Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness
Stewart Indian School -
Carson City, NV, May 24, 2009
Saying the Unsayable at the Stewart Indian School Visit
The 100 Eagle Feather Sacred Hoop
is carried in to begin the day. The history of the Stewart Indian School in Carson City, Nevada stretches from 1890 until 1980. It spans the heart of the boarding school times and reflects the fade out of the boarding school era that took place from about 1970 until 1980. The school opened on December 17, 1890 with 37 students from local Washoe, Paiute and Shoshone tribes and three teachers. It would soon go on to include students from Hopi, Apache, Pima, Mohave, Walapai, Ute, Pipage, Coropah and Tewa peoples.
In its day, Stewart Indian School was a non-reservation federal boarding school later run by the BIA. It had responsibility for the Walker River Reservation from 1897 to 1908. In 1925, it merged with the Reno Agency to form the Carson Agency. The school was successively supervised by the Carson and Western Nevada Agencies until it closed in 1980. The site is picturesque and maintained quite well. A number of the buildings are boarded up and some are being refurbished.
Michelle McCauley sings
the Shoshone Flag Song. The Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness made its visit to Stewart on a warm and sunny late spring Sunday. Before the day was out, about 100 people would participate in ceremonies, listen to an overview presentation about historic and intergenerational trauma by Don Coyhis, and maybe most importantly, listen to each other speak about their own remembrances. They would slowly begin to speak about the unspeakable, which is the start of healing from the negative parts of boarding school times.
Michelle McCauley sang the Shoshone flag song at the opening and her husband carried in the Wellbriety Forgiveness Staff. Melba Rakow gave an opening prayer. The Red Hawk Warriors Drum, made up of Marvin Hand, Monty Williams, Elmer Atlookan and Jeff Davis, brought the heartbeat of the earth into the event with their traditional songs. Site coordinator Sherry Rupert introduced speakers and provided continuity throughout the day.
The Red Hawk Warriors
Drum Sings an Honor Song. When community sharing began, it became clear that people had a lot to say that perhaps hadn’t had permission before. A gathering like this grants permission. Linda Melero is an alumna from the class of 1966 and is working on a video project. She shared her experience of interviewing Elders. She said she did not understand why the Elders would clam up and not speak about certain things any further. After hearing Don’s presentation, she said she began to realize the Elders’ inability to share their worst experiences are a result of historical boarding school trauma.
Thelma Delorme went to Stewart in 1941. Thelma remembered that her experiences weren’t bad. However, she recalls her grandfather and others being sent to the Federal Prison at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay if they did not allow their children to be taken to the boarding schools. She remembers her grandfather spoke about being put in the dungeon at Alcatraz––in the black hole, he called it. He would tell her that the only light that shone through was light from a keyhole in the door. She also recalls stories of fingers being chopped off for speaking the Native Language.
Participants share their experiences
of the boarding school times. Buck Sampson is a 1968 graduate from Stewart and has ancestors who all went to the boarding school. As a 1968 graduate, Buck left right at the beginning of the transition made by all the historic boarding schools from the abuse begun in 1879, to the beginning of respect for Indian ways that slowly took root by 1980. Buck talked of his experience as well as the stories he heard from his father and grandfather.
When Buck graduated he had three scholarships in sports. He liked boxing the best. He says his mother told him that when she went to school at Stewart the counselors were sadistic. She told him they antagonized the children to fight amongst themselves. Buck said he invited people from the local community to come to today’s event. But he feels they are not ready to forgive. The response that he received from some was that there can be no forgiveness for what happened. The pain and memories are too deeply seeded.
All participants pray at
the Hoop late in the day. Marshall is another community member who shared his experiences. He recalls being a child and his parents leaving him alone many nights. For a young boy it was a traumatic experience. He remembers that his parents didn’t hang out with the Elders but chose to hang out with their white friends who taught them they ways of alcohol. He recalls that they would come home and get all dressed up to go out and party. He wondered if they were going to feed him. It was like he wasn’t even there. Marshall never understood back then that it was trauma caused from the boarding school that led his parents to behave that way.
Marshall was seven when he attended his first sweat lodge. He joined the military, and after 20 years of alcohol abuse came back to the Elders because of a vision out in the ocean of his grandmother’s face. Now, at 56 years old, Marshall has learned the Medicine Teachings and is returning to the culture as his way forward. “We now have doorways to the future,” he says. “We are stuck in our past and we don’t know how to bring stuff out. But there is a spirit world and our Ancestor’s footprints are in the sand. We cannot change the past but we can change the future.”
Arlene Austin is a community member who graduated from Chemawa Indian School in Oregon. She liked the school. She grew up in an alcoholic, violent home with no spirituality, but she began to find spirituality at Chemawa, she says. Ms. Austin says there is so much silence about discussing the historic times. She says that the Mental Health and IHS (Indian Health Services) are not equipped to handle intergenerational trauma. She also states that forgiveness is for us Indians to do––not for the white people. She wonders about the graves and the children that died at the schools. “Did anyone cry for them, did their families know about their deaths, was there a ceremony?” she wonders. Arlene thanked us for undertaking the journey and for talking about healing. She says, “Healing is starting to happen. It is courageous to forgive.”
The open sharing during the Stewart Indian School visit is the way to begin to tell the truth about the lie. The lie is that as Indian people we inherently have all the problems that we have. The truth is that we have a background of historic and intergenerational trauma––that’s where the problems come from. The truth is that healing is not only possible, but is actually starting to happen, as Arlene Austin said.
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