The morning opened with the usual compliment of hassles. We were given a nice ballroom-type room to use, just off of (what I think was) the barracks. The sound system was supposedly disconnected for repairs, necessitating the unpacking of our own equipment. The ceiling-mounted projector still worked, but the only connection it offered was a small port hidden near the baseboard in back of the room. This meant that to use the projector would put the computer out of the range of Don's wireless slideshow-clicker, and too far back to access the speakers. So we started setting up and calibrating our own equipment for that, too.
I say that the sound system was supposedly disconnected because there woman in charge of the building was pretty put out that we were there at all, and wasn't too subtle about it. Marlin overheard her making what he described as "racist comments" and she was incredibly annoyed when I asked for help finding the projector connection. When we'd looked at the space last night, it was being used to host a wedding reception that clearly had some form of sound system. If hooking up the microphones merely involved flipping a switch, I wouldn't be surprised if she neglected to mention it.
She'll be mentioned again, so let's give her a name. How about... Mrs. Pants?
The ballroom, now set up with tables and fancy glasses, began filling up nicely. Raven started the day off, using her unique position as a non-military resident of the complex: "I'm just a spouse, so no one can stop me. I'm not going to lie!" (Teddy, her husband, is some kind of officer and might have limits placed on what he can say.) Raven emphasized the amount of pre-planning Pratt did before starting the school. He knew that it would be important to objectify and dehumanize the children, and knew the psychological importance of uniforms, cutting hair, and renaming. The very first building that was constructed was the prison for runaways. Once that building was constructed, he began his legal kidnapping -- every other new building was built by the children. In short, they were slave laborers used to build their own nightmare.
A note on the cutting of hair, which remains a major grievance to this day. It can be hard to imagine the importance of this act; personally, my white perspective led me to simply disregard it for the first week or so. "Hey, free haircut," I said. Actually, the cutting of hair was a three-pronged attack. First, it made the children look alike and thus made it easier for the teachers to accept inhumane orders: you weren't hurting a specific child, just one of those innumerable Indians. The second prong was aimed at specific tribes: it was a cultural mandate that hair only be cut during times of extreme grieving. I have heard that some people follow this to this day, shaving their heads if a family member dies and under no other circumstances so much as trimming bangs. The forced haircuts acted both as a well-recognized violation and as a way of insisting that their previous lives were "dead." Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. The final prong was targeted at some woodland tribes, who used hair braiding as a spiritual lesson and meditation, not unlike the Christian rosary. As it was explained to me, strands of hair are somehow identified as representing either the body, mind, or soul. Only when all three are weaved together is strength obtained. This familiar lesson and meditative activity might have been a source of support to children, even while their actual bodies, minds, and souls were under assault; but Pratt was canny and had learned a lot about Native beliefs while fighting in the Indian Wars.
Raven also pointed out a nearby building that was the school's punishment house; it, too, had been constructed by unwilling children. (Ashburn House? My notes are unclear). She advised against checking it out if you believe in any form of lingering energy, karma, or space-memory. "Can you imagine," she asked, what must be left behind in "an entire building used for nothing but punishment?" I think I must have grown jaded by the stories I've been hearing; it took Raven's question to make me step back and realize how odd it is to have an entire punishment building. This was no side corner, or chair turned to face the wall in a classroom. Pratt knew he'd need a multi-story structure just to handle the endless waves of beatings.
They were children.
How could an adult do these things to a child? How can the teachers go home, have dinner with their families, kiss their kids goodnight, then get up in the morning to do it all over again the next day? What made that okay?
Pratt also realized the importance of keeping the children from trusting each other; from the first day, all punishments were chosen by other students, and no one was punished harder than a student who had chosen an insufficient punishment for a peer.
Raven ended by talking about her own past in the boarding school. She's not particulalry old -- certainly no more than 50 and likely less -- and still talked about being taken unwillingly from her family and held until she was considered tamed; she was not released from her boarding school until she was 19. She spent most of her life hating her mother for sending her to school; only recently did she find out the true story. Even within her lifetime, the government was still abducting Indians, just more subtly. Her mother was served papers saying that her children would be taken to "Indian schools" unless she appeared in court to say that their education was already provided for. The papers were served the same day as the court hearing. The court she was required to appear in was 1,000 miles away, and she owned no form of transportation other than shoes. The next day, she lost legal custody of her children -- that part of the process, at least, was done timely. The situation was never explained to the little girl being pushed into a strange car by strange men, and Raven hated her mother for decades almost as much as she hated the school.
Her goal in life is to make sure that this kind of treatment never happens to any of her children or their babies. That part that's most stunning about that statement is the reinforcement of the idea that this is happening right now. Today. The corrupt boarding schools of old are no longer in operation, but the world is full of people in June of 2009 who remember them personally and worry that they could return.
The rest of the morning went as per usual; and lunch was particularly enjoyable because our table quickly filled up with people wanting a moment of Don's time. The woman who had taken the prized seat right next to him seemed content just to listen, however. Finally, someone asked
if she had any questions or comments; she guiltily admitted that she'd accidentally walked in a few minutes ago and saw that there was a free lunch and everyone seemed to be eating. Her acquisition of the most sought-after chair in the room was due to a fluke: it was the first seat she saw when she walked in the room. I thought it was pretty funny, and Don seemed to appreciate finally sitting next to someone who would just let him eat his lunch.
Kitty also joined us at lunch. I somehow haven't mentioned her before, but she's showed up periodically throughout the journey. As I understand it, she's making a documentary about health disparities in minority communities. Every once in a while, she shows up and films an event. Today I got my first real sense of how driven she is; she long-ago realized I was the lowest-ranked member of the Journey totem pole. Despite the fact that we sat next to each other, she tuned out everything I said in the hopes of getting a good sound byte from someone important. I left a little miffed.
After lunch, someone talked about the "classes" that Pratt first instituted to justify calling his empire a "school." There were two classes, one for each gender. Girls learned to be servants, boys learned to load and clean cannons. That was it.
One woman apologized that her brother refused to attend. He is an elder of some standing, but he long-ago refused to ever forgive the school. When he was a young boy, the school decided to expand their gym facilities, which meant building over a burial ground. Some children were forced to do the construction; others, including himself, were made to dig up the bodies and relocate them by hand. Decades of nightmares have solidified his resolve to curse Carlisle until his dying day; he would not come today.
If you remember, Gentle Reader, we had an elder named Ozzie travelling with us for the first day or two of the Journey, way back when. He returned today to see us through to the end. It was about this time that I really started realizing how great he really is: a good speaker, a kind heart, and a good sense of humor, all back up the tremendous strength he has gained from overcoming personal obstacles and alcohol. As he tells it, the best result of his service in the Korean War is that he could use his uniform to get admitted to bars and other public locations. Without that, Indians were immediately shown the door. No, their money wasn't good enough. Only as a veteran could he take part in public life.
He also told a great joke about "a friend of his" staggering away from a bar late at night. His shoes were untied, and he had one foot on the sidewalk and one in the gutter, slowly hobbling forward. Suddenly a policeman appeared and said, "I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to come with me. You're clearly drunk." In response, the man burst into tears and ran forward to hug the policeman. "Thank you, thank you! I thought I was a cripple!"
If you somehow get the chance in your life to hear Ozzie tell it, I recommend it.
It happened to be fathers' day, and Ozzie ended his piece with a plea to fathers. He acknowledged how difficult it can be to show love or affection, particularly for men whose emotional growth had been purposely stunted -- either by schools or by parents damaged by schools. It's been one of his greatest battles in his own life, and he stressed how critical it is for every father to learn how to be affectionate. I can hardly imagine this goodhearted man being anything but kind, but I guess that just means that he won his fight and came out stronger for it.
One person got up and tearfully said that their grandmother didn't have any fingers; it had never once been discussed and they had only realized today that it wasn't a birth defect -- it was a punishment earned at school. Perhaps you remember the story of the woman from Minnesota; apparently that punishment had a precedent at Carlisle.
Sometimes, there's nothing more painful than connecting the dots that you never wanted to.
We also learned today that Carlisle set another precedent: the "crying tree." Apparently, students at many schools would secretly find a hidden tree that would be designated as the crying tree. It was a place to hide and vent your feelings, and it was a sacred trust. No matter the punishments or the rewards for snitching, no one ever betrayed someone sneaking away to the tree. It was a place without teasing or judgment, where kids of all ages went to weep until their last tear was spent.
One young woman stood up during the open mic and shared an unusual story. She wasn't Native, but felt that she could understand. At 15, her behavior was so far out of control that her mother signed her up for a behavior-modification center. It was supposed to be psychologically soothing, but as soon as the doors closed on the van, she was handcuffed and taken to a grim facility where the sound of screams echoed at night and rumors of sexual abuse were widespread. After two weeks, she was handcuffed again and sent to another facility in Costa Rica where physical punishment increased exponentially. She was denied permission to call home and her letters were torn up. She said she didn't know much about the boarding schools, but she knew was it was to be distrustful, to be imprisoned, to be scared, to be hurt.
It's possible that her story might have holes; after all, she WAS sent in for severe behavior modification. But even so, the fact that a parallel can be drawn so easily between the treatment of ordinary Indian children at school and the treatment of disturbed youth sent to brainwashing centers is striking, irregardless of the details of her story. After all, we've really been talking about prison camps all along, and treatment that would be innapropriate for criminals, much less little kids.
And the damage is clear. An elder woman showed her vulnerability by sadly reflecting: "We grew up not loving ourselves, because there was no one...[inaudible]." The tears drowned out the end of her thought. Another woman remembers how her mother sat down one day and taught her brother which graves to spit on. Many of the graves contained people who had died generations before, like President Andrew Jackson. This story, besides being a clear example of anger passing from parent to child, shows how long that poisonous hate can last -- she hated people who died before she was born, a hatred she must have gotten from her own parents.
The day ended with a walk to the cemetery: over 175 dead children whose bodies they never sent home. Historical markers peppered the road and paths the whole way; all dealing with the military heroes who had lived or trained here. The only mention of the Indian School I saw was a single plaque commemorating the athletic achievements of student Jim Thorpe, who won double golds in the Olympics. One wall of a building was devoted to the names and pictures of people associated with Carlisle. All were men, and Jim Thorpe was the only non-white person.
The local drum group escorted us over, carrying the big drum by straps and always playing. This is the only female drum group I have seen on our Journey; in fact, it is the only time I have ever seen an Indian woman play anything other than a hand drum. When I asked about this, someone wistfully told me that it was not the original way: gender roles are important in traditional society. However, since the local elders have all moved on without passing on the old teachings, tradition is changing. Everywhere, Indian culture is making a resurgence, but it's also more in flux than it's ever been -- some of the old ways have simply been lost, and there are voids which are being filled in with new ideas; thus, the women's drum that played the old songs for us. I leave it up to the individual reader to decide how this time of charge should be approached: some are wistful, some are hopeful, many fall somewhere in between.
Kitty's right-hand man, Aaron, did his best to interrupt the final ceremony in his quest for the perfect shot. Even though I was as annoyed as anyone else, I was also a little jealous. He seemed to be getting some good shots. I've gotten the hang of getting shots while staying the heck out of the way, but it'd be nice to get a close-up like his once in a while. But not to behave like him.
In the cemetery, Maria reported finding 8 graves in a row marked "Unknown."
There's not much I can say about the final ceremony in the Carlisle graveyard. It was the most moving graveyard service we've done, and the pains unearthed are some of the oldest and deepest-rooted ones in the Native American psyche. I'm hoping my video can do more justice than my words, but I doubt it: it was a beautiful moment and the tears shed under the central tree might do more good than anything else we've said or done.
As we were packing up, Mrs. Pants appeared again. She left her work behind to took us aside and humbly thank us for coming. Today, we did good.
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