WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. In Canada, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.
Kalle Benallie
ICT
GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY — The sun shined brightly through the large glass-paned windows at the Gila Crossing Community School, where federal Indian boarding school survivors and their descendants sat to listen and speak about their experiences.
Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland mentioned how it was the first time it’s been present during the Interior Department’s Road to Healing tour and how important it is symbolically for Indigenous people.
Stories were shared that sounded similar to those in the other tour stops. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, was here to listen.
Pamela Lucero, Gila River, said Haaland’s visit is an honor.
“It’s almost like her being in office opened up something new for all Indigenous people,” she said.
Lucero was raised in California and said many of her family members attended boarding schools in either Arizona or California and the stories from them aren’t good.
“We have several staff members who attended boarding schools – they didn’t want to be here because of the memories back from what they went through at the boarding schools,” she said.
Related:
— Deb Haaland’s Road to Healing tour stops in Arizona
— Road to Healing: Deb Haaland pledges boarding school truths will be uncovered
— US boarding school investigative report released
— Excavation at Red Cloud school finds no human remains
— Harvard announces return of Native hair samples
Raven Lewis, Tohono O’odham, who is Lucero’s niece and is a student at the Gila Crossing Community School, said Haaland is “doing her job right by being a leader for her people. We need a lot more people like that. It brings positivity for the community.”
The school is near the northern border of the Gila River Indian Community.
Delores Saraficio, Tohono O’odham and Apache, was one of the few people who shared their stories to the crowd. Although she didn’t attend a federally funded boarding school, as her husband did at Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, she and her parents attended Catholic-run boarding schools.
She attended St. John’s Indian School in Laveen, Arizona, which is on the Gila River Indian Community, when she was 12.
In Saraficio’s later years she reflected on not only how boarding schools affected her but how it affected others. When working with the Bureau of Indian Education, she saw how parents who went to boarding schools were affected by their experiences when they needed to parent their children. She said their childhood lacked a familial support system that continued in their lives.
And it was apparent for her when she had her own family.
“We have four sons together. It was a struggle in the beginning when we first got married. I did everything I could. Luckily, my parents were together during those summers that I got a sense of family,” Saraficio said in her testimony.
She hopes there will be more events where boarding school survivor stories are shared to allow the younger generations to know their family histories.
“To kind of understand that when we talk a certain way, it’s because of what we experienced and to take it as a way of teaching, to say ‘we can be different. We can make things different,’” she said.
Nora Cherry, San Luis Rey Mission, also spoke at the event as a descendant of a boarding school survivor. Her mother Ena Dodd attended two boarding schools for most of her childhood.
From about ages 7 or 8 Dodd attended the Sherman Institute and then from age 12 she attended the Phoenix Indian School from 1930 to 1935.
Cherry said that separation created a ripple effect where today Cherry’s family is mostly apart due to her mother and uncles not being with their parents.
“My concern for today is really, as an adult going back and wondering, why my family is so disjointed and so weird,” Cherry said.
She has been conducting research to look for her mother’s records. As she was speaking to the crowd she was overcome with emotion when talking about going through ledgers with thousands of children’s names, ages and tribal affiliations.
She later added how talking about boarding school experiences is new for many people and being vocal is not part of some people’s culture.
“It’s really, really hard for people to speak and talk. I guess that’s why I went first because I thought ‘Oh let me just break the ice’ and I mentor a lot of Native students,” she said.
Thousands of students have attended the Phoenix Indian School since its opening in 1891 and closing in 1990. She wonders where the cemetery is.
“There needs to be a formal acknowledgement, apology from the U.S. government. Even though it’s only words. It would still go a long way,” she said.
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