Boarding schools shameful chapter in American history

Spectrum, by Patricia Wade

I recently took a vacation to Las Vegas. The greatest gift on my vacation didn't shoot out from a slot machine. The treasure was what I learned from an Athabascan Elder that I met for the very first time on that trip.

For many years I wondered how the government took children away from their homes and their parents in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. I interviewed my Aunt Helen a few years before she passed away. She had been taken to the boarding school in Eklutna, along with her brother Bill. Aunt Helen didn't complain. She spoke about the positive aspects of learning to read and write. I had heard that Uncle Bill disliked being at the boarding school so much he created such a ruckus they sent him back to Chickaloon. Aunt Helen shared a story about Uncle Bill wetting the bed, how he was punished and humiliated. That incident had taken place probably 65 years prior, and Uncle Bill had been dead for more than 30 years. But still Aunt Helen told me "not to talk about that." I wondered why she wanted it kept a secret after all that time.

As I visited with Marge in Vegas I found out she had moved to a southern state 40 years ago. She had a drawl that didn't match her face, because her face reminded me of my Athabascan relatives up the highway. She was willing to tell me as a child how she was forcefully seized from her mother and put into a bus, fighting and kicking. She was taken to Lazy Mountain Children's Home and told where to sleep, what to eat, and how to pray. Quonset huts made up the "home" back then. A couple lived in one of the huts. They ordered three little girls into their hut where they were severely beaten for no reason. This was done on a daily basis and the children lived in fear each day they would be called in for another beating. She saw a little girl named Mary being beaten so brutally she had blood running from the gashes in her back. The snow was deep that winter, but Mary ran away and somehow made it back to her home near Valdez.

Marge ran away from Lazy Mountain and stayed with her cousin for a while. The next time she was forcefully removed she was taken to Wrangell. One day she was called into the office. She was sternly told, "Your mother is dead. And don't you cry about it!" Marge escaped as soon as she could and later moved south to raise her family, grateful to be gone from Alaska's harsh memories.

Channel 2 aired a three-part story last month on the Wrangell boarding school. I learned it opened in the '30s and closed in 1975. Thousands of children were sent from all over Alaska. Former student Max Dolchok said, "Marshalls flew around to the villages and threatened to put your parents in jail if you didn't go to school."

Children as young as 5 and 6 were flown to Wrangell, some tethered together with a rope. All their belongings were taken away, they were stripped naked, heads shorn, then disinfected with caustic chemicals. All this was done in military-like fashion; they were shoved along, given government issued clothes and a number. Nobody held them in their arms and let them be little kids. They were abused and molested. Marge said, "They never expected us to grow up."

It brought shame to those innocent children, and then it got passed down. Those schools devastated lives with their cultural genocide. No wonder there's a high level of social and emotional problems among our people. How can you rip a child away from his or her home and family, abuse it violently and then expect it to function as a human being?

Didn't the federal government promise to protect the indigenous people from abuses, for the use of the land? I heard they promised to not only protect Natives from abuses, but provide education and medical care. Who could have known what kind of educational system they had in mind. Was it planned genocide from the beginning?

I am very grateful that the survivors of these atrocities have the courage to talk about it and I pray it will bring more healing to our Native people.

Patricia Wade is the editor The Chickaloon News.