I have been thinking of my Iñupiaq language and a small bit of the history that I know of and have experienced.
I grew up with Iñupiaq as the only language I knew before entering a classroom, a Bureau of Indian (BIA) Classroom at the age of 5. Even though I did not understand the English language spoken in a classroom, I would be brought to the school because it was deemed necessary to be there even though there was no understanding of the English language to be taught.
I remember at the age of 5, I must have been scolded or punished for speaking my language and I know I was crying, grabbed my parka and started running home across the lagoon. I was so young and I don’t think I remember being brought back to the school right away, others older than me that were send out at that young age did not have that privilege of running home when treated so bad and for a lot of them, that was the first time they experienced “domestic violence”. We were a quiet class because of the fear of being punished for speaking the only language we knew.
I don’t remember much of that school year as a 5 year old, but I do remember another incident that happened the following school year. As a child of nomadic parents, my parents would leave our wooden walls in late April or early May for spring camp and not returning until almost Thanksgiving, and this was the time of year we would be put in school.
My first grade year, I still could not understand English and being new to a classroom from a very loving home, that was the year I first encountered “domestic violence” as a first grader when the teacher, although did not hit me, she raised her hand at me and made me flinch. I was so scared that I started crying and could not stop. I don’t know if I was brought home or picked up, that is not clear to me. I do remember my mom telling my dad when he got home from work or trapping about the incident in my school. My father did not act right away but he thought it through and went and talked with the principal (who was an older native man) instead of approaching the teacher, he talked with our principal the following day. I don’t think my parents allowed me in school for a while but when I did go back, the teacher ignored me and I continued to witness “domestic violence” towards my classmates who were also so young and punished when they spoke our language.
My 2nd grade year was so different from the previous year because the teacher was so patient and had an understanding of our non-English speaking class. It made learning fun. The beginning of our 3rd grade year, we had another teacher that was also patient with us learning English words but by mid-school year we had a change in teachers and it was not so nice. We started going to school in fear again, fear of being punished for saying an Iñupiaq word because we did not know an English word for what we were saying. This time we had a male teacher who had a wife in the lower grade classroom. Well this man would go and get his wife to help discipline our class if we did not know English words and said Iñupiaq words. More “domestic violence” learned in a classroom.
My 4th grade year, we had an older man who also used “corporal” punishment like our previous teachers. Being exposed to this type of “domestic violence” was probably getting normal for a lot of these young minds. And we wonder why domestic violence is in such high rates in our native cultures of Alaska and the Nation, it’s because of the actions we witnessed in our early years of education. We never ever witnessed domestic violence in our culture until the Government got involved.
What is another word for Domestic Violence: Corporal punishment – Corporal punishment encompasses all types of physical punishment, including spanking, slapping, pinching, pulling, twisting, and hitting with an object. It also may include forcing a child to consume unpleasant substances such as soap, hot sauce, or hot pepper. Violence can be broadly divided into three broad categories – direct violence, structural violence and cultural violence.
We used to flinch as a young student when a teacher was throwing a large rubber eraser the size of a large stick of butter across the room towards another child. We also witnessed our classmates being pulled by the ears or their hair out of their chairs to be placed in front of the classroom corner to be humiliated by the teacher. We witnessed our classmates sticking their hands out, palm up being hit by the teacher with a wooden ruler with the sound of a whip on their small hands. These are just some of them I witnessed personally and I have heard my classmates talk of more incidents, some of them going home with bruises from their teachers.
My fifth grade year started out as the most terrible year of all of them, not because of the actions towards me but to watch my classmates suffer under the hands of someone the parents entrusted to teach. All the actions and words of that first teacher started on day one and continued until it drove one of our classmates to totally not coming to school. That one day when our female classmate who was quiet and could not understand our teacher, was looking to us for help to understand him and tell him that she needed to go and use the restroom. Instead, the teacher was outraged, grabbed the girl and picked her up by her shoulders, carried her over to our tall metal trashcan and shoved her in there where she peed her pants while the teacher left her in there for a long time while she was crying. His throwing of objects such as large hard erasers, chalkboard erasers, books, rulers, pencils and other things were a normal occurrence with this teacher until that fateful day of our classmate who never returned to school.
They finally let that teacher go and it was a relief to be free of fear. We got to know our teacher replacement and he was the total opposite of the person they let go. The new teacher was so patient with us and like our 2nd grade teacher, he made education fun without the violence. That same teacher lived in Barrow with his family for many years and continued to teach in one of our villages and has close connection with that community to this day. Thank you Mr. Finley.
I hope this makes you understand a little better why our Iñupiaq language spiraled down because of violence that happened to our young speakers. If my story angers you, you have not heard the stories of those that were sent out at a very young age of 5 years old to institutions outside of our region and sometimes out of our state/territory without any parental involvement to protect or speak for them for years. The Federal Government came in the name of education by different means and divided families using different tools to do that paid by the Federal Government. They were sent to assimilate and destroy our languages and cultures.
For nearly a century, between 1869 and the 1960’s, the Federal Government implemented the Indian Boarding School Policy. This policy authorized the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of American Indian and Alaska Native children, as young as five (5) years old, relocating them from their homes in communities to one of 367 Indian Boarding Schools across 30 States.
The Indian Boarding School policy was designed to assimilate American Indian and Alaska Native children into White American culture by stripping them of their cultural identities, often through physical, sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse and neglect. Many of the children who were taken to boarding schools never returned to their communities. At the Carlisle Indian School alone, approximately 180 American Indian and Alaska Native children were buried. Many of our Caucasian counterparts want us to “move on” because it’s “history” they say. It is History that has caused a lot of damage in our people and to our families.
While attending Indian boarding schools, American Indian and Alaska Native children suffered additional psychological abuses as they were sent to white-owned homes and businesses for involuntary and unpaid manual labor work during the summers. Many children ran away and remained missing, or died of illnesses due to harsh living conditions, abuse, and/or substandard health care provided by the schools.
Parents of the children who were forcibly removed to the boarding schools were prohibited from visiting or engaging in correspondence with their children. Parental resistance to compliance with this harsh no-contact policy resulted in their incarceration or loss of access to basic provisions including food rations, clothing, or both.
United States Commission on Civil Rights reported that American Indian and Alaska Native communities continue to experience intergenerational trauma resulting from experiences in Indian Boarding Schools that divided cultural family structures, damaged indigenous identities, and inflicted chronic psychological ramifications on American Indian and Alaska Native children and families.
When these young students came back home after being away for many years, they had been stripped of family and the unit they were once part of. It took years for them to get connected and try to learn their language and culture but a lot of them were not lucky, those that ran away and got lost. Not only were they stripped of their language but also their families, culture and dignity.
Indigenous peoples have an internationally recognized human right to their language. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples proclaims that, “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their . . . languages.” Similar terms appear in many other international human rights treaties.
Let us strengthen our language for those that never had the chance to return home. Let us tell our stories so we don’t carry it alone.