Author: Jeff Kisling

Emergency Wet’suwet’en solidarity call out event

I have been working to support the Wet’suwet’en peoples in British Columbia in their struggles to stop the construction of the Costal GasLink pipeline through their pristine lands and waters since January 2020. See: https://landbackfriends.com/?s=wetsuweten+wet%27suwet%27en

SOUND THE ALARM
Emergency Wet’suwet’en solidarity call out event, featuring Sleydo’
Thursday, May 26, 4pm PT / 7pm ET
Drilling underneath the sacred waters of the Wedzin Kwa could begin any day on Wet’suwet’en territory. On Thursday May 26, join us for “Sound the Alarm for Wet’suwet’en ” a live zoom meeting at 4pm PT / 7pm ET. 
With Sleydo’ Molly Wickham of Gidimt’en Checkpoint, together we’ll understand the situation on the ground and strategize together about how to #KillTheDrill.
 REGISTER NOW  
Dear friends, allies and comrades,

While we try to live out our daily lives and conduct cultural practices with our elders and children, police barge into our homes without permission — everyday, with at least six officers — intimidating us, surveilling us, illegally arresting, and detaining people on our own lands. 

It’s a story as old as the colonial violence against Indigenous Peoples to steal land, resources, and wealth. The sad truth is, it’s what’s happening right now: They want to intimidate us off our land so Coastal GasLink can start drilling in less than one month under our sacred headwaters, Wedzin Kwa. 

In March 2020, thousands of you took to the streets, railways, ports and highways to stand with Wet’suwet’en and demand Coastal GasLink cease construction. We made global headlines — forcing Justin Trudeau and John Horgan to commit to entering into discussions with Wet’suwet’en Hereditary chiefs. [1]

But they haven’t made any progress with us on those title discussions, haven’t stopped construction and haven’t pulled RCMP or CIRG off of our territories.  In fact, things have gotten worse. The UN has issued yet another letter to the so-called governments of Canada and BC, calling for an end to police violence and to halt construction. [2] 

We need your help to stop the drilling and make them listen, and we want to give you an update with all the information you need to act. Will you join me and Sound the Alarm for Wet’suwet’en on Thursday May 26 at 4 pm PT / 7pm ET on Zoom? In this call, you’ll hear from me and other Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and learn about what you can do to support us in our fight against CGL. 
[YES] 
Here are the details: 
What: Sound The Alarm For Wet’suwet’en 
When: Thursday May 26, 4 pm PT/7 pm ET 
Where: https://bit.ly/3LnPld7 
 
The Supreme Court of Canada, under the Delgamuukw v. British Columbia legal case, recognized that the Wet’suwet’en people never ceded our title to our land. [3] Yet over and over, both the so-called governments of British Columbia and Canada have paid lip service to reconciliation, claiming they respect Indigenous peoples’ rights. 
 
And now, we face losing our land, our water, our way of life. It’s why I’m reaching out now, because we need to raise the alarm so people everywhere know what is at stake, and rise up in massive opposition to help stop the drilling. 

Will you join the call to Sound the Alarm for Wet’suwet’en on Thursday May 26 at 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET to learn how you can help stop the drilling and stand with Wet’suwet’en?
[YES] 

[Can’t make it? Help promote the event!]
The amount of pressure and stress I feel everyday knowing that my people and our land is under threat is made worse by the constant police presence — showing up at my house unannounced and questioning us for living our lives. My children are 2, 6 and 10 years old. They shouldn’t have to bear this burden — and they’ve done nothing to deserve this treatment. 

At the same time, I feel immense hope. I believe in the thousands of people who have shared their outpouring of love and support for Wet’suwet’en. I’m energized by the beauty I see in the Wedzin Kwa river, everyday, and grateful for how the land provides for me, my family, and my community.  Will you stand with me and join the call to Sound the Alarm for Wet’suwet’en on Thursday May 26? 
[YES] 
With gratitude, 
Sleydo’, 
Spokesperson for Gidimt’en Checkpoint, Cas Yikh House, Wet’suwet’en 
 
Sources
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-urges-patience-pipeline-dispute-1.5484087

[2]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/un-committee-elimination-racial-discrimination-indigenous-coastal-gaslink-trans-mountain-1.6407798
[3] https://www.bctreaty.ca/sites/default/files/delgamuukw.pdf
We want to keep you up-to-date
Gidimt’en Checkpoint is a reoccupation site of Cas Yikh (Grizzly Bear House) territory where Wet’suwet’en people are asserting their jurisdiction over their unceded land. 
The Coastal Gaslink pipeline and associated LNG terminal is the largest private fracked gas investment in Canadian history. The Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs have been resisting the construction of the fracked gas pipeline on their territories for more than a decade, and the hereditary chiefs of all five Wet’suwet’en clans have refused to give their consent to the project.
After a decade of fierce resistance, Coastal GasLink is getting closer to drilling under the Wedzin Kwa, the sacred headwaters of the Wet’suwet’en since time immemorial. Now is the time to come together and demand drilling stop.
 COME TO CAMP  
 REGISTER FOR WEBINAR  

Our Latest Iowa Solidarity with Wet’suwet’en Event

On December 22, 2021, we went to Chase bank in Des Moines to protest the bank’s funding of fossil fuel projects. In support of the Wet’suwet’en’s calls for solidarity.

#KillTheDrill

Collapse is already here

This is a continuation of a recent post, the centre cannot hold, and discussion of the article Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading by umair haque. The reason I follow umair’s writings is because I agree with his analysis of where we are and learn more from him. In this article he talks about the collapse of the three systems we live in.

  • economic
  • social
  • political

Failing economies

Right now, a wave of mega-inflation is surging around the globe. It’s driven largely by climate change — and our nonexistent “response” to it. Harvests are failing, goods are getting harder and harder to distribute and ship, raw materials harder to source and attain. Inflation is going to keep rising — for the rest of our lives.

Shortages become the norm. You can see them beginning to happen in vivid, shocking detail now. Empty shelves are becoming the new normal. The age of abundance is over.

Our economies have failed. And they’re going to continue to fail.

Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading. I Don’t Know If You’ve Noticed — But Our Systems are Breaking Down by umair haque, Eudaimonia, May 19, 2022

Failing social systems

Think of how many generations our economies have failed at this point.

Boomers were the last ones to really live the dream — since then, our economies have been in decline, and that decline has accelerated rapidly. Gen X had it worse than Boomers, but not so bad as to cause total despair — enough to be comical. Millennials had it worse than Gen X — and they can’t afford to move out of their parents’ homes, or start families, so birth rates are declining. Zoomers have it far, far worse than Millennials — they’ll never be able to retire, they can’t get decent jobs, their lives are over before they began.

There’s a word to sum all that up — intergenerational inequality. What does intergenerational inequality do? It destroys the possibility of functioning social systems. Someone has to pay for them, after all — from retirement systems to post offices to hospitals and universities and so forth. Social systems must be funded from the public purse. But when people are struggling harder, generation after generation, getting poorer, there’s less left over to invest.

Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading. I Don’t Know If You’ve Noticed — But Our Systems are Breaking Down by umair haque, Eudaimonia, May 19, 2022

Failing political systems

This is the real reason why young people are apathetic about politics. They know they can’t change anything even if they try. They don’t have the money, so what’s the point? Sure, they can vote in politicians who want to build social systems — and sometimes they do, like AOC or who have you. But those politicians are left powerless in the end, because societies in which generation after generation is getting poorer cannot afford to be functioning societies at all.

Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading. I Don’t Know If You’ve Noticed — But Our Systems are Breaking Down by umair haque, Eudaimonia, May 19, 2022

The collapse of the economic, social and political systems umair haque describes above are part of the diagram below I’ve been working on for several years.

The economic system is Capitalism (red box in diagram below). Capitalism exerts financial control, and uses criminal justice systems of police and prisons to enforce capitalist policies.

Capitalism once did some funding of social systems: Medicare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc.

But now, the collapse of capitalism is leading to increasingly inadequate social services, pushing more people into, or further into poverty.

The answer, it seems to many of us, is to replace the capitalist economic system. As my friend Ronnie James says:

I’m of the firm opinion that a system that was built by stolen bodies on stolen land for the benefit of a few is a system that is not repairable. It is operating as designed, and small changes (which are the result of huge efforts) to lessen the blow on those it was not designed for are merely half measures that can’t ever fully succeed.

So the question is now, where do we go from here? Do we continue to make incremental changes while the wealthy hoard more wealth and the climate crisis deepens, or do we do something drastic that has never been done before? Can we envision and create a world where a class war from above isn’t a reality anymore?”

Ronnie James, Des Moines Mutual Aid

How to replace capitalism and the systems that support it is indicated in the Red/Green New Deal box. Discussions of these things can be found on these blogs of mine and elsewhere.

https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/

https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/

https://landbackfriends.com/

https://landbackfriends.com/

Wet’suwet’en and residential schools

I’ve been following and writing about the Wet’suwet’en peoples in British Columbia as they struggle to prevent a natural gas pipeline (Costal GasLink) from being built through their pristine lands and waters for years. Because of almost no mainstream media coverage of what has been happening there, they asked us to share their stories and struggles on our social media. (see links to many stories at the end).

This video shows the continued harassment of the Wet’suwet’en by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 5/15/2022. It is especially disturbing because it shows trauma carried from one generation to the next. Especially disturbing because it makes the connection to the Indian residential schools’ atrocities.

Cody and Winih Confront RCMP
Gidimt’en Access Point

For over 2 months the RCMP CIRG unit has carried out a daily harassment & intimidation campaign on Gidimt’en territory. On Sunday, May 15 as we started the build of a new balhats (feast hall) at our Tsel Kiy Kwa village site with elders and children, over a dozen officers were dispatched to surveil & criminalize us.

This day should have been a celebration. A representation of our governance system on the yintah despite being outlawed and all the government’s attempts to disrupt the transmission of culture and our laws to our children.

When confronted with the RCMP’s history of stealing Indigenous children to send them to residential schools & questioned about why none of their deaths are being investigated, despite excessive policing of our territory, officers fell silent.

#RCMPofftheyintah

May 15, 2022
Tsel Kiy Kwa Village Site

“10,000 kids murdered at residential schools. They’re here to harass you. You as a Wet’suwet’en. As a future leader of these lands. They still rip kids away from their parents every day, one at a time. So, you look at them, you remember their faces, because they decided that you’re not allowed to live here. Every time you see Every Child Matters, we’re talking to you guys, because you guys are the ones not looking into their deaths. 10,000 ** kids. That’s a lot of kids that went to school and died. Not one of you guys are doing anything about it.”

RCMP have patrolled Gidimt’en home sites more than 200 times since March 2022.

Following is a letter my Quaker Meeting sent to British Columbia Premier, John Horgan in 2020.

January 26, 2020

Bear Creek Friends (Quaker) meetinghouse is in the Iowa countryside. Many members have been involved in agriculture and care about protecting Mother Earth. A number of Friends have various relationships with Indigenous peoples. Some Friends have worked to protect water and to stop the construction of fossil fuel pipelines in the United States, such as the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

We are concerned about the tensions involving the Wet’suwet’en Peoples, who are working to protect their water and lands in British Columbia. Most recently they are working to prevent the construction of several pipelines through their territory. Such construction would do severe damage to the land, water, and living beings.

Bear Creek Friends Meeting, of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) approved sending the following letter to British Columbia Premier, John Horgan.

John Horgan.
PO BOX 9041 STN PROV GOVT
VICTORIA, BC V8W 9E1.
Email premier@gov.bc.ca

John Horgan,

We’re concerned that you are not honoring the tribal rights and unceded Wet’suwet’en territories and are threatening a raid instead.

We ask you to de-escalate the militarized police presence, meet with the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, and hear their demands:

That the province cease construction of the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline project and suspend permits.

That the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and tribal rights to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) are respected by the state and RCMP.

That the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and associated security and policing services be withdrawn from Wet’suwet’en lands, in agreement with the most recent letter provided by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimiation’s (CERD) request.

That the provincial and federal government, RCMP and private industry employed by Coastal GasLink (CGL) respect Wet’suwet’en laws and governance system, and refrain from using any force to access tribal lands or remove people.

Bear Creek Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)
19186 Bear Creek Road, Earlham, Iowa, 50072

Several of us gathered in Des Moines, Iowa, for a vigil in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en peoples, February 7, 2020.

Wet’suwet’en Updates 2.7.2020 Evening

Our most recent action was a vigil held at a Chase bank in Des Moines, December, 2021. Chase funds fossil fuel projects. You can see the solidarity, including Des Moines Black Lives Matter. https://landbackfriends.com/2021/12/23/iowa-solidarity-with-wetsuweten/

Writings about the Wet’suwet’en from my blog posts:
https://landbackfriends.com/?s=wetsuweten
https://jeffkisling.com/?s=wetsuweten+wet%27suwet%27en

the centre cannot hold

It is increasingly clear we can never return to life as we knew it several decades ago. It is difficult to know where we will go, where we can go from here. Difficult to make sense of what is happening.

After I had written this, I received the latest article from a thinker I follow, umair haque.

When I look at the world today, I see something chilling. Collapse is already here — and it’s spreading. And next to it is the curious juxtaposition of pretending that life will go on “normally.” I’ve warned for some time now that we’re entering an age of collapse, where our great systems will fail — and if you look around now, you can see it beginning to happen.

We’re going to talk about this in three forms — political, economic, and social systems — and on two levels, national and global systems. What’s alarming — oh no, am I an alarmist? — is that now our systems are visibly beginning to fail, and fail incredibly swiftly, in all of those ways.

Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading. I Don’t Know If You’ve Noticed — But Our Systems are Breaking Down by umair haque, Eudaimonia, May 19, 2022

sensemaking–the action or process of making sense of or giving meaning to something, especially new developments and experiences.

…there remains the most existential risk of them all: our diminishing capacity for collective sensemaking. Sensemaking is the ability to generate an understanding of world around us so that we may decide how to respond effectively to it. When this breaks down within the individual, it creates an ineffective human at best and a dangerous one at worst.

Threats to sensemaking are manifold. Among the most readily observable sources are the excesses of identity politics, the rapid polarisation of the long-running culture war, the steep and widespread decline in trust in mainstream media and other public institutions, and the rise of mass disinformation technologies, e.g. fake news working in tandem with social media algorithms designed to hijack our limbic systems and erode our cognitive capacities. If these things can confound and divide us both within and between cultures, then we have little hope of generating the coherent dialogue, let alone the collective resolve, that is required to overcome the formidable global-scale problems converging before us.

At the collective level, a loss of sensemaking erodes shared cultural and value structures and renders us incapable of generating the collective wisdom necessary to solve complex societal problems like those described above. When that happens, the centre cannot hold.

Pontoon Archipelago or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Collapse. By James Allen, originally published by Medium, June 18, 2019

It seems we’ve reached the point where the centre cannot hold, is not holding.

  • Our government systems are being hijacked by those intent on dismantling democracy. And they are succeeding. We have lost our voice in governance.
  • Complex global supply systems and the economies dependent on them are breaking down.
  • Environmental chaos is rapidly escalating.
  • There is increasing denial of facts and science.
  • There is widespread spiritual poverty.
  • Almost everyone is paralyzed by the onslaught of these crises.

I pray and try to make sense of where we are now and how to get where we want to be. Where do we want to be?

The answer has always been, and will always be, we want to be members of a community, communities. So much of what is wrong today is rooted in the many things that isolate us from being in community.

Recognizing the decline of our communities is not much of an insight, but we sometimes lose sight of the broader picture when confronted by one crisis after another, or multiple crises simultaneously.

My questions these days are which communities are important to me, and what is the health of them now? As James Allen wrote above, “a loss of sensemaking erodes shared cultural and value structures and renders us incapable of generating the collective wisdom necessary to solve complex societal problems”.

This is why I’m so invested in my Mutual Aid community. And am trying to find ways to bring more people into mutual aid communities.
https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/mutual-aid/

Something important happens when we gather in pursuit of a common goal. First we form rituals that help us relate to and negotiate each other, everything from a civic tradition that allows anyone with a voice to be respectfully heard, to sharing food and music in the local town hall every Friday night, to a labour system that fairly distributes the burden of work. Then, those rituals that stand the test of time become embedded in daily life. The ritual activities themselves and the good they produce help a community identity take root. As identity strengthens, so too does our sense of connectedness — our sense of affection, responsibility and obligation — to one another. When this happens, we then share a greater capacity for coherence and cooperation. And where we share greater capacity for coherence and cooperation there is also greater resilience: the ability to mobilise skills and resources to support the emergence of collective intelligence in response to crisis, enable rapid adaptation and ensure the continuity of the most important functions and structures of the community. This coherent togetherness and the collective intelligence that emerges out of it is the source of human strength and ingenuity. Within it lies our ability to transition from one evolutionary niche to another, even against the odds.

Pontoon Archipelago or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Collapse. By James Allen, originally published by Medium, June 18, 2019

The other community important to me is my faith community. I’ll wait for another time to talk about that.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29. By Rainer Maria Rilke

Support the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act

The House Natural Resource Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples is accepting written testimony in support of H.R. 5444, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act.

There are two ways you can send your written testimony for the bill. One is by using The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition’s resources. Secondly, information from the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is found at the end of this post. The FCNL site will help you write your letter and send it to the appropriate members of Congress.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

REQUESTING SUPPORTIVE WRITTEN TESTIMONY FOR H.R.5444

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is currently pursuing the passage of H.R. 5444 / S. 2907, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the US Act. The House Natural Resource Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples held a hearing on Thursday, May 12, 2022, on H.R. 5444. We are reaching out to invite you to submit written testimony in support of this legislation. The House allows for written testimony until May 26, 2022. Therefore, we are humbly asking you to share your story by emailing the House Natural Resource Committee at:

HNRCDocs@mail.house.gov and CC NABS at info@nabshc.org 

To familiarize yourself with the legislation, NABS’s one pager can be found here, H.R. 5444/S.2907 the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. 
To submit testimony, please see NABS suggested draft template on how to write your story for Congress. It can be a minimum of two paragraphs up to 15 pages.
If you have any questions, please reach out to NABS at info@nabshc.org  
t’igwicid – Thank you, 

https://mailchi.mp/nabshc.org/nabs-requesting-your-story-6024016?e=039867b489

https://mcusercontent.com/a2409f90592cd87d4d9c47cad/files/0dd54e21-d6e2-e607-8bd1-dd35e41c0834/Outline_for_Testimony.01.pdf

Natural Resources Committee to Hold First Congressional Hearing on the Indian Boarding School Era

Washington, D.C. – Tomorrow, May 12, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern, the Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States will hold the first congressional hearing in history to examine the “Indian Boarding School Era,” the time period from 1819 to 1969 in which the U.S. government forcibly removed Indigenous children from their communities and placed them into government-run boarding schools to assimilate them into Euro-American society. At these schools, American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian students were forbidden to practice their culture, use their given names, or speak their traditional languages. If they disobeyed, they were harshly punished. Many students experienced physical, sexual, or psychological abuse, and some never returned home to their families. To this day, the United States government has never formally acknowledged or apologized for these actions.

The hearing will be livestreamed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFeCr0gDopU

The legislative hearing will consider H.R. 5444, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act, introduced by Rep. Sharice L. Davids (D-Kan.), which will establish a formal commission to investigate and document the policies of the Indian Boarding School Era. The commission will develop recommendations on how the U.S. government can best acknowledge and heal the intergenerational trauma associated with the era.

Natural Resources Committee, U.S. House of Representatives

2022-truth-and-healing-commission-on-indian-boarding-school-policies-act-finalDownload

Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)

Support the Establishment of a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools

It is long overdue for the United States to acknowledge the historic trauma of the Indian boarding school era. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Christian churches collaborated with the government to create hundreds of boarding schools for Native American children. The conditions at these schools, some of them Quaker-run, were unspeakable.

Remind your members of Congress of their responsibility to tribal nations and urge them to support the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act (S. 2907/H.R. 5444).

Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)

It’s time to elevate Indigenous voices

As I was praying about what to write this morning, I was thinking about the title from an email from Grist magazine: It’s time to elevate Indigenous voices

It’s time to elevate Indigenous voices

It’s clear that Indigenous leaders and communities play a critical role in climate action and have already faced significant climate threats. Elevating Indigenous voices is key to staving off the climate crisis, and the news industry must do better.

Our reporting brings light to the challenges Indigenous communities face and grounds these stories through the lens of solution and justice by elevating the Indigenous leaders and ideas that are critical to protecting the planet’s biodiversity and the health of our ecosystems

Donate now

Grist

Although there is colonialism in the idea that it is White people’s privilege to frame these narratives, it is important to make White people aware of the importance of elevating Indigenous voices.

White people cannot begin to have authentic relationships with Indigenous peoples until we have learned and acknowledged the truth about the history of White settler colonists stealing the land and committing genocide against native peoples. And the continued oppression today. To understand the trauma that has been passed from generation to generation. The grief of those living today.

I was blessed to participate in the Climate Justice Summit of the new coalition, the Buffalo Rebellion. A coalition that has leadership from Indigenous people and that is elevating Indigenous voices.

Buffalo Rebellion is a coalition of Iowa grassroots organizations that are growing a movement for climate action that centers racial and economic justice!

Formed in 2021, Buffalo Rebellion is comprised of seven Iowa organizations: Great Plains Action Society, DSM Black Liberation Movement, Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, Sierra Club Beyond Coal, Cedar Rapids Sunrise Movement, SEIU Local 199, and Iowa CCI

https://www.facebook.com/IowaBuffaloRebellion

Forced assimilation of native children

One of the most grievous wrongs was the forced assimilation of native children. [https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/forced-assimilation/]

  • This is a fraught issue in Quaker communities today. More than 30 Indian boarding schools were run by Quakers.
  • The first step toward healing for all those involved, White and Indigenous peoples, is truth telling.
  • Raw emotions are re-awakened as the process of locating the remains of native children on the grounds of Indian boarding schools occurs at more schools.
  • The first volume of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report has just been released.

Urge your members of Congress to support the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act (S. 2908/H.R. 5444).

It’s past time for the United States and the faith community to acknowledge the historical trauma of the Indian boarding school era.

I know that. You know that. And this week, we received two strong signs that lawmakers are starting to understand it too.

Act Now

On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior released an investigative report documenting the brutal conditions endured by Native children who were forced to attend federal boarding schools. The next day, a House subcommittee held the first-ever hearing on this critical issue.

The impacts of this tragic era persist today. These schools—more than 30 of them run by Quakers—are inextricably linked to the loss of tribal languages, cultural resources, and dispossession of land. Many of the problems facing tribal nations today, including poverty, violence, suicide, and alcohol and drug abuse, are rooted in the traumatic separation of children from their families and the abuses at these federally sponsored institutions.

Your advocacy is making a difference. We have to keep the pressure on. Urge your members of Congress to support the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act (S. 2908/H.R. 5444).

Portia Kay^nthos Skenandore-WheelockSincerely, Portia K. Skenandore-Wheelock Congressional Advocate
Native American Advocacy Program

P.S. Read the Department of Interior report here.

It is long overdue for the United States to acknowledge the historic trauma of the Indian boarding school era. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Christian churches collaborated with the government to create hundreds of boarding schools for Native American children. The conditions at these schools, some of them Quaker-run, were unspeakable.

Now we must work with tribal nations to advance congressional efforts to establish a federal commission to formally investigate boarding school policy and develop recommendations for the government to take further action. Although the wrongs committed at these institutions can never be made right, we can start the truth, healing, and reconciliation process for the families and communities affected as we work to right relationship with tribal nations.

Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)
Support the Establishment of a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools

What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm?

As the world falls apart, I wonder where faith communities are? Where are White Christians, White Quakers?

As my friend Lucy Duncan writes, “we as White Quakers like to think of ourselves as ahead or better than dominant culture, but we have been complicit in a system and mindset that are ubiquitous.”

Recognizing the White dominant culture is fundamental for White people to understand. How we learn what we must change. White people must first change ourselves before we will be accepted in communities suffering injustice.

As Lucy writes below, “What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm?” Lucy speaks about slavery and racism.

I tell the stories of early White Quaker relationships to slavery because slavery was never really abolished. If we can reckon with the full truth of our connection to slavery and its afterlives, perhaps we can begin the healing necessary to fulfill the promise of the Religious Society of Friends of Truth. 

We as White Quakers like to think of ourselves as ahead or better than dominant culture, but we have been complicit in a system and mindset that are ubiquitous. Claiming the full truth of our history and committing to repair the harms done are deeply spiritual acts of healing our own wounds of disconnection. I would argue it is the pathway upon which we can, perhaps for the first time, discover and invigorate our faith with its full promise.

What would it mean for us to take seriously and collectively as a Religious Society a call to finish the work of abolition, hand in hand and side by side with those affected  and their loved ones? What would it mean for us to stand fully with the calls to abolish the police and fully fund community needs instead? What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm and fully dedicate ourselves to the creation of a liberating Quaker faith that commits to build the revolutionary and healing faith we long to see come to fruition? What would it look like to finally and fully abolish slavery?

A Quaker Call to Abolition and Creation by Lucy Duncan, Friends Journal, April 1, 2021

I ask these same questions regarding our past and present complicity with harms to Indigenous peoples. I speak from my own experiences with Indigenous friends. (One place I share some of these experiences are at the website I created about the First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March https://firstnationfarmer.com/ )

Two interrelated developments are finally bringing attention to Indigenous peoples, forced assimilation, and those who ran those residential schools.

  • One is the search and finding of the remains of Indigenous children on the grounds of Indian Boarding Schools in Canada and the US.
  • The second is the release of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report about what happened in those schools

What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm to Indigenous peoples?

White people need to imagine what it would take to dismantle the White dominant culture. We cannot begin to reckon with our complicity in harm until we have the humility and prayers to recognize the history of those harms, and how we continue to do harm now. We cannot make authentic connections with Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) until we unlearn our attitudes and actions of dominance.

How do we do that? We look for any kind of vertical hierarchy, and reject it. Vertical hierarchies are how dominance is enforced. Are the structures used throughout our society and government.

We should instead act in ways of horizontal, or no hierarchy. Dismantling vertical hierarchies is the path to reducing or eliminating dominance.

Eliminating vertical hierarchies is the core concept of Mutual Aid. My participation in a Mutual Aid community these past two years has been a real education. A deeply spiritual experience. Mutual Aid is how I’ve been learning to reject vertical hierarchies. Some of my experiences with Mutual Aid can be found here: https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/mutual-aid/

Recognizing White dominant culture makes it possible for us to look at the past and recognize our complicity with what happened then. And helps us envision how to stop the ongoing harms of White dominance now.

By asking the question where are faith communities (above) I’m implying where should faith communities be? I believe white faith communities should be working on their structures, actions, and attitudes of dominance. Learning about and embracing Mutual Aid is a way to do that.

Queries related to Mutual Aid
Do we recognize that vertical hierarchies are about power, supremacy and privilege? What are Quaker hierarchies?
Do we work to prevent vertical hierarchies in our peace and justice work?
What are we doing to meet the survival needs of our wider community?
How are we preparing for disaster relief, both for our community, and for the influx of climate refugees?
Are we examples of a Beloved community? How can we invite our friends and neighbors to join our community?

A Hierarchy Resister

I’ve been working on this diagram to show the structures of injustice, and concepts to address them. This is a work in progress. Relevant to today’s discussion is White supremacy and the way forward via Mutual Aid.

DRAFT: NPYM Minute of Support for Indigenous People

Two interrelated developments are finally bringing much needed attention to Indigenous peoples and forced assimilation as I wrote in Indian Boarding Schools: 1.

  • One is the search and finding of the remains of Indigenous children on the grounds of Indian Boarding Schools in Canada and the US.
  • The second is the release of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report about what happened in those schools

It is my sense that most Quakers don’t know a lot about these institutions of forced assimilation and the role white Quakers played in them. But because of this history, Quakers are in a unique position to educate ourselves and others and create/participate in actions today to help begin healing us all. A number of Quaker meetings and organizations have been working for truth telling and searching for ways for healing.

My friend Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge has shared a draft of a remarkable document from North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, a Minute of Support for Indigenous People. I first met Mackenzie as we work on the Quakers for Abolition Network.

This draft Minute includes links to useful sources of information about Quakers and forced assimilation. And most helpful, a number of suggestions for Quakers and their meetings to begin the process of truth telling and work toward healing.

“We commit to courageously and compassionately listen and face the learning required to comprehend settler colonialism and grow relationships with Indigenous people.”

When I talked to one of my Lakota friends about this minute, they nearly cried. They spoke about how meaningful it would be for Quakers, whose “good” relationships with Native peoples were instrumental in the creation of the boarding schools, to be the first majority-white faith community in the US to collectively attempt to heal those wounds. 

Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022, Mackenzi wrote:

Friends,

I’m so excited about this minute that NPYM is considering! 

We’re finally going to directly engage the topic of #LandBack: that is, returning stolen land to Indigenous people. We’re also going to get into the Quaker history of modeling & running boarding schools for Indigenous children — which means grappling with what acknowledgement of and accountability for participating in genocide might look like. 

When I talked to one of my Lakota friends about this minute, they nearly cried. They spoke about how meaningful it would be for Quakers, whose “good” relationships with Native peoples were instrumental in the creation of the boarding schools, to be the first majority-white faith community in the US to collectively attempt to heal those wounds. 

My friend also told me about a few of the brutal horrors their parents had each survived at a boarding school, and we grieved/raged about how much has been erased from collective knowledge. Indigenous families should not be the only ones carrying these stories. It is past time for white colonizers, and those of us connected to the religions that directly perpetrated this form of genocide (which includes Quakers!), to help carry this burden, and to take up our responsibilities in the healing process.

Feel free to steal from this minute, or to share it anywhere you’re inspired!

In struggle and solidarity,
from Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge,
zie/hir or she/her
University Friends Meeting on Duwamish land (aka Seattle)
(1/21/2022)

The North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends repudiates the Doctrines of Discovery, the basis for European colonization around the world. We acknowledge and regret Friends’ role in the ensuing genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation of the peoples indigenous to Turtle Island (‘North America’), including Friends’ role in operating and legitimizing compulsory residential schools for Indigenous children. We affirm the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We commit to courageously and compassionately listen and face the learning required to comprehend settler colonialism and grow relationships with Indigenous people. We intend that these relationships will guide us to develop thoughtful, grounded actions to oppose the ongoing systemic dehumanization and material dispossession of the original peoples of the land on which we live and worship.

DRAFT North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, a Minute of Support for Indigenous People.

Indian Boarding Schools: 1

Finally, some national attention is being given to the terrible history of Indian Boarding Schools in this country. Many object to characterizing these institutions of forced assimilation as “schools”.

There is a long and complicated history related to the policies and implementation of forced assimilation in the United States and Canada.

Forced assimilation is an involuntary process of cultural assimilation of religious or ethnic minority groups during which they are forced to adopt language, identity, norms, mores, customs, traditions, values, mentality, perceptions, way of life, and often religion and ideology of established and generally larger community belonging to dominant culture by government.

Wikipedia

Today I want to introduce

  • Quaker involvement in these institutions
  • Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report

As my friend Bobby Trice describes here, White Quakers were involved in some of these schools.

Quakers Grapple with Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

The recent discovery of 215 graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, in Canada’s Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nations territory, has re-centered a widespread reckoning with past government cultural assimilation policies. Some Quakers are responding by reflecting, learning about Friends’ complicity in running Indian Boarding Schools, and starting to tell the truth about this history.

Following FCNL’s tradition of witnessing in solidarity with Native Americans, we are amplifying the efforts of Native advocates to formalize this truth-telling process in current legislation. It’s vital to ground these efforts in an honest history of the Religious Society of Friends’ oppression of Indigenous people in North America.

Such oppression, rooted in white supremacy, has led to systemic discrimination and inequity that permeates our society today.

Starting with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the United States government systematically enacted cultural assimilation laws targeting Native Americans. The implementation of these policies led to Christian churches working with the government to found hundreds of boarding schools for Indigenous children.

Quakers ran more than 30 Indian boarding schools. The students faced cruel practices of child labor, forced assimilation, and physical punishments. In an 1869 letter, Friend Edward Shaw from Richmond, Indiana, wrote that Quakers participated “to protect, to Civilize, and to Christianize our Red Brethren.”

“For far too long, the truth of cultural genocide led by European-Americans at Indian boarding schools has remained hidden in secrecy and ignored,” said FCNL General Secretary Diana Randall. “Christian churches, including Quakers, carry this burden of transgression against Indigenous people.”

Quakers Grapple with Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools by Bobby Trice, Friends Committee on National Legislation, October 25, 2021

Another reason for national attention is the release of Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report that I wrote about yesterday. https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/2022/05/12/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative/

Following is a link to that report, and part of the introduction.

Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report.

“The consequences of federal Indian boarding school policies—including the intergenerational trauma caused by the family separation and cultural eradication inflicted upon generations of children as young as 4 years old — are heartbreaking and undeniable,” Haaland said in a statement. “We continue to see the evidence of this attempt to forcibly assimilate Indigenous people in the disparities that communities face. It is my priority to not only give voice to the survivors and descendants of federal Indian boarding school policies, but also to address the lasting legacies of these policies so Indigenous Peoples can continue to grow and heal.”

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland

I plan to continue to write about this. See the section about Forced Assimilation on this blog. https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/forced-assimilation/

And here is a link to other blog posts I’ve written on another blog: Forced assimilation

Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative

The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, May 2022, has just been released. The forced assimilation of Indigenous children has been a deep concern of mine. There is a long history regarding Quaker involvement in this. I hope Friends will be led to share what they know with their friends and neighbors. The general public knows little about this tragic history. For healing to begin, the truth must be told and acknowledged. The purpose of this post is to share some resources related to the Indian Boarding Schools in this country. (I don’t think it is right to call these institutions “schools”, but to search for information, that is how they were referred to in the past.)

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) says one thing we can do now is remind our members of Congress of their responsibility to tribal nations and urge them to support the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act (S. 2907/H.R. 5444).
https://fcnl.quorum.us/campaign/35660/

What can be done to heal the damage done to native communities by colonists, including Quakers? As Paula Palmer shares, it begins with telling the truth.

And one of the best discussions related to Quakers and the Indian Boarding Schools is Quaker Indian Boarding Schools. Facing Our History and Ourselves by Paula Palmer, Friends Journal, October 1, 2016.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition says that for healing to occur, the full truth about the boarding schools and the policy of forced assimilation must come to light in our country, as it has in Canada. The first step in a truth, reconciliation, and healing process, they say, is truth telling. A significant piece of the truth about the boarding schools is held by the Christian churches that collaborated with the federal government’s policy of forced assimilation. Quakers were among the strongest promoters of this policy and managed over 30 schools for Indian children, most of them boarding schools, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The coalition is urging the churches to research our roles during the boarding school era, contribute this research to the truth and reconciliation process, and ask ourselves what this history means to us today. 

Quaker Indian Boarding Schools. Facing Our History and Ourselves by Paula Palmer, Friends Journal, October 1, 2016

This is a link to the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative report

https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/inline-files/bsi_investigative_report_may_2022_508.pdf

Following is a recent video from PBS NewsHour, of Judy Woodruff interviewing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland about forced assimilation.

Like Canada, America has a painful history of creating boarding schools to assimilate Native American children, leading to trauma, abuse and death. For more than 150 years, Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced into far away boarding schools. But now there’s a reckoning and a new federal investigation underway. Judy Woodruff discusses it with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

https://youtu.be/3HlJ7_V9U-0

One of the best resources is the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

https://boardingschoolhealing.org/
https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/inline-files/appendix_c_school_maps_508.pdf
https://boardingschoolhealing.org/