which starts in 9 days time. athletes will be subjected to daily corona, virus tests and masks will be mandatory, took you is under a state of emergency following arise. and infections, and public opinion is sharply divided on whether the games should actually go ahead . can find out more about the olympics and everything else that we've been covering here. and i'll just say we're on our website. there it is. the address al jazeera dot com ah and the top stories on al jazeera, at least 72 people have been killed in dave of riots and losing across south africa . another 800 people have been arrested. what started as unrest over the arrest, the former president, jacob juma, is now turned into protests against poverty and inequality. it's some of the worst violence, the south africa seen since before the end of a partake. the military has been deployed to assist the countries overwhelmed

police force cove. in 1900 vaccination campaigns are suspended in some areas at a time of a devastating outbreak. us president joe biden has called the voting rights fight the test of our time. and he has accused republican lawmakers of attempting to subvert the electoral process. democrat politicians from texas have left have left the state for washington dc. it's a bid to stop the republican lead bill, which would restrict the access to voting president by that also criticized those alleging fraud in last year's us selections. it's clear for those who challenged the results in question, the integrity of the election. no other election has ever been held under such scrutiny. such high standards. the big lie is just that

a big why? yeah. hundreds of professors have gathered in iraq's city after a fire at a corona virus was killed, 92 people. the prime minister is promising accountability. it's the 2nd time in 3 months that a fire has torn through a hospital in iraq. cuba has restricted access to social media and messaging apps after widespread anti government protests. that's according to a u. k based monitoring group. thousands of cubans march through havana and santiago and sunday to protest against cuba as he called me crisis, and the country's handling of the pandemic with many calling for an end to communist rule, police have been out in force after the demonstrations. but he was president accusing the u. s. thank you. been americans of spurring on the process? those are the headlines coming up next the it's the 3 me. ah

ah ah, i am for me. okay, today on the stream, we're looking at indian boarding schools in america, united states government created residential schools in the 19th century. the id was to assimilate indigenous youngsters into american culture and take the indian out of them. now the u. s. government is investigating not cruel policy, starting with looking for the hidden, the secret, the loss grace of young indigenous children who died in the care of the state. i

want to start with farina. king farina is of the non how nation and her father attended the re my indian boarding school as a little boy. he ran away. he was trying to find his own family. he almost died as he was caught in a snow drift. that story, the story that her father told her is our starting point for today's conversation. it got for in a king, thinking about india boarding school, have a listen, have a look. i never really thought about this story in the same way as when i think about these unmarked mass graves of residential and indian boarding schools. and since that story came out, i realize how so many other children never made it home and they died in that way. my father almost did, by freezing to death, trying to escape in winter. those are all sons, daughters, sisters, brothers,

family, people who could have had children of their own and their own posterity that never was. but i am and my children are because my father was able to survive. now as we think about the impacts of indian boarding schools on these dark, complicated path, i think that what we grapple with is, is now what? that question. now, what is part of our conversation today? what other questions would you like to ask if you choose? the comment section is right here. take part in today's program would love to have your questions and you can put to the panel. let's meet your panel. hello to you, christine. hello, my car. hello mary. so good to have you here on the stream, christine with you. introduce yourself. try international audience. tell them who you are and what you do. certainly my name is christine in dc mclean and i'm the

ceo for the national native american boarding school healing coalition. we're headquartered here in minneapolis, minnesota, and our mission is to lead in the pursuit of understanding and addressing the ongoing trauma. that was a result of the u. s. indian boarding school policy. mccall. welcome to the street . what do you need to know about you? go ahead. thank you. thank you for having here. my name mccaul, black oak, i am the executive director for truth and healing at red card indian school, which is a catholic former indian boarding school. our last part is we're in the 1980. and my job today is to leave the institution through creation process. mary, welcome to the stream. introduce yourself to international audience. yes, i'm national correspondent for indian country today. i'm a citizen of the red cliff band of wisconsin gibb way, and i've written extensively about boarding schools. my mother's experience, and many other native topics. good to have and i'm going to stop by,

by showing our audience some pictures that promotional pictures for the carlo indian school in pennsylvania. i want you to look at these pictures i, i've been studying them for so long. on one side is the indigenous child, on the other side is what happened to them once they attended this residential school. the promotional pictures were put out there to raise the nations and the it's the 1st off reservation boarding school in the united states. the phrase kill the indian saved the man with famous re coined by the schools found a richard henry product. and you can see those pictures from your heart wrenching, you can see on one side coach or the other side, assimilation bodies pies where i want to start my car. this idea of a residential school, this us policy so blatant in what it was trying to do wasn't subtle. it wasn't secret, it was out there from your perspective, how do you see it?

i think it's really important to remember for many indigenous people in this country. this is our family history. i myself am a defendant of on both sides of my family. those who attended both carla and get in touch with school where those photos come from. and also the, the boarding school that i now work at and i'm a graduate of myself. so this is personal history for many of us to recognize that the reason why our languages are not passed on today as, as much as they could have been the reason why culture is so difficult to come across them and pop along is because of the school that actively suppressed our history and our language. my personal for you to i'm sorry, we should be absolutely very. this is, this is a personal story and it's a story for communities as well. if you are indigenous in the united states right

now, that would be a connection between these residential boarding schools and your own family member . what's yours? well, my mother is a survivor of saint mary's. indian catholic boarding school in northern wisconsin on the bad river reservation. and i don't, and she passed away in 2011, but i don't think a week went by during my childhood or her entire life when she didn't comment about that negative experience of attending. the sister school she called it was taught by the franciscan nuns, and i think it was very much for her, a message of diminishment of her traditional ways and of traditional culture. and just sort of you know, what she and who she was as a person. and she rebelled against that and i think raged against that her entire life. how do you see that not being out to grapple with who she was as a person because it was deliberately tried to impact her culture, her tone,

culture that she grew up in was trying to be changed? well, i think she had a number of mental health issues. you know, that were unresolved is probably p t s d. and she, you know, she actually, her home life was very bad. her parents split up and before she entered the sister school at age 5. so there was a lot of things very traumatic events had happened. and then after this traumatic event of the split of her family, she's just immediately thrust into this kind of punitive environment. so i think it, you know, it just had a elastic impact on her and she was never able to process that. she knew it was wrong, she had some chit, a deep pride, i think, and being a good way and being a snobby, quite as we say, as being an old chip, a woman she had that somewhere. but it was forever tainted by that boarding school experience. christine help us understand the purpose of the boarding schools. they were so many across the united states, and they lasted for 3 years. there's still

a couple a around the and i think though they have changed in terms of what they are doing now. but the purpose of them was what? well, it's this was started by the indian civilization fund act in 1819. and as the name suggests, it was to quote unquote, civilized the indigenous peoples in this country to make way for westward expansion . and what we address here at the boarding school human coalition is what we call the historical assimilated model, which prohibited language prohibited culture, forced conversion to christianity. and although there were 367 of these boarding schools in the united states and 73 of them are still open today. only 15 of them board students and they are no longer what we call the historical assimilated model of boarding school. because in the 1900 seventy's, there was a lot of legislation that came about that reversed that original civilization

policy. so the american indian religious freedom act, the american indian language revitalization, act, indian child welfare act, all of these things to protect our language, to protect our culture, to protect our children, which reversed the original policy. but there is still that legacy of these schools in this country. look, i think, you know, they are picking the not i'm sorry. can you repeat that? yeah, it's not. and go ahead. i think one of the things that's really interesting about all of this is, you know, when we talk about this being a personal history that many of our, our grandparents are great grandparents were impacted by this. and this is a really fine line between you know, so that the forest assimilation practices and the way in which culture is always change. cultures do change as they interact and engage with new people to new ideas . come not what happened to me school. and that's

a really important thing to remember here, and that's why that legacy is so better mental and long lasting to this day. i think this moment is important for many reasons. and one of them is because the secretary of the interior, which is the apartment responsible for managing these residential schools. the sexy of interior is now an indigenous woman. and this point is when the secretary of interior is about to investigate what happened in residential schools for the 1st time since 1928. this is deb hollins, secretary, deb holland. speaking about this at the american congress of american indians. and this happened to just a few weeks ago, but now for the 1st time, this country has the cabinet secretary who is indigenous. i come from ancestors who endured the horrors of indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by

the same department that i now lead for more than a century. the interior department was responsible for operating the indian boarding schools across the united states and its territories. we are therefore uniquely positioned to assist in the effort to recover the dark history of these institutions that have haunted our families for too long. it's our responsibility hold about a pile of crystal and the person who's in charge of his investigation. serendipity . yes congresswoman deborah holland, when she was a representative last year introduced a bill for a truth and healing commission on indian boarding schools. and that was the 1st bill of its kind to ever be introduced to address this legacy to address this federal policy to remove our children and culturally assimilate them. so the fact that she has carried on this work now as the secretary just expresses her

commitment to, to the generational healing that's needed and the acknowledgement that this was a federal policy. i'm going to go to our youtube audience now because they have some comments. i'm going to put them to you mac, how can you do with this one? actually? lauren says i am scared of the result of this investigation that they will be worse than the canadian discovery. at least 3 mass grace were, i'm going to say discovered, but many of the engineers indigenous people of canada already knew that these moscow will rouse mock up in the context of the united states. what are you worried about? well, i think for many 1st national people in canada, the famous true here for business community. this is not a surprise. this is not new information for and business people here in the country . these schools across the nation most likely have many, many great young people who died and passed away there. you know, there's

a conversation, of course, about the difference between math grades versus a mass amount of individual grades. as if that really make the difference. in the reality that these children were taken away from home, but they were often far from home, and many of them never got to see their families again. and sometimes those families never got to know the fate of their children. so this is a watershed moment, correct? and i think the discovery that will come forward again, aren't discovery supporting digital people. but many americans will be shocked by them. i'm so glad you said that. i'm going to go to tyrone here on youtube. mary. i'm going to put thailand thoughts to you. haven't says this has never been a secret. it only became a topic due to the proof of the skeletons recovered from the ground. the native american engine community have been persecuted. people, mary, your thoughts? well, you know, i, i do sort of shrink a little bit from this victim narrative that often infuse the way that the world

particularly, you know, wait, americans view us. you know, the process of these schools, they changed over time. initially they work streamline, militaristic, there are times like in the 1930 that they did change somewhat. i'm actually, it was reflective of this whole progressive era of education. and i think they were realized that people, you know, it would be probably be better for children to live with their parents that might do better if they went to, to school and learn better if they did tended school in that way. however, yes, we have always known us, you know, and it will, i fully anticipate there will be far more graves then there are in canada. and the other thing i think that will be very interesting is a lot of we don't even know the full number of boarding schools that existed here in the united states. several denominations of christians ran them some for a short period of time. for instance, this is a little bit counter intuitive, but unitarian actually ran a couple of schools or something for

a very short period for like 2 years. what happened to that land was sold to private, private ownership. it could very well be, you know, that we're having buildings and people living a top, you know, these braves of native children who attended boarding schools that are no longer there and, and retrieve and recorded. so there's a lack of data how, how do you even begin an investigation like that could go ahead i was going to say, i really appreciate what mary was saying about, you know, this victim narrative. there's a thing called deficit discourse, where, you know, when people talk about indigenous peoples of the united states, they often start with all these negative statistics. but it's important to note that we are very resilient people that we survived attempted genocide and we're still here. we're still thriving, and that's, you know, a positive narrative to highlight. but yes, regarding the history and the scope of this investigation, it is massive. we believe the timeline is, is a little short and likely the report will say more investigation is needed. canada

had a 5 year truth commission that investigated $139.00 schools in their country. the work of the coalition over the years by independent research has found, like i mentioned before, 367 schools in this country. we can estimate that the numbers of children who went to those schools is about double of what canada had. and so we think it is going to be multi year process to uncover the full truth and the full scope of this experience here in the u. s. so mac market, one of the things that happens when we talk about residential schools, i take your point, mary, about not making survivors feel like they're victims, but that survivors and that the culture has survived and continues and come to survive and continues. is the role with the church and the role of the catholic church and your catholic and you work at a former residential boarding school?

how do you make all of those different aspects of your heritage, joy history? how do you make them make sense? but typically when the catholic church is yet to say we were involved in this and we are sorry, we were involved in residential schools. yes, i work for one situation that is currently still catholic and. ready we are making efforts here to engage in this process that starts with the telling of that truth, the admission of that. sure. the acknowledgement of that shoot and the work to uncover and reveal the truth have been lost or hidden or made secret, including our document, our archive. i think you really dealing with the way that this country has utilized christian denomination to also fund these schools and support the schools and operate the schools. is a real reckoning for many christian denominations in the country,

including the catholic church. you know, people asked me how i can be native american and catholic. i think the fair question even to my non native catholic community. yeah. to be about, how do we reckon with the history of a church that was involved in this way? and i think it's a discussion that needs to be had broadly throughout the church. did you come up with answers because i know you, you, you wrestling this all of the time? i definitely rep with it. this is an important conversation for native communities across the country, especially for those who have adopted christian religion. that part of their, their pathway and they're like way, it's easy to turn this historical narrative into a native people versus the church. but there's an intro community conversations here her to for need are people who are christian in talking with themselves in each other. and in talking with their community who are really hurt and who are

skeptical and angry with the church in the history. i think we all have to turn our anger to the right direction. and that is really about the way that that truth has been hidden. i want to bring a table, david is the professor of native american studies at metropolitan state, university of denver, and he takes us onto the healing process. what does that look like? his david, the impact of the boarding schools reverberates today. the pain and trauma is passed from generation to generation and the loss of our culture and traditions is of course a tragedy. there have been some steps to begin the healing process. many boarding schools have begun repatriated, remains of the native children back to their homelands and there is a new federal program to examine the legacy and history of the boarding schools. we hope that this is the 1st step in the healing process. mary, when you are working on your publication and you are telling the story from

native american 1st nation communities and coaches, what does the heating process look like? well i think before we begin healing, we'd like to see some transparency and we haven't really, we haven't seen that yet. you know, there's a lot of talk about work conciliation and healing. but i think until we get both the united states government and various christian denominations to be very open with their archives. now it may be that red caught indian school is open with their archives, but the catholic church writ large. the bureau of catholic indian missions is not and you know it's, it's quite a chore to go see their archives. and additionally, the catholic church which operate the majority of the churches in canada, they have not been very forthcoming about despite you know, government orders to do so about transparency. and i think, you know,

at least from my perspective in many of the people that i speak to, i think people would like to feel better. we would all like to feel better and just try to release some of this. but until, you know, there is like real genuine truth. i think, you know, it needs to needs to proceed that process. i think mary, you hit the nail on the head. yeah. you told me to jump in. so here i go. you know, when we think about different models of healing, i like one of my favorite ones is by doctor maria, yellow horse brave heart. and she says that it must begin with confronting the trauma. and then seeking to understand it before there can be true healing or transformation. and i think that last step of transformation is really important because even when you look at different models of justice such as transitional justice, there is the promise not to repeat. once that the harms have been fully identified and you know, in some cases, reparations,

or redress or some kind of repair has been made, then there is, you know, the awareness that this is what we did wrong and we promise not to repeat these harms again and even the united nations human rights council says that people who suffered these types of human rights violations have the right to the truth. it's not that we deserve the truth. we have a right to the truth in this country. kristen, kristen, you said a threat, but just jumped out at me. it really shows the legacy of residential boarding schools. this threat is from marty simmons. marty sentence, tweets when visitors knock on the door and my children were little. i used to tell them to hive they would go and take off running a white friend of why did i do that? i didn't really know i asked my mom why we played that game. it wasn't a game for my dad. it was a survival technique that is incredibly powerful, christine. it is and there are several things that come up for me when you share

that. one is that we don't understand how these sporting schools impacted our families unless we talk about these stories, right? so she's kind of unpacking that and saying like this was a game i played as a child and i didn't understand that it had this terrible context to it. so we, we need to be talking about these experiences and our families in our communities in our country as a whole. but also, you know, in terms of the impact that this isn't a historical situation. the boarding schools evolved into the bureau of indian affairs indian adoption project, and there's a reason why the indian child welfare act of 1978, was needed to protect our children. because to this day, they are still taken into foster care and adopted out and represented at higher rates per capita than any other ethnicity in the foster care system. and that is a direct legacy because the 1st indian child welfare policy of this country was to

remove our children and send them to the schools. i'm just wondering, mary, are you hopeful for where we are at this stage in terms of understanding residential schools in the united states for the broader population of the united states, and then what this means for the indigenous people of the us? well, i frankly never thought we'd get this far. i'm, you know, in my lifetime, so i am encouraged, i think things circumstances kind of came together at a perfect time. you know, we're in this sort of period of reckoning. you know, after the george floyd murder and then you know, this point in, in canada and their residential school work. and then the discovery of the grades. and finally, people realizing, and i think it just kind of occurred at a time when maybe nothing else really big was happening in the news and people listen, heard it. i've actually spoken for quite a bit of people about that. so i know why. thank you so much, mary. right the, this program, this is a conversation that will be ongoing, not just on the stream,

but around america. so mary mac and christine, thank you for being part of ash oh today. appreciate you. take care. i'll say next time. ah, ah ah, ah ah, energy to every part of our universe more small to continue the all around the shape by technology and human ingenuity.

we can make it work for you and your officer to yeah, the one of the most famous film festivals is back with love landed 3 doors, the social distance thing in place in some countries unable to attend. and like 2 or 3 pieces, recreate the magic temperatures the council festival. now to tear a mineral central to the quest for clean energy. a key ingredient for the production of electric car batteries, cobalt extracting that is dangerous. profitable, with global demand set the skyrocket. people in power investigates, claims that industrial mines in contracting the precious material needed for cleaner energy, are in fact, poisoning the environment with dia, health consequences for those living in their shadow. the cost of coal, both people in power on a jersey. i am sorry,

should be about raising prices and harley down to the government. we bring you the stories and developments that are rapidly changing the world. we live in time in that says, i don't have the baby has the task of fixing a war torn economy. counting the cost on al jazeera ah, hello and barbara fara london. these are the top stories on al jazeera, at least 70 few people have been killed in days of riots and losing a cross south africa, and other 800 people have been arrested. what started as unrest over the arrest, the former president jacob zuba, has now turned into protests against poverty and inequality. well, it's some of the worst violence that south africa has seen since before the end of apartheid. the military has been deployed to assist the country's overwhelmed police force.