Palpable silence resonated through the Student Center’s overfilled auditorium Monday evening in response to the opening of “Chain of Sorrows,” EMU faculty member Kay McGowan’s new documentary about Native American boarding schools. The first light to pierce the black screen were two vitriolic quotes, the first from former President Andrew Jackson, the second from U.S. Army Captain Richard Pratt.
Both reflected the U.S. government’s strategy in dealing with the culturally and geographically marginalized Native American population: “All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the
Indian in him, and save the man.”
“I’ve had people say to me, ‘That didn’t happen,’” McGowan said in reference to the mandatory and notoriously oppressive schools. “It happened—180,000 Indian children went to the boarding schools in this country.”
McGowan explained that the schools were an extension of the centuries old genocide against the Native American people.
“The low point of our population was the year 1900. There were only 200,000 Indians in the United States,” McGowan said. “They had planned our extinction. They came this close to that happening. We’re one percent of the population in our own land.”
McGowan made the film with her twin sister Fay Givens. Descended from Mississippi Chocktaw and Cherokee, McGowan and Givens are passionately dedicated to spreading awareness about the genocide against Native Americans and the resultant trauma that has percolated from one generation to the next, a trauma that plagues their communities to this day. They hope their documentary will educate people who might otherwise be oblivious to their people’s tragic plight.
“It’s such a painful episode in the lives of Indian people,” Givens said. “We decided we’re going to use this film as an educational tool that we’re going to use all across this country and hopefully Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to tell people what has happened; to educate people who are going to work with Indian families—especially people in the social work field. It’s really important that they understand the impact that this has had.”
Working alongside McGowan and Givens as “moral support,” were Native American descendents Sue Maralit and Lucy Hunter. Hunter’s interest in the schools began when she learned how they had affected her own life.
“I found out five years ago that my grandmother went to the two boarding schools in Michigan: Holy Childhood of Jesus which was run by the Catholic Church in Harbor Springs and the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial School,” said Hunter.
Hunter’s story epitomizes the intergenerational trauma that continues to burden the Native American community.
“I grew up in a very dysfunctional family with an abusive mother, alcoholic aunts and uncles, and I never knew why,” Hunter said. “I was told I was ugly by my own mother. She was not a loving person. She never hugged me or told me she loved me. I was called all kinds of names. I was told I was stupid. I always felt inferior to everybody. My self-esteem was nothing.”
Hunter lived the majority of her life oblivious to why she had been treated so callously, why even as a child, she was shown no love—not even from her own mother. When she found out about the boarding schools, she began to understand her personal history with unprecedented clarity.
“I met somebody who told me about the boarding schools. I wondered if any of my relatives had gone to one. I called my aunt and asked her and she said my grandmother had. I’m 50 years old and I’m just finding out this big secret,” Hunter said. “It answered all the questions I had about the cruelty, the
abuse.”
Maralit explained that children descended from Native Americans who attended the boarding schools, were
born orphans.
“There’s a poem, ‘How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?’ and it talks about the kids that are the product of these parents that grew up in boarding schools,” Maralit said. “They didn’t have parents because they’re parents didn’t have parenting skills.”
The generation, or generations, forced to attend the schools were deprived of proper parental care and affection. Instead they were raised by morally bankrupt institutions charged with the task of violently eradicating their sense of cultural identity and pride. This emotionally crippled many of them. As a result, they never learned how to be loving, even to their own children. Testimony of this was abundant both in the documentary and in the audience.
“Right after I found out I went through about a year of depression,” Hunter said. “I was grieving for everything that I was denied. I was denied a loving mother. I was denied my culture. Everything. Because of those boarding schools. That’s why I’m so passionate about it.”
Kyle Hattie, a junior at EMU studying anthropology, is a Native American who attended the screening.
“I thought it was really great,” Hattie said. “Kay is my teacher and a really great friend. I’ve actually had family that went through the boarding school and I don’t know too much on that so it was good to [hear] a first hand experience.”
The documentary was filled with heartbreaking testimony of the reprehensible conditions of the boarding schools and the long lasting cultural effects of the oppression. For some it was overwhelming.
“I cried a little bit. It’s tough to hear the horrors, the abuse, the punishments,” he said. “The U.S. government tried to destroy our culture. The worst thing that came out of the boarding schools is that an Indian would go back to the reservation and he’d learn to hate himself and hate his people.”
“The poorest Indian reservation is in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and it’s no mistake that is completely surrounded by liquor stores,” Maralit said. “That is a plan. That’s not a coincidence. It’s part of planned genocide. Native American people are allergic to alcohol because it’s refined sugar. It’s not been in their diet before.”
One of the disturbing details found in many testimonies was the prevalence of sexual abuse at the boarding schools. Though many of the schools were administered by churches, it was quite common for Native American women to be raped or assaulted while attending the schools. Furthermore, secrecy was not necessary; the sexual violence was unofficially institutionalized.
“We had hundreds of thousands of Indian kids in Canada, in the United States, in Australia, that were sexually abused,” McGowan said. “Thousands of people must have known that was occurring and nobody came forward and said, ‘What are we doing? What is going on here? Why is this happening?’ That’s the tragedy.”
As more people spoke it became increasingly clear that this past still haunts modern Native American communities. They are still socioeconomically marginalized and still struggling to find prosperity in a land that was once theirs alone.
“It’s worse than you can even imagine. It’s unbelievable the way they’re living,” Hunter said. “They have no running water, no electricity. Elders have no heat. They need to go to the dentist. They can’t do anything because they have no money.”
Maralit succinctly explained the effects on the emotional health of the communities.
“The suicide rate is four times higher in a Native family that any other cultural or ethnic group,” she said.
The hope of all involved with this film is that it will help these communities heal from their pasts in order to improve their present and future.
“In order to heal, you have to talk,” Hunter said. “You have to share your story instead of holding it inside, like all of these poor 80-year-old people are doing. The last five years, there’s been a huge movement in Indian country where people are starting to share their stories and they’re starting to heal.”
“After I show the movie I’ve decided that I want to tell [the audience] the next time they see a Native who’s drunk, instead of making a comment, I want them to stop and think about why they’re that way. I want them to think about the boarding schools and what the government did to my grandmother. Have some compassion. “
The boarding school in Mount Pleasant is due to be demolished. As the evidence of this tragedy begins to disappear, as buildings are torn down, documents are lost or destroyed, and survivors pass away, it becomes paramount to document exactly what happened. Otherwise, people might someday forget. That
would be a harmful to our entire society and an injustice to the Native American people who suffered
previously and those who continue to suffer today.
“I just don’t want people to forget, to think that none of this happened, that we weren’t here,” Hattie said. “I mean we’re still here. We’re struggling but we’re still here. Keep the traditions alive.”
