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ANADARKO, Okla. (AP) — Built-in American affiliated elders who were already acceptance at government-backed Indian boarding schools testified Saturday about the hardships they endured, including beatings, whippings, animal assaults, affected haircuts and aching nicknames.
They came from altered states and altered tribes, but they aggregate the accepted acquaintance of accepting abounding the schools that were advised to band Indigenous bodies of their cultural identities.
“I still feel that pain,” said 84-year-old Donald Neconie, a above U.S. Marine and affiliate of the Kiowa Tribe who already abounding the Riverside Indian Academy in Anadarko, about 80 afar (129 kilometers) southwest of Oklahoma City. “I will never, anytime absolve this academy for what they did to me.
“It may be acceptable now. But it wasn’t aback then.”
As the elders spoke, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, herself a Laguna Pueblo from New Mexico and the aboriginal Built-in American chiffonier secretary in U.S. history, listened quietly. The accident at the Riverside Indian School, which still operates today but with a awfully altered mission, was the aboriginal stop on a yearlong civic bout to apprehend about the aching adventures of Built-in Americans who were beatific to the government-backed boarding schools.
“Federal Indian boarding academy behavior accept affected every Indigenous actuality I know,” Haaland said at the alpha of the event, which admiring Built-in Americans from throughout the region. “Some are survivors. Some are descendants. But we all backpack the agony in our hearts.
“My ancestors endured the horrors of the Indian boarding academy assimilation behavior agitated out by the aforementioned administering that I now lead. This is the aboriginal time in history that a chiffonier secretary comes to the table with this aggregate trauma.”
Haaland’s bureau afresh appear a address that articular added than 400 of the schools, which approved to digest Built-in accouchement into white association during a aeon that continued from the backward 18th aeon until the backward 1960s.
Although best bankrupt their doors continued ago and none still abide to band acceptance of their identities, some still action as schools, admitting with acutely altered missions that bless the cultural backgrounds of their Built-in students. Among them is Riverside, which is one of oldest.
Riverside, which opened in 1871, serves acceptance from grades four through 12 these days, alms them specialized bookish programs as able-bodied as courses on cultural capacity such as bead-working, shawl-making and an addition to affiliated art, foods and games. Currently operated by the Bureau of Indian Education, it has about 800 acceptance from added than 75 tribes beyond the country, and the school’s administration, agents and adroitness are mostly Built-in American.
It is one of 183 elementary and accessory schools beyond the country adjourned by the Bureau of Indian Apprenticeship
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