September 15, 2015

VIA EMAIL

Seattle City Council Attention: Council Members council@seattle.gov Dear Council Members:

We write to encourage that the Seattle City Council adopt the proposed Indian Boarding School Era Resolution.

Huy is a Seattle-based non-profit that provides economic, educational, rehabilitative and religious support for Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian prisoners, chiefly those Natives imprisoned in the Washington Department of Corrections and local jails. In Coast Salish language, Huy, pronounced “hoyt,” means: “See you again/we never say goodbye.”

Native American children in the tens of thousands were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the Christian Church during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Those schools were a component of the United States government’s assimilation policy, which attempted to affect cultural genocide upon Native Americans. In the Northwest, Native American children as young as five years old were forced into the Tulalip Boarding School, the Cushman Boarding School, and the Chemawa Boarding School. These children—many of our grandparents, mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles—frequently suffered horrific psychological, physical, and sexual abuse.

Indian boarding schools were, quite literally, prisons for innocent children. The inter-generational trauma that has ensued since their incarceration is profound and ever-present in the lives of Indian people, including urban Indians living in the Seattle area.

Native Americans endure the highest incarceration rate of any racial or ethnic group, at 38 percent higher than the national rate. Huy seeks to mitigate the heartbreaking legacy of the boarding school era by providing Native prisoners with valuable services. More importantly, Huy provides inmates with the opportunity to engage in traditional practices that survived assimilationist policies. While we do not excuse the mistakes for which our incarcerated relatives have been convicted, we do also recognize the negative impact that Indian boarding schools has had and continues to have on our relatives.

Thank you for your time and for your consideration of our support for the Indian Boarding School Era Resolution, which would be a profoundly important step towards truth and reconciliation regarding this local human rights atrocity.

Very truly yours,

Gabriel S. Galanda Chairman, Huy Board of Advisors info@huycares.org