It’s worth noting that right up until today, the largest Christian churches, notably the Roman Catholic Church, have in North America operated residential schools for indigenous children that are designed to convert them to Christianity away from their native cultures, and have historically brutalized children for speaking their native languages. The schools have been run by priests and members of religious orders for the explicit and unapologetic purpose of cultural colonization.
Canada is confronting that ugly history now, but few people realize that the same sorts of schools existed in the United States and in fact still exist right now.
When I was researching a story about Canadian residential schools, I came across a recent article in the Guardian by a man whose own family was brutalized by the staff of a Roman Catholic School in the United States. The school is still in operation, still terrorizing indigenous students, and still actively fundraising as if its mission were a morally good thing rather than something evil and shameful.
According to the man who wrote the article, portraits of credibly accused rapists and other brutalizers hang on honored spaces on walls in the school.
The state legislature has passed a law preventing victims from suing the school for the abuses staff have heaped on indigenous children.
And so it goes …
