at the site of the former carlisle indian industrial school

we cried at the army war college gates

as the guard asked us for i.d.

i imagined the terror of the 10,000 indigenous

children brought here in handcuffs

taken hundreds of miles

from their home communities by train

forced to leave their grieving families

the army took the majority of children

from tribes they wanted to suppress most

the children were made to cut their long hair

their native clothing and ceremonial objects

confiscated

our car searched

protocol for all army base visitors

the feeling of being under surveillance

as we walked through the fenced-off graves

many children died as soon as they were brought here

the legacy of indian boarding schools began here

the graves marked 1879 apache sioux unknown

we walked through tombstones

of native children who died

for refusing to let their spirits be broken

the carlisle boarding school a symbol

of systematic eradication

of indian ways of knowing and being

an unspoken history

of mass kidnapping and forced industrial labor

*

it really affected us to lose our children

my friend said

burning sage

as we walked through the residential school grounds

the air keeping it lit

crows in the trees watching over the children

our ancestors want us to be happy1

*

a military industrial complex has operated on the land

that’s now carlisle, pennsylvania since the 1700s

when george washington traveled the territory

of iroquois and lenape

giving chief alliquippa liquor

before dislocating her

from where the rivers were tended by mothers

who’ve climbed the wind since time immemorial

*

Later all the promises were broken and the settlements spread into

the territories.

It’s always the broken that holds the universe in place.

(Kazim Ali, “Carlisle”)

smallpox-infected blankets

were knowingly given to indians at fort pitt2

by u.s. soldiers in the name of peace

the allegheny river flooded by kinzua dam in 1957

a third of the seneca reservation washed away3

the grief i feel

at how little the truth of the native experience is publicly acknowledged

in the state of pennsylvania

when natives are referenced it’s often from a clinical narrative

that the only good indian was a dead one

*

firsthand accounts such as suzan shown harjo’s truth-telling on the carlisle indian industrial school paint the most accurate pictures:

Elsie Davis (Wah-stah) was Bull Bear’s youngest child. She died of consumption 1893 and was buried at CIIS; dug up and buried again to make way for a road, a stadium and then a building; buried, perhaps, in what is now the historic cemetery, a mass grave of CIIS captives, where it’s doubtful that any of the 186 Native young people are buried near the tombstones etched with their names.

That cemetery and the Guard House were considered worthy of preservation by the National Register of Historic Places. I agree, because they are history, but also because they are evidence. That small dark prison holds the blood and memory of those who could not or would not do what was demanded of them. DNA is in the cold stones of the walls and floor; bones and spirits were broken there.4

a mass grave at the back of the carlisle residential school

was dug up for a road gymnasium army barracks

the bodies of the 186 children who died at the school

transferred to a cemetery off the highway in the 1930s

186 is a low number next to accounts stating that of 10,000

students who attended carlisle one in ten died there5

*

the native children were made to work

in local farms or houses as servants in the summer

instead of being allowed to return to their tribal homes

some kids were sent back to the wrong communities

*

tiny horse dolls rested

at the foot of each child’s tombstone

brightly colored with shiny copper

lined with coins rocks and shells

horses carry the children through fences

into forests

mountains and river valleys now

*

my friend burned sage in the white colonial mansion

where native children were made to obey

richard pratt the founder of the carlisle indian school

pratt’s mansion was not presented like a holocaust

museum

it was a colonial parlor

of a modern officer’s home

open to the public with a guest book

normalized as if a family project

filled with knickknacks and photos

of native children

dressed like servants in rough white clothes

the wind carried sage smoke through the parlor

wind smoke over a photo of pratt posing sternly

next to a young native boy

let me tell you mister teacher when you say you’ll make me right

in five hundred years of fighting not one indian turned white

(Jim Pepper, “Drums”)

*

the legacy of indian boarding schools

like carlisle paved the way for implementing

policies that allowed the united states to justify

taking native kids from their families

and putting them in white foster homes

in the 1950s and beyond

the nuns would wake me in the middle of the night

and drag me to a brightly lit room

where i was made to repeat words over and over

until i pronounced them correctly

i watched as the younger children were beaten with switches

and forced to eat food from the floor like dogs

(Tanya Tagaq, “Got to Build My Fire Up”)6

did they notify native parents by letter

when their children were killed

by corporal punishment?

*

the abuse of indigenous north american children

in their own land by outsiders has been legislated

through government policies

such as the doctrine of christian discovery7

how do i confront the truth

of what really happened here

in opposition to the legacy

of an illegitimate society

based on lies

a legacy that has caused indigenous to experience traumas

of poverty illness suicide incarceration and violence against women

at far higher rates than national averages

*

Carlisle where soldiers are trained and Indians were brought to be

forced to forget.

Never did I think when I arrived there that it would be the place I would

sort myself out and dare actually to speak.

(Kazim Ali, “Carlisle”)

thankfully millions of indigenous have

survived 97% population depletion8

now tribes are rebuilding their nations

practicing their cultures

using love to heal one another

making artistic scholarly social justice contributions

creating legislation to protect

native rights and the rights of native children

resisting colonial pillaging and domination9

needing our earth left intact

*

I love you, I need you to survive

(Joyce Hobson Johnson, “I need you to survive”)

feather from three rivers

tree shrines

daffodil hillsides

for you

*

truth and reconciliation commissions

in maine and canada are addressing

the harm inflicted against natives

at the hands of residential schools

and state child welfare systems

seeking truth healing and change

while recognizing that oppression

is not something of the past

it just looks different now10

royal canadian mountain police coming out against native women drumming to protect

their homelands against fracking

as law enforcement fails to protect

thousands of missing and murdered indigenous women

we need contradiction to loss

with laughter

health and wellness

it was prophesied

that healing would begin

in the east

we learned we had to

take it from the head to the heart11

1 Maine-Wabanaki REACH, “Beyond Crime and Punishment: Fostering transformative justice in our communities” (presentation, American Friends Service Committee, Wallingford, PA, March 12, 2016).

2 “Jeffery Amherst and Smallpox Blankets: Lord Jeffery Amherst’s letters discussing germ warfare against American Indians,” accessed March 26, 2016, http://people.umass.edu/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html.

3 “Dam Indians: The Allegheny River,” accessed March 25, 2016, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/23/849691/-.

4 Suzan Shown Harjo, “Carlisle Indian School’s History Must be Preserved So Those Who Suffered Aren’t Forgotten,” Indian Country Today Media Network (2012) http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/10/11/carlisle-indian-schools-history-must-be-preserved-so-those-who-suffered-arent-forgotten.

5 Rebecca Sockbeson, “Cipenuk red hope: Weaving policy toward decolonization & beyond” (PhD dissertation, University of Alberta, 2011), https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/w08929935.

6 Christos Hatzis, Tanya Tagaq, Steve Wood, Northern Cree Singers, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Tadeusz Biernacki, Going Home Star: Truth and Reconciliation, Act II: Act II: I Got to Build My Fire Up, CD, Centrediscs/Centredisques, CD 1695, 2015.

7 “From Doctrine to Declaration,” accessed March 26, 2016, http://www.doctrine2declaration.org/.

8 Rebecca Sockbeson, “Cipenuk red hope.”

9 “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” accessed March 25, 2016, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf.

10 “Beyond the Mandate: Continuing the Conversation, Report of the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation,” accessed March 25, 2016, http://www.mainewabanakitrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TRC-Report-Expanded_July2015.pdf.

11 Maine-Wabanaki REACH “Beyond Crime and Punishment.”