Another Neurodivergent Queer Writes A Blog!

Mass graves have been found in Canada, with surely others still to be found, and nearly all in the US remain to be located, but they are surely somewhere. What was done to these human beings in the name of ‘civilization’ is shocking. Be prepared: this involves the worst potential of our species. If you experienced childhood abuse of any kind, please take care.

This is another awful part of US history, but we must allow ourselves to take in these horrors: just like a repressed trauma in an individual, repressed trauma in a collective leads to further tragedy and repeating the same traumatic events again and again through generations but also throughout one’s own life.

I can be more concrete. For the nine-or-so months I spent repressing a sexual assault, everything else felt like a rape, even the university not refilling the chalk for the boards in their study rooms; I even tried to form a relationship with the person who assaulted me in order, I realized later, to turn what happened into one of those Hallmark ‘I knew he was The One right away’ love stories.

A trauma repressed is a trauma given space to grow infinitely. Healing is only possible after acknowledgement. In any report about the Indian Boarding Schools, you’ll hear or read of a person saying they’d never let themselves think about what they went through: this is what is so profoundly important about the Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, touring the country on a “Road to Healing,” where she’s inviting local communities to speak on the traumas of the boarding schools.

Here’s a primer, from The Washington Post’s Post Reports podcast: “The Scars of Native American Boarding Schools” addressing the experience of being a child at these schools, of course, but also of those parents who were forced to send their children in exchange for rations, and those parents who chose to send their children, having been misled about the nature of these institutions.

Here’s a scrolling presentation of evidence from The New York Times: “Native American Boarding Schools Took Children’s Culture, and Hundreds Died” [gift article link, so hopefully free to you]

And here’s a major source of the NYT article, a history of US Indian boarding schools by The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. They’ve also put together a research database, on the landing page for which they emphatically advise that this material “may trigger secondary trauma or PTSD,” because what happened at these places is truly beyond belief.

Here’s a pdf of a report released in May 2022 from the Department of the Interior: “Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative: Investigative Report”

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One thing to be done immediately: The United States must sign on to the UN Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) [link to un.org] (and here’s a slick pdf for the UNDRIP). Contact your congressional representatives and make them know that this matters to you. Urge your friends to do so as well. If your elected representatives come to realize that their continued re-election rides on their support here, it’ll become their first priority.