Dismantling the Boarding School Mind Through Tribal Oral History and Inter-tribal Discussion

"The colonized does not seek merely to enrich himself with the colonizer’s virtues. In the name of what he hopes to become, he sets his mind on impoverishing himself, tearing himself away from his true self. The crushing of the colonized is included among the colonizer’s values. As soon as the colonized adopts those values, he similarly adopts his own condemnation. In order to free himself, at least so he believes, he agrees to destroy himself."

-Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957)

In 2021, after the Kamloops 215 hit newsstands, my mind went to Fort Simcoe Indian Boarding School on our reservation. It is one of the first on-reservation boarding schools established immediately after our tribe and several others participated in a four-year war with the United States. We have never seen a reason given by the U.S. Government why our reservation was one of the first, if not the first, chosen for a boarding school, but punishment for the war was the only conclusion we could reach. Emily Washines covers the topic of the Yakama war well in her blog.

Within that context, one begins to understand that the Yakamas were explicitly targeted to keep them under control and to avoid another costly war. This may very well be true for Yakama tribal allies as well, but the circumstances of forced removal to the reservation have only created division amongst the tribes, where there was none historically. It was only recently that I had discussions with Tribal elders from other tribes that I began to see just how interconnected the families were and how the U.S. Government did everything to sever those ties and alliances so many years ago (e.g. the late G. King George). Boarding schools were the next step in embedding intertribal in-fighting and making our Indian people and blood relatives foreign to us based solely on political differences.  

In 2000, I interviewed my grandmother about our family tree and history.  My grandmother Marie Blodgett Olney was the daughter of Sophie Hoptowit. Sophie Hoptowit was the oldest of over a dozen siblings and was born in the late 1800's. Sophie's parents were William and Emily Hoptowit.  My grandma Marie used to translate letters for her grandma Emily that she received from her first cousin, George Nanamkin.  Emily didn't speak or write English, but George could because he went to Paschal Sherman boarding school on the Colville Indian Reservation. Then, my grandma would have to translate a reply letter from our language into English for George. There are other stories I have of my family's link to different tribes, including the Snoqualmie, Muckleshoot, Cowlitz, and Grand Ronde, that I will not go into here, but the world is very small when you take the time to listen to elders and research the family trees. 

The reality that we were not far removed from our relatives on other reservations got me thinking about our tribal differences and why they exist. For 24 years, it never made sense to me why we stuck to these modes of thinking that were embedded into our people by Government force and Boarding School abuse. In 2019, I had an idea to create an intertribal caucus to discuss cultural resource issues important to the tribe. That caucus was to be held at the Northwest Anthropological Conference in Ellensburg in March of 2020. Tribes from Washington, Idaho, and Oregon were invited. The food was being ordered, plans were well in place, and COVID squashed all. 

The tribal caucus was supposed to be a place and time for tribes to come together to discuss issues that were important to us. It was supposed to force groups with differences and find common ground on issues facing our resources. It was supposed to reawaken bloodlines and open our eyes to the fact that we are not that far removed from a time when we fought together against a common enemy. For that, we were all punished harshly for many, many years. Many of us are still afraid to open that door of possibility because we were trained generations ago never to work together again. That is okay, but the door should always be open for the possibility of intertribal collaboration because I believe then and I believe now that we are stronger together than fighting each other.

It is not easy to know you are trying something different than what has been done before, especially when it risks opening old wounds. Maybe I am crazy, naive, and stupid for trying to facilitate such a discussion, but everything I have been taught through oral history was about tribal alliance, not tribal division. Tribes fought other tribes only in extreme circumstances; context is needed to understand those differences. If we are to protect the resources, many shared amongst different tribes, for generations yet unborn, they deserve everything we can give. During the wars, our ancestors gave their lives for grandkids they would never meet, and we can certainly give some time to our future generations. After all, who benefits when tribes fight other tribes?