EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE:
The Quaker Indigenous Boarding Schools: Facing Our History and Ourselves
A slide presentation by Paula Palmer, Gail Melix, and Andrew Grant, recorded on November 15, 2022
What does the Quaker history of running Indigenous boarding schools and the ongoing impact on Native communities mean for Friends today? How can Friends contribute toward healing?
This educational resource is offered by Beacon Hill Friends House, Friends Peace Teams, and the New England Yearly Meeting Right Relationship Resource Group.
"I know that this process will be long and difficult. I know that this process will be painful. It won’t undo the heartbreak and loss we feel. But only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that we’re all proud to embrace."
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Quakers managed more than thirty schools for Native American children. Some Quaker schools operated with federal funds and carried out the government’s policy of forced assimilation. Quakers separated Indigenous children from their parents and tried to remake them in the Euro-American Quaker image, causing tremendous harm.
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has told us that the first step in a truth, reconciliation, and healing process is truth-telling. Put another way — in order for healing to occur, we must bring the full truth about the boarding schools and their ongoing consequences for Native families to light in the United States.
This educational resource offers a way to explore the findings of Paula Palmer’s research into Quaker support for Indigenous boarding schools to help bring some of that truth to light. We aim to understand this history and its current impacts, as well as how Friends can take responsibility for our part in the historic and ongoing harm done to Native Peoples.
**** Note that this resource explores traumatic history and includes sensitive content.
Presenters
General guidance for use of the recording
This recording should be accompanied by more planned programming (guidelines below) when used by Meetings or other groups.
How to request an event for your group
You can request that the presenters, Paula, Gail, and Andrew, visit your group to be a part of the discussion after showing this recording. They will attend depending on availability. For more information and requests, email Paula Palmer (paulaRpalmer@gmail.com).
The November 15th event recording:
Guidelines for showing this recording as part of a program for your Quaker meeting or group
It’s important for Quakers and others to understand the involvement of Friends in the creation and operation of Indigenous boarding schools. This slide presentation reports research about the rationales Friends used to justify their involvement, how the Native children were treated (including violence and cultural erasure), and how Native parents and children both resisted and suffered from forced assimilation.
The slide presentation may bring up painful emotions, especially for people with trauma histories and/or are Black, Indigenous or other persons of color who have had similar experiences.
As you plan to screen this event, please consider how you can provide spaces for emotional and spiritual grounding, should these needs arise.
See one recommended format below. If you would like additional support for planning your event, contact Paula Palmer (paulaRpalmer@gmail.com) or Jennifer Newman, Program Director for Beacon Hill Friends House (program@bhfh.org).
Recommended format for showing this event to a small group:
- Hold a two-hour event: Show the recording in the first hour, and have small groups for discussion in the second hour.
- Read a land acknowledgment for the Indigenous lands your site occupies at the start of the program.
- Identify support people who are available to speak with participants individually for support/processing.
- Depending on the size of your group, consider having small group facilitators. Also consider having a BIPOC-only small group.
- Depending on the context of your group, consider holding a post-event space for worship and care for participants.
Recommended small group format:
- At the beginning of the small groups: Acknowledge that each of us does not need to unpack everything that’s come up during the presentation. There’s so much, and this is only the beginning of processing and holding for each of us; the queries are a way for us to tap into what’s rising for each of us now.
- Give the participants 3 - 5 minutes each to speak, to ensure everyone has time to share. Invite some silence in between each person sharing.
- Read the queries for small group sharing to the group (if using Zoom, put the queries in the chat in addition to reading them).
- Ask if there is someone who would like to go first. After that person shares, invite participants into a moment of silence together. Then ask who would like to go next. Repeat this process until everyone has had time to share.
Queries for small group discussion:
Hearing this history, what thoughts and feelings arise for you? How might you and your meeting be led to respond?
Recommended follow-up event:
We encourage you to consider offering a follow-up worship/discussion space for participants to reflect on what they heard at your first event.
Additional queries for a follow-up event:
What did we physically and/or emotionally experience during the initial session? What heartens us and/or grieves us from the session? Are we feeling led to respond to the call for Friends to contribute toward healing (how?)?
For New Englanders, consider making a donation to the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project. This amazing organization is working to bring back to life the ancestral language of the Mashpee, Aquinnah, Assonet & Herring Pond Wampanoag communities after more than 150 years of dormancy. This work directly relates to the harms done by Indigenous Boarding Schools that engaged in cultural erasure.
Further guidance for Quaker Meetings
Friends have some additional practices we have found important to supporting gatherings engaging with this content that we encourage meetings to consider. These are:
- Provide an elder to hold the participants in the Light. Elders for the body pay special attention to how Spirit is moving among participants, and where care may be necessary.
- Have Friends available to offer pastoral care to participants. This kind of traumatic history can bring up strong responses from participants. It's important to provide some dedicated space for pastoral care to support the community.
- Host a worship-sharing for Friends after small group sharing and/or several weeks after the event to continue discernment around how we're led to act given this presentation.
Here are the descriptions of these roles that Beacon Hill Friends House used for the event on November 15, 2022:
Elder for the body
- Arrive 30 minutes before for worship as presentation organizers finalize set-up/preparations
- Hold the body in the Light during the program
- When participants are in small groups, hold the body in grounding worship
- After the program, stay around until the very end, grounding all in the Light
Pastoral care:
- Arrive 30 minutes before for worship as presentation organizers finalize set-up/preparations
- Stay in a Pastoral Care breakout room on Zoom and attend to the needs of participants who arrive for the duration of the program
- Be available to stay after the event to support participants if needed
Care of worship:
- Arrive on the program 15 minutes before to enter the breakout space and get personally centered
- Hold care of worship during the program (even if no one enters the space)
Small Group Facilitator
- Arrive on the program 15-30 minutes before for grounding worship
- Pay attention to the program
- Explain the group process and expectations. (We will send these ahead of time).
- Make sure everyone is following these guidelines, and make sure everyone has space to reflect.
- Guide your small group through answering the reflection questions.