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Yahoo
06-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The devastating legacy of Native boarding schools: ‘no way people can apologize it away'
Mary Annette Pember will publish her first book, Medicine River, on Tuesday. She signed to write it in 2022 but feels she really started work more than 50 years ago, 'before I could even write, when I was under the table as a kid, making these symbols that were sort of my own'. A citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, Pember is a national correspondent for ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today. In Medicine River, she tells two stories: of the Indian boarding schools, which operated in the US between the 1860s and the 1960s, and of her mother, her time in such a school and the toll it took. 'My mother kind of put me on this quest from my earliest memory,' Pember said. 'I've always known I would somehow tell her story.' Related: 'We're still here': past and present collide at a Native American boarding school More than 400 Indian boarding schools operated on US soil. Vehicles for policies of assimilation, perhaps better described as cultural annihilation, the schools were brutal by design. Children were not allowed to speak their own language or practice religions and traditions. Discipline was harsh, comforts scarce. As described by Richard Henry Pratt, an army officer and champion of the project, the aim was to 'kill the Indian in him, and save the man'. In the 1930s, Pember's mother, Bernice Rabideaux, was sent with her siblings to St Mary's Catholic Indian boarding school, on the Ojibwe reservation in Odanah, Wisconsin. Bernice was marked for life. On the page, Pember describes how as a young child she responded to her mother's dark moods by hiding under the kitchen table, making her symbols on its underside. But she also writes about how her mother's 'terrible stories' about the 'Sisters School', about psychological and physical abuse, helped form a bond that never broke. Pember kept writing. A troubled child, she 'sharpened a lead pencil into a dagger-like point and wrote microscopic messages and insults to my family on the wall next to the stairs' of the family home in Chicago. Later, she became a reporter. 'Writing is so visceral for me,' she said. 'I still like writing with a really sharp pencil, I like the sound of it in my notebooks, and I keep them with me all the time. It always hits me when I'm really tired, and the last thing I want to do is write things down, and that's when I have to do it … It's just such a part of me, I don't question it. 'There was a lot of drama in my house. All these things were going on. Of course, they weren't explained to me. They would sort of lower their voices if they knew I was around. And I just hated being an outsider. I wanted to know what was going on.' Medicine River is an attempt to explain. If recent years have seen a shift in US awareness of the boarding schools and their legacy, that is in large part due to events in Canada, where discoveries of unmarked graves at sites of such institutions prompted a national reckoning of sorts. 'We were the model from which Canada drew,' Pember said. 'We predated them by quite some time, and we had far more schools. It had an impact on a far greater number of children. But for some reason we just remain stubbornly ignorant of it here in the United States. They were horrible places in which children were brutalized. And of course it wasn't just the schools. The schools were part of a greater federal assimilationist agenda. 'If they had just done the schools to us, it would not have been so bad. But I always think of it as this triple whammy that happened to Native people in the 19th century. It was removal [forced relocation west], then allotment [dividing lands collectively held], then taking the kids away. It was a concerted attack on our culture, our language and our holdings. That was what it was really about. They wanted our land. 'The public was averse to outright extermination, so it was framed as a humanitarian policy. I think it is really important to view boarding schools in that context.' Pember's investigations led her to dark places. Noting that in other spheres, the Catholic church has been forced to reckon with sexual abuse by priests, she said a moment of truth regarding Native boarding schools may yet come – while pointing to milestones already passed including reporting by Dana Hedgpeth and others for the Washington Post, a class-action lawsuit in western states, and the revelation of brutal events in Alaska. 'Native people were not really viewed as actually human,' Pember said. 'One of the surprising things I learned in researching the book, was the power of the eugenics movement. I mean, this was not peripheral hogwash. They were teaching this at Harvard. The leaders of the era … supported this whole notion of eugenics. They were using phrases like 'the final solution'. They stopped short of advocating euthanasia but there were 30 states that allowed involuntary sterilization of people who were considered feeble-minded or in some way racially inferior … I had not realized how foundational that was, to the way the relationship between the federal government and Native people evolved.' For Pember, publication day will not be without a certain irony. As Medicine River was written, the federal government finally engaged, to some extent, with the Indian boarding schools and their lasting harms. Last year brought an investigative report, identifying at least 973 student deaths (the Post found more than 3,100), and a presidential apology, delivered by Joe Biden alongside Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous secretary of the interior. But as Medicine River comes out, Donald Trump is back, assaulting federal agencies with staffing and budget cuts, seeking to obliterate recognition of the US's racist past. 'Things are so wild and uncertain,' Pember said. 'We're all just being pulled back and forth, every single day. 'We're still trying to figure out the impact of these things [Trump has] done, because Indian country runs on all of these disparate grants from agencies … the US Department of Agriculture gives so many grants to Indian country, for example, and then there's various sub-agencies and organizations within that. Unlike mainstream America, we have no tax base, and so we don't really have good, sustainable infrastructure. So we're trying to piece it together. '[In] the Bad River tribe, where my mom is from, the librarian is gone now. She lost her funding, under some real obscure agency. And that was so sad. They just recently got it, and they were really feeling they were sitting pretty, and now that's gone.' Hope remains. The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act, a bipartisan measure introduced in 2021, is not dead yet. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican senator more independent-minded than most, has taken it up. Pember noted that if such a commission is formed, it will not have subpoena power, perhaps necessary for co-operation from the Catholic church. Pember is determined to keep the Indian boarding schools in the public eye. 'The goal is to record as much as possible the stories that people have,' she said. 'To say: 'Yes, this happened to you. Let's document this.'' Describing research at Marquette University in Milwaukee, in the archives of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, she said: 'The big thing is to make these records available to people. I can tell you how powerful it is just to see your relative's name printed. To see my mom's name and my uncles and aunts and my grandmother and grandfather, to see their names on these rosters … was just something really powerful. It said: 'This happened, and there's no workaround. There's no way people can apologize it away. This did happen.' That's uniquely powerful.'
New York Times
29-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
Healing the Scars Left by America's Indian Boarding Schools
In 1892, Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of one of the country's first Native American boarding schools, told an audience, 'A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one,' referring to George Armstrong Custer's bloody massacres. 'In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.' Before establishing the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Pratt participated in the forced removal of tribes from the southern plains while a U.S. calvary officer. The school was another act of genocide: Upon entering, children were given English names, forced to convert to Christianity and punished for speaking in their native languages or observing tribal customs. Pratt's institution became the model for more than 500 religious and federal boarding schools attended by hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children between 1819 and the 1970s. While some parents willingly sent their offspring, many more resisted and endured beatings, imprisonment and denial of their treaty-guaranteed food rations. 'Through force or poverty-fueled necessity, so many Indian children were taken to boarding schools through the 1970s,' writes Mary Annette Pember in her piercing new memoir, 'Medicine River,' 'that virtually no Indian family remains untouched by the experience today.' Pember is perfectly positioned to write this book. She's an enrolled citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, a journalist who has reported on Native issues for more than two decades and the granddaughter and daughter of boarding school survivors. 'Medicine River' weaves together the history of the U.S. government's brutal crusades to exterminate, then assimilate, Native Americans, with her mother's experience at St. Mary's Catholic Indian Mission School, in Odanah, Wis. Bernice Rabideaux was just 5 when she and her four siblings were brought to the school after the implosion of their parents' marriage. The nuns treated the students more like inmates than children, goading them through a rigid schedule of worship, chores and classes that permitted only one free hour a day. The girls spent much of their time cleaning — scrubbing floors, washing dishes, doing laundry — under the supervision of sisters who were quick to slap or call them 'dirty Indians.' Constantly hungry, Rabideaux resorted to stealing food and was once whipped for taking an apple. Rabideaux spent eight years in this loveless environment, only rarely seeing her parents. Although she left after she graduated eighth grade, her harrowing experience at what she called the 'Sister School' warped the rest of her life. 'I can still see her as she tried to outrun her invisible tormentors,' Pember writes of her mother. 'She was lost to our family during these times. She could never speak of nor even allow herself to remember all that happened. Instead, she kept her little hands and stories clenched into fists.' Rabideaux suffered migraines, nameless fears and hypervigilance — all hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. As a small child, Pember hid from her mother's violent mood swings under the kitchen table. Rabideaux seemed fixated on cleanliness. ''Get down on those prayer bones, girl,' she'd say as she instructed me on how to clean the floor. Often, she muttered, 'We may be Indian, but by God we ain't dirty.'' After running away at age 13, Pember was sent to juvenile hall, where she inked 'squaw' into her arm — 'an attempt to make that derogatory term so often used against me my own.' Then came stints of homelessness, of numbing herself with drugs and booze. Eventually, Pember enrolled in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she became active in the Indian student organization and graduated with a degree in journalism. Although Pember wrote about the boarding schools in her capacity as a journalist, her mother balked at questions about her own experiences at the Sister School, which closed in 1969. It was only after Rabideaux died that Pember visited the school's archives to better understand her mother's trauma — as well as her own. The horrors of the boarding school system are still being revealed. In 2021, the discovery of more than a thousand unmarked graves at residential schools in Canada drew international headlines and, in 2023, Canada agreed to pay some $2 billion in reparations to survivors. The United States has begun its own reckoning. Deb Haaland, the first Native American Secretary of the Interior — whose great-grandfather attended Pratt's Carlisle Indian Industrial School — conducted a listening tour to meet survivors and record their stories. In 2024, the Interior Department identified 74 burial sites at various schools containing the remains of nearly a thousand Indigenous children. That same year, The Washington Post published exposes on widespread sexual abuse at Catholic-run boarding schools and put the student death toll at more than 3,100 — three times the official number. President Biden issued a formal apology for 'one of the most horrific chapters in American history.' The apology has since been removed from the White House website. Only a year later, the U.S. government is again engaging in the erasure of Native Americans, part of the Trump administration's war on diversity, equity and inclusion. Pages referencing the contributions of Native soldiers have been deleted from the Army's website. The Pentagon took down web pages featuring the Navajo Code Talkers — whose encrypted messages helped secure an Allied victory in the Pacific during World War II — only to restore them after public outcry. With a government that is rewriting history in real time, 'Medicine River' stands as a testament to the truth. Pember has continued her own journey of healing, through increasing connection with Ojibwe culture. At the book's close, she shares the ecstatic experience of dancing in a powwow held within sight of her mother's former school, now in ruins. 'Surrounded by friends and family, we laughed and celebrated together,' she writes. 'Not only have we survived, but we have flourished.'
The Guardian
19-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
The devastating legacy of Native boarding schools: ‘no way people can apologize it away'
Mary Annette Pember will publish her first book, Medicine River, on Tuesday. She signed to write it in 2022 but feels she really started work more than 50 years ago, 'before I could even write, when I was under the table as a kid, making these symbols that were sort of my own'. A citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, Pember is a national correspondent for ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today. In Medicine River, she tells two stories: of the Indian boarding schools, which operated in the US between the 1860s and the 1960s, and of her mother, her time in such a school and the toll it took. 'My mother kind of put me on this quest from my earliest memory,' Pember said. 'I've always known I would somehow tell her story.' More than 400 Indian boarding schools operated on US soil. Vehicles for policies of assimilation, perhaps better described as cultural annihilation, the schools were brutal by design. Children were not allowed to speak their own language or practice religions and traditions. Discipline was harsh, comforts scarce. As described by Richard Henry Pratt, an army officer and champion of the project, the aim was to 'kill the Indian in him, and save the man'. In the 1930s, Pember's mother, Bernice Rabideaux, was sent with her siblings to St Mary's Catholic Indian boarding school, on the Ojibwe reservation in Odanah, Wisconsin. Bernice was marked for life. On the page, Pember describes how as a young child she responded to her mother's dark moods by hiding under the kitchen table, making her symbols on its underside. But she also writes about how her mother's 'terrible stories' about the 'Sisters School', about psychological and physical abuse, helped form a bond that never broke. Pember kept writing. A troubled child, she 'sharpened a lead pencil into a dagger-like point and wrote microscopic messages and insults to my family on the wall next to the stairs' of the family home in Chicago. Later, she became a reporter. 'Writing is so visceral for me,' she said. 'I still like writing with a really sharp pencil, I like the sound of it in my notebooks, and I keep them with me all the time. It always hits me when I'm really tired, and the last thing I want to do is write things down, and that's when I have to do it … It's just such a part of me, I don't question it. 'There was a lot of drama in my house. All these things were going on. Of course, they weren't explained to me. They would sort of lower their voices if they knew I was around. And I just hated being an outsider. I wanted to know what was going on.' Medicine River is an attempt to explain. To most, its story will be unfamiliar. If recent years have seen a shift in US awareness of the boarding schools and their legacy, that is in large part due to events in Canada, where discoveries of unmarked graves at sites of such institutions prompted a national reckoning of sorts. 'We were the model from which Canada drew,' Pember said. 'We predated them by quite some time, and we had far more schools. It had an impact on a far greater number of children. But for some reason we just remain stubbornly ignorant of it here in the United States. They were horrible places in which children were brutalized. And of course it wasn't just the schools. The schools were part of a greater federal assimilationist agenda. 'If they had just done the schools to us, it would not have been so bad. But I always think of it as this triple whammy that happened to Native people in the 19th century. It was removal [forced relocation west], then allotment [dividing lands collectively held], then taking the kids away. It was a concerted attack on our culture, our language and our holdings. That was what it was really about. They wanted our land. 'The public was averse to outright extermination, so it was framed as a humanitarian policy. I think it is really important to view boarding schools in that context.' Pember's investigations led her to dark places. Noting that in other spheres the Catholic church has been forced to reckon with sexual abuse by priests, she said a moment of truth regarding Native boarding schools may yet come – while pointing to milestones already passed including reporting by Dana Hedgpeth and others for the Washington Post, a class action lawsuit in western states, and similar events in Alaska. 'Native people were not really viewed as actually human,' Pember said. 'One of the surprising things I learned in researching the book, was the power of the eugenics movement. I mean, this was not peripheral hogwash. They were teaching this at Harvard. The leaders of the era … supported this whole notion of eugenics. They were using phrases like 'the final solution'. They stopped short of advocating euthanasia but there were 30 states that allowed involuntary sterilization of people who were considered feeble-minded or in some way racially inferior … I had not realized how foundational that was, to the way the relationship between the federal government and Native people evolved.' For Pember, publication day will not be without a certain irony. As Medicine River was written, the federal government finally engaged, to some extent, with the Indian boarding schools and their lasting harms. Last year brought an investigative report, identifying at least 973 student deaths (the Post found more than 3,100), and a presidential apology, delivered by Joe Biden alongside Deb Haaland, the first indigenous secretary of the interior. But as Medicine River comes out, Donald Trump is back, assaulting federal agencies with staffing and budget cuts, seeking to obliterate recognition of America's racist past. Sign up to First Thing Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'Things are so wild and uncertain,' Pember said. 'We're all just being pulled back and forth, every single day. 'We're still trying to figure out the impact of these things [Trump has] done, because Indian country runs on all of these disparate grants from agencies … the US Department of Agriculture gives so many grants to Indian country, for example, and then there's various sub-agencies and organizations within that. Unlike mainstream America, we have no tax base, and so we don't really have good, sustainable infrastructure. So we're trying to piece it together. 'I[n] the Bad River tribe, where my mom is from, the librarian is gone now. She lost her funding, under some real obscure agency. And that was so sad. They just recently got it, and they were really feeling they were sitting pretty, and now that's gone.' Hope remains. The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act, a bipartisan measure introduced in 2021, is not dead yet. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican senator more independent-minded than most, has taken it up. Pember noted that if such a commission is formed, it will not have subpoena power, perhaps necessary for co-operation from the Catholic church. Pember is determined to keep the Indian boarding schools in the public eye. 'The goal is to record as much as possible the stories that people have,' she said. 'To say, 'Yes, this happened to you. Let's document this.'' Describing research at Marquette University in Milwaukee, in the archives of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, she said: 'The big thing is to make these records available to people. I can tell you how powerful it is just see your relative's name printed. To see my mom's name and my uncles and aunts and my grandmother and grandfather, to see their names on these rosters … was just something really powerful. It said: 'This happened, and there's no workaround. There's no way people can apologize it away. This did happen.' That's uniquely powerful.' Medicine River is out in the US on 22 April
USA Today
18-02-2025
- Business
- USA Today
New AI platform helps tribes find funding sources, apply for needed grants, loans
New AI platform helps tribes find funding sources, apply for needed grants, loans Show Caption Hide Caption How to use ChatGPT, AI as a dating coach Unsure of how to craft the perfect text or tackle a tough topic? Artificial Intelligence might be able to help. Problem Solved Bazile Panek knows he helped do some good when he sees a tribal representative's sigh of relief after using a new software platform that employs artificial intelligence to find funding opportunities. 'This is going to do great things for Indian Country,' he said. Panek is the tribal liaison for the company behind the startup AI platform called Syncurrent. A member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Panek saw firsthand the need for services and investment on the reservation in far northern Wisconsin where he was born and raised. Syncurrent uses AI to quickly gather data from hundreds, even thousands, of websites to find the exact grant, loan or other funding opportunity from federal, state and philanthropic sources that is needed for particular projects and provides information about what's needed to apply. More artificial intelligence: Want more out of AI? Here are 10 savvy prompts to try out What used to take hours or days by hand now can take minutes with Syncurrent. 'I hear from so many people who spend more time trying to find grants than actually doing their jobs,' Panek said. Syncurrent was recently tested by officials for the White Earth Ojibwe Nation in Minnesota. 'The platform's simplicity has allowed us to identify and collaborate on critical funding to meet our community's needs,' said Eugene Sommers, an official for the tribe. More than a trillion dollars in funding opportunities are available to tribal, local and state governments every year from the federal government, but navigating the process to apply for the funds can be overwhelmingly complex, especially for small staffs. Syncurrent is the brainchild of technology expert Dhruv Patel and Matthew Jaquez. The platform's basic plan is free for governments to use; its premium plan is $49 per month per department. Panek is a longtime colleague of Patel and had urged him to consider the needs of tribal nations early in the development of Syncurrent. The company recently announced a partnership with the U.S. Department of Interior and the nonprofit Native CDFI Network to make Syncurrent premium free for all tribal nations for 10 years. 'Supporting Tribal Nations is and always will be a main priority for Syncurrent,' said Patel in a statement. 'Through our efforts, we're taking a group of people that have always been pushed to the back of the line and moving them all the way to the front.' In 2024, Congress approved $32.6 billion in funding to benefit tribal communities, but much of that money may not be reaching them, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. For example, the USDA invested about $6.6 billion to support rural development between 2017 and 2021, but only about $138 million went to tribal communities. The government department's report blames the red tape and paperwork in finding and applying for funding as a major part of the problem. 'Tribal Nations have long faced systemic barriers to accessing capital and securing their fair share of federal, state, and philanthropic dollars,' said Pete Upton, CEO of Native CDFI Network, in a statement. "Syncurrent's AI technology will enable tribal governments to identify and secure critical funding much more quickly, efficiently, and effectively, empowering them to build stronger, healthier, and more prosperous communities." Syncurrent can currently be accessed for free by tribal governments through its website, Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@ or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New AI platform helps tribes find funding sources, apply for needed grants, loans
Bazile Panek knows he helped do some good when he sees a tribal representative's sigh of relief after using a new software platform that employs artificial intelligence to find funding opportunities. 'This is going to do great things for Indian Country,' he said. Panek is the tribal liaison for the company behind the startup AI platform called Syncurrent. A member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Panek saw firsthand the need for services and investment on the reservation in far northern Wisconsin where he was born and raised. Syncurrent uses AI to quickly gather data from hundreds, even thousands, of websites to find the exact grant, loan or other funding opportunity from federal, state and philanthropic sources that is needed for particular projects and provides information about what's needed to apply. More artificial intelligence: Want more out of AI? Here are 10 savvy prompts to try out What used to take hours or days by hand now can take minutes with Syncurrent. 'I hear from so many people who spend more time trying to find grants than actually doing their jobs,' Panek said. Syncurrent was recently tested by officials for the White Earth Ojibwe Nation in Minnesota. 'The platform's simplicity has allowed us to identify and collaborate on critical funding to meet our community's needs,' said Eugene Sommers, an official for the tribe. More than a trillion dollars in funding opportunities are available to tribal, local and state governments every year from the federal government, but navigating the process to apply for the funds can be overwhelmingly complex, especially for small staffs. Syncurrent is the brainchild of technology expert Dhruv Patel and Matthew Jaquez. The platform's basic plan is free for governments to use; its premium plan is $49 per month per department. Panek is a longtime colleague of Patel and had urged him to consider the needs of tribal nations early in the development of Syncurrent. The company recently announced a partnership with the U.S. Department of Interior and the nonprofit Native CDFI Network to make Syncurrent premium free for all tribal nations for 10 years. 'Supporting Tribal Nations is and always will be a main priority for Syncurrent,' said Patel in a statement. 'Through our efforts, we're taking a group of people that have always been pushed to the back of the line and moving them all the way to the front.' In 2024, Congress approved $32.6 billion in funding to benefit tribal communities, but much of that money may not be reaching them, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. For example, the USDA invested about $6.6 billion to support rural development between 2017 and 2021, but only about $138 million went to tribal communities. The government department's report blames the red tape and paperwork in finding and applying for funding as a major part of the problem. 'Tribal Nations have long faced systemic barriers to accessing capital and securing their fair share of federal, state, and philanthropic dollars,' said Pete Upton, CEO of Native CDFI Network, in a statement. "Syncurrent's AI technology will enable tribal governments to identify and secure critical funding much more quickly, efficiently, and effectively, empowering them to build stronger, healthier, and more prosperous communities." Syncurrent can currently be accessed for free by tribal governments through its website, Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@ or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: New AI platform helps tribes find funding and apply for federal grants
