Vestiges of forced assimilation still echo in New Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

By Rob Martinez For The New Mexican Aug 6, 2021 Updated 10 min ago

Recent and shocking discoveries of the bodies of Native American children buried on the grounds of boarding schools in Canada and the United States have sent reverberations of concern and outrage throughout the land.

New Mexico has its own dark history of Native American boarding schools. At least nine operated in the mid- to late 1800s into the 20th century. These were not the schools of the East Coast, where wealthy families sent children to get a good education and learn the ways of the elite. These were institutions of forced assimilation.

At New Mexico’s Indian schools, Native American children of Navajo, Ute, Apache and other nations were taken from their homes, torn from their loving families and from the arms of parents who nurtured them. They were stripped from cultures that were here thousands of years before Europeans arrived — long before there ever was a United States of America.

While teaching did occur, so did abuse. Physical and psychological trauma were common. The erasure of Native culture in the form of beatings for expressing Native cultural attributes and punishment for speaking Native languages permeated the boarding schools. “Removing the Indian” from the children was paramount. One can only suspect it was considered too late for the elders, so targeting the youth was the primary solution to achieving the goal of getting rid of the “Indian problem.”

Yet, before the American system of Indian schools, there were the Spanish Catholic missions. The missions in New Mexico were established by the Catholic order of Franciscans in the early 1600s. The primary purpose of the missions was the Christianization and education of the Puebloan people in the ways of the Spanish. There also was an underlying goal of assimilation — turning the Native people of New Mexico into subjects of the Spanish monarchy.

More:
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/vestiges-of-forced-assimilation-still-echo-in-new-mexico/article_1afde93e-f474-11eb-a0ca-1f2299bd73ec.html