A note from Deacon Jason related to the ELCA Truth & Healing work with Indigenous Communities:
Earlier this month I was invited to take part in an ecumenical lobbying group that travelled to Washington, D.C., to encourage congressional leaders to cosponsor Senate Bill 761. If passed and signed into law this bill would create a Truth & Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools. Elizabeth Andress works as the co-lead for the ELCA Truth-Seeking & Truth-Telling Initiative on Indian Boarding Schools and was also invited into this journey to meet with our elected leaders.
Monday Feb. 2: Religious leaders and Boarding School survivors traveled to Washington D.C. from Alaska, Arizona, Minnesota, and Maryland. Once we arrived at the Quaker hospitality house we met Rachel Overstreet, who serves as the legislative representative for Native American Advocacy within the Friends Committee on National Legislation. After introducing ourselves to the group, we were given an overview of what the next few days would look like beginning with an all-day training on how to lobby by sharing our stories and why the bill is so important for healing, and then a day of visits to Capitol Hill to meet with senators, congressional leaders, and their staff.
Tuesday Feb. 3: Most of the day was spent going over the history of Bill 761, steps for lobbying, and then role-playing our conversations with congressional leaders and their staff. In the afternoon we met with Antoine Cummins who serves in the ELCA Witness in Society office in Washington D.C. as the Program Director for Civil Rights Policy and Witness in Society. Elizabeth and I were so grateful that he was able to join us and introduce us to the ELCA staff serving in the advocacy office. Later that evening representatives from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition shared with us the history of how multiple churches worked with the federal government to run over 526 board schools across the United States. In a 150-year period, over $26 billion in today’s dollars were spent on boarding schools that:
- forcibly abducted Indian children
- sent them hundreds of miles away from their families
- took their clothes, cut their hair, and often gave them numbers instead of names
- allowed Indian children to be beaten, malnourished, abused, and neglected
Two of the people joining us for this lobbying work from Alaska were boarding school survivors who shared parts of their stories, which included the things listed above. They reminded us that the older generations who went through these boarding schools are dying and it is more important than ever to record their stories in order to help locate the burial sites of many children who never returned home to their families.
Wednesday, Feb. 4: I made the group some french toast at the Friendship House where we were all staying before we walked over to get a few pictures in front of the Capitol building. From there, we split off to go meet with our various state representatives to encourage them to either cosponsor Bill 761 or support it publicly. After a day of meeting with representatives and their staff we gathered back together to debrief the experience before heading home.
I am so grateful for this experience and will gladly welcome anyone from our synod into this work who feels called to learn more about how we can work towards healing these past wounds caused by the church.
The next online quarterly gathering for the Truth & Healing movement will be Thursday, Feb. 26, at 7:00 p.m. If you are interested in attending, or would like more resources to educate yourself and your community, email me at or call me at 315-277-3703.
Yours in Christ,
Deacon Jason
If your community of disciples would like to be a part of this advocacy work, click here or scan the QR code to find the ELCA Action Alert link. Share that link broadly so people can let their congressional leaders know they want them to support this bill. Educate and advocate, these are simple steps we can all take in our communities of faith to spread truth and healing.