US President Joe Biden delivered an historic apology October 25 for his country’s Indigenous boarding school system. It was a first for any American president, and came 16 years after former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s apology.
“The federal Indian boarding school policy and the pain it has caused will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot, on American history,” said Biden. “It is horribly, horribly wrong. It’s a sin on our soul.”
Biden then thanked Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, America’s first Indigenous cabinet member. Her years of work toward this apology were in part motivated by the recent discovery of unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, BC.
The following day, on October 26, Rear Admiral Mark Sucato of the United States Navy, presented an apology to the Tlingit people of southeast Alaska for the 1882 bombardment of the village of Angoon.
According to the oral and written histories of the Tlingit peoples, the US government claimed that Tlingit fishermen were holding a white whaling crew hostage on a fishing vessel, demanding 200 blankets in compensation from the whaling company for the accidental death of their shaman Tith Klane in an explosion onboard the vessel. The whaling company refused their demand and called on federal support for a naval intervention. Government authorities felt the Tlingit weren’t owed anything and in turn, fined them 400 blankets for the supposed insurrection, and ordered them to return to work.
Historical accounts state that the Tlingit struggled to come up with the 400 blankets they needed to keep warm during harsh winter months on the Admiralty coast. They delivered only 81, which prompted the US Navy to attack. Six children lost their lives in the initial shelling. Once the shelling destroyed the village, sailors landed and burned what was left of the clan houses, food caches and canoes. As a result, an unknown number perished of starvation and exposure.
According to Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, living conditions got so dire that village Elders “walked into the forest” – meaning they chose death, so that remaining supplies could sustain younger survivors. Tlingit historical accounts maintain that the boat’s crew likely remained with the vessel out of respect for their dead leader. The descendants of those who perished in the atrocity maintain that the Tlingit would have never demanded compensation so soon after their leader’s death.
“The United States Navy recognizes the pain and suffering inflicted upon the Tlingit people, and we acknowledge these wrongful actions resulted in the loss of life, the loss of resources, the loss of culture, and created and inflicted intergenerational trauma on these clans” he said, in a live-streamed ceremony from Angoon. “The Navy takes the significance of this action very, very seriously and knows an apology is long overdue,” said Rear Admiral Sucato.
Tlingit leaders were apparently stunned when they learned of the proposed apology during an online conference. Elder Eunice James of Juneau, a descendant of Tith Klane, said she hopes the apology helps her family and the entire community heal.
That October day in the gym of the Angoon High School, clan Elders spoke, led by Deisheetan leader Dan Johnson Jr. “None of us in this room will ever forget,” he said. “We will take it to our graves, we will teach it to our children. For our house we accept the apology that you have provided.”
Then he added, “You can imagine the generations of people that have died since 1882, who have wondered what had happened, why it happened, and wanted an apology of some sort, because in our minds we didn’t do anything wrong”
After a compensation settlement of $90,000 from the Department of the Interior in 1973, Angoon has held an annual memorial for the children killed during the bombardment. Every year leaders ask those in attendance if anyone from the US Navy has apologized. Angoon school teacher Shgendootan George, who grew up with this story, has taught students about the destruction of the village. His efforts were a principal part of the commemoration.
The Navy issued an apology a month earlier for the bombardment and burning of the southeast community of Kake in January 1869. It is expected they will do the same for the neighbouring community of Wrangell. The attacks were deadly escalations of a series of conflicts between the US military and Alaskan Natives in the years after the US purchased the territory from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million.
It is that time of year when we mark Remembrance Day. Being among those who have served our country, I have taken this day to heart over the years. But every time I wear the poppy, I think of late Montreal playwright David Fennario, who started the white poppy movement.
Fennario would point to the Cenotaph and other war memorials to explain how commemorative plaques have become smaller and smaller because there is little space left for new ones. He spoke about our soldiers’ valour, and of how we glorify war and its martyrs without a thought for the carnage it leaves to future generations. He described the women working in Canadian munitions factories, a large percentage of whom would later become fatally ill from chemical exposure. He explained how soldiers returning home would pass on their trauma to the generations that followed.
“How do you restore a human being? How do you restore a family? How do you restore a community who have been the target of annihilation?” asked Barbara Cadiente-Nelson, an Angoon teacher who maintained the memorial practice of the Tlingit people’s history.
Phil Fontaine, the former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, was one of the first to publicly decribe the abuse he experienced at the Fort Alexander Residential School in Manitoba. Fontaine maintains that Canada has had a “tremendous influence” on the American effort to face their own parallel history.
Fontaine said the US should launch its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Currently, there is a legislation before the US Congress to would establish such a commission. Deb Haaland has been working towards a “Truth and Healing Commission” that would document the history of boarding schools and spearhead government action.
During Remembrance Day commemorations, let us remember the Canadian war effort and the Indigenous veterans who served. More importantly, celebrate the efforts of Indigenous leaders and communities to foster life after war.