NEW: Read the Critical Appraisal of Reparation Report Have your organization sign the letter requesting a hearing in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Join our Facebook cause! To stay up-to-date on boarding school news in the United States, join our yahoogroup: During the 19th and 20th centuries, American Indian and Alaska Native children were forcibly abducted from their homes to attend Christian boarding schools as a matter of government policy. Sexual, physical, and emotional violence was rampant in many of these schools. As a result of boarding school policies, there is now an epidemic of child sexual abuse in many Native communities. However, because of the shame attached to the abuse, there has been no forum to adequately address this problem. Consequently, child abuse passes from one generation to the next. This project is a starting point to address child sexual abuse. By framing abuse as the continuing effects of human rights abuses perpetrated by government policy, we hope to take the shame away from talking about the abuse and provide space for communities to address the problem and heal. The Boarding School Healing Project, a coalition of several organizations around the country, seeks to document Native boarding school abuses so that Native communities can begin healing from boarding school abuses and demand justice. This project will entail the following components:
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Boarding School Healing Project |
Seeking healing and justice |