Alan S. Austin
Arizona Playwright • Writer • Poet
  

ABOUT NATIVE AMERICANS (6/25)

There's an amazing section in The Heard Museum devoted the lives of young Native Americans forced to leave their homes to be brought up in "white" ways at Phoenix's Indian School. They were forbidden to speak their own language and had to dress as whites. They were also forced to cut their hair which was sacred to them. The photographs in the Museum of them sitting passively and quizzically at their desks trying to understand what was happening to them reverberate with sadness. We know so little of them or their lives or what they thought of the process or what happened to them. Now that they are discovering the bodies of Native Canadians subjected to the same type of ethnic cleansing, the stories of what they suffered and the abuse from priests and teachers beggar the imagination. We ought to know the full story of what happened at Phoenix Indian School to enable us to mourn and at least apologize for what was done in our name. Is there a corner in the field where the Indian School used to be which covers the remains of children where we might leave some token of remembrance. We ought to know. It takes courage to wake up to your own history.