Resistance

Picture and explanation of the resistance of Native Communities to American Indian Boarding Schools

Earlier this year, I visited the Heard Museum in Phoenix. I saw Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories, an exhibit that documents the actions of the United States Government to strip our Indigenous brothers and sisters of their culture, language, names, and the land that is their home and ours too.

The photos and the ample sampling of testimonial videos of students at these boarding schools depicted various forms of abuse the children endured. However, it also highlighted the power of resistance and the drive to survive, maintain their agency, and preserve their sense of self. Boarding schools were also a place where artists flourished and leaders were formed.

Take a look at this short video I took.

One image that I have flashed on repeatedly since seeing the exhibit was the lone barber’s chair surrounded by locks of long black hair, with the following words etched on the glass casing:

“The next day the torture began. The first thing they did was cut our hair while we were bathing our breechclouts were taken and we were forced to put on trousers. We’d lost our hair and we’d lost our clothes, with the two we’d lost our identity as Indians.”

Picture of a glass-encased Barber's Chair and long strands of black hair on the floor, with a Boarding School student's quote about their hair being cut upon arrival. 

I flashed back to this image when I saw the masked guards in El Salvador's CECOT Prison shaving the heads of the men that ICE had rounded up and forcibly flown to the notorious facility. In the high-quality video footage released by the Trump Administration, men are on their knees, forcibly held down while their heads are shaved; some men are crying. This act of domination and humiliation intends to strip them of agency over their bodies. Another picture from CECOT, men shoulder to shoulder dressed identically, reminded me of this image I saw at the exhibit.

Boys and girls in boarding school photo, standing shoulder to shoulder. The girls are dressed in identical black garments, and the boys are similarly attired in military-style uniforms.

As I walked through the various rooms of the exhibit, I felt the sadness I saw on the faces of these children.

According to the Heard Museum, the exhibition draws on "first-person recollections, memorabilia, and the writings and art of four generations of Indian school alumni to examine the commonality of the boarding school experience. Exploring an important and untold era of American history, the exhibition incorporated historic images, music, sound, oral histories, memorabilia, and video to immerse visitors in the story being told by the people who lived it.”

As I reflect on the visit, it was as if I were looking into the future, given the current state of our country. The Trump Administration is pushing hard (and illegally, as judged by the number of cases where the courts have blocked their actions) to erase our nation’s history and to replace it with a so-called “patriotic education curriculum.”

The attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the banning of books written by authors from marginalized communities, including beloved and respected authors I know, are part of the effort to erase the many ways in which people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds built and shaped the United States of America. The Trump Executive Order banning DEI in education is currently halted by court action.

In 2019, The New York Times published the 1619 Project, commemorating the 400-year anniversary of the arrival of enslaved African people in the colonies that later became the United States. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the 1619 Project, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the opening essay that set the stage for the numerous pieces by eminent scholars examining the role of race in American history. The 1619 Project sparked significant interest in American history among the broader American public as we collectively examined the factors that have contributed to the inequality that currently exists in the United States.

The response from conservative factions to counteract the 1619 Project (in addition to demonizing DEI) was the creation of the so-called Patriotic Education Initiative (which later became another Executive Order signed by Donald Trump upon taking office). This initiative seeks to present a false narrative of American history, where white Christian men are glorified as the heroes who brought civilization and have engaged in noble acts that made America great, a state we need to return to by implementing Project 2025. The Administration seeks to defund schools that teach so-called “gender ideology” or “discrimination equity ideology,” terms so vague that teachers and administrators can’t determine what’s permissible.

For example, an Idaho middle school teacher was instructed to remove the above poster from her classrooms with the words, "Everyone Is Welcome Here," on the grounds that it expressed a personal political belief that she was not permitted to share in her classroom. This incident led to protests by parents, students, and community members. Ultimately, the teacher resigned, not wishing to work in an environment that would penalize a message of inclusion.

At the heart of the Patriotic Education Initiative is the push to use public funding, in the form of parental choice and vouchers, to promote religious education paid for by taxpayer dollars. This theme of religious indoctrination was also part of the Indian Boarding School experience as reflected in this photo and quote.

Another image that deeply affected me was a pair of handcuffs, with the opening not much larger than an egg. These were used to restrain elementary school children.

These handcuffs reminded me that the first Trump Administration separated more than 5000 children, some as young as toddlers, from their families and warehoused them in large empty buildings in temporary cages built from fencing material. Several hundred of those children are still separated from their families. And of course, ICE has now shown up at several public schools. The deportation of parents has resulted in U.S. citizen children, including some in cancer treatment, being deported along with the adults in their lives.

You can learn more about this exhibit on the Heard Museum website, and if you are ever in Phoenix, be sure to visit. I highly recommend seeing this. If the Trump Administration succeeds, and we must stop this from happening, exhibits like this one at the Heard Museum will not be allowed. President Trump repeatedly states that protests or criticism of the US Government are unlawful attacks by people who “hate this country,” and will be met with harsh (and unconstitutional) state violence against protesters.

Criticism does not equal hatred.

Think of all the ways we criticize our spouses, partners, children, and parents. We point out their shortcomings, their errors (and to be sure they do it right back at us), not because we hate them, but because we love them and want them to think about their actions and whether they are helping or hindering their relationships with their family, friends, classmates, and workplaces. 

Peaceful protest is not insurrection, and it is not un-American. It is as American as apple pie, and is protected by the United States Constitution. Protesters have been out in the streets for days, in Los Angeles and many other cities, and we will be out en masse this Saturday, June 14.

Ordinary folks, like you and me, will be out peacefully demonstrating in major cities and small towns all around the country. DJT is celebrating his birthday with a military parade expected to cost the U.S. taxpayers between $25 and $ 45 million. I hope you can join a demonstration in a community near you, standing with like-minded neighbors who object to the abuses of this government. For more information about protests in your area, click here.

We, the people, have the power to change the course of history, and protest is a powerful means to do so. Let our elected leaders know that we won’t go back to a time when blatant discrimination and violence against targeted groups are everyday occurrences. And we will not allow them to perpetuate lies and rewrite American history.