Little River Band of Ottawa to Screen Boarding School Film

Native News Network Staff in Native Currents. Discussion »

Manistee, Michigan

MANISTEE, MICHIGAN - Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Tribal Member Lucy McClellan-Hunter - Red Bird Productions, will be presenting a documentary, 'The Indian School, A Survivor's Story' on Saturday, December 3 at 6:30 pm est at the new community center at Aki Maadiziwin, located at 2953 Shaw Be Quo-Ung Road.

During the late 19th and 20th centuries, across the United States and Canada, the federal governments habitually required Native American residential boarding schools. Beginning with the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (1879), the goal was assimilation. The motto was, "Kill the Indian, save the man." There were 519 schools in the US, and 126 in Canada.

The survivors of the boarding school experience are primarily from the Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.

Indian Boarding Schools routinely subjected children… some as young as four, to emotional and spiritual abuse, corporal punishment and worse. The students' alienation from their families resulted in a loss of culture, language, ritual and spirituality; which in turn led to inter-generational trauma and thus exacerbated the post-traumatic stress disorder in many Native families today.

This film, from the victims' own voices, details the boarding school experience.

The film was produced and directed by, Dr. Kay McGowan, Professor in the Anthropology Department at Eastern Michigan University and her twin sister, Fay Givens, Director of American Indian Services in Lincoln Park, Michigan. Both have worked with the United Nations in an attempt to strengthen the rights of indigenous people in countries throughout the world.

WHAT:  Screening of "The Indian Schools, The Survivors Story"

WHEN:  Saturday, December 3

TIME:  6:30 pm est

WHERE:  Aki Maadiziwin Community Center
2953 Shaw Be Quo-Ung Road
Manistee, Michigan

Free Admission

posted November 25, 2011 6:50 am est