[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 171 (Thursday, September 30, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6826-S6827]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      National Day of Remembrance

  Mr. President, I did not come to the floor today to speak to this 
nomination. I have done it previously. I will be voting against her 
nomination in just a moment, but I came to the floor today because this 
is a day of special recognition, September 30. And I am joining 
colleagues and many people across our country and in Canada, who are 
coming together on what we are calling a National Day of Remembrance, 
to give voice to the thousands of Native children who tragically died 
in Indian boarding schools across America and in Canada and to 
acknowledge and support the thousands of Native children who survived 
but are perhaps still coping with intergenerational trauma from these 
experiences.
  Today, we recognize and honor the lives lost of thousands of innocent 
Native children who died and remain lost to their communities and 
families in misattributed or unmarked graves across America and in 
Canada. We remember not only the children that were lost but not 
forgotten, but also the families, again, that are still impacted by 
this tragedy.
  Supporters like myself are wearing orange today because of the story 
of one First Nation's boarding school survivor, Phyllis Webstad. 
Phyllis helped to elevate this issue by recounting her own boarding 
school experience in Canada. She was just 6 years old--6 years old. She 
was living with her grandmother when she was taken away to a 
residential Mission school.
  You know, you think about what that means, to know that the child 
that is entrusted to you as the grandparent, that her education, the 
only education that she will be able to receive, will be away from the 
family, away from you at 6 years of age.
  Her family didn't have a lot of money, but somehow, her grandmother 
managed to buy a new outfit for her to wear on the first day of school, 
and that outfit included a new shiny orange shirt that Phyllis had 
picked out for this occasion. And when that little girl arrived at 
school, excited for her first day, she was shocked to be stripped of 
her clothes and her new orange shirt and forced to wear a standard 
uniform. And it was that moment in time that would leave an indelible 
mark on a young girl that would later start a movement across nations 
to remind us how innocent Native children were truly stripped of their 
identities and made to feel as if they didn't matter--they just didn't 
matter.
  The stories of those children who were taken from their families and 
sent away to these boarding schools need to be shared, and they need to 
be heard. And we collectively, as a country, need to support indigenous 
survivors in their healing journey.
  Our Nation's history in the treatment of Native American people is 
not an easy one to tell. It is not easy to hear or to acknowledge, but 
our discomfort in sharing painful, collective history probably pales in 
comparison to the lived experience and the realities that so many 
Native people continue to face today.
  For a long period of time, beginning with the enactment of the 
Civilization Act of March 3, 1819, there were thousands of Native 
American children who were taken from their families and taken from 
their communities, often forcibly removed. They were relocated to 
residential boarding schools. Some of the schools were perhaps closer 
to their home and some of those schools not so close to home and not so 
close to their families.
  The Federal Government made attendance compulsory for all indigenous 
children. Some of the children were as young as just 3 or 4 years old. 
I find that just incomprehensible, really, that a toddler--a toddler--
could be removed from their home and their parents.
  While Indian boarding schools were in operation, many enrolled 
children were forced into manual labor. Some worked maintaining the 
schools that they were in, and a number of schools lent the children to 
nearby communities or surrounding States to work, and they worked as 
domestic servants. They may have worked as farm laborers and at 
factories.
  While attending Indian boarding school, so many--so many--children 
were stripped of their Native identities and their culture. We have 
heard the stories. They were forbidden to speak in their traditional 
language. They were forbidden to practice their religious or their 
spiritual beliefs. They were forbidden to dress in traditional clothes, 
to wear their hair long or in braids. Native identity was replaced with 
a new identity that was viewed as being more acceptable to American 
society at that time. And by cutting a child's long hair, speaking to 
them only in English, dressing them in uniforms, shedding all parts of 
their indigenous cultures, our Federal Government really stole from 
these children their identities, who they are.

  The stories are told--they are legendary in many places--stories told 
about when a child disobeyed the rules, they were often physically, 
verbally, mentally abused, sometimes placed in solitary confinement 
like a prisoner. It has been commonly reported that numerous Native 
children who attended the Indian boarding schools were abused both 
physically and sexually. Many children died while at the schools.
  This is what remains unknown. We know that they died from exposure to

[[Page S6827]]

disease. We know that there were deaths due to accidents. There were 
many unexplained reasons--but the abuse that some suffered.
  In recent months, we have seen shocking evidence of hundreds of 
unmarked graves of First Nations children who attended Canadian 
residential schools and were found at former schools in British 
Columbia and Saskatchewan.
  Here in this country, the Department of the Interior has begun a 
comprehensive archival review of U.S. boarding schools that were here. 
This is going to be a very important and a very necessary 
investigation.
  Mr. President, I want to share with you the story of one young Aleut 
girl from Alaska. She was an orphan. She was 17 years old when she 
died. She died on May 6, 1906. She was a student of the Carlisle Indian 
Industrial School. This was a rural boarding school that is located in 
Pennsylvania.
  Sophia Tetoff was Unangas, Aleut. She was one of the many children 
who were lent from the Carlisle School to live with and work for other 
White families. So keep in mind, when she left Alaska, she was 12 years 
old. She is 12 years old. She thinks she is going off to boarding 
school, she is going to get her education, and she is lent from the 
school to live and work for White families in that area.
  Within her first year of being at Carlisle, Sophia would be placed 
with families in New Jersey, in Maryland, and in Pennsylvania, where 
she worked essentially as a servant. We don't know a lot of the details 
of those 5 years that Sophia spent at Carlisle, but what we do know is 
that after the near monthlong journey it took to get this young girl 
from her home village on St. Paul Island in the middle of the Bering 
Sea--think about that. You are 12 years old, and you are put on a ship, 
leaving your small village in the middle of the Bering Sea and crossing 
those waters to get over to the east coast--a monthlong journey, for a 
12-year-old.
  She spent the majority of her time living with various non-Native 
families, working as a servant, without her family or any familiarity 
to offer her any comfort.
  It was during her last placement that she contracted tuberculosis. 
She was returned to the school--not returned home. She was returned to 
the school, where she died a year later, alone in a school hospital. 
She died alone, 4,000 miles from her home and her family.
  This year, in July, Sophia's remains, along with the remains of nine 
Rosebud Sioux children, were repatriated from Carlisle, PA, back to 
their original homelands.
  Sophia was returned home to St. Paul for her final burial and her 
forever resting place, surrounded by relatives and people who loved 
her, even though most had never known her.
  It has been reported that Sophia was one of 188 students buried at 
Carlisle, and she was one of more than 100,000 Native children who were 
placed in an estimated 375 boarding schools across our country in an 
effort to assimilate Indian people.
  So just let that kind of sink in for a moment here, the sheer number 
of young, young children who were taken from their parents, from their 
families, their Tribes, and their communities who would never return 
home. This is just--it is heartbreaking.
  Carlisle was one of the first off-reservation, government-funded, 
assimilationist boarding schools that Native American children 
attended.
  We often hear the name BG Richard Henry Pratt mentioned when we learn 
of some of the atrocities that came from Indian boarding school 
policies. Mr. Pratt was the founder of the Carlisle School, and he 
coined the phrase ``Kill the Indian, save the man.''
  At that time in history, mainstream society largely believed that 
Native Americans were a problem that needed to be solved and regarded 
Indian people as almost less than human, savages who needed to be 
segregated or terminated. Pratt, however, was of another mind and 
believed in the noble cause of assimilating Native Americans, and his 
mission was to civilize Indians and assimilate them into mainstream 
American society. While Pratt may not have intended to be malevolent, 
the policies and practices that were carried out under his name and 
Federal mission tore thousands of Native families apart.

  The impact of these actions authorized by our government upon Native 
American people and cultures is something that we never can truly make 
whole. In many respects, Native cultures were gutted by the impact and 
loss of Native children, and that is something that we as American 
people need to acknowledge, learn from, and reckon with in order to 
support Indian self-determination and healing.
  In 1886, a government report about the progress of Indian boarding 
schools stated that isolating Native children from their families was 
the key. The report stated:

       If it be admitted that education affords the true solution 
     to the Indian problem, then it must be admitted that the 
     boarding school is the very key to the situation.

  It went on to say:

       Only by complete isolation of the Indian child from his 
     savage antecedents can he be satisfactorily educated.

  It wouldn't be until a 1969 Kennedy report that found Indian 
education had failed and was a national tragedy that the Federal 
Government would look to begin improving Native American education 
policies. I think Samuel Torres, of the National Native American 
Boarding School Healing Coalition, said it well when he said:

       If we can't name the trauma, if we don't know the extent 
     and scope of that trauma, we'll never heal from it.

  So as we are looking to the future and continuing our mission of 
educating people about America's painful past treatment of so many 
Native American people, I would ask that you consider remembering the 
names of the children who were lost, like Sophia Tetoff, and start 
weaving the names of these innocent Native children into our collective 
memory.
  If we are going to accurately account for our history and truly 
support indigenous people, we need to include Native children in this 
narrative towards healing--say their names, remember their Tribes, and 
acknowledge the survivors and the families who are still with us.
  Mr. President, before I conclude, I want to mention that, to mark the 
significance of this day, I have introduced a concurrent resolution 
designating September 30, 2021, as a national day of remembrance for 
the Native American children who have died while attending a U.S. 
boarding school and to recognize and honor the survivors of Indian 
boarding schools and their families.
  Now, my resolution is not meant to serve as a solution or an answer 
or even a long-overdue apology; it, instead, seeks to honor the lives 
of the many Native children who died in Indian boarding schools and to 
recognize, support, and honor the survivors and their families and 
acknowledge the grief and the trauma that our country created, we 
condoned, and we codified. So my resolution is meant to open a door to 
the conversation and congressional recognition of the atrocities that 
our government contributed to and the impact that it has had on so 
many.
  I know we are approaching November. It is usually when we recognize 
National Native American Heritage Month, but I think it is important 
that we remember every day, not only today, all those who fought to be 
here, especially our first peoples in this country. I would encourage 
all to look at our resolution and support and recognize September 30 
for all of the Native American children who died while attending an 
Indian boarding school or survived the experience and are living to 
tell about it.
  We honor them, their Tribes, their parents, their families, and their 
communities.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.