"I would welcome the hierarchy of any BIA boarding school or Indian mission boarding school to produce a list of former students and track them through the years they have spent on this earth since leaving the boarding schools and Indian missions. I think their failure averages would be quite astounding.

Just from the school I attended in the 1940s and 1950s, the Holy Rosary Indian Mission on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, a list of students who went on to lives of alcoholism, drug abuse and crime is quite extensive. I can name several of my former classmates who ended up in prison or died by their own hand. I can name several who ended up as wife abusers and just as bad, abusers of their own children.

Time and time again I have written over the past 35 years that children cannot be abused mentally, physically, sexually and emotionally without serious consequences. It is a proven fact that the abused often become the abusers. It is also a proven fact that the abused often turn to lives in conflict with the law."

Get the Story:
Tim Giago: Boarding schools in America or residential schools in Canada: What was the difference? (The Native American Times 12/12)

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