Tuesday, August 17, 2021

 

Signed in secrecy off Newfoundland 80 years ago, the Atlantic Charter changed world history

Charter was signed in secret off coast of Argentia

Alex Kennedy · CBC News · 



Four months before the U.S. went to war, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Sir Winston Churchill chat aboard HMS Prince of Wales on August 10, 1941, a rendezvous that gave the world the Atlantic Charter. To the extreme left behind FDR is Capt. Elliott Roosevelt, his son. (The Canadian Press/AP)

War historians in Newfoundland and Labrador are marking the 80th anniversary of the signing of the Atlantic Charter, a closed-doors deal between Britain and the United States that helped shape the course and aftermath of the Second World War.

The charter was signed near Argentia, on ships off the coast of Newfoundland, on August 14, 1941, by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It included eight principles the world could follow at the end of the war, including an agreement between the two countries not to seek territorial expansion, free seas, and international labour and economic standards.

Gary Walsh, immediate past-president of the Crow's Nest Officers' Club, said the beginnings of the deal came at a time when the war wasn't going so well for the British — and Churchill knew he needed help from the Americans.

"They were afraid that Germany may invade and whatnot," Walsh told The St. John's Morning Show on Friday.

"They decided 'we have to meet,' and of course Churchill was very anxious to get the Americans to join in. So a very top secret set of meetings was arranged. And they decided to meet at a very secret location … and Newfoundland was selected of all places."

Walsh said Newfoundland was chosen for several reasons. It wasn't overly populated, which meant there was less chance of being caught by a spy. The island had also connected the British and Americans in the past through naval and air bases, which allowed for a safe meeting place.

"The year before in 1940 … the British allowed the Americans to set up some naval and air bases in their British territories, one of them, of course, being Newfoundland."

Roosevelt even had a family connection to the island, with his son, Franklin Roosevelt Jr., stationed in Gander in 1940.

The anniversary, which is commemorated every five years, was celebrated Saturday. Festivities included a dinner in Placentia, remarks from Premier Andrew Furey and federal Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole and a showing of a play that was created for the 75th anniversary called Mysterious Visitors.

Walsh said the signing of the charters highlights an important time during the Second World War that he hopes can be preserved for years to come.

"They wanted this eight principles that the world could follow once the war was over. That's what came out of the charter," he said. "This meeting really developed a joint, strong initiative to get together...and there's a lot of historians who think it's very much worth commemorating."

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The ancient symbol that was hijacked by evil

(Image credit: Alamy)


By Kalpana Sunder16th August 2021

How an auspicious sacred sign was twisted to become the graphic embodiment of hate and intolerance. Kalpana Sunder explores the extraordinary history of a potent emblem.

The equilateral cross with legs bent at right angles – that looks like swirling arms or a pattern of L shapes – has been a holy symbol in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism for centuries. And, of course, the swastika (or the similar-looking hakenkreuz or hooked cross) is also a symbol of hate, embodying painful and traumatic memories of the Third Reich. The symbol of Nazism, it is associated with genocide and racial hatred after the atrocities of the Holocaust.

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The swastika has a long, complex history – much older than its association with Nazi Germany – dating back to prehistoric times. The emblem was a sign of well-being and long life, and was found everywhere, from the tombs of early Christians to the catacombs of Rome and the Lalibela Rock Churches, to the Cathedral of Cordoba. "The motif appears to have first been used in Eurasia, as early as 7,000 years ago, perhaps representing the movement of the sun through the sky… as a symbol of wellbeing in ancient societies," says the Holocaust Encyclopedia.


The Mezquita Cathedral in Cordoba, Spain, is adorned with intricate symbols including the swastika (Getty Images)

The word swastika comes from the Sanskrit roots su (good) and asti (to prevail), meaning wellbeing, prosperity or good fortune, and has been used in the prayers of the Rig Veda, the oldest of Hindu scriptures. In Hindu philosophy it is said to represent various things that come in fours – the four yugas or cyclical times, the four aims or objectives of life, four stages of life, the four Vedas. Swastika is even a girl's name in certain parts of India.

In Buddhism, known as the manji in Japanese, the emblem signifies the Buddha's footsteps. To Jains it means a spiritual teacher. In India, it's a symbol of the sun god with a clockwise orientation, and the auspicious symbol can be seen, often smeared in turmeric, drawn on thresholds and shop doors as a sign of welcome, or on vehicles, religious scriptures and letterheads. It is displayed at weddings and other festive occasions, to consecrate a new home, and while opening account books at the beginning of the financial year, or starting a new venture.


In Indian philosophy it represents the fourth state of consciousness, which is beyond waking, sleeping and dreaming – Ajay Chaturvedi

Ajay Chaturvedi, author of Lost Wisdom of the Swastika, tells BBC Culture: "The swastika is a four-dimensional cube used in Vedic Mathematics, and also symbolises an entire state of being in Indian philosophy – the fourth state of consciousness, which is beyond waking, sleeping and dreaming. The sign as used by Hitler was demonising [it]… and using it in politics, without any understanding of what it stood for in Indian philosophy, where symbols are always backed by meaning and deep significance."


Windows created in the shape of the swastika on a building in Lalibela, Ethiopia (Credit: Alamy)

Different civilisations associate the sign with outstretched hands, four seasons, four directions or with spreading light in all directions. In the 19th-Century book The Swastika: The Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migrations, Thomas Wilson documents how the swastika was found all over the ancient world, on everything from quilts and shields to jewellery. Some believe that its shape was inspired by an ancient comet. The Ancient Greeks used swastika motifs to decorate their pots and vases. The ancient Druids and Celts also used the sacred sign, and in Norse mythology the swastika represented Thor's hammer.

The National Museum of the History of Ukraine houses a wide range of objects featuring the symbol. The oldest is probably a mammoth-ivory figurine of a bird, found in 1908, with a meandering swastika pattern on it that was carbon-dated to 15,000 years ago. Seals depicting swastika motifs have been found in the Mohenjo-Daro and Harappan ruins in India.


There are few more potent symbols with alternative meanings than the swastika in its many iterations – Steven Heller

US art director Steven Heller, author of Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? tells BBC Culture: "I am a graphic designer. Symbols and signs and how they are used and manipulated is important to my practice. There are few more potent symbols with alternative meanings than the swastika in its many iterations."


Before World War Two, the swastika was used in branding – seen here at the Carlsberg factory entrance (Credit: Alamy)


In the early 20th Century, the swastika was widely used in Europe as a symbol of good luck. Interlocked swastikas were used in textiles and architecture. "The sign was used in many ways before Hitler adapted it. A sign of good fortune, fertility, happiness, Sun, and it was given spiritual import as well as commercial value when it was used with or as a brand or logo," says Heller. In the early 20th Century, the swastika was used as a symbol of good luck in advertising, architecture and jewellery. The Danish brewing company Carlsberg, headquartered in Copenhagen, used the symbol as its logo from 1881 to the 1930s, and then discontinued it because of its Nazi association.

Until recently, the Finnish Air Force used a swastika as an insignia on its badges. Rudyard Kipling featured the symbol on many of his book covers because of his association with India. It was used as a symbol by the Scouts in Britain until 1935 – like Kipling, Robert Baden Powell may have picked it up in India. For the Navajo people in the US, the right-facing swastika was a symbol of friendship, which they gave up after World War Two.

Hindu cultural organisations and religious groups have tried to explain that the Nazis did not use the swastika, but a hooked cross. The Nazi swastika has the arms turned to 45 degrees giving a slant to the symbol, whereas the swastikas of Hinduism are presented with the base arm lying flat.

A complex history

When Adolf Hitler was looking for a symbol for his newly launched party, he used the hakenkreuz, rotating the swastika to the right and omitting the four dots – he then adopted this as the party's emblem in 1920. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, passed a law in May 1933 that prevented unauthorised commercial use of the hooked cross.


In Hindu tradition, the emblem is frequently used at festive occasions such as weddings
DALIWAL  (Credit: Alamy)


It has been suggested that Hitler's adoption of the symbol may have had its roots in Germans finding similarity between their language and Sanskrit, and drawing a conclusion that Indians and Germans came from the same "pure" Aryan ancestry and lineage. During his extensive excavations, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered, in 1871, 1,800 variations of the hooked cross on pottery fragments at the site of ancient Troy, which were similar to artefacts from German history. "This was seen [by the Nazis] as evidence for a racial continuity and proof that the inhabitants of the site had been Aryan all along," writes anthropologist Gwendolyn Leick.

Of course, cultural appropriation usually harms the original culture. The German Orientalist Max Muller wrote to Schliemann, and warned him to avoid using the word swastika on the icons: "Swastika is a word of Indian origin, and has its history and definite meaning in India. I know the temptation is great to transfer names, with which we are familiar, to similar objects which come before us… the occurrence of such crosses in different parts of the world may or may not point to a common origin."

Not everyone agreed with this interpretation, however. In his book The Sign of the Cross: From Golgotha to Genocide, Dr Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, an expert on Christianity, suggests that Hitler's decision to use the hakenkreuz as a symbol of the Nazi party "may have been due to his childhood upbringing at the Benedictine Monastery in Austria, where he repeatedly saw the hooked cross in many places".


In Hinduism the swastika cross has for many centuries been a symbol of religious devotion (Credit: Alamy)


But over the decades, the swastika has become a contentious and controversial cultural icon. In his book The Swastika and Symbols of Hate, Heller says: "The swastika is an ancient symbol that was hijacked and perverted, twisted into the graphic embodiment of intolerance." In many European countries including Germany, public display of Nazi symbols is prohibited by law, and violating such terms is a criminal offence.

New York State Senator Todd Kaminsky introduced a bill in the New York Senate in 2021, which would require schools in the state of New York to teach that the swastika is an example of a hate symbol. Due to the bill's national implications, organisations including the World Hindu Council of America urged the New York Senate to differentiate between the original swastika and the Nazi hakenkreuz.

Director of advocacy and awareness for the World Hindu Council of America (VHPA) Utsav Chakrabarty said, "We acknowledge the horrid way the swastika has been misused and misinterpreted… For the past 70 years, the swastika continues to remain a vilified and maligned symbol. This must be corrected. Instead of censoring the symbol, we must celebrate the positive history of it."


An ancient mosaic in Uzayzy, Jordan, shows a version of the sacred emblem (Credit: Alamy)


Even members of the Jewish community have highlighted on several occasions the way in which the sign has been misused. "A distorted version of this sacred symbol was misappropriated by the Third Reich in Germany, and abused as an emblem under which heinous crimes were perpetrated against humanity, particularly the Jewish people. The participants recognise that this symbol is, and has been, sacred to Hindus for millennia before its misappropriation," said the declaration made at the Second Hindu Jewish Leadership Summit in Jerusalem held in February 2008.


I want to neutralise the swastika, to remove its association with evil, so that no one need fear it anymore – Edith Altman


Swastikas have however been allowed in the filming of historical movies and the making of video games. There have been some attempts to redeem its image by artists down the ages. The symbol was included by pop star Madonna in a video in 2012, accompanying the song Nobody Knows Me. Madonna later said that she used it to show growing intolerance of people to other communities and people.


The KiMo Theatre in New Mexico, USA, is adorned with traditional Navajo emblems (Credit: Alamy)

In 1993, a Jewish artist named Edith Altman – who lost her grandparents to the Holocaust – created an installation entitled Reclaiming the Symbol: The Art of Memory. She painted a gold swastika on a wall above a black Nazi swastika painted on the floor. "I want to neutralise the swastika, to remove its association with evil, so that no one need fear it anymore," she told the Chicago Reader.

The anti-Semitic use of the swastika did not end with World War Two. Even today racist neo-nazi gangs use the sign to desecrate Jewish graves or houses of worship. Some people feel that its taboo status has enhanced its appeal for hate groups. "The latest 2021 police figures from the two cities with the largest Jewish populations, New York and Los Angeles, show both cities tracking for a record year for overall hate crime, with Jews being the most targeted in New York and third most targeted in Los Angeles," says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE), and a professor of criminal justice.

In 2020, a 21-year-old Indian student in the US, Simran Tatuskar, faced a backlash on social media after she attempted to portray the swastika as a peaceful symbol that should be included in the school syllabus. One group tweeted: "In Nazi Germany, one of the first things anti-Semites did was erase the history and persecution of the Jews, minimise their struggles and appropriate their beings. By normalising the swastika, this is repeating that vicious cycle." Ultimately Simran Tatuskar had to clarify her position on the issue, and apologise for any unintentional misunderstanding.


The Shoin Shrine in Hagi, Japan, features the ancient sign (Credit: Getty Images)


Before the 2021 Olympic Games in Japan, the decision to drop the Japanese symbol (the manji) for temples on tourist maps, and replace it with a pagoda icon, provoked a backlash. When the elements of a culture are adopted out of context, it seems, its history and heritage become tainted.

As Brian Levin puts it: "Unfortunately, but rightly, the most recent and widespread use of the swastika as a symbol of Nazi hatred and genocide will forever cast an indelible shadow over its lengthy history and alternative meaning. It is important, however, to note that expanding our teaching of history and civics can incorporate not only the origins of symbols, but how they can be co-opted and rebranded to the most evil of ends."



SEE  MANWOMAN SACRED SWASTIKA


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Archaeologists find skeleton, evidence of Greek in Pompeii

ROME (AP) — Archaeologists in the ancient city of Pompeii have discovered a remarkably well-preserved skeleton during excavations of a tomb that also shed light on the cultural life of the city before it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in AD 79.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

A skull bearing tufts of white hair and part of an ear, as well as bones and fabric fragments, were found in the tomb in the necropolis of Porta Sarno, an area not yet open to the public that is located in the east of Pompeii’s urban center. The discovery is unusual since most adults were cremated at the time.

An inscription of the tomb suggested that its owner, a freed slave named Marcus Venerius Secundio, helped organize performances in Greek in Pompeii. Experts said it was the first confirmation that Greek, the language of culture in the Mediterranean, was used alongside Latin.

“That performances in Greek were organized is evidence of the lively and open cultural climate which characterized ancient Pompeii,” the director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said in a statement announcing the discovery.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Zuchtriegel said Marcus Venerius clearly had been able to make a living for himself after he was freed as a slave, given the “monumental" size of his burial tomb. “He didn't become super rich, but certainly he reached a considerable level of wealth," Zuchtriegel said.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD destroyed Pompeii. Excavations over the years have yielded remarkable discoveries of tombs, chariots and brilliantly frescoed homes.

The Associated Press

 

Pompeii tomb offers new hints about cultural life in ancient city

Newly excavated tomb belonged to man who organized performances in Greek

The Associated Press · 
Archaeologists in the ancient city of Pompeii have discovered a remarkably well-preserved skeleton during excavations of a tomb. The discovery is unusual since most adults were cremated at the time. (Alfio Giannotti/Pompeii Archeological Park via AP)

Archeologists in the ancient city of Pompeii have discovered a remarkably well-preserved skeleton during excavations of a tomb that also shed light on the cultural life of the city before it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in AD 79.

White hair and part of an ear, along with bones and fabric fragments, were found in the tomb in the necropolis of Porta Sarno, an area not yet open to the public that is located in the east of Pompeii's urban centre. The discovery is unusual, since most adults were cremated at the time.

This is the tomb of Marcus Venerius Secundio, located in the necropolis of Porta Sarno, in an area not yet open to the public in the east of Pompeii’s urban centre. (Alfio Giannotti/Pompeii Archeological Park via AP)

An inscription on the tomb suggested that its owner, Marcus Venerius Secundio, helped organize performances in Greek in Pompeii. Experts said it was the first confirmation that Greek was used alongside Latin.

"That performances in Greek were organized is evidence of the lively and open cultural climate which characterized ancient Pompeii," Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, said in a statement announcing the discovery.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD destroyed Pompeii. Excavations over the years have yielded remarkable discoveries of tombs, chariots and brilliantly frescoed homes.

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 British Columbia

Anti-pipeline activists mark one year of treetop occupation in Burnaby

Protesters have been living in tree houses to block the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project


Michelle Gomez · CBC News · 
Trans Mountain anticipates it needs to remove 1,275 trees from this forest in Burnaby, B.C. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

Tim Takaro first ascended the trees of the Brunette River Conservation Area on August 3, 2020. Over a year later, he and other protesters still occupy the treetops.

Takaro, an SFU professor and retired physician, is one of the leaders of StopTMX, the group behind the lengthy treetop protest of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. 

"We have to stop building new fossil energy infrastructure or we are going to face even more death and destruction than we've already seen," Takaro said. 

The expansion project will twin the existing 1,150-kilometre pipeline, increasing the amount of petroleum it carries from Alberta to British Columbia's coast from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day.

The project has been contested by several groups including Indigenous activists, environmental organizations, and municipal governments. While these groups have taken their fight to the streets and the courts, StopTMX has taken it to the trees. 

Part of the Brunette River Conservation Area has been cleared of trees by Trans Mountain. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

With a team of about 40 people, they always have at least one person occupying each of their two tree houses, usually switching off every two to five days. The group consists of a wide range of activists, from teenagers to elders. 

"This is an intergenerational struggle and it's about intergenerational justice. We are obligated to leave a planet that is sustainable for our children and their children's children," said Takaro. 

Food, water, and other supplies are delivered to the main tree house using a system of pulleys. The protesters are able to go up and down with climbing equipment, and can walk in between the tree houses on a ladder walkway that connects the two. 

An unnamed protester occupies one of two tree houses. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

Maureen Curran joined the treetop protest last summer, and has been involved ever since. She was recently named the Burnaby-South candidate for the federal Green Party, and will be running against NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in the upcoming election. 

Curran described her time spent in the treetops as "surprisingly peaceful" despite the noise from the nearby train tracks and traffic from the highway. 

"The birds come to visit. I got to watch a hawk hunt for its dinner one night … it really changes your perspective."

Maureen Curran, Green Party candidate for Burnaby South, climbs up to a tree house. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

Takaro believes the protest has been successful so far. 

Following two on-site inspections in April, an enforcement officer from Environment and Climate Change Canada ordered Trans Mountain to halt construction in the area until August 15 due to bird nesting season. 

Environment and Climate Change Canada ordered Trans Mountain to put up signs stating that work must be halted until August 15 due to nesting birds. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

According to Takaro, the enforcement officer was there to witness a tree with a hummingbird nest being cut down. 

"The mighty hummingbird has been able to stop this project since April." 

'There's no vaccine for climate change'

Takaro estimates Trans Mountain has already cut about half of the 1,275 trees they say need to be cleared from the area. 

Trans Mountain did not respond when asked how many trees they have cleared from the area so far, but said they are still on track for "mechanical completion of the project by the end of 2022, with commercial operations commencing shortly thereafter." 

Takaro, whose group would like to see the project cancelled, notes the economics of the project grow "worse by the day."

StopTMX's second tree house is connected to the other by a ladder bridge. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

"We are counting a victory every day that construction is not happening in this place." 

In February 2020, Trans Mountain CEO Ian Anderson announced the cost of building the expansion had increased from an initial estimate of $7.4 billion to $12.6 billion. 

"COVID is taking lives every day and causing damage every day. So is climate change and it's accelerating," said Curran.

"We have a vaccine that can get rid of COVID. There is no vaccine for climate change."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michelle Gomez

Michelle Gomez is a CBC News Researcher in Vancouver. You can contact her at michelle.gomez@cbc.ca.

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Indigenous history, culture cut

Update: The South Dakota working group's draft recommended including Oceti Sakowin stories in kindergarten to studying tribal banking systems in high school, but the state education department cut many of those recommendations


Chairman Harold Frazier of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.
 (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)

UPDATED:AUG 12, 2021
ORIGINAL:AUG 10, 2021
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Stephen Groves
Associated Press

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Teachers, educators and other South Dakota citizens charged with crafting new state social studies standards said Tuesday that Gov. Kristi Noem’s administration deleted many elements intended to bolster students’ understanding of Native American history and culture from their draft standards.

Members of the working group — appointed by the Department of Education to review and update the standards — said they were caught by surprise on Friday when the department released a document with significant changes. New standards are released every seven years. They said changes made to the draft they submitted in late July gave it a political edge they had tried to avoid, instead aligning with the Republican governor's rhetoric on what she calls patriotic education.

The working group's draft recommended including Native American culture from Oceti Sakowin stories in kindergarten to studying tribal banking systems in high school, but the department cut many of those recommendations.

The Forum News Service and South Dakota Public Broadcasting first reported the changes.


In this 2019 photo, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem gives a budget address to lawmakers at the state Capitol in Pierre, S.D. (AP Photo/James Nord, File)

“Here we are again; the Native population is not worthy of being taught,” said Sherry Johnson, the education director with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and a member of the working group. “I feel it’s important for all students to learn. This is how you combat racism and you build resiliency.”

She joined the group after trying unsuccessfully for years to get the state government to implement a greater emphasis on Indigenous history and culture in public schools. Johnson said she was one of two tribal members on the 46-member working group, but felt encouraged by the draft they submitted.

When the revised draft was released, she watched in real-time as Native American history was erased. The Department of Education cut in half the number of references to Indigenous Native Americans, tribal, or Oceti Sakowin — the Sioux Nation tribes located in the region.

“We don’t show up for great periods of time. It’s like we don’t exist,” she said.

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier issued a strongly worded statement on Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, the bureaucrats and politicians who commissioned the workgroup gutted the portion of the curriculum regarding our Indigenous people," Frazier said. "Removing the important lessons of who we are, where we came from and why things are the way they are, robs every young mind of the necessary understandings to overcome the hurdles of conflict, genocide, and historical trauma."

The Department of Education said in a statement that it “relied heavily on the recommendations ” from the workgroup but that the proposed standards put a greater emphasis on learning about the experience of Native Americans in South Dakota than the previous set of standards.



“The department made certain adjustments before the release of the draft to provide greater clarity and focus for educators and the public," the department said. “The draft standards provide a balanced, age-appropriate approach to understanding our nation’s history, government, economy, and geography, including opportunities to teach about the experiences of all peoples.”

Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Rodney Bordeaux told KELO that he disagrees with the removal.

“All South Dakota citizens need to be taught what’s going on in the state and throughout the country,” he said. “You shouldn’t gloss over it — I think our citizens deserve better. They need to know the true history so they know what they’re dealing with.”


Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Rodney M. Bordeaux


NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy organization based in the state, responded "to the blatant erasure of Indigenous people."

“The consistent and active erasure of our people is demonstrative of a larger social and systemic issue of white supremacy, racism and clear lack of cultural proficiency that can only be addressed when we begin to be inclusive of the narratives that have been absent and excluded from our education system," Sarah White, NDN Collective director of Education Equity, said.

The response also included a statement from NDN Collective President and CEO Nick Tilsen.



Paul Harens, a retired teacher and another member of the working group, said the changes subverted their work. He said they worked hard to build a consensus on the draft and tried to make the standards “apolitical.”

“The new document takes sides,” he said. “They have turned it into a political football.”

While the preface submitted by the workgroup explained their purpose was to “prepare students to be active, aware, and engaged citizens of their communities, state, country, and world,” the Department of Education released an entirely new preface. It places more emphasis on the “framers of our nation’s constitution,” and references Noem's effort to create a state history and civics curriculum for K-12 students.

The revised preface states: “The founders of our nation emphasized the important role education played in equipping people for the knowledgeable practice of their responsibilities and the respectful enjoyment of their liberties, realizing the common good, and understanding other points of view and cultural beliefs are all equally protected.”

The department will hold public hearings on the proposed standards throughout the school year, and the Board of Education Standards will adopt the final standards in March. The standards are widely followed by school districts but are not mandatory.

Harens predicted the revisions from the Department of Education would stoke divisions at school boards across the state as they wade through a wider political debate on how history and racism are taught.

“All of a sudden you have a political agenda,” he said.

Indian Country Today contributed to this report. It has been updated to include more statements from tribes and Native organizations.
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A shameful history

Native historians are compiling what we know about boarding schools, a piece of history unknown or forgotten by many in the United States, and Canada, though Native communities know it well

Left to right, Linda Grover; Brenda Child; Denise Lajimodiere. (Courtesy photos via Minnesota Reformer)


Colleen Connolly
Minnesota Reformer

AUG 16, 2021

Since 2006, Denise Lajimodiere, an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, has spent hours hunkered down in archives searching for records of Native American boarding schools.

“It is tedious,” she said. “It is dusty work.”

And grueling and traumatic. The records are incomplete, but what researchers like Lajimodiere have uncovered reveals a shameful history. Children were often abused, separated from their families and stripped of their culture and language. The records contain stories of both loss and resistance, but they are also important for what’s missing. Many children disappeared and never made it home.

For Lajimodiere, this work is extremely personal, and that’s one reason why she does it.

“I wasn’t sent to boarding school,” she said. “But my parents and grandparents were. My story is the story of millions of Native people and the intergenerational trauma and the historical trauma. We are still in that unresolved grief.”

(Related: Little justice for child sex abuse victims in Indian Country)

The archives are scattered across the country — in government offices, church basements, historical societies and museums. Some records don’t exist at all, at least not formally. Lajimodiere, 70, found out about one school in Wisconsin only after her grandchildren went dumpster diving following the death of a 100-year-old neighbor. The woman’s family threw out many of her possessions, and the kids found an old scrapbook that mentioned a boarding school Lajimodiere had never heard of: Bethany Indian Mission in Wittenberg, Wisconsin.


To date, Lajimodiere has counted 406 boarding schools in the United States, some run by the federal government, both on and off reservations, and some run by religious organizations. In addition to identifying schools, she has also interviewed boarding school survivors and their descendants — including people in her own family — and recorded many of their stories in her book “Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding School Survivors.”

Lajimodiere is one of the many Native researchers and historians who have been compiling information about boarding schools for decades. They’ve often had to advocate for the importance of their research in academia, working with limited funds. After Lajimodiere retired from North Dakota State University, where she taught, she applied for grants to continue her work in the archives, but was always denied.

The boarding school era, which ran from roughly 1879 to the 1930s — or longer depending on whom you ask — is a piece of history unknown or forgotten by many in the United States, though Native communities know it well. The federal initiative announced earlier this summer by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to look into the legacy of boarding school policies has brought sudden national attention to the issue, and for the first time, researchers like Lajimodiere and their tribes might receive significant government support and funding to continue their vital work.


Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Friday, April 23, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Lajimodiere is one of the founders and a past president of the Minneapolis-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, representing tribes across the country. In 2016, the coalition filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Bureau of Indian Education to try to find out the names of all federal boarding schools and the children who died or went missing when they were students.

Their request was denied. The bureau said they didn’t have the information.

Today, the coalition is pushing Congress to pass a bill first introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Haaland last year to create a truth commission similar to the one in Canada that helped bring to light the history of atrocities at boarding schools there. The recent initiative announced by Haaland set a target date of April 2022 to submit a report of their findings, which the coalition believes is not enough time, considering how difficult it has been to track down documents. The commission, they hope, will continue the work.

It’s not yet clear what the federal initiative will be able to accomplish, but for Brenda Child, who is Red Lake Ojibwe and a professor of American studies and American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota, it’s vitally important to get the history right so the government can respond to it appropriately.


When Child first began her research into Native American boarding schools as a history student in the 1980s, she had to push against a lot of the scholars at the time, who argued that boarding schools weren’t very relevant after 1905. She argued that boarding schools were actually an important part of Native Americans’ lives for a few decades more, into the Great Depression and the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act. That law sought to stop the allotment of tribal land and end Native American cultural assimilation policies, including boarding schools. But Child says there’s more to the story.

“Boarding schools were about dispossessing Indians,” Child said. “By the 1930s, the big land grab was over. White Earth had lost 92 percent of their reservation land by then, so there’s no need for boarding schools anymore. Indians can go to public school.”

Like Lajimodiere, Child has spent hours digging through archives to find stories of boarding school students. As a history student writing her dissertation, Child was told she wouldn’t find much in the National Archives, but she went anyway and found loads of letters from students and parents. In addition to stories of loss, illness and death, she also found stories of resistance — something she finds missing in a lot of coverage of the topic today. Much of what she found is documented in her book “Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940.”


A federal initiative won’t be able to return the stolen childhoods to boarding school survivors and victims. But Child says there are other things they can — and should — return to atone for the era.

“Land can be returned to Indians. The United States doesn’t have a practice of returning land to Indians, but look, we’re out there dealing with land around the Mississippi and protecting our water right now,” Child said, referring to the Native-led efforts to halt construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline in the northern half of the state. “There’s all kinds of ways to make amends.”

Scholarships and free tuition to state universities would be another obvious way, she said.

Linda Grover, a professor emeritus of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, says there is a through-line that connects the boarding school experience with Native American children’s education in public schools today.

Early in her career as a historian, Grover researched and wrote about the Vermilion Lake Indian School, a federal boarding school on the Bois Forte Reservation where her grandparents met. She found that recruiters used coercion to convince parents to send their kids to the school. They would argue “the futility of efforts to continue living the Indian way.” The boys were forced to cut their hair, and all students had to wear military-style uniforms. Punishments included spanking and whipping.

Decades later, when Grover was attending graduate school at UMD, she told her aunt she was taking a history class. Her aunt responded: “Don’t let them push you out of there.”

Grover said her aunt’s generation had to fight fiercely from being excluded. “From her generation that’s how she saw things,” Grover said. “To have that feeling that this is your place as much as anybody else’s and to be really proud of who you are as a Native person is so important.”

Grover’s feeling of Native Americans being ostracized from education, however, has lingered. In the early 2000s, Grover worked as the director of Indian education for Duluth Public Schools. There, she witnessed other barriers to education for Native students. When the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, she was told they couldn’t use any of the money for educational programs connected to Native cultures.

Today, she said, things are improving. Her grandkids can learn the Ojibwe language in school if they want to. But the memories of the recent past are fresh.

One of the most lasting impacts of the boarding school era is the intergenerational trauma in families who survived. In addition to identifying boarding schools and their students, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition also works with communities to ameliorate their trauma and find a way forward. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Haaland said this is an important part of the initiative as well: “The first step to justice is acknowledging these painful truths and gaining a full understanding of their impacts so that we can unravel the threads of trauma and injustice that linger.”


Lajimodiere hopes that part of the initiative will include sending resources and funds to tribes to pay for therapy and counseling, including from medicine people. Though she is relieved by the attention that boarding schools are finally receiving, she worries about how it might re-traumatize survivors and their families. She has personally grappled with the impact of boarding schools and understands how difficult it is to break the cycle of trauma.

“We need to research how to talk to the next generation and pass on the truth in ways that are age-appropriate and aren’t re-traumatizing, as much as possible,” she said. “We need to know about it, learn about it and understand colonialism. But it also needs to be accompanied by resilience, strength and hope.”

The Minnesota Reformer is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to keeping Minnesotans informed and unearthing stories other outlets can’t or won’t tell.
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