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The "Reeducation" of Native American Families

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The "Reeducation" of Native American Families

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We gasp in horror when reading about reeducation camps in North Korea and China, not to mention in the former USSR, but this is exactly what occurred in the United States.  A wonderul cultural heritage that had lived in harmony with nature for perhaps tens of thousands of years, at least in the northwest, was practically wiped out by colonizers.  This happened from the tip of Chile to the Arctic Circle in the Americas.

Living in the beautiful South Sound and enjoying some of the more pristine parts of the our country, I think often about what knowledge we lost when we destroyed these peoples' way of life.  They are suffering from the results of this colonization, it's easy to see how they could have higher rates of suicide.

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About 10 years ago my good friend came upon a Native American who had hung himself in Priest Point Park, which traumatized him deeply.  This is the area that was used by the seven tribes of the Salish Sea for a harvest festival at the end of every summer, until a monastery was built down the beach from it. Hence Priest Point Park.  The police told him later that he had a note pinned to his chest that lamented what had happened to his people.

Update:  The Olympia City Council just voted to rename it Squaxin Park, which is an improvement but not perfect because there were many different tribes who used the park.

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Reading DuBois' history of Reconstruction was heartbreaking to read.  Freed African-American slaves were driven to educate themselves, and made incredible progress during the first part of Recontruction.  I forget DuBois' statistics on the timeline, but around 50% of freed slaves became literate within a generation. He compared that to when Russia abolished serfdom around the same time, 5-10% of the freed peasants became literate.

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"People of color, are, in general, skeptical of research as a determiner of our fates.  Academic research has, after all, found us genetically inferior, culturally deprived, and verbally deficient."  (Page 31)
It's so easy to sympathize with this sentiment, as we've learned in this class the experts shouldn't always be trusted.