When I read about the boarding school, I was shocked by the fact that people could do such a horrible thing. The series of actions by the American government during this time is something we should have discussed and learned the most in school. A few years ago, I had a chance to visit someone who had survived boarding school, but unfortunately for her, she was so young when she was taken by the government that when she finally left school, she didn’t know where home was. To prevent the same thing from happening to others, she decided to help, so she stayed at a hospital and looked after many Native American babies whose families either gave them up or who became orphans for various reasons. Her story was so empowering and yet so sad, and to actually be able to listen to her own story is even more shocking to the fact that this happened not that long ago. Moreover, the article about the US Army made a claim about itself as not a museum, and therefore the NAGPRA doesn’t apply to them is absolutely ridiculous. The point of NAGPRA isn’t forcing government agencies to return what they stole but to recognize the wrongs they have done. The excuse of thinking it would be complicated to return the human remains to those suffering families and would cause ‘unnecessary’ disputes and lawsuits therefore they will do nothing and let those family members come with proof, this behavior has not only demonstrated how little do they care about doing the right thing but also showed that they have no remorse for their actions.
The article Carlisle Repatriation showed the most recent updates on the repatriation of those children’s remains, and from those updates, we can see that those children came from all over the places. The government has intentionally forced those children to leave their families and isolated them from their own culture so that they could completely erase the Indigenous culture and its history. The letter to a commissioner of Indian Affairs shows the proof of what they were trying to achieve through those programs, and no one could deny that. What we can focus on now is how to keep telling the truth and do the right thing for people in the present and in the next generation.