The 2009 Journey for Forgiveness involves a national walk that will be part of a national effort to ask the Obama Administration to officially apologize for sending Native American children to boarding schools, since the abuse they suffered there is at the root of the social problems plaguing Native American communities today. The Canadian and Austrialian governments have already issued apologies, and the Canadian government has gone so far as to make reparations, so there is good precedent for this. In any case, whether or not the government asks for forgiveness, the walkers will forgive anyway, upon the advice of a group of elders advising Wellbriety.
Here is a fact sheet on the Wellbriety Journey, which is set to stop at Standing Rock this year.
• High rates of substance abuse, domestic violence, child sexual abuse and suicides continue to plague Native American communities
• Most efforts to address these issues to date have focused primarily on the symptoms rather than potential causes.
• An increasing body of evidence indicates that the patterns of physical and sexual abuse in Native communities today stem from widespread abuse of Native children at the 25 Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools and 460 government-funded boarding and day schools run by churches between 1879 and 1940.
• The Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness is a national campaign planned for 2009 to support a collective healing of Native American peoples from the curses of historical trauma and unresolved grief believed to have their deepest roots in what Native people experienced at these schools.
• Historical or intergenerational trauma has been described as a type of post-traumatic stress disorder that has been passed down through generations.
• The Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness is about going back to these schools and taking back what was lost there.
• The vision of TWJF is to further the efforts of Native American communities to heal themselves by:
o Acknowledging those aspects of the Indian school experience that left a curse
on Native communities
o Providing a collective time and space for Native people of all tribes to join
together in forgiveness, release and healing from this sad chapter in our
history
• The 2009 Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness is being organized by the Colorado-based non-profit organization White Bison Inc. (www.WhiteBison.org)
• The Wellbriety Movement is a term coined by White Bison back in 1999 to denote the grassroots efforts in Indian communities to get well through culturally-based programs and practices
• The Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness events will include:
o A 6,800-mile coast-to-coast journey to 23 present and former Indian school sites in the US
o Designation of June as National Forgiveness Month
o An educational exhibit about the boarding school experience
o Filming for a full-length documentary currently in production
o Creation and transport of a 40-foot tall Wellbriety totem pole from Haines, Alaska, to Washington, D.C.
o Educational workshops and ceremony at many of the school sites
o The convening a task force of Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians to develop the national goals and strategy for a culturally-appropriate wellness and sobriety plan
• Planning for the tour will be guided by an advisory committee of Native elders.
The flagship of the tour will be the 6,800-mile cross-country Journey.
o The Wellbriety Movement’s Sacred Hoop of 100 Eagle Feathers and recently-gifted
eagle staff will be transported cross-country during the 40-day Journey beginning
May 16, 2009, at the oldest continuously operated Indian boarding school,
Chemawa, in Salem, Ore.
o The route will end the week of June 21 at the National Museum of the American
Indian in Washington, D.C.
o The route will include a stop at the site of the first boarding school, Carlisle
Indian Industrial School, opened at Carlisle, Penn., in 1879. The school was the
model school for educating Native American children for more than 60 years.
o The Journey includes stops at 23 present and former school sites where
educational activities, facilitated talking circles and traditional Indian
ceremonies will be held to promote awareness and support healing from the
intergenerational trauma originating from the boarding school experience
Historical background
o Between 1879 to 1934, Native children were forcibly removed from their homes to attend one of 500 schools run by the government and churches to assimilate Native people
o At these schools, children were severely punished for speaking their native language and practicing their traditions and cultural ways
o Widespread physical and sexual abuse against children occurred at the schools and has been documented. Many died there. Their bodies remain in marked and unmarked graves.
o While most of these schools had shut down by 1940, others stayed open and loopholes in the law allowed abuses to continue there into the 1980s
o The Canadian government took the US boarding school model and employed it against Native people in Canada in full force up until the 1970s
o On June 11, 2008, the Canadian government apologized to Native people for the thousands who were traumatized at the schools
o A bill is currently in the US Congress to apologize for what happened at the boarding schools here
• During Forgiveness Month, peoples will be asked to forgive those responsible for what happened at the schools in order to promote a collective healing of the nation
• The Tour is intended to send the message that Indian people can heal from the historical trauma of the schools without waiting for a formal apology or monetary settlement from the US government
• All Native communities will be encouraged to host activities in line with The Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness vision. Resources to participate will be provided to the communities on the designated website www.wellbrietyjourney.org.
• The Ancient Ways of Knowing Foundation is slated to release a documentary during the ride on the boarding schools from a historical perspective, through the sharing of personal stories and an examination of intergenerational trauma and its effects on the social fabric of Indian communities
• The ride will be led by two sacred objects created to support the healing of Native peoples – the Wellbriety Eagle Staff and Sacred Hoop of 100 Eagle Feathers
o The Wellbriety Eagle Staff of 36 feathers was gifted to the Wellbriety Movement
by Nancy Kingbird, a member of the Leech Lake Ojibwe Tribe and grassroots community
activist, during White Bison’s national conference April 18 in Minneapolis, Minn.
The staff was made for the movement in remembrance of Kingbird’s husband, Warren
Bradley Tibbetts, who was murdered at their home in 2005
o The Sacred Hoop of 100 Feathers was created just after the birth of the white
buffalo calf and has since traveled more than 40,000 miles bringing the messages
of unity, healing, hope and forgiveness to Indian communities in the United States
and Canada
• For the last 20 years, White Bison has offered sobriety, recovery, addictions prevention and wellness resources to Native American communities nationwide. Its goal is to bring 100 Native American communities into healing by 2010. FMI, visit its website at www.whitebison.org
• The Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness is being organized because Native people need to heal from this trauma now so that it doesn't get passed on to yet another generation.
The Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness is asking for people to sponsor the trip by mile, $18.79 per, in fact. Go to the website for more information.
