Friday, September 30, 2022
The Peninsula-Delaware and Baltimore-Washington Conference Committees on Native American Ministries invite United Methodists to observe a special time of prayer and action from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, as they remember the atrocities associated with tribal children once taken from their families and placed in boarding schools.
“Justice for our Children: Healing for Our Communities” is the theme of this year’s observance, which pays particular attention to those children who died at the schools and whose bodies were buried far from their homes. The observance also marks the “spiritual deaths” of hundreds of Native children whose culture and spirituality were taken from them.
The observance is sponsored by the Native American International Caucus. Information about this dark chapter of history can be found at https://boardingschoolhealing.org/.
During the week this year, Sept. 30 is the official National Day of Remembrance for U.S. Indian Boarding Schools. Oct. 6 has also been designated as a Day of Remembrance because on that day, in 1879, General Richard Pratt took children from First Nations and opened a boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.