180: What We Did To Native American Kids - Federal Boarding Schools

In our book, we talk about the federal boarding schools that were just for Native American children - and by boarding schools, we mean that the U.S. government rounded up Native children over the course of 150 years (!!), separated them from their parents and often took them hundreds of miles away… and often times, those kids never came home.

If you haven’t heard that story (which is fairly common, given the erasure of the Native narrative in this country), this episode is for you, because without understanding this history, you won’t understand how we are where we are now with over 570 federally recognized Native American Nations within the United States - while most people we hear say they’re not sure they’ve ever spoken with a person of Native descent.

For more, go buy our book, Dear White Women: Let’s Get (Un)comfortable Talking About Racism, and make sure you’re following this podcast for more!

What to listen for:

How last year, Deb Haaland, who is the first Native American woman to hold a Cabinet office position in the US government (she’s Secretary of the Interior), commissioned the first ever report on the Federal Indian Boarding School System
How the government coerced Native families into sending their kids (it really wasn’t a choice), and the (horrific) conditions the children experienced in the schools - including the discovery of many unmarked graves.
What questions have yet to be answered, what you can do about sharing history like this including in your kid’s schools, how you can respect the Native lands you currently live on, and participate in reparations

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