June 19, 2018

Good Afternoon to all reading this blog! Here it is the middle of June, Summertime. I hope this finds everyone doing well. Hum…I had been typing this blog for hours, but accidentally deleted it. I am going to try this blog to you again.

Most everyone has heard about what is happening to immigrants trying to come into our country for a safe, peaceful new life. Here is it 2018 and immigrants are being arrested and their children being separated from them and held in cages! Our government is treating these immigrants and their children like criminals. When I think about it, 2018 may be a different year, but things haven’t changed since 1891 when the government forced my Great Grandmother, Sophia Huff-Powless and her sister, Lily, to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding to become assimilated Euro-White. I show two photos of Sophia posing with a group of fellow Carlisle Indian Boarding School students in March of 1892. One of the photos is a head shot of Sophia to show you where she is standing in the group photo.

Today I heard an audio on the news of immigrant children crying for their parents as they are put into cages by our government. The government is separating the parents from their children. Terrible! I think back to Sophia and Lily being ‘forced’ to leave home and their parents to go to the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School to become assimilated Euro-white. The government said this was good for Sophia and Lily and that they would become better citizens. Sophia and Lily and the twenty four other Indian children road a train to Carlisle, Pennsylvania for three days. Forced to leave their parents, these children sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Listening to the immigrant children sobbing on the news audio was heartbreaking to hear as a parent and mother. The government is breaking the law. They are committing a criminal act removing these kids and arresting their parents! I feel the government needs to be put into cages, arrested for their cold, spineless treatment of the immigrants and their children. Oh, and I would also throw away the key!

The government is notorious for mistreating people of all nationalities. Africans were sold as slaves, their children taken from them and also sold to different slave owners! My husband’s family, Italians, were called “greasy Wops.” Irish immigrants were treated as subservient and less than. In the movie, The Rabbit Proof Fence, children in Australia were sent to internment camps to be trained to become servants. During WWII Japanese were put into internment camps here in this country.

It doesn’t matter what year this is or century, for that matter. Discrimination and racism is alive and well, I am sorry to say.

In my book, Sky Woman Lives in Me, I talk about how I was ashamed to be Oneida Indian. I pretended to be white so I could fit in. I came upon a photo of an indigenous woman who graduated from the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School in 1915. Her name was Lillian Walker. The photo I show is of her with her face painted white. Lillian wanted her face painted white so she could be more white. Sometimes I wanted to paint my face white to fit in. Grandma Millie always wore her hair short to fit in, instead of having long hair, which was traditional in Oneida Culture.

I remember obtaining a book called Stiya, A Carlisle Indian Girl At Home. This book was a propaganda book, written by a racist lady who worked as a matron the Carlisle School. The book talks about how Stiya is allowed to go home to her Pueblo Reservation after spending five years attending Carlisle. Stiya returns home only to be shocked at how dirty her Pueblo Indian tribe is, as well as the reservation. This book was sent out to all graduates of Carlisle to remind them to stay assimilated and not become Indian anymore! This book was published and paid for by the government and U.S. Army in 1891. I show a photo of the cover of this book.

Please pray for all these immigrant children and their parents.

In October, 2018, there will be two conferences marking the centennial closing of the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School in 1918. (1) The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is holding a conference Oct. 2-3 in Carlisle, PA. Google NABS and you should be able to find out more information on this conference. There is a cost to register. (2) Also On October 4th through October 7th, the Carlisle Journeys biennial conference will be held at the Cumberland County Historical Society and Dickinson College. This conference is free. Both of these conferences will have descendants of the Carlisle Boarding School and other Indian boarding schools, sharing their ancestors stories. Please consider sharing your ancestors stories so the public knows the true history of what happened to us Indigenous people. It hurt me to learn and write about my grandmothers in my book, Sky Woman Lives in. But, I would do this all over again, pain and all. Many people have no clue about the assimilation experiments by our government to indigenous tribes…to African Tribes, to Mexicans and many other ethnic groups. Thank you for reading my blog. Please share if you wish. Sincerely, Roberta Capasso, a proud member of the Oneida Indigenous Tribe of Wisconsin