• Menu
  • Skip to left header navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Minnesota Native News

Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations

  • Programs
    • MN Native News
    • Native Lights
      • Biidaapi
    • COVID-19
      • Helpful Links about COVID19 in Minnesota
      • COVID-19 Community Conversations
      • Health Report
      • COVID-19 Daily Update
    • A Mile in My Moccasins
  • About Us

Header Right

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Programs
    • MN Native News
    • Native Lights
      • Biidaapi
    • COVID-19
      • Helpful Links about COVID19 in Minnesota
      • COVID-19 Community Conversations
      • Health Report
      • COVID-19 Daily Update
    • A Mile in My Moccasins
  • About Us

Historian Brenda J. Child Responds to the Federal Indian Boarding School System Report

Native Lights May 20, 2022

Native Lights is a weekly, half-hour radio program hosted by Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe members and siblings, Leah Lemm and Cole Premo. Native Lights is a space for people in Native communities around Mni Sota Mkoce — a.k.a. Minnesota — to tell their stories about finding their gifts and sharing them with the community.

On today’s show, we talk with Brenda J. Child Ph.D. (Red Lake Nation) about the U.S. Department of Interior’s recently released investigative report on the Federal Indian boarding school system.

Brenda J. Child Ph.D. is the Northrop Professor of American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and was recently awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The Department of Interior’s 100+ page report is a first step in the U.S. government accounting for and acknowledging the harm done to Indigenous people over many decades. From 1819 to 1969, the United States funded 408 boarding schools for American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaskan Native students. These schools were a means to culturally assimilate Indigenous people and to dispossess them of lands across what are now 37 states.

Brenda J. Child is the author of many award-winning books including Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940; Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community; and My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation, which won the American Indian Book Award and Best Book in Midwestern History. Her bestselling book for children is Bowwow Powwow.

Find the report here: https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/department-interior-releases-investigative-report-outlines-next-steps-federal-indian

Additional resources suggested by Brenda J. Child:

Museum Exhibit: Away from Home – American Indian Boarding School Stories exhibit at the Heard Museum in Phoenix Arizonahttps://heard.org/boardingschool/

Journal article: The Boarding School as Metaphor, written by Brenda J. Child https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/jamerindieduc.57.1.0037

Dr. Charles F. Eastman (Santee Dakota) autobiographies include Indian Boyhood, Soul of an Indian, and From the Deep Woods to Civilization.  Eastman was born near Redwood Falls, Minnesota in 1858.

 

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund.

Subscribe to Native Lights wherever you get your podcasts

Apple PodcastsSpotifyRadio PublicRSS


  • Thomasina TopBear: Empowering Community Through ArtMarch 16, 2023
    She specializes in large-scale murals; her work can be seen on the sides of buildings throughout the Twin Cities and the country.
  • Tabitha Chilton’s Gift for Building Access & Trust in Healthcare SystemsMarch 9, 2023
    Leah and Cole chat with Tabitha Chilton, a White Earth Nation member who serves as Sanford Health’s Native American patient advocate in Bemidji, Minnesota. Tabitha’s focus on outpatient care at the Joe Lueken Cancer Center helps Native communities access healthcare throughout Northern Minnesota
  • Jewell Arcoren: Healing With Language and The Next GenerationMarch 2, 2023
    Jewell is a community activist and the Executive Director for Wicoie Nandagikendan, an Ojibwe and Dakota language immersion preschool in Minneapolis. There, she pursues her commitments to early childhood education, language revitalization and addressing intergenerational historical trauma.
  • Sasheen Goslin & Deanna Reder Bring Their Distinct Abilities to the Team at AICHOFebruary 23, 2023
    Sasheen Goslin and Deanna Reder from the American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO) in Duluth. They are two members of the small team at AICHO that is dedicated to all aspects of wellness for the Indigenous communities in Duluth.
  • Annie Humphrey’s Gift for Living With Care and EmpathyFebruary 17, 2023
    Annie talks about her latest album Eat What You Kill, building a hemp house, and the upcoming benefit show for the American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO)’s Dabinoo’Igan Domestic Violence Shelter expansion.
Previous Post: « Responding to the Federal Boarding School Report
Next Post: Joseph Nayquonabe Jr.’s Gift for Strengthening Tribal Economies »

Site Footer

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsRadio Public

Copyright © 2023 Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations. All rights reserved. | Site Design by Flying Orange.
Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage FundFunding for Minnesota Native News and Native Lights is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.