If European Americans begin to learn the real stories, and become aware of the level of devastation and grief suffered by Indigenous peoples, our first reaction can sometimes be defensiveness. After all, we think, it wasn’t me, personally, who stole Indian land, or caused disease among the people, or killed anyone. Perhaps our second reaction is a feeling of guilt, because of what our ancestors may have done. But I have learned that neither defensiveness nor guilt is really very helpful. In a way, they keep the overwhelming losses at arm’s length. We must go deeper than that. Is there a way we can acknow-ledge the terrible brokenness? How can we begin to find healing, or a way to restore wholeness?

One first step for me has been to listen to Indigenous people tell their own stories. I needed to learn how to listen to stories of loss and pain. Listening is not about fixing something, or feeling guilty, or giving advice. Listening is about being present and opening our hearts to the experience of someone who has a story to tell. We need to seek out those stories of brokenness, to listen and let our hearts be broken by them. There have been moments when the pain of such listening has felt almost too much to bear, but I reminded myself how much more painful it must be for the one telling the story. Then I felt such gratitude that someone was willing to share these stories.

Let me tell you about one opportunity that used listening to create a path to healing. In the fall of 2012, I attended a presentation about the Maine Wabanaki Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The goals of the commission were three: to find out and write down what happened to Wabanaki people involved with the Maine child welfare system; to give Wabanaki people a place to share their stories, to have a voice and to heal; and to give the Maine child welfare system guidance on how it can work better with Wabanaki people.

The history underlying this effort is soul-shattering. One of the ways the U.S. and Canadian governments tried to solve their so-called “Indian problem” was to take Indian children away from their families and communities. Beginning in the 1800s, children were taken from their homes and sent to boarding schools run by different churches. The purpose was to destroy their Indian identity, and assimilate them into a white way of being. Their hair was cut and their own clothing was taken away. They were forbidden to speak their languages, or practice their religions, and often did not see their parents again for years. This original horror was amplified by emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Many children died. Those who made it home were not the same as when they left.

In the 1950s and 60s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Child Welfare League of America tried another experiment: they took hundreds of Native children from their families and tribes to give to white families to adopt and raise. Hundreds of others were taken from their homes and placed in white foster care. In Maine, Native children were taken from their families and placed in white foster homes at a higher rate than most other states. The stealing of children has been one of the worst forms of genocidal oppression Indigenous peoples have suffered.

In 1978, after heroic efforts by Native activists, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act. It recognized that children’s tribal citizenship is as important as their family relationships. It stipulated that child welfare agencies should work with tribal agencies to keep children within the community, and prioritized placing children with relatives rather than taking them to strangers outside of the community. They also recognized that there is “no resource that is more vital to the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes than their children.”

The effects of stealing the children persist through generations of Native families and communities. Co-founder of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Passamaquoddy Denise Altvater, spoke of how she had been taken to foster care as a seven-year-old child:

State workers came onto the reservation. My five sisters and I were home. My mother was not home. They took all of our belongings and they put them in garbage bags. They herded us into station wagons and drove us away for a long, long time….

They took us to a state foster home in the Old Town area and left us there for four years. During those four years, our foster parents sexually assaulted us. They starved us. They did some horrific things to us.

No one believed them when they tried to get help. During another three years they were placed in kinder situations, but the dislocation and sense of not belonging anywhere caused lasting psychic trauma into adulthood. Even though Denise eventually became successful in a career and was admired by many, this trauma left her feeling a profound sense of disconnection. She did not know how to be a real parent to her children, and she saw its effects in the struggles of her children and grand-daughter.

Telling these stories is incredibly painful. Denise Altvater revealed that she had a breakdown after she first shared her story. But she persevered because being able to speak the truth is central to the path toward healing. Without her willingness to tell her story, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission might never have come to be. Listening to her story, I felt my heart break open, too, for the hurt caused to those young ones who were so vulnerable, for the pain that repeated itself through generations.

Denise and others who were working to implement the Indian Child Welfare Act in Maine, educating state workers about its meaning and implications, realized they needed a process to deal with the deep levels of hurt and trauma Native people and communities were carrying. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hoped to be a tool for that healing, and for making changes so children do not suffer in the future what Denise and so many others suffered in the past.

The mandate for the Commission was signed by Tribal leaders from the five Wabanaki communities in Maine and by the governor of Maine. Five commissioners were selected and community support was set up for those who told their stories. This was the first Truth and Reconciliation of its kind in the United States. Organizers also established a network of non-Native allies to lend support to the Commission’s process.

Healing becomes possible through telling stories and through listening to the stories. Healing becomes possible through re-building trust and connection between Native and non-Native peoples. When we listen together, there is hope. Native people want us to move beyond myths and stereotypes and learn more deeply and accurately about the issues they face today. Those of us living in the mainstream society can use our advantage and position to be allies and resources for Native peoples’ concerns, and join together in our common concerns for the earth.

In her novel Solar Storms, Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan begins with a story of an unusual feast given by a woman named Bush. Bush was grieving the loss of a small child, Angel, after she was taken away from their tiny Native community by the white county authorities. Though not related by blood, Bush had cared for Angel after Angel’s mother could not. In order to reckon with her grief, Bush prepared food for the whole community, and then she gave away all of her possessions to them. Hogan writes, in the voice of one who had been to the feast:

Going back that morning, in the blue northern light, their stomachs were filled, their arms laden with blankets, food…. But the most important thing they carried was Bush’s sorrow. It was small now, and child-sized, and it slid its hand inside theirs and walked away with them. We all had it, after that. It became our own. Some of us have since wanted to give it back to her, but once we felt it we knew it was too large for a single person. After that your absence sat at every table, occupied every room, walked through the doors of every house.

Through this sharing of sorrow, the sorrow became bearable. Indigenous people too often bear the sorrows of our history alone. Once we let ourselves feel this grief, we realize it is much too large for one people to carry alone. But the more of us who are willing to carry this sorrow, the more of us who are willing to join in the struggle, the more bearable it will be.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109232852/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_04/03.mp3