Gyasi Ross: Teaching our traditions to the next generations

We’ve got to restore our children’s sense of belonging and purpose. That sense of belonging and purpose will only come through introducing them to/keeping them involved in their Native communities.

It’s in our DNA.

The Baby Veronica case was heartbreaking and also was crucial fodder for political-types who tried to say that it was yet another example of stealing Native babies. Factually, that may or may not be the case; yet our history is indeed packed full of examples of Native children being forcibly taken from Native parents. But the underlying premise—that white, proselytizing forces need to steal Native children—I’m not convinced. While it very true that at one time, boarding schools and forced assimilation stole our children away, I simply don’t think that anybody needs to steal our children anymore.

We give them away now.

As John Mohawk observed, we lose our children by adaptation to Western culture. We allow our children into the colonizer’s education system to learn the colonizer’s history and eat the colonizer’s horrible, unhealthy food. We allow our children to pledge allegiance to the same flag that was planted in victory immediately after the massacres of Wounded Kneee, Marias River and Sand Creek (and many more). But…but…all of that’s practical, right?—some of us have no other meaningful choice in how we educate our kids. We have to let our kids go to public schools. Economics. Time. We don’t have much of a choice.