OPINION:
Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, is the oldest continually operated federal school for Native Americans. I went there in 2013 when I was governor of Kansas to apologize with deep remorse for the ramifications of ill-conceived assimilation policies and for the hardships, maltreatment, and deaths of the children who attended Haskell and were never returned to their families and ancestors.
Sadly, apologies to Native Americans by the U.S. government have been few and far between.
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On the back side of the Haskell grounds, away from public view, is a cemetery where children are buried, some as young as two years old. Their tombstones serve as an eternal testament to a terribly troubled and deadly federal policy of “kill the Indian, save the man.”
With the Indian being “killed,” many of the Native men and women, often while still children, died, too. Some even while still babies.
Past the cemetery is marshy land, a low-lying area where it is said many Native American children died trying to escape Haskell and return to their families. Their remains were never found, but their “blood cries out to us,” even now.
The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, Volume 2, was recently released and, if we follow its recommendations, it can begin a road to healing for our nation, the Indigenous people of America, and our land.
The first step is to acknowledge the wrong, as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have already done, and apologize for it.
The President of the United States must do this. No one else will suffice. It needs to be done publicly and symbolically at the White House.
In 2004 when I was in the U.S. Senate, Negiel Bigpond and a group of Native American and spiritual leaders came to my Senate office to talk about healing for the land. Negiel attended Chilocco Indian School near Newkirk, Oklahoma. While he shared some good times he had there while receiving an education, he also spoke about the harsh conditions he endured, and the sometimes cruel and mean-spirited actions displayed by his teachers and administrators. We talked about the paramount need for healing but, first, I saw their pain.
Mature, beautiful men and women, gracious and humble, breaking down in tears of anguish as they spoke about their and their ancestors’ ignored past trauma at the hands of the federal government.
Negiel and I would later travel together to Linn County, Kansas, where the Trail of Death ended for the Pottawatomie Indians after their forced relocation from their ancient homeland of Indiana to the plains of Kansas. It was a totally different environment to them and they suffered for it.
Six hundred Pottawatomie would eventually be buried there before they moved again to a permanent reservation west of Topeka. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced nearly 100,000 Native Americans, like the Pottawatomie, from their homelands east of the Mississippi River westward to what some early explorers then called the Great American Desert. Thousands died in this forced relocation.
Lest we paint too one-sided of a picture, atrocities were committed by Native Americans as well. Furthermore, there were many Europeans who tried to help the Native people. Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, left her native France in 1818 to travel to Missouri and in 1841 moved on to Kansas to minister to and pray for the Pottawatomie Indians.
Still, it’s past time for healing.
In 2004, Negiel and I teamed up to bring an apology from the U.S. federal government to the Native people. This inspired idea came through Negiel, but we both believe it is from the Heart of God.
While I served in the Senate, I co-authored with North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat, and other co-sponsors a bill calling for an official apology from the United States to the Native people. It eventually passed and was signed into law in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama as part of the annual defense appropriations bill. Most of the treaties the federal government made with Native Tribes did not get approved as free-standing bills, but rather as riders on defense appropriations bills, so it seemed fitting to approve an apology the same way.
One of the requirements of the bill is for the President of the United States to issue a formal apology. That has never happened. Now is the time.
With this historic report chronicling the history of Indian education in America of which Negiel experienced first-hand, Americans need to hear the President of the United States say this was wrong. But he can’t stop there. He needs to acknowledge the full breadth of the destructive federal policies done to Native Americans, so the boil of these past sins can be lanced and a healing process begun.
Apologies are tough but necessary. They are hard for individuals to do and even tougher for nations. Mr. President, in your remaining days in office, you have a unique opportunity to be a healer. Please do so!
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Sam Brownback is a former U.S. senator and governor of Kansas. He served as the United States Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from 2018 to 2021 and chairs the National Council for Religious Freedom. He is also a Senior Fellow at Global Christian Relief.
Negiel Bigpond is a full-blooded member of the Yuchi Indian Tribe whose family was subjected to the Trail of Tears. He is currently serving as Apostle of Morning Star Church of All Nations in Oklahoma.
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