“They made us many promises but they kept only one. They promised to take our land and they did.” |
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“Almost immediately following the Indian war era, there began a series of governmental policies that were designed to make sure that we didn’t exist anymore as tribal people. That we no longer kept our language, our cultural identity, our religion, and most importantly our land and natural resources. There were a number of policies that tried to move us toward that end, the boarding policy which took children away from their families...And the relocation program was just one more policy in this long list of policies.”
-Wilma Mankiller, Former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Natio
"Native America knows all too well the reality of the boarding schools, where recent generations learned the fine art of standing in line single-file for hours without moving a hair, as a lesson in discipline; where our best and brightest earned graduation certificates for homemaking and masonry; where the sharp rules of immaculate living were instilled through blistered hands and knees on the floor with scouring toothbrushes; where mouths were scrubbed with lye and chlorine solutions for uttering Native words." |
CLICK ON THE DOCUMENT TO READ ABOUT THE OFFICE OF INDIAN AFFAIRS' POLICIES ON RELIGION IN NATIVE AMERICAN BOARDING SCHOOLS.
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“Relocation was the idea that you could take the Indian family in the city, give them employment training, help them find a house, and they would succeed, which is a definition of a human being only in economic terms" "We got off in a very poverty-type area in Oakland and we got off, and we said, ‘oh my gosh, this is just what we came from’." |