As the country celebrates Native American Heritage Month, President Joe Biden recently issued a historic apology to Indigenous people, including tribes in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, for forcing Native American children into federal boarding schools. The children were often mistreated and abused in an attempt to erase their culture. Biden said, “After 150 years, the federal government stopped the program...I apologize as President of the United States of America, for what we did.” The president called it, “A sin on our souls.”
Loren Spears, Narragansett educator and director of the Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, says the boarding schools which began in the late 1800s, were an attempt to eradicate Native American identity. “The real goal was to take the land. If they couldn’t exterminate us through genocide and warfare, they were going to exterminate us through forced assimilation,” said Spears.
“I learned at first through my family, through our stories, through our oral histories, through the understanding that these structures were structures of, of slavery. One of my uncles, he was literally taken, he and his siblings, taken from his family and community and he has the not only the emotional but physical scars to show for it.” Spears went on to say it led to multi-generational trauma.
This “erase and replace” was first started in 1879 by Richard Pratt, a military officer. Among thousands of children that were held at the Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania, its records indicate there were Narragansetts, Wampanoags and Pokanokets kept at the school against their will.
This “Hidden History” will have the place and space to be told at a new Tomaquag Museum to be built in Kingston replacing the current site in Exeter. Rhode Islanders recently voted to pass Cultural Arts and the Economy Grant program, which will provide two million dollars for the extensive headquarters and research center. Fundraising is ongoing. Spears says they hope to break ground on the new complex sometime next year. She adds it will better preserve the rich history and culture of the Narragansett tribe.
