The U.S. Department of Interior released its much-anticipated report chronicling a century and a half of widespread abuses at federally sanctioned boarding schools. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland now promises a year-long tour of the country, establishing an oral record, from a Native viewpoint, of a devastating period in history. As important and historic as the DOI report is, how much confidence should we put into the federal government’s role in mitigating the trauma?
-Host Shawn Spruce
"The beautiful thing about this work is that it’s multigenerational. I always tell people that my intended goals, I may not live to see them. As my father in his work, he understood that his intended goals, he would likely not live to see them. Yet, it did not mean he did not do the work, because it’s about the world we leave for our children and our children’s children. My father left this world a better place for me, left behind tools for me to actively reengage with my language and with my music. I want to make sure that my children and their children have those as well." - Chris Newell
"For our Native families, and I’ll speak for only my family, we are actively and intentionally healing from these experiences. [Our grandparents suffered] the disruption of our relationships to our plant and animal kin, the disruption of our traditional ways of praying. I make decisions everyday to give my children what my grandparents couldn’t have.
That’s why our boys grow out their hair long. That’s why we pierce their ears. That’s why we do things in the old way. We reclaim their bodies, we reclaim our culture. Our existence is resistance, right? That’s what we hear Native people saying all the time. And it’s true."
"Right relation is derived from a term that is mostly used by Quaker organizations, “right relationship.” When I use the term making right relation, I am referring to the processes of creating cultures of equity that are empowered by an activated citizenry working in concert to make sustainable change that does not shy away from the accurate history of the United States and recognizing how those violences are sustained through systems of oppression. This process is for the good of all people living in the United States, not just Indigenous people – it is a process of investing in the relationships our grandchildren and great grandchildren will have with one another. There are a multitude of ways to work towards this goal, both large and small, but all must be based on the understanding that at some point in the future, our public humanities institutions, places of education and seats of governmental power will have to engage in practices of power sharing with BIPOC populations."
"One of his colleagues at Akomawt, endawnis Spears, said Newell’s strength is his ability to explain the culture to people who are not familiar with it in a manner that is both friendly and non-judgmental. “With all of these issues that are at the forefront of American culture right now around race and history, it requires personalities and spirits like Chris Newell. He is willing to have those conversations with people in constructive ways. If it’s just about guilting people out or pointing fingers, Chris doesn’t engage,” she said. “It’s a perfect alignment of the stars that he is at the Abbe right now.”"
"“If you have a Native mascot, stereotypes are going to be perpetuated around it," said Chris Newell, director of education at the Akomawt Educational Initiative and a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe. “You don’t create a Native mascot and then ask that it be non-stereotypical. That’s just an oxymoron.”
Even when schools are respectful in implementing Native mascots, Newell said, opposing fans might not be."
“Spending time immersed in these documents — and the genocides they represent — required of me, a spiritual space where I could shed the weight and atrocity of these documents and be in balance as I live my life with my family and friends,” endawnis Spears (Diné/ Ojibwe/ Chickasaw/ Choctaw) of AEI said. “There are some big shifts that need to happen in cultural institutions here. We hope this exhibit and this process can help contribute to that praxis.”
-endawnis Spears, Akomawt Educational Initiative
“America gets to tell itself a reason why it is how it is, but it does it at the expense of native peoples,” said Chris Newell, who is Passamaquoddy and the museum’s education supervisor. “It writes out all other settler contact with indigenous Americans.”
-Chris Newell, Akomawt Educational Initiative
Newell said non-Native Americans “think we’re all dead and gone” due to pop culture, current teachings of history and the focus on colonialism throughout Boston that ignores Native American lives and history. He hopes that the MFA’s partnership with Akomawt during Monday’s events leads to more awareness of indigenous populations and the inclusion of modern Native American art in the MFA in the future.
When it sought to develop a land acknowledgment statement, UConn’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion turned to the Akomawt Educational Initiative, a consultancy formed by Jason Mancini, former executive director of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, and two of his former colleagues there, endawnis Spears and Chris Newell.
Teachers feel unprepared to buck the way schools have taught about race and culture, gender and sexuality. But they can start with small changes as they push the district to do more, activists said.
“In Maine, parents would often leave their children with their grandparents or other extended family members when they would leave for seasonal work elsewhere. To the state, however, this constitutes neglect and could qualify a child for removal. In reality, our children’s needs were commonly met by extended family and community beyond the nuclear family.”
-Chris Newell, Akomawt Educational Initiative
"We need to make Native Peoples once again human in the history of this country, to add our perspective of how this country was formed. There’s a whole different side that’s not being told. We teach kids myths. We teach them lies sometimes, not always knowing that we’re doing it. Students grow up, and they take this with them."
-Chris Newell, Akomawt Educational Initiative