Indigenous North Americans at White Christian Boarding Schools: Surviving Physical, Sexual, Spiritual, and Genocidal Abuse

TRIGGER WARNING: Graphic stories of ABUSE AND SURVIVAL follow.

First we hear from a woman about her experience of gross physical abuse. The we hear the story of a boy whose hair was forcibly cut off. There were many horrible things that happened at the hands and policies of white people, by white men and white women. For me, these are but two of far too many examples of how white Christian supremacy is a genocidal force in the world. I feel rage and sorrow when I hear these stories of abuse. And it makes me wish white Christianity had never been born upon the Earth.

Lakota woman Joanne Tall describes the abuse she received as a 12 year old girl in a "christian" boarding school:


In 1869 the US government forced large numbers of Indian children into Boarding Schools where brainwashing techniques were used to try to assimilate them and teach them the ways of western society. A popular term was "Kill the Indian, Save the man". Children were stolen from their family, humiliated, physically and mentally abused. More than 100,000 Indian children were stripped of their language, cultural heritage and identity: