Bou I'm Rita carpin your host for PBS nors native report me witch for joining us for the final episode of the 19th season production for Native report is made possible by grants from the Blandon Foundation the generous support from viewers like Jack and Sharon camp and viewers like you today's episode will be a little different than usual we are breaking format to explore a highly controversial topic American Indian boarding schools also known as residential schools these schools were established in the mid 17th century with with the main goal of assimilating Native American children they stole children from their families took their names their language cut their hair and erase their history tonight we will discuss how the Erasure of History has led to intergenerational trauma we will look at how some indigenous people have processed that trauma while bringing awareness to it the historical trauma that I am most familiar with and most um connected to I guess would be the Indian boarding school experience and my grandparents actually met at a boarding school in northern Minnesota they were of a a generation that really as as my uncle used to tell me had no choice and the government um really got into the boarding school business after the Civil War there had been boarding schools before that but large amounts of federal money going into the system is what really made it happen Nationwide assimilation as um as kind of the foundation for the boarding school system was actually something that was considered quite Progressive for its time after the Civil War when um a former Army officer um Colonel Pratt actually thought that in working with American Indian prisoners he felt that they could learn to read and write they could learn to assimilate to fold themselves into larger society and so instead of actually physically um decimating Indian populations um this was supposed to be a a nicer way of dealing with things it did take a lot of money to build a boarding school system in America and they did it actually fairly quickly certainly he could not have done this without the tremendous support and lobbying of other people and other organizations in this country it was um churches and sist movements literacy groups women's Temperance groups they were um there were many people who were um who were supporting this and so the removal of children from their home homes and the um the placement of them in a school far enough away that they wouldn't be able to get home to visit and their parents wouldn't be able to see them very often was part of the purpose of the Indian Bard school system as part of assimilation into larger American society they were not allowed to speak their own native language they were um not allowed to wear their clothes or their hair in the way that they had they had to be changed physically into um into something that would be an imitation of larger more dominant Society in America the curriculum was not the same as in regular public schools and the children were not well educated assimilation was the was the the first of like a three-prong approach and so the second um and in order of importance in curriculum too would have been preparation for a job or a profession or um what their lives would be once they finished school if they finished school which many did not and so Reading Writing academic things then was third in priority and so the education um most children received was it was not only um different from regular education but it was it was inferior it was necessary to try to undo everything to remove everything that was that was native that was Indian about the children and then replace that with something else well some experience was were very very bad not everything was bad all the time as my relatives told me but at the same time that um that rupture of of family and Community um created Created real challenges as far as being able to pass the time honored ways of of of knowing the world of of teaching and learning of native World Views and tribal beliefs and practices if they returned home and if they survived they had been brought up without the the ways of passing knowledge down that Generations before them had had it it was not only that the children who had been at boarding school were returning to some type of vacuum they were bringing their own problem that had developed while they were at school with them and so there were many social problems that they were they were going to have to try to live with and deal with and then you know perhaps raise their own children who at really um critical points in their life might be removed from home too and that is what happened with my family for a couple of generations as my uncle wanted so much for me to to know that it was not his mother's choice that people had no choice something that is at the foundation of intergenerational trauma for the boarding school families is that there is a there's a long road back and I don't know if we I don't know if we ever actually will get all the way back you know to to the strength of the families that was there before we certainly recognize this and we want this and we work on it but how do you do this without the the tools that are necessary to do so my name is uh Keith sakola and um my middle name is Melvin and one of my given Indian names is masabi Wanini which means massabi is the Iron Range of Minnesota or a spiritual name I call myself a musician but it's much um more than that you know a producer uh engineer a recorder songwriter in fact I think songwriter is maybe the most comfortable and historical trauma is something that is intergenerational and passed down when we're talking about the boarding schools and things and parochial schools and things the loss of language the loss of self-esteem you know it's very well documented the fear and anxiety that is created when people go through something traumatic emotional fear of everything from abandonment to um they could go through physical pain and physical abuse which is usually the case so you name things you name them with descriptions and I think historical trauma can be categorized like that you can almost label them like this was because of this this happened to this and it could be everything from physical abuse to mental and and this pain has passed down through generations through people and I even think even inner species sometimes you know like animal spirits and things like that they they can create um just the chaos that they've existed you experience it as a child as you see your older relatives struggle with things that has been in their past and you kind of pass this down you know to your kids too I had an uncle a friend when I say uncle in a native way when he was a little boy he would wet his bed at night and in the daytime when they have a lineup the residential person would make him put his pissy blankets around him so that everybody could make fun of him you know and so he plays guitar to this day and he's older than me and I think that's how people heal one of in the parochial experiences that the pastor or the priest would scare him with a snake a big yellow snake a boa snake and then they'd abuse him and and scare him and would let the snake go at the Halls that night too physical things like that you know like how do you heal from something like that you know like when you hear things like that did this really happen to our ancestors they are our ancestors and they were younger than us when they had these experiences there is a lot of ramifications from them and there were a lot of reasons probably the ultimate one was the the whole historical greed and The Taking of land and languages and things like that um you know take everything from the native people take the children the most precious gift of all I think that was the the intention of a a cultural genocide side but I see the healing it comes from the expressions of Love of the quantum dreams that we can hear from them children who experience that fear and that pain and that anxiety late at night they' probably go out in the schoolyard and pray and I think them prayers went up into the stars and now they're coming down on us and they're helping us heal by help us create art create songs in a Nish a culture we have these things called dream catchers and we put them over our baby's cradles and there's a little hole in the middle and the hole is for the good dreams that come through and enter a baby's mind and then the the bad dreams get caught up in the webs and I think that as a songwriter we have song catchers over us too you know and they catch songs they come through and that's what I think you know that that's how I think the song came native people call the um North America Turtle Island we believe that North America was created on a shell of a turtle I was up in the the most central location of North America of Turtle Island and that's Winnipeg if you looked at the the city Winnipeg it's right in the middle of Turtle Island I was playing a concert up there and I I I always get up I like getting up early and having coffee and writing and maybe taking a walk or something and one morning after my show I did and I seen a lot a lot of people were lined up like for to go into this building and I noticed there were Native people there you know like oh those aren those are all look like native people and so I went up to someone and I asked in the in the crowd I go what's going on here um um and this woman says oh yeah um they're having a Reconciliation testimonies at that time the premier of Canada was Stephan Harper and he had these testimonials all over across Canada where victims that were victimized by the boarding schools or parochial schools up there in Canada um could come and testify of the the perpetrator what happened to him and the only thing they couldn't say was the name they couldn't say who did it or you know they could tell the story and I thought wow that's pretty heavy and inside was like a big room like this and kind of dark and one person would come up and share and I thought a long time should I go in there you know I don't know it's I don't want to feel that sadness like I do didn't but then the other part of me thought about you know I'm a songwriter and I record my people happiness and grief and so I went in there and from the very first words that this woman uttered she says it happened late at night the priest would come down the hall and then the irony of it was 25 years later the same priest who perpetrated her and married her and her husband just from not words like that when she said it you tingle not just she came up one other person another person another person another person later that morning I remember walking around and I heard someone throwing up profusely like whoa you know thinking like oh somebody must have partied last night you know and it wasn't that at all all there was one of our healers from the cre Nation a medicine man had one of the victims and the victim was holding on to a tree and he was helping the victim and when they would do that that victim would just throw up everything like from the past and so later that night you know I came home and to my hotel room and I just started simple you know almost like how the testimony started you know I think um that one was like it very very true like late at night down the hall monsters scream Roman crawl and and so like I'm I'm spoofing on that you know later at night don't know how monsters scream Roman crawl don't tell no one or you'll get bad dreams actual words from the testimony and those were the lyrics of that song you know tears of our children take these tears tears come falling 500 years you know tears come fall 500 years prayers of our children take these tears and and so I like that that last um line prayers of our children take these tears because these children were our great grandparents and our grandparents and our grandmother and our grandfathers and our aunts and Moms new Young used to have a manager named uh Elliot Roberts and he told me one time he says so important songwriters s write songs important to the people and I think that's what you got to do you got to write songs important to your people your community but that's where the inspiration came from that long line of testimonies we can we can stop that inner intergenerational trauma by just healing by laughing by coming to grips with the emotional anxieties that were created by this by writing art by creating creativity in your own life I've seen this healing in British Columbia where Elders will get up and start talking about it a lot of tears and a lot of shame but they're getting it out there and they're talking about it a little bit and this is the beginning of healing you know to recognize them emotions to start labeling them so that we were not overcome by them I see uh Native people uh writing more um playing music more young people playing music more old people too and so and then then of course the the healthy ways to heal Us by we teach people to eat um less processed foods and eat better more natural foods same thing with music you know like we have to teach them to listen to Natural Music sometimes so that the only thing we hear is in these highly processed foods like what we hear at the halftime at the um Super Bowl is highly high sugar content you know like boom it catches me catches me but you can't hear the wind and the healing of it you know or you can't hear a creek we got to teach our young people that healing is here it's not out there but I think that's a response to how do people heal and HIV seen it through song through physical education through mental therapy more people are seeking it out all like it ain't a bad thing to talk about you know and and we're all in this together the Nish people we talk about um you know that that love is the strongest medicine that all people have we used to work together a long time ago up on the Range we both worked in Indian education we wanted to do some good for the children um from what we had seen and so our I guess our thoughts were on the kids um but on honoring the people who went to boarding schools ahead of us you couldn't imagine if it happened to your children and and for our grandparents and our parents to go through this and lose so much and where are the remnants today you know like being a college student who's just learning the language is a it's a little humbling you know even as an older man it's a little humbling but I'll take the humbleness cuz and I'll take even the shame because of what our children and our grandparents went through and this song say your name is all about that people of our generation are we touch the children now of course but we we touch the generation of boarding school children themselves um it's a great honor I think to hear those stories and to and to remember remember them remember their names it's how we honor the past and the and the future you know like there's a a song that I play on my flute a lot and it's called when the Buffalo return as children and it's about this prophecy that the Lota people have that the Buffalo will return his children and we see it in our lives time I uh you know in some form if we know the immense Slaughter of the Buffalo and the correlation of our people too but now we see these small herds coming like a a small kid's playing and selling bracelets and and uh sweet things and laughing you know and being being part of the healing normalizing normalizing being happy you know that would be that would be something to see wouldn't it I the normalizing of being happy you know we we have been living you know in this Shadow for some time and I don't think we were meant to be living this this way I think we were meant for something something much better much nicer um and that our our children will have that experience this thing is a long game for native people um doing things today that will help the long game we're not saying it's going to change overnight cuz we know better but we play this long game for our children and our great grandchildren and things like that say your name show your face leave no trace of the chain tears come falling 500 years prayers of our children late at night down the hall monsters screen and C don't tell no one you get bad dreams girls of our children one say your name show your face leave no tra all the games tears stop falling 500 years prayers of our children prayers of our children prayers of our children take this by the end of the 1970s most of the Native American Residential schools shut down although in 2016 the Bureau of Indian education stated they contined to run 50 schools Nationwide no boarding schools remain open in Minnesota if you'd like to learn more about Native American reporting schools you can head over to nativereport.org thank you for spending time with your friends and Neighbors from across Indian Country I'm Rita carpen in we'll see you next time on Native report oh