Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) is assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico and author Our History is the Future Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. At High Country News, he writes—The U.S. stole generations of Indigenous children to open the West:
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.”
It’s a chilling scene that I was unprepared for when I visited last year on the 100-year anniversary of the school’s closing. And the experience was made even more jarring by the mandatory background check and armed checkpoint I faced just to visit the cemetery and the school’s remnants. The campus is an active military base, and the heightened security measures are due to post-9/11 precautions. The unquiet graves of these young casualties of the nation’s bloody Indian wars lie next to the Army War College, which trains officers for the nation’s longest war, the war on terror.
The cemetery was not supposed to be at the front entrance. It was an accident: In 1927, to make room for a parking lot, the Army dug up the children’s graves and relocated them behind the base — out of sight. Then, in 2001, the back of the base was turned into the entrance to satisfy new security protocols. Now, Carlisle’s deadly past is on full display.
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.”
Rosebud is not alone in seeking justice for its young ancestors. The Northern Arapaho reclaimed its first children in 2017, and other tribes have followed suit. [...]
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“When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or the other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution. If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has the time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers? By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.” ~~Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—The SEIU chessboard:
John Edwards took a serious hit when he failed to garner the SEIU endorsement. Rather than a national endorsement, the union decided to give each local the power to make their own endorsements.
This means, most importantly, that the national SEIU's significant war chest and its campaign operatives are out of commission in this primary. It also means members of locals can only campaign out of their state in places where those locals have endorsed the same candidate.
So the Iowa local endorsed Edwards. Yeay Edwards! Except that Iowa's SEIU is small, with just 2,000 members. But neighboring Illinois has one of the biggest SEIU locals—100,000. Also nearby Indiana has another 70,000. Obama scored a coup by getting their endorsement. They're off the table for the Iowa battle.
What about New Hampshire? 10,000 members, and another 70,000 in neighboring Massachusetts. But the regional mother lode is New York with 300,000 members. Edwards could sure use those guys and gals, but Hillary Clinton is the state's senator, and they're unlikely to piss off someone who might still be the state's senator after the primary. So she's the prohibitive favorite for the New York endorsement, again depriving Edwards of valuable boots on the ground and blunting the PR value of the endorsements he does get.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter are back! The debate: It happened. Impeachment hearings roll on, with more witnesses than were invited. Trump insults several British people, because he's a clod. ProPublica digs up his dual (duelling) sets of books.
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