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The White Bison group came through Tahlequah, Okla., on the Wellbriety Walk to Forgiveness. The 6,800-mile journey is to conclude at the National Museum of the American Indian.Reznet photo by Christina Good Voice

Indians March to Mend Boarding School Hurt

By Christina Good Voice

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — In a movement intended to mend the decades-old physical, emotional and mental abuse suffered by American Indian children in boarding schools, an American Indian group made a stop here June 4 on its 40-day, 6,800-mile "Journey For Forgiveness."

The American Indian non-profit organization White Bison, Inc., is traveling across the United States in healing ceremonies as it visits present and former Indian boarding schools.

White Bison President Don Coyhis said the "Journey For Forgiveness" acknowledges the decades of abuse suffered by children in Indian boarding schools, which led to alcoholism, substance abuse and violence.

The schools instigated a system of abuse that was passed on to the children of boarding school attendees, he said.

Coyhis' grandparents attended boarding schools, and the experience significantly affected his family.

"Our family was very sick, but we didn't know we were sick," he said. "We didn't hug in our family; we shook hands," he said.

Walk is Part of the Boarding Schools Healing Movement

The walk is part of the group's "Healing the Legacy of the Boarding Schools 1879-2009" movement, which began May 16 at Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Ore. The final stops are Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Penn., June 21, and then the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., June 24.

The Sequoyah walk took the group and walk participants from the Cherokee Nation tribal complex to the campus of Sequoyah Schools. Sequoyah Schools is a boarding school for American Indian students in grades seven through 12.

Sequoyah originated in 1871 as an orphan asylum to care for children who were orphaned by the Civil War. It is named for Sequoyah, the scholar who developed the Cherokee syllabary. The school serves more than 400 Indian students from all over the United States each year. The school is five miles southwest of Tahlequah, Okla.

Cherokee Nation Deputy Chief Joe Grayson Jr. welcomed the White Bison group.

Schools' Policies Touched Many Lives

Grayson did not attend a boarding school but his father did, along with Grayson's aunt and uncle.

"He was an orphan, and boarding school was his last resort," Grayson said. "He told me stories of when he was young — that he had to go into the woods with the other Cherokees and that is where they spoke their language because they were not allowed to speak their language in school."

Mitch Walking Elk, Cheyenne-Arapaho citizen, is a singer and songwriter who is also a counselor, teacher and cultural community support person at an inner-city alternative school in St. Paul, Minn. Walking Elk knows the boarding school life all too well, as he was a student at Seneca Indian School in Wyandotte, Okla., Jones Academy in Hartshorne, Okla., Concho Indian School in El Reno, Okla., and Oaks Indian Mission in Oaks, Okla.

Walking Elk traveled with White Bison on the journey and brought some of his students on the trip so they might learn what the boarding school era was about.

The Effects Ranged From Benign to Damaging

"(I want them to understand) the healing that goes with what happened to students who are now adults — who are grandmas and grandpas; who didn't even get to enjoy the healing experience," Walking Elk said. "Some are gone now. They died. They didn't get to get well.

"For some people, the boarding school was OK. For some others, it was a prison camp. In my case, it was terrible."

Dana Tiger, a Muscogee (Creek), Seminole and Cherokee artist from Oklahoma, met Coyhis nearly a decade ago as White Bison came through Tahlequah on a walk. Tiger said she regards Coyhis as a close friend now.

"I'm proud to say that he's helped me so much in my life," Tiger said.

She's lost loved ones in her life, including her father when she was 5 and her brother when he was 22, she said.

"What I do today is try to remember them as we're here to remember those that have gone on in whatever way they've gone on due to things that have happened in the paths that we walk on," Tiger said.

Those paths are determined by issues such as boarding schools, she said.

White Bison's goal is to have 100 native communities in healing by 2010.

Christina Good Voice, Muscogee (Creek), Choctaw and Rosebud Lakota, is a reporter at the Cherokee Phoenix tribal newspaper in Tahlequah, Okla. She is a member of the board of directors of the Native American Journalists Association. A 2001 graduate of the American Indian Journalism Institute, Good Voice had reporting internships at The Associated Press bureaus in Columbia, S.C., and Oklahoma City. Good Voice has writen for reznet since 2002. She writes about fashion, daily life, kids, family and the economy.

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