||| FROM SPIRIT EAGLE |||


Regarding Gov Inslee’s statement about Native American Boarding Schools: I have spoken to many elders who lived through the Hell of the Indian “schools.” Not very many people know that there was a family on Sucia Island who had many children. The government agents arrived on Sucia and said that they HAD to give up their children so they could go to the Indian School. They forcibly removed this families’ children, except one who was in the arms of the mother.

They literally tortured the children in the Indian Schools. Forms of abuse were physical abuse, psychological abuse, and sexual abuse. I heard the stories from their own mouths, the pain evident after 60 years. The government schools were often run by christian churches, yet they were prisons to these children. Houses of horror. One elder who I spoke with said there was severe punishment for speaking their native language. He did so, at one time, and in the dead of winter was taken outside and was told to put his tongue on the metal fence post and to keep it there.

The heartlessness was beyond what kind, loving people would do. And yet, it happened all over the United States and even in Canada. I have spoken to Native People in Canada who told the stories, too. Once, when I was on my way back to Washington from Florida by Greyhound, we stopped in North Dakota and changed buses. There was a big tall cop there (I am 5′ 1 and 3/4″) and he just had it in for me. I was in my 50s then, and he was disrespectful and verbally abusive to me, and he asked for my ID and of course it said: “Spirit Eagle.”

I can tell you that prejudice is alive and well, as is ignorance. This degradation had grave consequences for Native Culture. In the last thirty years, or so, Native Americans have been speaking out, and taking their power back, it is good to see. Every inch of ground in the United States was first walked upon by the Native American people, and the land was sacred to them. They understood the Gift of Life, for all Beings on the planet, human and animal, and the land and waters, itself.

The best exercise I have found, is to look within, at our own souls and into our Hearts, for the answers we all seek, regarding what it truly is to be a Real Human Being.

AHO Mitaquiasi. (All My Relations.)


**If you are reading theOrcasonian for free, thank your fellow islanders. If you would like to support theOrcasonian CLICK HERE to set your modestly-priced, voluntary subscription. Otherwise, no worries; we’re happy to share with you.**