Posted on Jun 25, 2021
'I thought my name was my number': Survivors recount Alaska boarding school experience
899
6
1
4
4
0
The recent discovery of the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children at a residential school in Canada has prompted discussion, grief and memories of past trauma in Alaska.
Thousands of Alaska Native children were sent to boarding schools in and outside the state. The effects of forced assimilation continue to impact the lives of Native people.
Two boarding school survivors, Jim Aqpayuk LaBelle and Fred John Jr., as well as cultural expert Paul Ongtooguk, shared their perspectives on Talk of Alaska with Lori Townsend this week.
Listen to their conversation:
Thousands of Alaska Native children were sent to boarding schools in and outside the state. The effects of forced assimilation continue to impact the lives of Native people.
Two boarding school survivors, Jim Aqpayuk LaBelle and Fred John Jr., as well as cultural expert Paul Ongtooguk, shared their perspectives on Talk of Alaska with Lori Townsend this week.
Listen to their conversation:
'I thought my name was my number': Survivors recount Alaska boarding school experience
Posted from alaskapublic.orgPosted in these groups: State of Alaska
Native Americans
Native Americans
Posted 3 y ago
Responses: 1
1
1
0
PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
Paul Ongtooguk, former director of the University of Alaska Fairbank’s Alaska Native Studies Department, on the origin of U.S. boarding school policy as labor development:
"In the early era, one of the strategies that were developed was to end the Indian Wars by ending Indianness. One of the venues for doing that was missionaries — converting people not only to Christianity but away from being Indian. That was not completely successful.
In the summertime, the students were essentially loaned out or sold, leased to members of the white community to serve as labor servants or maids, whatever manual labor that was available for them. So there was a very high attrition rate. There was a very high number of students who died from probably the geographic shift, probably from the population shift and from loneliness, from abuse and from malnutrition. There were also multiple reasons for accidents, given the kind of labor that they were involved in — this was all pre-OSHA.
Boarding school survivor Jim Aqpayuk LaBelle on his memories of being sent to the Wrangell Institute:
My mother took us to the airport and our mom, in Fairbanks, left my younger brother and me there at the hands of the BIA officials. The first thing that they did was they tied us together with other children with ropes at the Fairbanks airport. There were dozens of other children that were already tied there."
Paul Ongtooguk, former director of the University of Alaska Fairbank’s Alaska Native Studies Department, on the origin of U.S. boarding school policy as labor development:
"In the early era, one of the strategies that were developed was to end the Indian Wars by ending Indianness. One of the venues for doing that was missionaries — converting people not only to Christianity but away from being Indian. That was not completely successful.
In the summertime, the students were essentially loaned out or sold, leased to members of the white community to serve as labor servants or maids, whatever manual labor that was available for them. So there was a very high attrition rate. There was a very high number of students who died from probably the geographic shift, probably from the population shift and from loneliness, from abuse and from malnutrition. There were also multiple reasons for accidents, given the kind of labor that they were involved in — this was all pre-OSHA.
Boarding school survivor Jim Aqpayuk LaBelle on his memories of being sent to the Wrangell Institute:
My mother took us to the airport and our mom, in Fairbanks, left my younger brother and me there at the hands of the BIA officials. The first thing that they did was they tied us together with other children with ropes at the Fairbanks airport. There were dozens of other children that were already tied there."
(1)
(0)
Read This Next
Continue with Facebook 
Continue with Google