Petition: Redress Colonialism Related to Indian Boarding Schools       

The relationship between the United States and Indigenous populations has been built on broken promises for the theft of Native land, culture, and identity. Treaty-making practices and governmental policies have forced this inequitable relationship that has resulted in sanctioned ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide. The operation of Indian Boarding Schools remains one of the core intergenerational atrocities that continues to impact Indigenous communities, families, and individuals to this day. Alongside the government, religious institutions remain in control of these schools and many within these entities are guilty of abusing Indigenous children. These Indian Boarding Schools were not academic institutions, but instead militarized, labor-intensive concentration camps, established to eradicate all vestiges of Indian culture, nothing more than ethnic cleansing hidden under the disguise of doing “good” for the American people. In these institutions, Native children were taught that the genocide of their People was a benefit to them, and the only other option but to assimilation into predominant “White Culture” was death and damnation.

Demands

o All control and power over investigations and investigatory findings must be given in full to Indigenous community leaders, Tribal leaders, Tribal organizations and appointed representatives.

o Establish a Technical Advisory Council comprised of Indigenous community leaders, Tribal leaders and representatives, directly funded and aided in full by the United States Department of the Interior responsible for assisting in all aspects of investigations regarding Indian Boarding Schools.

o All aspects of investigations must be public and transparent.

· Full release of all federal records to the public.  There is a history of documents, information and records related to governmental affairs with Indigenous populations conveniently “disappearing” when called to be found; some buildings where financial records were held “caught fire,” unintentionally or intentionally destroying information. (ex. Elouise Cobell v. Salazar concerning U.S. mismanagement of trust funds of over 500,000 individual American Indians)

· Full stop of destruction of all records and evidence relating to Indian Boarding Schools including records of affiliated, sponsored and involved governmental, private, public and religious institutions, policies and practices.

o Immediate cessation of known policies and practices infringing upon and violating the basic human rights of Indigenous individuals, communities and Tribes, including voting rights. 

o Complete list of all federal and religious institutions, entities, policies, practices and individuals directly involved with the implementation, oversight and continued operation of Indian Boarding Schools to be publicly released and updated regularly as investigations continue.

o Complete list of every Indian Boarding School within the United States and all affiliated Territories−including those listed under “Mission” or other disingenuous/religious names.

o Complete accountability for every child ever taken and boarded at an Indian Boarding School including information, such as family history, Tribe/Reservation/State where the child was removed and attended an Indian Boarding School.

o Public trials: prosecution is expected for any individual who through these investigations is implicated in criminal activity.

o Anthology, an accurate representation, and full rewrite from an Indigenous perspective of all United States history books involving Indigenous populations.   The initiative should address all K-12 books and school curricula in which the United States has intentionally misinformed the public, and the content should reflect the human rights violations on which this country was built and continues to thrive upon.

· Textbooks

· Governmental information (sites, resources, etc.)

· International information (sites, resources, etc.)

o If any individual, entity, and/or institution is found to have destroyed evidence or obstructed justice in any way throughout the investigative process, they are to be prosecuted to the fullest extent under the law.

o All human remains found−not just those found during the course of these investigations−but also of those that have been stored or put on display in museums around the world to be returned to the appropriate Tribal entities and original inhabitants as stated in all Treaties.

o All land that was misappropriated or corruptly stolen under the 1887 Dawes Act; and all federal land that is no longer in use, be it a park or military base, etc., are to be returned to the appropriate Tribal entities and original inhabitants as stated in all Treaties.

o There must be public acknowledgement and apology by both governmental and religious institutions concerning their complicity and culpability in the extermination of Native people.

Closure is often a term mentioned when overcoming tragedy. Closure in this instance is defined as any interaction, attainment of knowledge, practice or exercise that allows an individual to feel as though a traumatic, distressing, or complicating life event has been fully resolved. There will never be closure, at least not in the foreseeable future, for Indigenous communities who for generations have lived these experiences and massacres−any more than there has been closure for the Holocaust survivors and the generations that followed. What is being found at these Residential Schools in Canada, what you will find in the United States Indian Boarding Schools, is only an extension of the Holocaust that Indigenous populations lived through and replays endlessly in their hearts today.

Dean S. Seneca, MPH, MCURP, CEO and Founder Seneca Scientific Solutions +, Treasurer of Native Research Network