When you read the disparaging remarks about the Hualapai posted...

When you read the disparaging remarks about the Hualapai posted by some of the AZL shareholders here. It is an excerpt from articles about Indian boarding schools published Monday by the Washington Post:

From 1819 to 1969, the U.S. government separated Native American children from their families to eradicate their cultures, assimilate them into White society and seize tribal land.

European settlers waged war against Native Americans for centuries, decimating tribes through violence and spreading disease. By the 1800s, the U.S. government continued to grapple with what it called the “Indian problem.”

The government wanted tribal land for settlers and needed to justify taking it. If Native Americans adopted Western ways of education and farming, officials said, they would need less land.

As Native Americans were forced off their land and onto reservations, the government established day schools for their children. But U.S. leaders concluded they needed to be more aggressive to fully eradicate their cultures.U.S. officials ordered Native American children to be removed from their homes and sent to remote boarding schools. As one of the first boarding school founders said, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

At least 523 Indian boarding schools were established in the United States. Religious groups received federal contracts to operate about a third of them. Families were often coerced by federal agents or priests to send their children.Physical abuse, disease and malnutrition were widespread in the schools. Many children were sexually abused by the priests, sisters or other members of religious orders charged with their care.

An unknown number of children died at the Indian boarding schools. Many of them were buried in unmarked graves. Parents were often prohibited from visiting the schools. Sometimes, they found out that their children had become ill and died after they’d already been buried at cemeteries on the school’s grounds. By 1891, the Spokane Tribe of Indians in Washington state sent 21 children to boarding schools. Sixteen died, according to Chief Lot, a Spokane chief.

The financing of the boarding school system added to the devastation wrought on Native American communities. According to a 1969 Congressional report, “proceeds from the destruction of the Indian land base were to be used to pay the costs of taking Indian children from their homes and placing them in Federal boarding schools.” Land was taken from Native Americans and sold, and those funds were then used to cover the cost of the Indian boarding school system.

Today, there are 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States, and their cultures endure. In October, Native Americans received a long-sought official apology from the president for Indian boarding schools.