For Alaskan trying to bring relatives out of residential school graveyard, Biden’s pardon ‘is one start’

Eleanor Hadden’s face was dimly lit by the glow of her television on a still-dark Friday morning in her South Anchorage living room. On top of it, President Joe Biden was watching the sun in Arizona, speaking to a crowd of tribal leaders and members of the Gila River Indian Community – and people like Hadden, watching from their homes across the country. Biden was making history as the first president to apologize to Native Americans for what he called “the most horrific chapter in American history”: the era of Indian residential schools.

“I apologize officially, as the president of the United States of America, for what we did,” Biden said. “In fact, there is no reason for this apology to have taken 50 years to do.”

From the 1800s to the 1970s, the federal government ordered the removal of tens of thousands of Native American children from their communities, and sent them to one of the schools that passed 400 Indian shelters that they operated or supported across the country, according to the federal plan. which investigated the history of integration strategies.

Investigators found records of at least 74 unmarked or unmarked school cemeteries, and the deaths of a thousand students, although Biden said the true number is expected to be “much, much higher.”

Hadden’s grandmother, Mary Kininnook of Ketchikan, was one of them. Mary was 14 when she died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1908, according to her school record. He has been buried there ever since, according to his family and local media at the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.

“Lost generations, culture and language,” Biden said. “Lose hope. It’s scary, it’s so wrong. I would like to ask for … a moment of silence,” Biden said. “To remember the lost, and the generations who live with that tragedy.”

Inside Hadden’s house, the only noise that could be heard was her husband Ron’s footsteps upstairs; he had just asked her to remove the tissues.

“Apologizing is one start,” Hadden, who is Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian, said afterward. “What are we going to do about it, then?”

Across India, tribal leaders and former residential school students are posting similar messages of gratitude for Biden’s recognition while calling for government accountability to help reverse that. which has not taken away.

[Native Americans laud Biden for historic apology over boarding schools, but want action to follow]

For the past 57 years, Hadden and his late mother, Mary Jones, have been searching for their missing aunt. Jones began the search in 1967 by writing to Indian boarding schools across the country in an inquiry brought up by her own mother: that Aunt Mary had died in a boarding school.

It took another three decades to slowly piece together historical records — including Kininnook’s student ID, an obituary and newspaper articles about his campus funeral — to place him among the more than 200 buried students. At the Carlisle Main Post Cemetery in Pennsylvania, Hadden said. .

But he was lost again when Hadden visited Carlisle in 1984 to look for Kininnook’s headstone and discovered another shocking truth: When the US Army occupied Carlisle in 1918 and moved the cemetery nine years later, the names of several dead were lost. shuffle/ The military reburied those 14 people, who researchers believe to be native children by comparing historical and recent maps of the cemetery, under headstones marked “UNKNOWN.”

Mary Kininnook is one of them.

“It was like news when someone died,” Hadden said, recalling the moment he learned.

Although the Army has promised to return the remains of every Native child to their next of kin — and has returned them every year since 2017, including several Alaska Native families — officials it has not been clear to inform the families who believe that their relatives are there. unknown in the return process, Hadden said.

Hadden said he and his brother were initially told that their grandfather would return home in the 2020 cycle with the help of astrologers. Because her great-aunt is one of two non-infant girls missing from the headstones — one was 17 — biologists can determine who she is based on pre-pubescent bone structure, he said. But the return process has been delayed by the outbreak, and Hadden said he hasn’t heard from officials at the Army Cemetery Office since. The Office of Military Cemeteries did not respond to a request for comment.

Across Alaska, there are “thousands, to tens of thousands,” of families like Hadden’s, who are still waiting for their relatives to return, said Alaska Native Heritage Center researcher Benjamin Jacuk. .

“That, at some point, will involve every family and community in Alaska,” Jacuk said, based on his decade-long search of federal, state, church and private archives.

That’s the motivation for Alaska Native leaders to approve federal legislation that would create a truth and healing commission to further investigate the legacy and loss associated with Indian residential schools.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who introduced one of the bills to create the commission, said in a statement that Biden’s recognition of the pain and injustice inflicted on Indian communities strengthens his determination to make the law a law.

Rep. Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik, wrote on Facebook that Biden’s recognition of the “pain, past and present, caused by Indian residential schools” “is essential to progress for Alaskans and tribal communities throughout the US”

“This apology is an important step forward, but it must be accompanied by meaningful actions that address the continuing effects of this injustice,” Alaska Federation of Natives President Benjamin Mallott said in a statement. prepared. “This includes reviving our languages ​​and traditions and repatriating our Setsoulale children who have not yet been returned, so that they can be kept with their families and communities.”

In Kodiak, Cassey Rowland, who brought her grandfather Carlisle home in 2022, said she appreciates President Biden’s apology.

“Hearing someone admit they were wrong, especially when that person is the president of the United States, helps with healing,” Rowland said by phone.

Hadden, whose parents met at the Sheldon Jackson Boarding School in Sitka in 1944, said that—like many others—he grew up with few truths about Indian boarding schools. His mother loved his piano lessons, shared “very good stories,” and had worked to address the dangerous behavior she had seen in his mother – Hadden’s grandmother. – by doing things differently with his children, telling them that he loves them and loves them. proud of them. But the story of Kininnook, and his constant absence, call Hadden to finish the work his mother started long ago.

“Part of me is happy,” Hadden said from his rocking chair. But I also feel lonely. What you need after recognition is planning. What’s next?”

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