By ARIADNE WILL
Sentinel Staff Writer
The Assembly voted Tuesday night to support The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act.
U.S. Senate Resolution 2907 states that the Truth and Healing Commission will investigate “the impacts and ongoing effects of the Indian Boarding School Policies” and will also develop a series of recommendations on ways to protect unmarked graves associated with residential schools; support repatriation and identify the tribal nations from which children were taken; and stop the removal of Indigenous children from families and tribal communities by state social service departments, foster care and adoption agencies.
The resolution passed by the Assembly supports the work and conversations the Truth and Healing Commission would be tasked with, and encourages the commission to “come to Tlingit Aaní as a part of the commission’s search for truth and the process of healing.”
Assembly member Kevin Knox – who cosponsored the Assembly resolution with Rebecca Himschoot – said that passage of Senate Resolution 2907 would allow for community- and nation-wide conversations to continue.
“Sitka was a unique place in Alaska when it comes to boarding schools, and not all of it bad... but by and large it is something that has hurt a lot of people,” he said at the meeting.
Part of that unique history is the presence of what became Sheldon Jackson College. The school was the first residential school for Indigenous Alaskans in the state.
Presbyterian missionaries founded the Sitka Industrial and Training School in 1878. It was named for missionary Sheldon Jackson in 1909 and evolved over the years, adding high school and college programs until its closure in 2007, when it operated as a liberal arts college.
Mount Edgecumbe High School — which was opened by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947 — also operated originally as a boarding school for Alaska Natives. The boarding school later reopened in the 1980s under state management.
Two Sitkans spoke under public comment, including Rachel Roy, who told the Assembly that Indigenous people today are not far removed from those who were forced to attend residential schools.
“The generational trauma that this resolution is speaking to is very real and it’s very raw,” she told the Assembly.
Roy said that her grandfather, originally from Kake, attended Sheldon Jackson.
Richard Wein also spoke under public comment. He voiced support for the resolution and encouraged people to read primary documents to better understand what the schools were like.
Assembly member Crystal Duncan said that for many Native Alaskans, the sort of literature that others may seek out is part of a lived experience.
“We don’t have to look far to find primary sources – we are the descendants of them,” she said.
Both of Duncan’s parents attended Mt. Edgecumbe High School when it was a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. “We know it wasn’t all bad, but folks had pretty difficult experiences,” she told the Assembly.
Duncan also said the legacy of residential schools has contributed heavily to the nationwide crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous persons.
“We know historically that the first MMIP were victims of residential schools who never came home,” she said.
Duncan added that those who want more proof of how Indigenous people have been affected by boarding schools can look to how Indigenous communities are affected by violence.
“If you want data, you can explore victims of violence, including sexual violence. Look at incarceration rates, look at foster care numbers, look at suicide rates, look at homicide,” she said. “We know healing will affect all of those rates.”
Duncan said too that she is glad conversations on topics like residential schools are becoming more widespread.
“Ten years ago we weren’t willing to have those conversations publicly,” she said. “We’ve seen a lot of work over the last couple of years and I’ve felt energized by that momentum.”
