How We Can Actually Help Native Americans

I n the wake of a recent report on the harms of 19th- and 20th-century Indian boarding schools, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced a cross-country tour called The Road to Healing, during which survivors of the boarding-school system could share their stories. If healing is what Ms. Haaland wants, though, this strategy will likely disappoint.

The latest Interior Department report on life in these schools — where many Indian children were sent against their will but where many were also sent by their parents voluntarily — was prompted by news from Canada that hundreds of “unmarked graves” had been found last year at the sites of the boarding schools there. In response, more than 25 churches in western Canada were vandalized or burned. (Most of the schools were church-affiliated.)

Some important questions have been raised about the exact nature of these graves and what they tell us about the experience of the children at the schools. As one columnist for the Toronto Sun has noted: First, the technology being used is very inexact, and there is plenty of reason to believe there were graves (even individual ones) with wooden markers that have since disappeared. Second, some of the sites also have non-Indians buried in them and were used by the whole community. Finally, many of the children died of diseases such as tuberculosis. While one could argue that medical care could and should have been better, these types of deaths were hardly unusual at the time.

None of this excuses the abuse and neglect that did take place at these schools or the policy of removing children from their families and communities. But such questions should temper the moral panic that resulted in Canada and what reaction Americans might have to this news. We should also lower our expectations about what this investigation will resolve.

During a recent news conference, Ms. Haaland, the first American Indian to hold her position, noted that, “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.” She said: “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.”

The idea that exposing the abuses of boarding schools is the key to healing Native communities is often repeated, but evidence is slight. Most tribal leaders, health professionals, and observers of Indian communities blame boarding schools for the high rates of physical and sexual abuse on reservations. Writing in the New York Times, Joe Flood, a high-school teacher on the Pine Ridge reservation, explained the epidemic of suicide there:

Tribal leaders and experts are struggling to understand the recent suicide epidemic (specifics on many of the cases aren’t widely known), but there’s general agreement on one underlying cause: the legacy of federally funded boarding schools that forcibly removed generations of Native American children from their homes. Former students and scholars of the institutions say that the isolation and lack of oversight at the mostly church-run schools allowed physical and sexual abuse to run rampant.

Some media outlets seem to find it impossible to report about any social problem on an Indian reservation without mentioning these institutions. An NPR story on high levels of heroin abuse on reservations blamed boarding schools first. Once boarding schools were established as the primary reason for the problem, the reporter got around to explaining that “Mexican drug cartels are specifically targeting Indian Country. High unemployment on the reservations means many turn to trafficking and dealing. The cartels know the tribes lack law enforcement resources.” That seems to be a bit more of a direct connection than the idea that people are depressed and more likely to use drugs because they or their parents or grandparents attended a boarding school 25 or 50 years ago.

Similarly, there are other — and, frankly, more obvious — explanations for the substance abuse, violence, suicide rates, and dysfunction in these communities that the federal government, for obvious reasons, does not want to consider.

If you compare Indian communities to other impoverished areas in the United States, you’ll see similarities in terms of single motherhood, teen pregnancy, drug use, and violence. As Elizabeth Morris of the Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare told me: The core of the problem is “family disintegration,” caused largely, she says, by government subsidies. Her late husband was married once before, and he acknowledges that he wasn’t always there for his wife and children. But, says Morris, “It didn’t matter if he took off for three months on a binge. They had HUD housing, they had food stamps, fuel assistance, tribal health care. He wasn’t needed. If he thought his family wouldn’t have had food, he would have behaved differently. A man does need to feel needed. But the government took care of all that.”

The other immediate source of the problems on reservations is a failure of law enforcement to ensure the safety of individual Native Americans. You can blame boarding schools for the fact that physical and sexual abuse of children is higher than for any other racial group. But you cannot blame them for the fact that the tribal governments leave these children with their abusers or place them with other tribe members who have a history of abuse. And you cannot blame them for the fact that the federal government has looked the other way in the name of respecting Indian sovereignty. Ending intergenerational trauma does not just involve public airings of historic injustices. It means taking seriously the idea that Indians are American citizens entitled to the same protections as everyone else.