Dineh Jean Whitehorse: Boarding schools, relocation and sterilization

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Jean Whitehorse, Dineh, AIM West

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Watch live streaming video from earthcycles at livestream.com

Watch video: Jean Whitehorse's presentation begins at minute 25, after
Webster Arthur, Nez Perce, and Raquel Arthur, Pyrmaid Lake Paiute

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jean Whitehorse, Dineh from Navajo Nation, spoke on abuse in boarding schools, bias in children's literature, relocation and the sterilization of Native American women, during the American Indian Movement's gathering, AIM West, Nov. 21 -- 22, 2014.
Jean spoke on the boarding schools which were designed to strip the identity, family ties and the language of their ancestors from Native Americans.
"I still speak Navajo, that is what the government tried to wash out of our mouths," Jean said.
In boarding school, the goal of the school was to make Natives like whites. She said they were given a number in boarding school, and were not addressed by their name. She couldn't even speak to her brother at school. 
"There were no holidays. Our parents couldn't even visit us."
Then for Jean, like many other Native Americans, there was relocation to the cities. But the good part was she was in the right place at the right time. She was in the Bay Area in the time of the occupation of Alcatraz, she said.

Jean described how she was a victim of the United States secret sterilization of Native American women. The United States secretly engaged in sterilizing Native women when they were in IHS hospitals for other reasons.
After she returned home from the Bay Area to the Navajo Nation, she was treated for an illness at Indian Health Service in Gallup, N.M.
"Two years later I found out that I was sterilized."

Listen to more of Jean's comments at AIM West on Earthcycles in the video library.
www.earthcycles.net

AIM West Conference 2014 links at Censored News

Dineh Jean Whitehorse: Boarding schools, relocation and sterilization of Native American women

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/11/dineh-jean-whitehorse-boarding-schools.html

Lori Riddle, O'odham: Protecting sacred land

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/11/gila-river-oodham-lori-riddle.html

Nez Perce and Paiute: Water rights and Borders

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/11/nez-perce-and-paiute-water-rights-and.html

AIM West Panel on Racism, Mascots and Genocide

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/11/aim-panel-on-racist-mascots-and-genocide.html

Henry Dominguez, cofounder of Black Berets, speaks at AIM West

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/11/black-berets-cofounder-henry-dominguez.html

Live AIM West Day 1

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/11/live-aim-west-fri-nov-21-2014.html

Live AIM West Day 2

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/11/aim-west-conference-day-2-2014.html

Censored News

www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Earthcycles

www.earthcycles.net

Navajo Jean Whitehorse: Boarding schools, relocation and sterilization

The Occupation of Alcatraz offered Navajo Jean Whitehorse the best education
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com


SAN FRANCISCO -- Jean Whitehorse, Navajo, endured the US government’s boarding schools, relocation and sterilization. Today, she says the BIA unwittingly gave her the best education that money could buy; not by giving her job training in the San Francisco area, but by placing her near the Occupation of Alcatraz.
At the age of 19, it was the right time and the right place for Whitehorse to learn who she was as an American Indian.
Speaking at the 42nd Anniversary of the American Indian Movement, during the weeklong conference, Whitehorse described her own journey, beginning with the exile of her people, the Navajo or Dine’.
Whitehorse said when Navajos were forced on the Longest Walk, they were removed from their homeland for four years. The government returned Navajos to only ten percent of their land, and only did so because the government felt the land was worthless. Later, oil, gas, uranium and coal were discovered on Navajoland.
Whitehorse, from the Eastern Agency of New Mexico on the Navajo Nation, said she grew up with abuse in boarding schools. The “Board of Education was the ruler. It was to punish you. My whole boarding school experience was all about abuse.”
She said in those days, parents were not able to defend their children. “Back then, our mothers and fathers weren’t there to talk for us. They weren’t there to protect us.”
Next came relocation. Whitehorse was sent to the Bay area to learn a vocation, then was pressured to stay and work. During this time, she went to Alcatraz, two months after the initial takeover in 1969. This came at the time of Black Panthers and protests of the Vietnam War. San Francisco offered an education.
“I had to learn to survive.” From the very beginning, she wanted to go home, she did not know where she was. However, she was told that she was to learn a vocational skill. When she persisted to go home, she was told the BIA would get her a job.
“The longer I stayed here -- they kept me here -- I learned about myself, what it means to be an American Indian.”
Praising the young people who attended the AIM conference, Nov. 22-26, she urged Indian youths to learn their traditions, ceremonies and songs. “Learn your language, that is how you are going to learn to be strong.”
Whitehorse pointed out that Navajo elders say that when the people stop speaking their language, they will stop being identified as who they are as a people.
Urging young people to learn about their real history, she said it is important to know that the land of Navajos is held in trust by the US government and what that means in terms of natural resources.
Whitehorse studied law one year in order to make sure she understood federal Indian law. She discovered the secret of federal Indian law.
“I found out that it is not written to help us. It is written for Congress to use as they please.” She pointed out that Navajo elders are still being relocated because of the coal on their lands.
Besides being a target of relocation, Whitehorse was the target of another well-funded US government program.
It was “Native American sterilization, another genocide, another way to attack us.”
“Some of us were told, ‘You’re unfit to bring your own kind into this world. You’re uneducated, you’re on welfare. Your children are going to be on welfare too.’
“I only had one daughter when they did that to me. Sometimes I wish I had four or five children.”
“I’m very happy that a lot of families have little children,“ she said, urging parents to hold on to their children, and bring them up right.
“Make sure they keep their language.”
After boarding schools, relocation and sterilization, came self-determination.
But, she said, American Indian self-determination does not come easy.
“We have to work at it,“ she said, stressing the need to reunite and be strong. She said the future is in the hands of the youths.
The relocation programs were about removing the young people from the land, so the land could be seized for the resources.
Whitehorse said she stayed in the Bay area for four years, then went home.
“My education is very important to me. When I talk about where I’ve been, where I’m going, I always say, ‘I was here at the right time, at the right place, at the BIA’s expense.’ They sent me here, paid my way around, gave me money to stay. The more I stayed, the more involved I got with the movement on the island.”
Whitehorse said, "Stand up for what's right, even if you are standing alone."
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Listen to more of this presentation, along with a talk by Yvonne Swan, Colville. Recorded by Earthcycles: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/11027639

Watch Jean Whitehorse's presentations at the 2009 AIM West Conference.
Video by Mary Ellen Churchill. Filmed in San Francisco, California, November 23rd, 2009.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkIRkaBmmwo
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87C513-G_Xo&feature=related
Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtX7zVc6Zus