https://nativenewsonline.net/opinion/history-cant-be-patriotic-if-it-requires-silence/

History Can’t Be Patriotic if It Requires Silence by Levi Rickert

Opinion

The first lesson of Indian boarding schools wasn’t reading or writing.

It was silence.

I was reminded of that during Labor Day weekend 2022 while talking with a tribal leader at a protest against Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline at the Straits of Mackinac. Weeks earlier, she had testified at the Interior Department’s Road to Healing event about surviving a Catholic-run Indian boarding school in northern Michigan.

She described years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse Native children endured there. But what struck me most wasn’t just what happened inside the school. It was that Catholic nuns warned Native children never to speak about what happened inside the school. If they did, terrible things would happen to them.

That conversation came back to me when I read the White House report, Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage. Released quietly during the fireworks over the National Mall as the nation celebrated its 250th Independence Day, the 162-page report wasn’t simply another government publication. Its timing seemed almost symbolic: celebrate the nation’s birth while attempting to mute some of its most painful truths.

The report criticizes the Smithsonian for emphasizing the devastating consequences of the federal Indian boarding school system. It argues that museums devote too much attention to America’s historical injustices and too little to its achievements.

While the report stops short of praising Indian boarding schools, it dismisses the Smithsonian’s emphasis on the documented harms they inflicted on Native children as part of a broader critique of what it considers an overly negative portrayal of American history.

But Indian boarding schools were never simply schools.

They were instruments of federal policy designed to erase Native identity. Children were taken from their families, punished for speaking their languages, forbidden from practicing their cultures, and taught that becoming “American” required abandoning everything that made them Native. The goal was assimilation through erasure.

Today, nearly every major study—including the Interior Department’s own investigation—has documented that painful history. Tribal nations have spent decades gathering testimony from survivors. Elders have relived unimaginable trauma so future generations would know the truth. After generations of denial, the United States has finally begun acknowledging one of the darkest chapters in its history.

Now, the Trump administration appears determined to turn back that clock.

The White House report isn’t simply about museum exhibits. It is also about controlling the nation’s historical narrative.

That argument collapses when applied to Indian boarding schools.

The report criticizes the Smithsonian’s discussion of boarding schools, suggesting that it is inconsistent to acknowledge the destruction of Native languages while presenting America as a nation without a single culture or language. That criticism overlooks a central fact: the federal government deliberately targeted Native languages precisely because language carries identity, culture, ceremony, history, and nationhood.

This isn’t ideology.

It is a historical fact.

The administration also objects to exhibits describing land dispossession, treaty violations, and the reality that America’s expansion came at the expense of Indigenous nations. It dismisses land acknowledgments and challenges exhibits explaining that Native peoples were forcibly removed from their homelands.

Again, these are not political opinions. They are historical facts documented in treaties, acts of Congress, military records, and decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Native people don’t need the Smithsonian to tell us what happened to our ancestors. Our families have carried these stories for generations. But museums serve an essential purpose: they help the broader public understand that America’s story is larger—and far more complicated—than the mythology many of us were taught in school.

Patriotism should never require historical amnesia.

A nation confident in itself should be willing to confront both its triumphs and its failures. Germany teaches about the Holocaust. South Africa teaches about apartheid. Canada continues reckoning with its own residential school system. Strong democracies understand that acknowledging injustice strengthens a nation; it does not weaken it.

The United States should be no different.

As America enters its 251st year, we have a choice. We can embrace a fuller history that includes the voices of Indigenous peoples, African Americans, immigrants, women, and countless others whose experiences shaped this country. Or we can retreat into a sanitized version of the past that celebrates conquest while ignoring its consequences.

Native people have lived through federal efforts to rewrite history before. The first lesson of the boarding schools was silence. The White House report asks Americans to be comfortable with silence once again.

We shouldn’t be.

The truth about Indian boarding schools, broken treaties, stolen lands, and Native resilience does not diminish America. It makes America’s story honest.

And honesty is something every democracy worthy of celebration should be strong enough to withstand.

Thayék gde nwéndëmen – We are all related.