The US Has Confirmed Hundreds Of Deaths Occurred At Native American Boarding Schools
The remains of more than 500 children were discovered at burial sites as part of a wide-ranging investigation into the Indian boarding school system that systematically erased Indigenous culture across the US from the early 1800s to around 1970.
Furthermore, the number of children whose bodies were dumped in the mass graves is expected to be much higher.
Still, the early results of the report released Wednesday are damning and confirm what survivors and their family members have long been describing: a systematic effort by the US government and Christian institutions to erase their existence and cultures by targeting and taking away their children.
The main strategy was forcing their children to be Christian Americans, and the government tapped and paid churches to help run the system. Children were "coerced, induced, or compelled" to enter the schools, many without their parents' consent.
These schools had the capacity to house up to 1,700 children, who were often severely mistreated. According to the report, students endured "rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care." As part of their "education," administrators also made them do hours of "industrial work," including cooking and cleaning, farming fields, and working on railroad systems.
If they did not follow the rules, teachers and administrators often beat and tortured the children. Punishments included solitary confinement, flogging, starvation, whipping, slapping, and cuffing.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bri...ren-report
The remains of more than 500 children were discovered at burial sites as part of a wide-ranging investigation into the Indian boarding school system that systematically erased Indigenous culture across the US from the early 1800s to around 1970.
Furthermore, the number of children whose bodies were dumped in the mass graves is expected to be much higher.
Still, the early results of the report released Wednesday are damning and confirm what survivors and their family members have long been describing: a systematic effort by the US government and Christian institutions to erase their existence and cultures by targeting and taking away their children.
The main strategy was forcing their children to be Christian Americans, and the government tapped and paid churches to help run the system. Children were "coerced, induced, or compelled" to enter the schools, many without their parents' consent.
These schools had the capacity to house up to 1,700 children, who were often severely mistreated. According to the report, students endured "rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care." As part of their "education," administrators also made them do hours of "industrial work," including cooking and cleaning, farming fields, and working on railroad systems.
If they did not follow the rules, teachers and administrators often beat and tortured the children. Punishments included solitary confinement, flogging, starvation, whipping, slapping, and cuffing.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bri...ren-report
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
