Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness
Dr. Mary Belgarde speaks
about
the Boarding School Era. Dr. Mary Belgarde Speaks about the Boarding School Era
Dr. Mary Belgarde, a professor at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and an Educational and Sociocultural Specialist, was a presenter at the Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness event in Albuquerque, NM on May 31, 2009.
On Healing from the Boarding School Era
“My sense is that you have to come to peace with the boarding schools in order to become a whole person again. If you don’t accept those principles of recognizing, acknowledging, getting to that forgiveness stage and allowing yourself to grow from it, you never remain in harmony and balance. You can’t have anger, resentment, and grief going on and achieve harmony at the same time. My sense is that for most Native folks there are always the avenues that we learn from our Elders with regard to spirituality and ceremony that become very meaningful to allow this to happen. For the people who come from a Christian tradition, Christian ways might be a more appropriate step.”
“Healing is being able to feel whole again and to learn to let go of that anger. We can’t change history. It is always there. But you can let go of the anger and resentment and hopelessness and all of those kinds of things in some way. Part of the process of healing is to be able to forgive and stop the anger toward those that colonized or those who took away your right to be who you are. Unless you forgive and move on, you hold on to that and you don’t achieve harmony. You create your own self-hatred and your own sense of powerlessness by holding on to it. You have to find a way to let it go whatever it is. It could be personal counseling, ceremony in a Native tradition, or Christianity––it could be whatever is right for you.”
On Guilt and Apology
“Most non-Natives who took my classes or who take Native studies courses end up feeling guilty. The point is not to make them feel guilty. They didn’t do anything unless they are perpetuating the same behaviors––especially the superiority. If they continue to do that then they have something to apologize for. I don’t think they have to apologize for their forefathers.”
“One of the contexts that I put in my presentation in Albuquerque was that what happened was the result of attitudes and policies of that time. Even the first colonizers had permission from the King and the Queen, the Pope, and the government to go out and do Manifest Destiny, to conquer lands, and look for gold. During the Forgiveness Journey event some non-Natives were asking for forgiveness for their forefathers. I was thinking that we put them in such a difficult bind. In some ways, that desire from non-Natives to make it right for Native people has to come from a different place because they didn’t do anything themselves. I think it is the right thing when governments do a formal apology. I think that’s right on behalf of the country. But if we continue doing things that harm Natives in our current day laws it makes you wonder what good is the apology.”
On Education about the Indian Boarding Schools
“We have got to go beyond the textbooks. Most textbooks will have nothing written from the Native perspective. You have to go outside of the textbooks and you have to use other primary resources like oral stories and sharing from Elders. A lot of my college students didn’t know what took place in the boarding schools either, and never thought to ask their grandparents or their parents about it. Even for them it was a learning experience and they became very angry. Sometimes the parents and grandparents who experienced it didn’t want to talk about it. When they did, they would end up crying so it became a healing process for them as well.”
“The boarding school era should be recognized and approved as part of social studies in language arts curricula in all schools, both Indian and non-Indian. Most histories start in 1492 in text books but they have very little information, a short paragraph, a page at best, on the boarding school era. It’s not in state standards or benchmarks. It’s not in teacher education programs so teachers don’t know how to address it. As a result, we never learned it in school. Even Native students didn’t learn it in school. They knew their parents went to boarding school but they couldn’t probe too deeply about what experiences they had.”
— From an interview by Richard Simonelli on June 4, 2009
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