The trauma created by Native American boarding schools has affected generations of people and this week, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition will hold listening sessions in Albuquerque for Indigenous elders to record their experiences.
KUNM talked with two of the organization's Indigenous co-directors on the oral history project, Lacey Kinnart and Charlee Brissette. Brissette said they’re continuing earlier listening sessions started by former Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland.
CHARLEE BRISSETTE: This project has kind of come from that, because they had their listening tour, you know, the Road to Healing tour. And they learned that there needed to be something where elders and survivors could go and share their story more privately, more intimately, and get the time that they needed, the reverence that they deserve to hear their stories and to record them for preservation purposes. So these stories will be preserved for generations to come, so people will be able to learn from them and see exactly what happened in these different schools all around the country.
And so that's what we do. We travel with this project. We travel to a different state, a different site, each month, and we spend a week listening to our elders and spending time and community. Kind of creating a welcoming space for them to come and share their story. We really do our best to try to create a safe space, a loving space, show them care, honor, respect and just share with them that their stories deserve to be heard.
KUNM: Lacey, what were boarding schools used for?
LACEY KINNART:
Their whole goal was to strip Native children of their culture, their Native identity, remove them from their land, remove them from their community, and replace all of that Native-ness in them with Western education, oftentimes religious beliefs. So taking out the Native traditions and teachings and replace it with Catholicism or Christianity of some sort, the religious aspect was even included in the federal boarding schools, where it wasn't ran by religious entities. These stories are very complex, very varied, and a lot of different type of stories. You know, if you're starting from ground zero on learning about it, don't feel bad that you don't know about them. It's not talked about, it's not taught about. We're often miseducated on the topic as well. So it's not our fault that we don't know about it, because there was intention behind that in the education system.
KUNM: So what’s the long-term purpose for the oral project?
KINNART: The project as a whole is to interview as many survivors as we're able to and add to the permanent oral history collection that will be housed within the Library of Congress. So our goal is to interview 400 survivors, and this will be a first of its kind oral history collection. And the purpose of this is to educate the general public to hear what happened to our people, from the people who experienced it firsthand. It's not going to be told by other people or non-Native people, it's going to be a collection of stories by the people that went through it and from there the possibilities are endless.
KUNM: Why is it important to record these testimonies?
KINNART: Because it hasn't been done yet. Our survivors haven't even felt safe until recently, to even talk about it. We have so many survivors that come in and say, ‘that's the first time I've ever shared that story.’ And it wasn't all that long ago where survivors didn't even feel safe to talk about it because they weren't believed.
So it’s important for the survivor to get it off their chest. It's important to document what really happened to our people. It's important for the general public to learn about it. It's important for survivors to know that this is not theirs to carry, that the shame behind this, the boarding schools, and what happened to them is not their fault, so it's important in so many ways. But the time is now.
KUNM: Charlee, what does the week long of events include?
BRISSETTE: So the opening ceremony on Monday is open to community and family and the public. We start off the week in a good way with ceremony. So the first hour is blessings, prayers, together. We reach out to people that are local traditional healers or practitioners, community members, elders that would be willing to provide a blessing or a prayer for us to start our week off in a good way and then the second hour is a feast, and we share a meal together. So that's open to the public. On Monday, it's at four, and then the closing ceremony as well, which is on Friday, at 4pm and then the interviews themselves throughout the week are private. And so people, if they're wanting to participate, they have to sign up ahead of time.
The opening ceremony will be on Monday January 26th 4pm with scheduled interviews during the week and a closing ceremony on Friday January 30th 4pm.
All events will be held at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya, 1300 Tuyuna Trail, Santa Ana Pueblo, NM 87004
You can find more information on the week’s events and listening sessions here.
Support for this coverage comes from the WK Kellogg Foundation.
