Echoes of a painful past is how one Alaskan who attended a native boarding school described the experience he says is still affecting generations of Alaska Natives.
. spoke at a panel discussion at the Alaska Federation of Native Convention in downtown Anchorage Friday.
Boarding schools have a long history in the state. Starting in the 1900s all the way to the 1970s, many rural Alaska Native children were forced to attend boarding schools far from their homes, sometimes out of state. Some suffered physical or sexual abuse, but panelists spoke about how the effort to assimilate Native children also stripped them of their culture and identity.
Theresa Sheldon, another panelist with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, encouraged the crowd to voice support for a bill that is currently in congress.would establish a commission to look into abuses at Federal Indian Boarding Schools. Sheldon said it would also require the commission to learn more about children who died while attending the schools.
“The investigation would locate and document all children still buried at or near boarding school facilities that are not documented, and their stories are not told,” she said.
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