POLITICS
COVER
Chief's
House Torched in Kanesatake
BIOGRAPHY
A
Christmas Story: Sharon Greyeyes' Original Bannock Shop
BOOKS
Carr's
Native Experience Reprinted
Telling
It Like It Is
BUSINESS
Diamond
Search Leads to Conflict-of-Interest Probe
ENVIRONMENT
Blueberry
River First Nations Launches $7.5 Million Lawsuit Against Gas Development
HUMOUR
Bee
in the Bonnet: Ten, Happy, New, Years
Bee
in the Bonnet: Point the Arrow
POLITICS
Wounded
Leaders, Wounded Nations
Ottawa
Announces New Fast Track for Residential School Survivors
The
2004 National Aboriginal Achievement Awards (NAAA)
Wounded
Leaders, Wounded Nations
By
Dr.
John Bacher & Danny Beaton, Mohawk Nation
Canadian natives suffer from a crisis of leadership under the graduates of the residential school system.
Find out how these sinister educational institutions robbed natives of their traditions and ties to Earth to replace them with Euro-American values of greed and ownership.
Residential
schools for natives, which were imported from the United States prison
system, were introduced to the Americas by colonists. These schools were
used as a device to assimilate natives into the ideology of Western thinking.
Residential schools were part of an unrelenting war to steal Indigenous
lands in order for organized imperialist to profit from and control America
after the guns were silenced on the American parries.
The Canadian Residential School system was a terrible nightmare created by a federal government attempting to imitate the worst aspects of the American dream - hoping that natives would lose respect for the earth and become obsessed with getting rich through real estate speculation like ordinary American citizens.
Residential schools were part of an unrelenting war on native culture after the gunfire of the American prairies was stilled. Confrontation between two ways of life shifted from the battle field to the class room. Past battles over land were coupled with newer clashes over ideals, dreams and values.
After the plains wars ended, native culture was painfully forced to adjust to life on reservations, by having cattle grazing replace the hunting of wild animals as a critical source of food. For the American government however, such a compromise was not enough. It sought to break up both the reservations and native culture.
To conform to the American dream, Native American governments would be dissolved and the tribal lands were broken up into lots, which could be sold in the real estate market. U.S. policy hoped that individual Native Americans would break their bonds with the earth, looking at the land as a source of cash, rather than of spiritual nourishment.
The sinister school system developed at a time when moderate American political opinion supported cultural genocide. They defeated the more fanatical extremists that desired the slaughter and massacre of Native Americans. Such extremists saw final solution in crude physical genocide reminiscent of a number of killings in the 19th century, most infamously, Sand Creek.
Narrow escape from native massacre
The Lakota, (Sioux) spiritual leader Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated
the U.S. Calvary in 1876, averting a planned massacre of natives who were
resisting seizure of the sacred Black Hills, guaranteed through a treaty
with the U.S. government. A dramatic victory was won to defend traditional
native lands and the spiritual way of life based upon it. This was guarded
through deep emotional bonds to the earth, reinforced by sacred ceremonies
intended to promote reverence for life.
The Lakota triumph was won at a significant time. It took place on the eve of the American Centennial celebrations. These celebrated the American Revolution's victory over the Crown's efforts to defend native territories against rich and greedy colonial land speculators such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry.
The news of the Lakota last stand in defense of Mother Earth was received in the heavily populated eastern United States on the fourth of July. This put a great damper on the American centennial festivities, challenging widespread notions of cultural superiority. It contributed greatly to a fanatical revenge war to wipe out native traditional ways.
At the time of the American centennial very few Euro-Americans, at least those who were significant then as a political force, had any sympathy for Native American efforts to defend their traditional culture and territories. In the 1870s, public opinion of the small number of politically active American citizens who actually concerned themselves with native issues was divided into two basic camps.
Both disliked how Native Americans stood in the way of Euro-American efforts to exploit the earth through environmentally harmful projects such as railways, mines and agriculture on arid lands prone to erosion. The answer of one camp was to kill all Indians. The other response was to kill the cultural ways that motivated Native Americans to defend the earth from the assaults of destructive corporate agendas.
The critical architect of the residential school system was a combat veteran of the wars of the Great Plains, U.S. Army Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Considered by the American standards of the period as racially tolerant, Pratt commanded blacks and natives against their own people to seize control over the western prairies.
Pratt fought during eight years of fighting following the end of the Civil War. He played an important role in the American military victories in plains wars. This was aided greatly by the deliberate slaughter of game animals native people needed for food and clothing. The combined policies of assaults by hunters and soldiers eventually lead to the destruction of the Great Plains horse-buffalo culture.
From his Great Plains battle experience, Pratt developed a slogan that he would repeat many times: "Kill the Indian, save the man."
He wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs: "If millions of
black savages can become so transformed and assimilated...there is but
one plain duty resting on us with regard to the Indians - that is to rescue
them of their savagery."
Click here to continue reading this article.