Interior Secretary Deb Haaland helped to raise a healing totem pole in Anchorage, the nation's first dedicated to boarding school survivors.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland brushes a healing totem pole for Alaska Native boarding school survivors with a bough of cedar to bless it on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023.
“This is the first time in history that a United States cabinet secretary comes to the table with the same trauma that all of you have,” Haaland said. “I want you all to know that I’m with you on this journey. I will listen, I will grieve with you. I will weep and I will feel your pain.” There was the gauntlet, in which a naked child would be forced to run past a row of kids, who lined up to strike them with their belts – and if they didn’t hit hard enough, they would be punished too.
LaBelle says some were as young as 11 and 12. And because Wrangell was a small campus, the kids knew what was going on but never told anyone – secrets which darkened the rest of their lives. “Every single boarding school child that has died, their last thought was, ‘I want to come home,” Sam said.“Every single one of us has somebody out there,” Sam said. “There is so much pain in our soul, many of us even forgot where this pain came from.”
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