“Most Quakers still don’t know our history as participants in this enterprise of forced assimilation of Native people,” Paula Palmer says. “So the first thing that we have to do is learn the truth.”
In this video, Paula discusses Friends’ role in the traumas inflicted on the indigenous peoples of North America since the arrival of European colonists—particularly in the administration of boarding schools where Native children were forced to abandon their heritage and embrace the ways of White Christian culture, where they would never be truly accepted as equals.
Although it’s easy to “shake our fingers” at previous generations, Paula warns us that retroactive judgment isn’t enough—Quakers today need to hold themselves accountable as well. “As we think about work that we do today as Friends,” she says, “we need to examine our own attitudes and make sure that ways that we are trying to do good in the world are not also coming out of a sense of superiority.”
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Transcript:
One Dakota woman, Zitkala-Sa, was taken to a Quaker boarding school in Indiana at age eight. She talks about what she lost in order to get to, what she called, the “white man’s papers.” Through her schooling, she was awarded certificates and graduation papers. But what she lost was her relationship with the natural world, her relationship with her mother, with her community, her connection to Spirit. And she writes about that with such pain. I think most Quakers still don’t know our history as participants in this enterprise of forced assimilation of native people. And so the first thing that we have to do is learn the truth.
My name is Paula Palmer and I use she/her pronouns. I’m a member of the Boulder meeting, which is part of Intermountain Yearly Meeting, and I live outside of Boulder in a little town called Lewisville, which is in the homeland of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute Peoples. The indigenous people of this country experienced many traumas, beginning with the arrival of Europeans on these shores. The boarding school experience was particularly traumatic for the children, who were taken away from their families — intentionally separated from their parents and grandparents and communities. And so you can imagine the trauma that they experienced, not only by being physically separated, but by being told that everything about their lives was somehow wrong and that they needed to change everything. From their names to their clothes to their hair.
As they left the schools, they faced another really difficult challenge. As they tried, if they tried, to assimilate as they were taught to do, they were never going to be completely accepted as equals. In a racist society dominated by white European Americans. Many of them had lost so much of their indigenous identity by missing those years of growing up in their families and learning the dances and the stories and the songs and the skills of their people. It was very difficult for many of them to return to their families, into their communities and feel at home there. Trauma is passed from generation to generation.
As they grew up and started having children, they experienced their parents as being not genuinely affectionate and loving because they had not experienced that themselves as children. They didn’t really know how to be in a family, how to create a family, how to be affectionate to their children. Their children grew up lacking that care and comfort and sense of being loved in their own families. And they usually were not taught the indigenous language that their parents had lost in the years that they were not allowed to speak their language in the boarding schools. That generation grows up also feeling that something is missing. One generation after another, that sense of despair is passed down and it can it can be experienced as: persistent poverty, violence, alcoholism.
Friends sometimes ask me, “well, how could Quakers have done this? Didn’t Quakers at that time see that of God in indigenous people?” I think they did see that of God in individuals. What they didn’t see was the intrinsic value of indigenous cultures as a whole. And that’s because they were blinded by white supremacy. They were they were blinded by their certainty that their way of life was superior.
What can we do now is not something that we ourselves can answer alone. We can only really answer that through dialog with Indigenous people. Being in touch. Reaching out. Meeting Native people where they are. Learning from them. Participating in their activities. Supporting their work in the communities. Their aspirations. And learning through those relationships. Learning through friendships. One thing that Quakers can do, and that is really important to do, is to support this legislation for creating a Truth and Healing Commission. And FCNL, the Friends Committee on National Legislation makes it so easy for us to do that, to contact our senators and representatives. So that’s something that we immediately need to do as individuals and as our meetings.
Another thing I think that is a direct acknowledgment that the Quaker Indigenous schools attempted to annihilate indigenous languages. We can support Indigenous language education programs. I think it’s not enough for us to shake our fingers at the Quaker ancestors who participated in the forced assimilation of native children, I think our task today is to look at the mirror ourselves and ask, “Who are we are?” Our leadings led us down a wrong path for quite a long period of time. As we think about work that we do today as friends, we need to examine our own attitudes and make sure that ways that we are trying to do good in the world are not also coming out of a sense of superiority.
Discussion Question:
- What were Quaker indigenous boarding schools?
- What is the lasting effect of Native peoples?
- How can Quakers help today?
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
Wow! I somehow thought Quakers were not involved in the destruction of society regarding the Native Peoples of the U,S. thank you for sharing this information. It seems Quakers are not without blame in many things, including ownership of slaves..
The number of Quakers in Canada is much smaller than in the U.S. and as far as I know, only a very small number of them taught in the Indigenous Boarding Schools here. But I have not heard of Quaker opposition to them, when they existed, and I don’t think that we today feel much responsibility for what our predecessors did.
The words in this video are the most moving Quaker comment on the subject I have seen. The wrongness of our participation and the difficulty we have in accepting that “following our Light” could be so misguided is hard to accept.
Thank you all for this inspirational interview with Friend Paula Palmer. I know I have vital work to do becoming better aquanted with the Leni Lenape, on whose ancestral lands where I now live. Gaining fascinating knowledge from the Hopi in Arizona was an important first step in the many steps that call to me. Fortunately the Birmingham Friends Meeting where I now attend welcomes and enjoys the work of an active committee, Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples (TRR), from whom and with whom I can learn more. I am grateful for the guidance of Friends.
I am interested to learn more about the history of Quaker relations with the Lenape in your area. One of my Quaker ancestors (William Brinton) settled in the Birmingham area and family lore says that the Lenape people helped his family through at least their first winter (1684) before they could build a home. Does the Friends Meeting have any of that history in their possession? He had a considerable amount of land in Concord and Birmingham and the Concord Meeting was held in his home in Birmingham around 1690. William’s daughter, Esther Brinton Willis, my 7th GGMother, lived in Thornbury with her husband John Willis. It was fun to discover all of this history many years after graduating from nearby Westtown School. Thank you.
I am not sure “White Supremacy” is the right word. I think the term “White Privilege” is closer to to what was happening. Quakers don’t believe that one group or person is “better” or “more superior” than another. But, for most Quakers, being White is all they knew, and so yeah, they tried to pass on that identity to indigenous children. I have been involved with the UCC (descendants of the Congregationalists–the Pilgrims) and while I have less faith in the Puritans not believing in their superiority, (they used to hang Quakers, you know) so this has been a topic of discussion for 25+ years for me. Having lived in ND and SD, and having adopted two Sioux children, this is a very personal issue for me. The boarding schools were unfortunate, and I agree with the term “being blinded.” I wish both the Congregationalists and the Quakers had sought to seek and recognize the cultures they met and respect those cultures as important, meaningful, and significant as their own, but they didn’t. I am glad that we are facing our mistakes, and making efforts to apologize to those people whom were hurt. Nothing will ever make up for the harm done. But, making an effort to rebuild the cultural knowledge of the indigenous, and working toward rebuilding relationships between both groups is an important first step.
Thank you for such a clear statement of our history, our need to acknowledge where we erred, and what we need to do to heal ourselves and those around us. Thank you, Paula, for such a succinct and clear statement of the harm we have caused by our insistence on white supremacy. May it be a touchstone towards humility in the future. We do need guidance from Indigenous peoples in working towards healing this terrible, terrible wound.