A recent exposé described the abuse of American Indian children in boarding schools operated by the Catholic Church and sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior. In June, U.S. Catholic bishops apologized for the church’s efforts to strip away the identities of American Indian children for generations. Other churches should do the same.
Apologies cannot change the past, but they can pave the way for healing and reconciliation for those affected by forced assimilation and abuse. Apologizing is recognition by the contrite of wrongdoing. The federal government and all institutions involved, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, must formally apologize and commit to doing better in the future.
My foster brother, Leander, came to live with my family in Utah as part of the Indian Student Placement Program (also called the Lamanite Education Program) sponsored by the LDS Church. Sixth grade was a unique year because he and I were in the same class and, therefore, the same class picture. Among a small sea of 27 children and one teacher, there were 26 white, typically middle-class children (including me) and one Native American boy on the first row, my brother.
Indigenous children whose parents agreed could send their kids to live with mostly white, Latter-day Saint families in Utah to attend better schools and, of course, to be better Latter-day Saints. Often, parents and children were pressured to participate. However grand the motives, the goal of the program was — in my view — to “kill the Indian” to “save the man.” The emotional trauma of being forced to conform to unfamiliar cultural norms tolls across generations.
In the late summer of 1971, my family and I met Leander after he had taken the long bus ride from a reservation in Arizona to my nearly all-white community in Utah. He stayed through his fourth-grade year, and he returned home for the summer. At the beginning of fifth grade, he said he did not want to come back. My family and I, at the behest of a church caseworker, set out in our car to retrieve him — to take him from his home, his family, his culture and especially his beloved younger brother. I do not know if we broke any laws, but we did coerce him to go against his wishes.
Leander did not return to our family for 10th and 11th grades, but he did return in the fall of 1979 to live with us for 12th grade. However, by the end of the semester, my foster brother was a truly angry person. By Christmas, my family and I went to the station to put him on a bus back to the reservation. We gave up on him. That was the last time I ever saw or spoke with him.
In September 1995, Leander died at age 33. In ripping children from home, culture and family in service of the church, no matter how much better we feel their lives might be, we do irreparable damage. I hope that much of Leander’s time with us was worthwhile, and a few surviving artifacts suggest it was. At the same time, his despair and anger at being torn from home and family were evident that day at the bus depot.
The Indian Placement Program was wrong when I was a boy, and it is wrong now for the church to refuse to apologize for its program of forced assimilation and cultural destruction. The self-serving act of exclusionary othering, stigmatizing persons based on prejudice or preconceived ideas, encourages abusers, promotes unjust punishment and feeds the egos of the privileged.
The church othered Native Americans and promoted the notion that they were cursed but could be redeemed and have their skin made “white and delightsome.” The church has since claimed this was a printer’s error, rather than apologizing for its racist past. Recently, it settled allegations of sexual abuse among placement program participants, as well.
Apologies suggest that institutions recognize their poor behavior in the past, and they can help those harmed by neglect, abuse and forced assimilation to heal. In July 2022, Pope Francis offered an apology to the victims of Canadian forced assimilation when he visited Alberta. He could use the influence of the Holy See to encourage other churches, such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to look beyond religious pride and do the same.
It is past time for these institutions to acknowledge their historical wrongs, offer sincere apologies and commit to preventing such atrocities in the future. Only then can we begin to heal the deep wounds inflicted upon Indigenous communities.
Thomas DeVere Wolsey, Ed.D., grew up in Utah Valley and is now an international education consultant.
Thomas DeVere Wolsey, Ed.D., grew up in Utah Valley and is now an international education consultant. His recent work deals with transgenerational trauma and education for refugees. He lives in Catalunya, Spain.
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