KIMBERLEE MEDICINE HORN JACKSON NAMED TO NATIONAL RESEARCH TEAM WITH NATIVE AMERICAN BOARDING SCHOOL HEALING COALITION
On October 11, the United States commemorated national Indigenous Peoples' Day simultaneously with Columbus Day.
Since the 1990s, Indigenous Peoples' Day has been on the rise as an alternative to Columbus Day, which Native Americans have protested for honoring a man who enabled their colonization and forced assimilation. Over the years, a growing number of cities and states have adopted Indigenous Peoples' Day.
This year, President Joe Biden has proclaimed October 11 as a day to honor “our diverse history and the Indigenous peoples who contribute to shaping this Nation.” Biden also issued a Columbus Day proclamation acknowledging the contributions of Italian Americans as well as “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities” that resulted from European exploration.
"This is a step in the right direction," said Kimberlee Medicine Horn Jackson. “The wheels of justice turn slowly but they do turn.”
While her comment refers to a national reckoning with this truth in general, Jackson is referring specifically to the Native American Boarding School Era of American history, an organization many people have never learned about.
Recently, Jackson was selected to join a national research team tasked with uncovering the hidden histories of the hundreds of such manual labor schools managed by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs from the 1800s through 1980. These schools forcibly removed Native American children from their ancestral lands, birth families and tribal cultures to assimilate them into white society.