action Society, including Sikowis (Christine Nobiss), Alton and Foxy Onefeather, Trisha Cax-Sep-Gu-Wiga Etringer and Ronnie James. Trisha is quoted in the story above, and both she and Sikowis appear in these videos.
Great Plains Action Society is an indigenous collective working to resist and indigenize colonial institutions, ideologies, and behaviors.
Great Plains Action Society (formerly Indigenous Iowa) was formed out of concern for the current state of our land, the climate and all living things–including Mother Earth. Using our sovereignty and ancestral teachings, we strive to resist colonial-capitalism and Indigenize the world.
Due to the recent Delta variant and other increased cases of COVID-19 in and around the area, this event will now be virtual.
Join us at 7:30PM MST, Friday – July 16, 2021 on Facebook Live @THEOGLALANATION for a Virtual Candlelight Vigil in truth and solidarity with our Sicangu relatives as they bring their ancestors home to their oyate in Rosebud.
Thank you for your understanding. Please stay safe and continue to practice COVID-19 prevention measures including wearing a mask, social distancing, hand hygiene, and get vaccinated.
I’ve been praying and writing a great deal about the atrocities of forced assimilation of Indigenous children. Studied the history of these atrocities. Heard my Native friends’ stories.
All of this is just horrendous. I didn’t think it could be any worse. Thought this was an extremely misguided attempt to help Native children, wrong as that was. I don’t know how I could not have seen that made no sense.
Several months ago I began to find reports that this was a policy of intentional cruelty. A way to force Native peoples who were resisting, to give up their lands.
The following quotes are from the article cited below which I highly recommend. It goes into great detail about this travesty. Information about forced assimilation and other subjects related to Land Back can be found on my website LANDBACK Friends
Nearly 200 Native children lie buried at the entrance of the Carlisle Barracks in the “Indian Cemetery” — the first thing you see when entering one of the United States’ oldest military installations. It is a grisly monument to the country’s most infamous boarding school, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which opened in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and closed in 1918. Chiseled onto the white granite headstones, arranged in the uniform rows typical of veterans’ cemeteries in the U.S., are the names and tribal affiliations of children who came to Carlisle but never left. Thirteen gravestones list neither name nor tribe; they simply read “UNKNOWN.”
Carlisle, and boarding schools like it, are remembered as a dark chapter in the history of the ill-conceived assimilation policies designed to strip Native people of their cultures and languages by indoctrinating them with U.S. patriotism. But child removal is a longstanding practice, ultimately created to take away Native land. Although Carlisle is located in the East, it played a key role in pressuring the West’s most intransigent tribes to cede and sell land by taking their children hostage.
A century after its closing, however, unanswered questions surround the Carlisle Indian School’s brutal legacy. Secrets once thought buried — why did so many children die there? — are coming to light. And the descendants of those interred are demanding more than just the return of their stolen ancestors.
“The past of Carlisle is really about justice,” says Ben Rhodd, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s tribal historic preservation officer. Since April 2016, his office has been pursuing the return of 11 children buried at the Carlisle Indian Cemetery. Even in death, Rhodd explains, Rosebud’s children remain “prisoners of war,” held at a military base and unable to return to their home on the Rosebud Reservation, children who were “hostages taken to pacify the leadership of tribes that would dare stand against U.S. expansion and Manifest Destiny.”
BY 1889, A DECADE INTO THE CARLISLE EXPERIMENT, Lakota parents were heartbroken. Up until then, the Lakota leadership had put up a united front opposing the 1887 Dawes Act, which proposed to allot reservation lands by parceling out individual plots to individual Lakota families and selling off “surplus” lands to white settlers. Given the forced starvation already occurring on reservations and the loss of the Black Hills, the horror of the unexplained deaths of boarding-school children was just too much to bear.
During a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., in December 1889, Lakota and Dakota leadership discussed the loss of their children in regard to their decision to finally accept allotment. Coupled with the slashing of food rations, the taking of their children was “like cutting our heads off,” American Horse from Pine Ridge told the commission. White Swan from Cheyenne River explained, “It seems as though (our children) learned how to die instead of reading and writing.” The delegation had been lured to the East not only to sign over their lands but to also see their children. “Pine Ridge and Rosebud have their children at Carlisle mostly, so wherever their children are, they would like to go that way on their road home and see their children, and then go right home. That’s all,” Chief John Grass from Standing Rock pleaded before the delegation departed.
Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) is an assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico and the author of Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019).
Writing is a spiritual practice for me. Sitting at the computer, I try to quiet my mind to hear what I should write. In times past a writer would sit in front of a blank page. This morning there are intertwined threads.
There are many reasons news of the remains of Native children profoundly affects me.
My career began with five years in neonatal intensive care. The rest doing research at that children’s hospital. I was blessed to be immersed with children everyday. I attempt to retain childlike qualities. Children are my heroes. I love the idea of children as sacred beings.
In almost every indigenous language of what is now known as the Americas there is a word for children that translates to English as sacred beings. Acknowledging in thoughts, words and actions that our children are sacred beings provides not only the necessary healthy intention and consciousness that will benefit our children; this acknowledgement reminds us as parents to once again be open with our own hearts.
Knowing children as sacred beings brings forth a healthy and healing strength of humility from within us as parents and adults. The youth are our teachers with a profound message for this world. When we as parents and adults acknowledge the Sacredness within ourselves it becomes difficult to not acknowledge this within others – especially our children. We have all been manifested as sacred beings, and although we are able to forget, we are unable to change the truth of what we have been created as, and always will be.
For parents who struggle to see themselves as sacred beings, simply allow your children to remind you of what you’ve forgotten. At birth through their newborn cries the children sing a song to their parents and the world. At this very moment hundreds of sacred beings, answered prayers, messengers of light are manifesting in all cultures and languages. They’re all entering this world singing a song of a sacred contract that can never be broken, only temporarily forgotten. The children’s song is reminding us. Listen…
One of this morning’s threads relates to brutal honesty. I’ve often thought of the following quote. I haven’t always been but will try to be brutally honest in what follows.
Being brutally honest does not necessarily mean you are correct.
Well, I have to tell you something, and you may not like to hear it. But if you struggle with the art of being frank, you need to hear this. It will make you a better person, a better communicator and a better blogger. So here it is … You’re a coward. If you can’t be brutally honest with people, especially when you know it’s in their best interest, you’re a coward. You’re not doing anyone a favor by withholding a truth from them, even if it’s difficult for them to hear. The only person you’re protecting is yourself. Because you’re afraid of the consequences to you. But it’s not about you. Being honest is about making sure your audience has the information they need to make good decisions. That includes information they may not like.
I’ve stepped away from the Quaker community that has supported my spiritual life, my whole life. I’m not certain this is not just an emotional response to the atrocities of forced assimilation. I continue to pray to see if this is a true spiritual leading.
I wonder if I can remain a Quaker.
For the past several years I have been led to opportunities to become friends with a number of Native people. It takes much more than attending conferences or powwows or serving on committees to accomplish this. One opportunity was walking and camping for 94 miles along the path of the Dakota Access pipeline with a small group of native and non-native people. Through experiences like that, I’ve been blessed to come to some understandings through a gentle process of integration. But I am just at the beginning of this journey.
The word En’owkin in the Okanagan language elicits the metaphorical image of liquid being absorbed drop by single drop through the head (mind). It refers to coming to understanding through a gentle process of integration.
Jeanette Armstrong
What follows are generalities. But my understanding, expressed as brutally honestly as I can. When I refer to Quakers I mean white Quakers in the lands called the United States and Canada. That distinction is necessary because much relates to white supremacy.
Indigenous peoples have always lived in balance with nature.
Quakers are not and should immediately do everything possible to stop using fossil fuels.
We should immediately ramp up installation of local renewable energy sources.
Environmental chaos will only worsen. Extremely rapidly.
Indigenous ways are the only way to slow down the impending chaos.
I have grown spiritually from my experiences with Indigenous peoples. In ways I hadn’t as a Quaker.
White Quakers are too integrated into the culture of white supremacy and capitalism.
Friends need to understand how white culture continues to oppress and interfere with our relationships with black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC).
Friends should be physically present in BIPOC communities so healing and reconciliation can occur. To understanding through a gentle process of integration.
Friends should literally be on the front lines of BIPOC actions for justice.
Quakers should reject vertical hierarchies of power. Vertical hierarchies are the only way White supremacy can exist.
An alternative is Mutual Aid which is based upon a flat hierarchy. Quakers should participate in, and create Mutual Aid communities.
Quakers should learn about and participate in Land Back. The model for returning to Indigenous practices for community and stewardship of the land.
Hundreds of thousands of Native children were forcibly taken from their families to institutions of assimilation.
Thousands of children died in those schools, or during their escape.
Quakers were involved in various ways in forced assimilation.
Quakers should discern a response and act on it now. This is urgent. Rapidly increasing numbers of children found is devastating Indigenous communities. Should be devastating to Quakers.
In our way we are always told not to ask for anything. We are always told in our community, as a practice, that when we have to start asking for something, that’s when we’re agreeing that people be irresponsible. Irresponsible in not understanding what we’re needing, irresponsible in not seeing what’s needed, and irresponsible in not having moved our resources and our actions to make sure that need isn’t there, because this is the responsibility that we, and the people that surround us, mutually bear. So in our community we cannot go to a person and say, “I want you to do this for me.” All we can do is clarify for them what is happening and what the consequences are for our family, or for our community, or for the land. We must clarify for them what needs to be done and how it needs to be done, and then it is up to them and if they fall short of that responsibility, at some point they will face the same need themselves.
I have tried to clarify for Quakers what needs to be done and how it needs to be done, and then it is up to them and if they fall short of that responsibility, at some point they will face the same need themselves.
I thought of this photo I took yesterday when I read coming to understanding through a gentle process of integration in the quote above. The image was basically black, but by the gentle process of editing, the shapes and rainbows of colors emerged.
How can I work through conflict with my Quaker community? What is the conflict? How resolved?
Fundamentally, what is the relationship between spirituality and how we live our lives?
I agree with my friends Alton and Foxy Onefeather, “Earth is my church”.
Alton and Foxy Onefeather
That is why I’ve had lifelong tensions with Quakers about burning fossil fuels. I was able to live without a car in Indianapolis because of a city bus system, bicycling and running. With no mass transit in rural Iowa, Friends do what they can. It is humbling to now live in a small city with no public transit, to need to use a car sometimes.
Unresolved conflicts have an immediacy by definition. Something is being done now that causes conflict. Our spirituality guides us through our own conflicts. But what do we do when we see others acting in ways we disagree with? How do we deal with what our ancestors might have done?
How we live our lives should be an example. We hope this might encourage others to change. But need to consider we might be wrong. We can discuss our differences but should not try to force change. I’ve done that.
Several weeks ago I felt a strong leading to stop attending my Quaker meeting. It has been difficult. I didn’t want to.
I’ve been praying about why, and when I can return. Historically Friends who had strong leadings, for example about enslavement, worked within Quaker communities.
My current conflict is an overwhelming grief at news of the discovery of the remains of hundreds, soon to be thousands, of Native children on the grounds of residential institutions of forced assimilation. I feel this in ways I would not have several years ago, before I was blessed to begin to know and work with my Native friends. I have spoken to each of them about Quaker involvement in forced assimilation early in our relationships. We could not have moved into deeper relationship if this truth was not spoken.
One of my good friends told me he is trying to not let rage get in the way of his mourning. I have met his son and cannot imagine their discussions about this.
As I was praying about conflict, I remembered Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems by Joy Harjo. I’m surprised how the following gets to the root of the conflicts I feel now.
1 . SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:
Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.
Harjo, Joy. Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems. W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
To this day we have not come to grips with fundamental injustices our country was built on, the cultural genocide and theft of land from Native Americans, the enslavement of African Americans and the legal justifications of bestowing rights and privileges on white land-owning men. The consequences of these injustices continue to plague our society today. And will continue to impact us until we do what is necessary to bring these injustices to light and find ways to heal these wounds.
Several Friends recently assisted Boulder Meeting Friend, Paula Palmer, to lead workshops and discussions as part of her ministry “toward right relationships with Native people.” Part of the tragedy of the theft of Native land is that some Native people don’t have the concept of land as property, belonging to a landowner. Rather they have a spiritual connection to Mother Earth, that the land is sacred and not something that can be claimed as property by anyone. Being forced to leave their land broke their spiritual bonds with the land.
Native people have asked us to begin work toward reconciliation and healing. The first step needed is truth telling, recognizing that injury or harm has taken place. One of the important parts of holding “right relationship” workshops is to determine which Native nations were on the land before white settlers arrived.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein
I don’t know how many times I’ve read this quote. I would think, that sounds good, and then move on. That’s the very thing I am asking you to not do. We hear so many people talking about so many things, so many crises, we end up tuning them out. Basically give up. Continue living as best we can. Don’t change ourselves or the world.
Please don’t just move on.
We cannot afford not to change. We will not survive if we do not change now.
We are witnessing the collapse of so many systems. Our environment, political and economic systems, social safety nets, healthcare and education. Many are dealing with broken families, mental and physical health problems, addiction, not finding a faith community or spiritual support.
Here’s the thing: These reflections — these emergencies — are all connected. The colonial mindset that claimed a God-given right to steal children, land and resources was the same logic that built an economy based on limitless extraction and consumption, creating the climate catastrophe.
It’s urgent that we see these connections clearly. Because we need transformative change in this country, and we need to get to work on it immediately.
Here’s how it might start: For more than 150 years, settlers have taken the riches of this stolen land and turned them into money. In the 21st century, we simply can no longer afford that 19th-century thinking. We need to build a new economy in a hurry.
That means we need a fundamental change in the values that govern our society.
I know so many well intentioned people. And my heart breaks every time I fail to get them to understand they are caught in a trap. As long as they think and work in the context of current systems, nothing new can happen. Remaining in the systems perpetuates those systems.
This is a diagram I’ve been working on to conceptualize current systems and alternatives. We have to reject capitalism, and move to Mutual Aid, LANDBACK, abolition of police and prisons, and renewable energy now. These things are discussed in detail on the new website, LANDBack Friends. https://landbackfriends.com/
Change is difficult, scary. But I imagine you find the situation we are in now frightening. So many people have lost their idealism. Do you remember how that felt? To be searching for who you are? Believe you could change the world?
This is the time to begin again to search for who you are. Then you will change the world.
LANDBACK Friends 