Native Communities in the U.S. Also Ravaged by the Havoc of Residential Schools

It is widely known that the church played a significant role in establishing colonial rule in North America. However, many Americans, including myself, have not been educated about the Christian-run boarding schools that forcibly enrolled Native American children and aimed to erase their culture. Fortunately, in recent years, the disturbing truth about these schools has come to light, both in Canada and now in the United States.

According to The Associated Press, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) has announced its plan to digitize 20,000 archival pages related to Quaker-run boarding schools. Similar to Canada’s notorious residential schools, the Quakers, as members of the Religious Society of Friends, separated Native American children from their families to indoctrinate them with Christianity and impose Western education.

The digitized documents, scheduled to be published next spring, will include boarding school records from Kansas, New York, Pennsylvania, and four other states, as reported by the AP.

It is important to note that Quaker-run boarding schools were not the only institutions that attempted to assimilate Native children. Episcopalians, Methodists, and Catholics also operated schools with similar objectives.

The NABS, led by Native Americans, is collaborating with libraries at Swarthmore College and Haverford College in Pennsylvania to make these files accessible to the public. This effort to provide historical knowledge sets a positive example of institutions acknowledging their wrongs and presenting a more accurate portrayal of the past.

Gaining more information about Quaker-run boarding schools will enable us to understand their operations and organization, which have largely remained hidden from the public. It will also help us grasp the full impact these schools had on Native American children and provide a platform to honor their experiences.

Celia Caust-Ellenbogen, an associate curator for Swarthmore’s Friends Historical Library, stated to the AP, “Those records can be really important for truth-telling processes and acknowledging and supporting the repair of past harms. By making these archival records available, by digitizing these records, we can help restore access to communities that were impacted.”

However, it is essential to approach these records with a critical mindset, considering that many of them were created from the perspective of the boarding school leaders rather than the children who endured brainwashing, abuse, or worse.

These records require us to deeply understand colonialism as a system that has been continuously reinforced throughout history, including through land invasion and the extermination of entire populations. It also operates by teaching children a distorted version of history, such as Christopher Columbus “discovering” America, and deeming the customs of Indigenous people as uncivilized or wrong, thereby erasing their humanity.

While the Quaker community can never undo the trauma and pain it caused Native American communities, it can initiate the healing process by acknowledging its history with honesty and striving for greater clarity.