Researchers Identify 102 Native American Students Who Died at Government-Run Boarding School, Irish government agrees €800m package for mother and baby home survivors
Irish government agrees €800m package for mother and baby home survivors
About 34,000 people thought to be eligible for compensation, including those born in church-run homes
Lisa O'Carroll in Dublin
Tue 16 Nov 2021
Ireland has confronted one of the most painful chapters in its history and agreed an €800m compensation package to thousands of unmarried mothers shunned by society and hidden away in church-run mother and baby homes.
The redress scheme was agreed by the government cabinet on Tuesday and will offer up to €65,000 each to survivors of a practice, widely condemned as a shameful and cruel, that spanned almost 80 years of the country’s 100-year history.
Announcing the scheme, the children and equality minister, Roderic O'Gorman, said: “There is no payment or measure that can ever fully compensate or atone for the harm done through the mother and baby institutions.
“What we have set out today is the next chapter in the state’s response to the legacy of those institutions, and its commitment to rebuilding the trust it so grievously shattered.”
The state will also offer compensation to the children who ended up spending their early years in the religious institutions, some of them forced to work in laundries....
The redress scheme comes after an inquiry by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation detailed the horrific experiences of about 56,000 women and about 57,000 children who were placed or born in homes, mostly run by nuns, between 1922 and 1998.
In its report published in January it discovered an alarming number of deaths of babies in the homes and documented the cruelty and neglect suffered. Many were forced to take part in work and separated from their babies, who were fostered or adopted.
The commission was established after human remains were found in a mass unmarked grave near a home in Tuam, county Galway.
Catherine Corless, a local historian, had begun studying the records of the home and discovered that 796 children had died there between 1925 and 1961 but there were no burial records.
After excavation, 20 underground chambers were discovered with human remains in at least 17 of them, and age-at-death put at between 35 foetal weeks and two or three years old.
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Researchers Identify 102 Native American Students Who Died at Government-Run Boarding School
"Prior to their arrival, many of the students were removed from their families and homelands against their will, according to The Guardian. They then were forced into hard labor and subjected to cruel treatment, such as being prohibited from speaking their tribal languages and being required to convert to Christianity as a way to diminish and completely erase their cultures, the outlet reported."
People
November 15, 2021, 7:58 PM
Researchers have identified over 100 students who died at a government-run boarding school for Native Americans in Nebraska.
Thanks to the efforts of the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project, a total of 102 names of students who attended the U.S. Indian School have been uncovered, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
Margaret Jacobs, a history professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the co-director of the project, told the outlet that some names may be duplicates but she believes the death toll is likely much higher, though no graves have been found.
"These children died at the school," Jacobs told the World-Herald. "They didn't get a chance to go home. I think that the descendants deserve to know what happened to their ancestors."
The U.S. Indian School in Genoa was operated by the U.S. government from 1884 to 1934, according to the World-Herald. During its peak in 1932, the school housed a total of 599 students, ranging in age from 4 to 22, across its 640-acre campus.
Prior to their arrival, many of the students were removed from their families and homelands against their will, according to The Guardian. They then were forced into hard labor and subjected to cruel treatment, such as being prohibited from speaking their tribal languages and being required to convert to Christianity as a way to diminish and completely erase their cultures, the outlet reported.
The school was the fourth of its kind in the U.S. and one of the largest in a system of 25 federal Indian boarding schools, per the World-Herald.
In the years since its closure, the U.S. Indian School has become the subject of a nationwide investigation as researchers attempt to identify the students who died on its campus.
It has been a challenging task, as no graves have been found and the school's documents were either destroyed or lost when it closed down in 1934, according to the World-Herald.
"I think America needs to take these little children back home, and if we're not able to find them, I think we need to do something to recognize that they lost their lives there," Judi gaiashkibos, a citizen of the Ponca Tribe whose mother went to the boarding school, told the outlet.
In 2017, the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project was launched with the goal of "telling the stories of the American Indian children who attended Genoa, the stories of their communities, and the stories of their descendants," per their website.
To uncover the identities, researchers have been relying on newspapers clippings and oral history from former students, according to the World-Herald.
Through her research, Jacobs was able to determine that many of the students died from diseases, like pneumonia, tuberculosis and measles, the outlet reported. Other causes of death included accidents, such as drowning, shooting, and being hit by a freight train.
While they work on compiling the list, Jacobs told the World-Herald that the victims' names won't be published until they consult tribal leaders and attempt to contact relatives of the dead.
The Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative — which was launched by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in June in the wake of the discovery of 215 children's bodies buried at an indigenous school in Canada — will also be involved with the matter.
Per the World-Herald, the initiative will be conducting an investigation into the allegations of abuse at the school and helping to find burial sites for the deceased, according to the outlet.
"I have a lot of feelings, a lot of mixed feelings," gaiashkibos told the World-Herald of uncovering details about her mom's time at the school. "As a country, I think there was a collective decision that this isn't the history that we want to tell. That the truth is too painful to reveal. I think it's time to take responsibility for that and to do something positive for the future."
"I'm looking to see something good come out of this," gaiashkibos added. "Perhaps we will find some way to restore language, to restore some of the culture that was stripped from us. Also, [to] hold people accountable. Everyone needs to learn the stories and say, 'America did this and we can do better.'"
