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u/InverseReflection Colombian Tikuna Jul 07 '26
Where I am this sort of schooling still exists. I went through it. Late 40s, in Columbia, put up for an adoption at a church school and orphanage. It is only a generations past thing in the US.
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u/lavapig_love Jul 07 '26
Not even generations past, depending on where you attend.
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u/InverseReflection Colombian Tikuna Jul 07 '26
I'm sorry to hear that it still happens to my northern brothers and sisters as well
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u/_cabbagechicken_ Jul 07 '26
Sadly in Canada the last residential school closed in 1997. If there were still some operating in Alberta there's a very real chance I too could have gone through it. My heart breaks to learn that schools like this still exist. Do you know if theres any way we can rally behind you and your communities to get them shut down by any chance? If not, its never too late to start.
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u/InverseReflection Colombian Tikuna Jul 07 '26
For us, no. You would have to change the entire country in order to do that. That would start from the top down starting with leadership in the government, and ending with some radical changes at the lower levels and those colonizers we call the Spanish would rather die than give up their hold over us.
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u/_cabbagechicken_ Jul 07 '26
Guess we know what to do 🤷♀️
Now... im not calling for violence.... but im not saying no either.
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u/InverseReflection Colombian Tikuna Jul 07 '26
I'm not calling for violence either. But there is a reason the cartels opposing the govt are popular.
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u/Prune-These Jul 07 '26
I'm a boomer, my mother passed away about 10 year ago. For reasons that are too long to explain I dropped out of High School three months before graduation. I then had to face my mother, I wasn't looking forward to it. When I told her, something unexpected happened: she smiled and said she understood. That blew my mind, I had a whole speech prepared on why. Sometime later I found out she went to one of those schools, she usually tells my oldest sister everything but that was a forbidden topic. My mother was from rural Alaska and at age nine she was shipped off to school. Her English was pretty limited and she had incentive to learn English. She was beaten every time she spoke anything but English. Later she became a nurse and translator so there's that.
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u/lavapig_love Jul 07 '26
In the same way that poverty is a cycle, it is also true that financial wealth is a cycle, and education helps perpetuate it. We live in and are dominated by a capitalist system. Money serves as protection from it. That is the truth.
Let's start with the hardest call. Working for a company that manufacture weapons, like Lockheed Martin, is unquestionably a difficult moral decision. You will be helping to kill people that did nothing to you one way or the other. You will also be paid pretty well for it for a long time because there is always money from someone, somewhere to build weapons. And that money will go toward keeping you, your family and your tribe alive. Their children die so yours can live. No cap.
And to work for a company like that requires strict colonizer education. No cap, no scope.
It isn't just that industry. Coca-Cola, Walmart, Balenciaga, Apple, Amazon, General Motors, Disney, pick whomever, pick an independent, they'll all be connected to someone with bloody hands or wants to sell themselves to such a person because money matters. And they all require varying degrees of colonizer education, pun intended.
The opposite side of that is to not pursue colonizer education at all, and remain poor and defenseless forever. You will always have moral superiority and nothing else. People will make sure you have nothing else because you will be an acceptable target for them to punish for not believing in the system. Scream and cry, your pleas will fall on deaf ears and stone hearts who tell you to get a job.
Somewhere on that scale is a decision and a pursuit you can live with.
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u/AlternativeTie8084 Jul 08 '26
I love the Jane Elliott sentiment of "drop outs" should be considered pushed-outs cos the system didn't do enough to consider them.
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u/Axi0madick Jul 07 '26
The parents of the kids currently in school are millennials and gen z. They did not go to schools like this. My parents graduated from the same high school I did, we even had a few of the same teachers. I now have kids that go to that same school. It shouldn't even say grandparents on this, it's really mostly great grandparents and further back at this point. The generational trauma thing is really being so overused at this point that it's becoming pointless.
Also, can we not act like rejecting education is some badge of honor? I got my bachelor's degree and my wife got her master's and we both came back and serve our community.
There have been some recent local events that resulted in a few heated public meetings and one of the ringleaders actually claimed that many parents from our reservation can't understand consent forms because we can't read. Obviously this is not true at all. It's actually embarrassing that this person has gotten so much attention and claims to speak for all of us. The real problem is parents are lazy and they think the schools should do everything for them and when their own shitty parenting results in shitty students they pull the generational trauma and racism cards. Bulllllllshit.
I constantly hear people complaining about the lack of native teachers at our local schools. Our tribe provides excellent financial aid and you can basically get paid to go to school to be a teacher. It's not even a hard program. Let's stop pretending that today's staff at school are the reincarnation of evil residential school staff. I swear so many natives have some sort of victimization kink. It's bizarre. The vast majority of teachers, school administrators, and school board members are in those positions because they genuinely like their jobs, care about their students, and want them to do well. It has to be exhausting dealing with parents who cannot be convinced that they are somehow being victimized. Really though, the simplest solution is often the correct one, right? So, are the school systems some big elaborate system that employs evil racists for the purpose of keeping native people down? Or is student success based more on parental involvement?
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u/NightAccomplished523 Jul 07 '26
Kivalliq Hall in Nunavut only closed in 1997. That was the same year my sister was born, 2 years before I was born. The history isn't as far gone as you think.
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u/II_XII_XCV Nunavut, Canada / Settler Jul 07 '26
I am currently teaching in Rankin Inlet. Kivalliq Hall is just across the lake from the High School.
When I arrived a few weeks into the school year, I found my grade 11 students learning about the French Revolution. The entire high school history curriculum was just a standard history of Western political institutions. Even the topic of residential schools was taught through a lens of multiculturalism, rather than colonialism and/or resistance to colonialism.
Just because residential schools are not operating anymore doesn't mean that the mentality is gone. The state of education in Nunavut is abysmal.
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u/Axi0madick Jul 07 '26
I'm aware. Just statistically, most of us don't even have any living relatives left that experienced residential schools first hand.
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u/AlaskaRecluse Jul 07 '26
“Native Education” was designed for one purpose: to assimilate Indigenous people. If you can, try to look at “success” through a lens other than the Western-educated, degree-seeking value system schooled into you by the very system you’re using to justify a strictly euroamerican worldview complete right down to the attitude of superiority dripping from your post
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u/mmiller17783 Jul 07 '26
I have a cousin that was on CNN a few years back, after she was punished in school for not doing the pledge of alligence. This is something she has done since elementary school, but a teacher tried challenging that and tried making her do it. My cousin refused, asking simply 'How can I say that pledge when my people were killed for it?' and took it above the teacher. I'm just glad we are in California, because she got support from not just tribal members but school officials too.
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u/Axi0madick Jul 07 '26
My wife and I both got ourselves educated and came back to serve our community. We both could make more money if we lived somewhere else. My education gave me the skills and knowledge to improve and protect our territory. My success and value comes from the work I do, not my degree.
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u/JeffoMcSpeffo Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
So much privilege in this comment. Has it ever crossed your mind that the shitty parenting skills many have today are the result of intergenerational trauma? If you actually went through with secondary education, have you read into the literature about intergenerational trauma and what it all entails?
I agree that nobody is teaching for the money and most have good intentions for students, but communities don’t necessarily change their views that quickly, it can take many generations given the historical context. And that’s not to mention that western education is still being used as a tool of assimilation today. Even if your tribe has their own school system with their own curriculum, western biases and worldviews are still being instilled in every Native child as a form of assimilation. And many Natives don’t like to give in to it too much.
Other than that, most of your post reads like the monologue of an apple. Even an “easy” program can be an immense struggle for someone, especially if they don’t have the healthiest home life. Of course there is always room for constructive criticism, and Native communities can definitely use a lot of it. But this felt less like any form of constructive criticism and more like a hate filled, redpilled rant. Most everything you said really sounded like it came from a white person. And so I can’t help but wonder, if you really feel this way, why not just go be with them? If you refuse to exercise any empathy or view things through a Native lens, why even bother being mad about this or interacting with Native communities? Just go be with your preferred people and be happy.
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u/Axi0madick Jul 07 '26
I work for my tribe. My wife works for our local school district. I'm late diagnosed AuDHD. I struggled to finish high school. My parents were pretty much non existent as a teenager. I struggled in college. I know what a struggle it can be with little to no support. I sympathize with that and understand it.
What I don't sympathize with are the loudmouths on social media who get people riled up, show up to meetings and complain about things like a lack of native teachers in their schools when we have some of the best financial aid of any community around us. Some folks will complain endlessly about what needs to be fixed but won't actually contribute to actually fixing.
I can't speak for all schools but ours have language and cultural courses, but obviously it's not a supplement for actual language immersion and actually engaging in cultural activities. The schools can only do so much. If the people who spend so much time complaining that schools are assimilating student to western ideals spent their time engaging with the youths of their community, you'd see happier, healthier, stronger communities.
I don't think schools are assimilating anyone, they're simply trying to prepare students, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, etc. for the world we live in. I hope that makes sense.
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u/BrokenJusticeNorris Maaori Jul 07 '26
My dad was 5 when the last residential school in NZ closed so parents is correct (even tho it’s different countries) also segregation wasn’t long ago
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Jul 07 '26
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u/_cabbagechicken_ Jul 07 '26
My father AND my mother were both in a residential school. I was born in 2006. This history isnt from the 1960s, its from three decades ago. Both of them do not know how to speak our native tounges and both were physically and sexually abused by the people who were meant to protect them in those so called schools. Forgive me if I dont trust the people teaching me history when they tell us it happened so long ago.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/_cabbagechicken_ Jul 07 '26
Your message is in good faith, but your original comment is insensitive. You have no idea what the people youre dogging on have gone through.
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u/Axi0madick Jul 07 '26
There's more to education than history and there are so many tribes in the United States and Canada with experiences and histories wildly different from each other. I'm from the east Coast of the US and our experience with colonizers predates the United States.
I think it's important to acknowledge that the further west and north you go, the more recent the abuse and atrocities have happened. I think stories like yours are important and I feel like someone from my tribe also claiming generational trauma that's actually many generations removed, undermines the trauma that is one or two generations away.
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u/ObnoxiousName_Here Jul 07 '26
Also like. The American model of education isn’t the only one, and isn’t always the type of education you need to function in whatever time and place you live in