Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) has long stood in solidarity with United States and Canadian boarding school survivors in acknowledging September 30th as a Day for Truth and Reconciliation. In 2023, we remain firmly supportive of honoring the lost children who suffered and disappeared in boarding schools in both countries.
Each year we invite you to wear orange on September 30th to honor the truth about mandatory Indian boarding schools, and to remember the generations who are forever impacted by their operation. “Wearing orange on September 30th isn’t simply a sign of solidarity,” says Brian Ridley, TCC’s Chief/Chairman, “It represents a call to action. Wearing orange tells officials, communities, and the public at large that we will not keep these atrocities in the past; especially because American boarding schools have yet to experience any accountability for the atrocities committed within their walls.”
Indian boarding schools operated in 37 states across the US for nearly 100 years, and worked in partnership with churches, religious orders and missionary groups. Together these entities supported more than 400 boarding schools, where attendance for Indigenous children was made mandatory by the United States government. Government estimates put attendance of Indigenous children in the tens of thousands, spanning several generations, and thousands of children are believed to have died. Other reports include sexual assault, physical abuse, and emotional trauma that has trickled down into the familial patterns of families affected by mandatory Indian boarding schools.
In 2023, a reckoning is beginning. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe whose grandparents were stolen from their homes and forced to attend boarding schools, travels the nation to expose the devastating legacy of the schools on families and tribes. Simultaneously, a nonprofit group called the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is collecting thousands of documents on Indian boarding schools with the goal of creating an interactive digital archive, which is expected to launch later this year.
In addition to wearing orange on September 30th, TCC invites people to read, listen to, and watch the stories of our Elders, as their depictions are a historical unfolding and a call to action for officials to take action on this appalling history.