Leonard Peltier's Testimony to Boarding School Tribunal

Written Testimony by imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier. Testimony read into the record by Dorothy Ninham, at the Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpNSa5vX1qY

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Dutch translation by NAIS

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin -- Imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier described when he was kidnapped from his family at the age of nine, along with his sister and cousin, in a statement read into the record during the Boarding School Tribunal here. 
Dorothy Ninham read Peltier's statement.
Peltier described when the men came for him as a child living with his grandmother. Peltier knew he was supposed to run, but he was curious. He watched as if he was in a trance. When he heard the word "boarding school," he wanted to run into the woods, but he didn't want to leave his grandmother, sister and cousin. He feared his grandmother would be taken to jail.
Peltier froze in place, even when his grandmother told him in Chippewa to run and hide.
Then he was taken away with his sister and cousin. He wanted to escape, but he didn't know where he was being taken or how to escape.
Later his cousin, Pauline, was placed in an insane asylum. The school said she had fallen and hit her head.
Peltier described what happened when he arrived at the boarding school. First, there were the buzz haircuts which made the youngest ones cry. Peltier was put in charge of taking care of a younger boy. Peltier was punished for not scrubbing him hard enough in the bath because the young boy started to cry from the scrub brush.
Peltier tried to escape and he and another boy made their escape across the thin ice of a river.
As night approached, it was cold, and they returned to the boarding school. They had to face the music, another haircut, 10 whacks with the ruler, and they had to wear oversized clothes and shoes to show the other children they were runaways.
After reading the statement, Dorothy Ninham said boarding schools set up children for the US military or prison.
"It seems that everything was geared for our people to go from one institution to another," Ninham said.
The boarding schools began identity theft. In Indian country that identity theft means taking our language, our culture and our way of life, she said.
Ninham said there should be a class action lawsuit against the US government and the churches because of what happened in the US boarding schools.
Listen to Peltier's detailed statement of being stolen from his family and his years in boarding school, read by Dorothy Ninham.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpNSa5vX1qY

“My crime’s being an Indian. What’s yours?”

In his autobiography My Life Is My Sun Dance, Leonard says:

“I know what I am. I am an Indian--an Indian who dared to stand up to defend his people. I am an innocent man who never murdered anyone nor wanted to. And, yes, I am a Sun Dancer. That, too, is my identity. If I am to suffer as a symbol of my people, then I suffer proudly. I will never yield.” 

Leonard tells us that when he was nine years old a big black government car drove up to his house to take him and the other kids away to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding school in Wahpeton, North Dakota. When they got there, they cut off their long hair, stripped them, and doused them with DDT powder.

“I thought I was going to die...that place...was more like a reformatory than a school...I consider my years at Wahpenton my first imprisonment, and it was for the same crime as all the others: being an Indian.”

http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/peltier/lp_silencescreams-091207/

Watch Tribunal livestream by clicking arrow below.
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Boarding School Tribunal
Day 3 Preliminary conclusions and testimony

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/conclusions-boarding-school-tribunal.html

More Testimony from Day 3: 

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/day-3-boarding-school-tribunal-watch.html

Day 2

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/watch-live-day-2-boarding-school.html

Day 1

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/day-1-boarding-school-tribunal-in-green.html

Peltier's statement

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/leonard-peltiers-testimony-to-boarding.html

Livestream videos

www.earthcycles.net

Preliminary Conclusions Boarding School Tribunal

Photo Brenda Norrell

Revitalization of AIM: Dennis Banks announced a walk across America for Leonard Peltier, beginning Feb. 2015, from Alcatraz to Washington DC

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News original live coverage
More testimony from Day 3: 
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/day-3-boarding-school-tribunal-watch.html

Boarding School Tribunal Green Bay photo by Brenda Norrell

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin -- During the conclusion of the Boarding School Tribunal on Friday, Dennis Banks spoke on the history and direction of the American Indian Movement.
"Revitalization, what does that mean? We need a shot in the arm," Banks said.
Banks urged the youths to take a role in defining the future of the American Indian Movement.
Banks said of the youths, "We have to let them step up."
Banks described the history of AIM across the nation. He said one goal of AIM must be staying away from alcohol and drugs.
Floyd Westerman and Vernon Bellecourt have passed away, and they should be remembered and honored, he said.
The tree of racism will grow if AIM doesn't combat racism. We need to combat racism, alcohol and drugs, he said.
"We have to do all that, plus keep moving forward."
Herb Powless said the story that Madonna Thunder Hawk's story of boarding school reminded him of his own mother.
"My father was born in 1886."
"My great-grandfather came from New York, that's where the Oneida people came from."
Herb's great-grandfather was Paul Powless.
Speaking of Russell Means and Dennis Banks, Powless said, "Russell and Dennis, I've seen them in action." Powless said he had seen them "duke it out" with the cops.
One of the Native women is now speaking. "The mission schools take from us, our futures, our children. Today they are robbing our kids from our beautiful ways, from learning how to greet the morning sun."
"It is very important that when you take from Mother Earth, that you must put down your tobacco."
"We have to feed them," she said of feeding the ancestors who have passed on.
"My mom made sure I learned this way."
It is the traditional ways that saved her.
"Our kids are getting suicidal. They don't have this, some of them don't know this."
"I just lost my niece, about a year ago. She was so beautiful."
With tears, she said, "I miss you my baby."
"They are getting to us, and they are still doing it."
She said after the meeting, people will go their own ways.
"We all have to remember it is our babies."
During the Friday afternoon session, Mike Forcia, Chairman of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, is speaking now.
Mike started up the AIM patrol after one of the men died. Every Sunday they would have a homeless breakfast. They also gave out personal supplies.
They were at the Indian Center, but now there is no place to do the homeless breakfast and a place to give out supplies.
Mike said there was a young man who was stabbed 19 times, and was taken to the hospital and lived. The AIM Patrol also helps the elders. This is the type of help they are giving.
"I've never considered myself a leader, I'm more of a helper."
Mike spoke of the tarsands and destruction. "They are destroying us."
"They just increased their carbon footprint."
"We need those plants and animals for our food, our clothing, our housing to survive."
"But the plants and animals don't need us."
Mike said, "I hope a lot of people in America and around the world see what happened in the boarding schools, what happened to us."
Mike said he can't speak his language today because of those boarding schools.
Delbert Charging Crow, Lakota, from Wanblee on Pine Ridge spoke.
The boarding schools and Christianity put a lot of fear in people.
In Rosebud boarding school, they decided he would be a minister at the age of 12. But it was clear that was not going to happen as he grew older.
Charging Crow said in 1972, the Rosebud boarding school apologized for the beatings, cutting the hair, and forbidding the speaking of the language.
He said, "Lakotas were warriors who were not afraid of death."
"Death is a good life for us."
"When we pray, we pray to the grandfather of the Four Winds."
Charging Crow said those that go on, come back to watch over us. The young ones come back again to try again, he said.
"When you get it right, you live to be old, like these gentlemen here."
"When you pass away, you come back as eagles," he said, thanking his grandparents.
"My great grandfather Crazy Horse picked up a stone and he wore it, it protected him from any harm," he said, describing how powerful the earth is.
"The Black Hills is the heartbeat of Turtle Island."
The protectors of Black Hills are fighting the bureaucrats over the Black Hills. He said there is a way to make the wasichus leave. "Go in with your shotguns, tell them they have 48 hours to leave." He said those wasichus should be forced to go on the Longest Walk.
Charging Crow said it is time to take over those million dollar houses.
"The Black Hills is ours."
He said there is cancer, diabetes and liver and kidney failure because of the poisoning of the water on Lakota land.
One man speaking now said that his only knowledge of his Native heritage is his adoption papers.
"I'm just here to help," he said of helping the AIM Patrol in Minneapolis.
"How do we bring back the American Indian Movement the way it used to be? I don't think we can. We can make it what we want it to be."
He said people are forgetting our children are the future.
On the AIM Patrol in Minneapolis, he said some nights are very long, there's not much to do.
"We're always thinking about our elders, those people walking around our neighborhoods."
"We're the original chapter of the American Indian Movement," he said of Minneapolis.
He said they are working very hard to have a positive image of the American Indian Movement.
Sometimes, he said Mike will go and clean peoples houses.
"These are the things that we are willing to do."
He said they are thinking of canoe races and other events. He said it is important to contribute to self preservation. It is important to do something today.
"I'm here for you, those who want to be the future leaders."
Robert Roche, former director of the Cleveland Indian Center, said the tribes aren't representing their own people, their own children.
"Without the American Indian Movement we wouldn't be having this discussion." Robert said there would be none of the laws today, including those laws protecting the children, and funding for necessary projects.
"We need the youths, we need the young people."
Robert spoke of the high rates of suicide, diabetes, and the low life expectancy.
What the AIM Patrol is Minneapolis is doing today, helping the elders, cleaning the houses, that is what the early AIM did, he said.
Robert brought a message of solidarity from Glenn Morris and Autonomous AIM in Colorado.
A 19 year old whose ancestors are from the Carolinas, is speaking now. He said a new Longest Walk should reach out to people in the east.
"What I'm hoping for is Indians across the country will reach out to each other."
He said there are gangs and drugs in Cleveland where he lives.
"It would be important to reach out to the youths." He hopes the AIM Patrols will spread out across the country. He said what would help the youths would be to see the AIM elders united and not fighting.
Jean Whitehorse, Dine' (Navajo) said that in the Bay Area, AIM West is alive.
"We talk about issues. We invite different tribes." 
"We do try and help our people."
She said in California, many tribes are still trying to get recognized.
"You're welcome to come and join us in November, at our AIM West Conference in San Francisco."
There will be a protest against the Redskins. She said it is actually protecting rights instead of protecting.
When she returned home from the Bay Area, in late 1973, AIM was on the Navajo Nation.
Jean said racism starts in the home, when the children are three or four years ago. She makes presentations on bias in children's literature.
She said the bias in books that is shown to two and three year olds will be remembered. As a tribal librarian, she makes libraries and schools aware of which books to select for the children.
"I don't like to sit in my office. I go to the communities. I go to the schools."
She asks the teachers about the books that will be shown to the children. She works with 50 Navajo communities.
"I know everything starts with young children under the age of three."
Yvonne Swan, from Colville Confederated Tribes, said the young men are on the right track who said they are helpers.
"That's what life is all about, to help wherever we can."
"I get my direction from my dreams."
"We are all equal, we are all doing what we are supposed to be doing."
She remembered the words of a street philosopher: "You get the people healthy physically first, then everything will fall into place.'
Yvonne thanked Dennis Banks for using his notoriety for making people aware of diabetes.
During the open microphone, Jessica Powless thanked her grandparents and shared her thoughts about encouraging the youths.
"If we are going to do something good, we need to be drug and alcohol free." She said she is glad that she has always been drug and alcohol free.
Jessica said it is important to be alcohol and drug free and have a spiritual base.
"I was raised with a spirituality, a lot of kids don't have that."
She said lots of kids don't have that.
"They want to learn, they want to learn their language, they want to learn their culture."
Jessica encouraged this standard to be the foundation of AIM Chapters.
"I believe in spiritual education first." She said this is more important than her college degree.
She said she finished her degree fast, so she could do something to help her people.
Jessica said social media can help get the word out, with Facebook and Twitter.
"The young people were saying that they want something to stand up for."
A midwife is speaking now on the importance of home birth, undisturbed birthing.
She said the shields people surround themselves with, are opened.
"Those shields are opened, she becomes primal, like her baby."
A life can be put back together at that time, when the shields caused from hurt and pain are shed.
She said that 85 percent of sex trafficking in Minneapolis were Native American children.
Sex trafficking victims have told her that this happens because people have the misconception that all Natives receive per capita from casino revenues. Another reason is that Natives are considered exotics.
Dorothy Ninham concluded with thanks to all who participated.
Dennis Banks said a walk across the country would be good and it should be led by the American Indian Movement. He said people from other countries should be invited to join the walk. 
Dennis said, "We should take up the challenge to walk across this country as we did in 1978."
Dennis said, the five month walk in 1978 stimulated the movement in a new way.
Dennis said others look at this earth and see real estate. "We see our Mother Earth."
Finally, Dennis said a walk across America for the freedom of Leonard Peltier will begin on February, 2015. Dennis urged students, and people around the world, to come and join AIM for the five and one half month walk from Alcatraz to Washington DC.
Sharing the sad news of the shooting at a Washington state high school, Dennis said, "We need to be out there."
The commissioners will submit a written statement of their findings to the Tribunal.
On Friday evening, a banquet with Bill Miller and Buggin Malone in concert is underway.
The day began with a Pipe Ceremony.


Boarding School Tribunal coverage 
by Brenda Norrell, Censored News, with French and Dutch translations by Christine Prat and Alice Holemans NAIS
Day 3 Preliminary conclusions and testimony
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/conclusions-boarding-school-tribunal.html
More Testimony from Day 3: 
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/day-3-boarding-school-tribunal-watch.html
Day 2
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/watch-live-day-2-boarding-school.html
Day 1
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/day-1-boarding-school-tribunal-in-green.html
Peltier's statement
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/leonard-peltiers-testimony-to-boarding.html
Livestream videos
www.earthcycles.net
Translations
French translation by Christine Prat
http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=2552
French translation Leonard Peltier’s testimony
http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=2547
Dutch translation by Alice Holemans NAIS
http://www.denaisgazet.be/

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Call for help: Sheep impounded, arrest, of Navajos resisting relocation Oct 2014

Censored News

French translation by Christine Prat

http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=2522

Louise Benally said, Dine' (Navajo) residents face arrest and livestock theft on their ancestral homelands of Big Mountain, Black Mesa, Arizona. These are ELDERS and families that RELY on their livestock for sustenance. It is the US government with their borders and mass forced relocation, amd nearby coal company that is the real burden on communities, the land, water, air and ozone -- not a family's livestock. Call the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Hopi Rangers, and the Department of Interior. Ask they stop impounding sheep on the HPL. This is current day colonialism, our food sovereignty is being attacked."

Residents are requesting human rights observers and sheepherders during this time of escalated harassment. {*HPL refers to the US-backed 'Hopi Partitioned Lands' located at massive seams of coal}. ‪

By Black Mesa Indigenous Support
UPDATE from HPL (Hopi Partition Land) residents:  Shirley Tohannie and elder Caroline Tohannie  had their entire herd of 65 sheep impounded by the Hopi Rangers (US federal government) Tuesday, October 22, 2014.If the fines aren’t paid the sheep will go to auction, and the family is being told that the sheep will not be able to return to the family’s rangeland.  The cost to release the livestock is nearly $1,000.

Jerry Babbit Lane, the Tohannie’s neighbor on the HPL, was arrested by Hopi rangers when he attempted to check on his neighbors and was charged with disorderly conduct. He was released this evening, 10/23. Rangers told Shirley they plan to take Rena’s (Jerry’s mother) sheep too and that they’re going to start impounding across the HPL.

 As we’re writing, another family on Big Mountain has had nearly their entire herd impounded.

Residents are requesting human rights observers and sheepherders during this time of escalated harassment.  If you or anyone you know can come be a human rights observer to support the Dineh resistance on Black Mesa,now is the time. Doing human rights observation work can help stop or slow down the impoundment process. Families who will be potentially impacted by impoundments are requesting solidarity. Email blackmesais@gmail.com if you can come out.

“Call the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Hopi Rangers, and the Department of Interior. Ask they stop impounding sheep on the HPL. This is current day colonialism, our food sovereignty is being attacked. Call the BIA superintendent Wendel Honanie (at 928-738-2228), the Hopi Rangers Clayton Honyumptewa at (928-734-3601), and the Department of Interior at  (202 208-3100) and ask that they stop the unjust impoundments.”--Louise Benally  

Although these orders are coming from current Hopi policy, ultimately the relocation laws and livestock impoundments result from the federal government and Peabody Energy’s divide and conquer strategy used to open up the land for massive coal mining. “In the 1970s, Hopi elders encouraged the Dienh elders to remain on their homelands, saying if they did relocate, the coal mine would expand. The Hopi elders said it wasn’t them who wanted the land.”--NaBahii Keediniihii

A July 2012 report by the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission classifies the relocation as a massive human rights violation and demands the immediate repeal of PL 93-531 and an end to relocation efforts and harassment in the form of surveillance, livestock impoundments, and disruption of gatherings and ceremonies that the resistance community experiences.

The sheep sustain the vitality of the people and the land, and traditional grazing practices need to be supported not severed. Impoundments are nothing less than harassment and human  rights violations.

For background information on the resistance of the HPL communities, click here.

BLACK MESA INDIGENOUS SUPPORT

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Day 2 Boarding School Tribunal Green Bay

Jean Whitehorse, Dine' (Navajo)
Photo Brenda Norrell


By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin -- The Tribunal on the Devastating Impacts of Boarding Schools began the second day with Jean Whitehorse, Dine' (Navajo) speaking on Native rights and the sterilization of Indian women. 

Whitehorse said she went to the hospital in intense pain, and was asked to sign papers.

"Besides taking out my appendix, they sterilized me," said Whitehorse, of the sterilization carried out without her knowledge at Gallup Indian Hospital.

At that time, the US government published a pamphlet promising many horses to the Native American women who did not have many children.

"I'm proud I had one daughter before they did this to me."

Whitehorse spoke of her heroes, including Navajo women resisting relocation at Big Mountain and her own grandmother.

Native Women Testify

During a panel of testimony, Kim Oseira, Alaskan Native and survivor of the Holy Cross Mission Orphanage in Holy Cross, Alaska, said always in life these experiences give you both pain and beauty.

"We were punished a lot, so we learned how to tell lies."

"We knew extensively that if we told the truth we would be punished."

She remembered being punished and having to move all the beds in the dormitory. She was around nine or ten and had to scrub the brown floors until they were white. She wanted to finish the final small area, when the nun grabbed her wrist and threw her.

"We starved. The nuns did not feed us properly."

Oseira read from her interview with Mary Annette Pember, when she described what happened to her and her sister in those boarding schools.

"The boarding school, located along the Yukon River, over 400 miles from Fairbanks, was officially called an orphanage in church records. Holy Cross Mission was founded in 1880 near the village of Holy Cross, a community of Athabascan and Yupik Eskimos ."

"Oseira, 73, has come forward to tell her story because, she says, 'It is time.' Over several hours and multiple interviews she takes us through her childhood years at the Jesuit orphanage, sharing memories that she once thought were “completely blotted out."

There are few adults in Oseira’s earliest memories. She seemed to be alone even at age five in Nome, Alaska, where she was the primary care giver for her sister, Della Mae, two years younger. I was responsible for feeding her, changing her diapers, teaching her how to go potty, everything,” she recalls.

Later she learned that her birth parents, non-Native father and Alaska Native mother, were chronic alcoholics. Oseira was five years old in 1945 when her mother was sent to a TB sanatorium and suddenly everything changed.

“All I remember is desperately holding onto Della Mae. For some reason we were each wearing new dresses and carrying dolls. We’d never had dolls before. Della Mae wore blue and I wore pink,” she recalls.

Madonna Thunderhawk, Lakota from Cheyenne River, South Dakota, remembered her mother and her experiences in boarding schools in South Dakota.

Thunderhawk described how the abuse in boarding schools, and freezing of emotions of her mother's generations continued into the next generation.
"She would say, 'You think you have it tough.'" Her mother did not speak of her experiences until she was elderly.

"We were scared silent," her mother said.

Her mother learned not to run away. If a child ran away, all the children were marched into one room of the boarding school. They cut off all their hair.

"Then they would string them up and flog them," Thunderhawk remembered.
The children never made a sound.

When they were discovered speaking their own language, they had to kneel on beans on the floor for long periods of time.
But later, in high school, her mother changed boarding schools and became a champion tennis player.

Thunderhawk said as she grew up, she grew up with a stern mother, who provided well for them, but suffered the lack of emotion that resulted from being abused in boarding school.

Thunderhawk said she patterned herself after her mother, and now regrets how stern she was with her own children.

Thunderhawk said she is glad her own children are now breaking that cycle. She credits the American Indian Movement with the change that took place in her own children and praised them for the good choices they are making.

Thunderhawk remembered her own boarding school experience, and her head being dumped in kerosene and then wrapped in towels. "No one said a word."
"You didn't cry, you didn't show any emotion."

Thunderhawk said in her own generation in boarding school, the abuse came from other children, the bullies.

"I had to protect my sister. I didn't become a bully, but I became tough."

Thunderhawk said she realized, "We had no parenting skills." As a result, "We have all this dysfunction in our families." She said it is the same all over the world, including Australia. Today there are alcohol and drugs, and no parenting skills, as a result of the inter-generational trauma because of abuse in boarding schools.

Today, Thunderhawk devotes herself to halting the abuse being carried out by US Social Services. Children are still being ripped from their homes.
"It is still going on."

A Menominee elder, 93, from Wisconsin spoke sadly about how she wants to go back to the family farm. She remembered her own parents, and said they were in Carlisle Boarding School.

"We were punished for things we couldn't help, things that were not their own fault."
"The school is gone, the fence is gone, but the memories are still there."

She said she is thankful that the school is no longer there. "It was abusive."

"We're Native Americans. We are not Indians. We were here when Columbus came."

Yvonne Swan is Sinixt, "People of the Arrow Lakes, of the Colville Confederated Tribes from Washington state.

"They thought that sending us to a boarding school was advantageous. They thought we would get a good education."
Remembering her grandfather, she said, "He named us after the ancestors."

Swan's grandfather said it was necessary so that when they passed on, the Spirits would recognize them.

Speaking about the purpose of the Boarding School Tribunal, Swan said it is important to heal.

"The United States took a lot of things from our people."

"We have to come from deep within, and get all that out."

Sharing her own experience, she said she had a "free floating fear." She described when an intruder came into her home and she acted to protect her family.

Describing her own experience in a mission boarding school, she said her parents were poor, but they sent a little money to the mission. This meant she was treated a little better than some others.

But still, the conditioning, and the religious teaching about sin, left her feeling bad about herself.

"What kind of sins are a little six-year-old going to commit?"

She questioned why girls and boys were treated differently.

Swan became sick from the mission boarding school food. She would climb into the hills and eat the roots and sunflowers for healing. The boarding school seldom took the children to the doctor.

Speaking about the boarding school, she said, "They censored our letters from our families. They probably wanted to see if we were going to get any money." She never received all the letters her family sent her.

While cleaning the kitchen in the boarding school, she saw the steaks and fresh fruit that the teachers and staff would eat. The children ate brown mush called "dynamite."

Swan's cousins would wet their bed and they were shamed and forced to sit in a tub of ice water. They were slapped and forced to sleep on beds of straw.

There was a pattern: "Ridicule, beat us down, make us tell untruths so we wouldn't be punished."

"The priests had two straps. The 'little suzy' was used on little girls." The boys were hit with the "black might" strap.

The nuns hit the children with a ruler until the children's hands would bleed.
Swan said tearfully that many of the children turned to alcohol and died of suicide and in car accidents.

"There were six people in my family that took their lives."

"One of my nieces hanged herself in jail. One of my nephews hanged himself in tribal jail."

Three of her nephews shot themselves.
This is historical trauma.

"You feel so alone."

In boarding school, the children were taught about Jesus, the Bible, brotherhood. "But you can't relate -- you have to march, you have to stand, there is no love."

Swan described how her sister was grabbed and held by a priest, and the unwanted embrace ended when someone entered the room.

She described how the children of the survivors went on to spank their own children too hard, out of fear, fear of predators, fear of the dangers out there.

Swan described her aunt's sickness from hunger in boarding school. Her aunt asked another for her orange peelings to eat because she was so hungry. The orange peelings were thrown on the ground, and the person said, "Go get them you pig."

She described how her brother was kicked in the back, and ran away. It took him 10 days walking through the snow and over the mountain.

One child was knocked down to the bottom of the stairs for speaking her language.

Children read stories from Boarding Schools

During the second day of the Tribunal, Oneida children read stories from boarding school experiences. They shared the story of one boy who was slapped for telling the truth about writing his name in his own dictionary. Another read the story of a child who was beaten because she could not defend herself from false accusations because she did not speak English.

Second panel of witnesses on Thursday

Roxanna Banguis, Ed.D., Tlingit, Haida and Sechelt, said her mother told her that there were a lot of beatings in the boarding school in Sechelt B.C. Her mother was very sick for a long time. She was never cared for by a doctor. It was the other children who brought her food.

Her mother was sexually molested by the older boys. Those boys learned these sexual acts from the people that worked at the boarding school and the boys were repeating the sexual abuse that happened to them.

When the school partially burned down, skeletons of babies were found in the walls.

"The sexual molesters, the predators, found a job where they can abuse children."

But Native people were not vanished, they were not disappeared as a people.

"We are still here," she said. She pointed out that this history of boarding schools "has been swept under the carpet."

"The worst is the baby skeletons they found in those walls. We don't know if those were Native Americans, or from the nuns." She said the nuns were not celibate.

Grand Chief Terrance Nelson of the Southern Chiefs Organization is vice chairman of the American Indian Movement.

"The reason my heart is in AIM is they won't put up with the crap that has been done to our people."

Chief Nelson described the influences in his life, from the American Indian Movement to Malcom X. He also spoke of the children killed by the United States in Iraq and his trips to Iraq and Iran.
Chief Nelson said he understands the psychology of abuse and control that was used on Indian children in boarding schools.

"In order to wipe out people, you have to dehumanize them."

"You have to take their children away from them."

Chief Nelson told the story of James, 10 years old. James was in boarding school with Chief Nelson's mother. The first time he ran away, they shaved his head. The second time he ran away, they made James stand weighted down with a ball and chain in the hall, where he would feel shame as the children passed by.

Then he ran away a third time.

"The principle strapped him up and down his arm." But James did not cry. Then the principle strapped him up and down his other arm. It took a long time, but they finally made James cry.

Years later, James was stabbed to death, when he was an alcoholic on the street.
What they did that day with the strappings was for the control of the other children.
Chief Nelson remembered his mother's words. "I learned to cry and cry fast, so they would leave me alone."

Chief Nelson said, "When you want to control someone, you make sure they understand the consequences."

Chief Nelson said Mohammad Ali was one of his heroes. "He refused to be told what to think."

"We refuse to be told who we are," he said of the American Indian Movement.

Chief Nelson said youths should not be encouraged to think of themselves as victims.

"We are not 10 year olds watching James get beaten."

He said today there are 10,000 children in Manitoba in the care system.

"Why are we doing this right now to our own children today."

Milton "Grasshopper" Bazinau, of Mackinac Island in northern Michigan, said he had to come here today to tell his story. Milton described being sexually abused by a priest at the age of five, and the shame and heartache of standing there with blood running down his leg.

"I carry a lot of pain."

The priest told him that he would kill him and kill his family if he ever told anyone.
Milton said it is fear that keeps people from understanding one another.

"They were trying to destroy us rather than understand us."

Milton said his mother never wanted to be known as Native American. He said he forgives his mother, who began having children at 15. "She was a child raising children."

Milton said he found his way back to himself through Indian culture and the Sundance.

"If I hadn't been a Sundancer, I wouldn't be alive today," Milton said.

During the afternoon session of the Tribunal, the testimony of Mitch Walking Elk was read into the record. Dennis Banks also spoke on the abuse in boarding schools. Describing being called a terrorist by the FBI later in life, Banks said, "These names that they called me mean nothing."

Testimonies of abuse in boarding schools by children kidnapped from their families were also read into the record on Thursday, including the testimony of imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier who was stolen from his family as a child in North Dakota.

The testimony on Thursday was followed by a Pipe Ceremony.

The Boarding School Tribunal continues all day on Friday, with a banquet on Friday night. Earthcycles will provide livestreaming again on Friday.
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Dennis Banks, Bill Means, Grand Chief Terrance Nelson
Photo Brenda Norrell

Day 3 Preliminary conclusions and testimony
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/conclusions-boarding-school-tribunal.html
More Testimony from Day 3:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/day-3-boarding-school-tribunal-watch.html
Day 2
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/watch-live-day-2-boarding-school.html
Day 1
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/day-1-boarding-school-tribunal-in-green.html
Peltier's statement
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/leonard-peltiers-testimony-to-boarding.html
Livestream videos
www.earthcycles.net

Watch live streaming video from earthcycles at livestream.com
Follow live sessions on Wednesday through Friday
Oct. 22 -- 25, 2014
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Earthcycles and Censored News are live in Green Bay!
Information on the Tribunal


Community Feast during Boarding School Tribunal on Thursday evening/Blues Skies photo

Article copyright Brenda Norrell.