President Joe Biden made a historic trip to the Gila River Indian Community last month and formally apologized for the U.S. government’s role in running federal Indian boarding schools. About four dozen had operated in Arizona.
Steele Indian School Park once housed one.
Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center specialist Elena Adell Selestewa personally guided Interior Secretary Deb Haaland around the site during last year’s “Road to Healing” tour, which helped shape Biden’s apology that Selestewa also attended.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains reflections on trauma, mental health, substance abuse and suicide.
There are some days where I’ll just sit outside of the building and look at it like, “You were here this whole time and I didn’t even know.” Meaning, I lived here in the city, but I didn’t know what it was significant for. I didn’t know that’s why this park was called Steele Indian School Park. So that just is living proof that, of course, we weren’t taught this information. We kind of have to do our own digging.
My name is Elena Adell Selestewa. I am the Phoenix Indian School visitor specialist. I started here back in February of 2022. I was going through a really, really bad time in my life, before I found this job. I want to say I almost became a statistic of what Native American people are.
I didn’t talk to my family for a while. Then I got a phone call from my grandma, and she was like, “Heard you’re working again,” and I told her, I said, “Oh yeah, the Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center.” And she paused, and I’m like, “What’s wrong grandma?” She goes, “I went to school there.”
So that has been my passion to understand how it affected our generations. To that, I am a prime example of boarding schools. I am Hopi, Navajo, Laguna and Zuni. The school was established in 1890; 1891 was the first class, doors closed in 1990.
Ninety-nine years in operation, and we barely just surpassed 100-year mark of being citizens. Native Americans, we were actually part of the War Department in the beginning. So that is why it was a little bit easier to switch us over to that military assimilation.
With Richard Henry Pratt, he was a lieutenant in the Amy, so he was already well-aware of prisoners of war. He was like, “These men are strong. They’re worth something, but we just have to take their traditional ways away.” So that’s the term, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” came to be.
This was his propaganda here.
You’re not saying something that was written in a history book. You're not reading off of a script. This is you being genuine: “How are you supposed to be the proper parent if you never had your children around? How are your children supposed to actually be loved and taken care of if they never had their parents around?”
This separation between family members, it’s just a trauma we all went through.
Even me and my mom, we hug, but we don’t have any other type of affection at all, and I noticed that with her and my grandma, because we were never around with our loved ones.
Our high rates of suicide, our high rates of substance abuse and alcohol, it all stems from trying to cope, but we couldn’t. And then the fraudulent sober living homes, that was kidnapping and pretty much starting that cycle all over again.
With sober living homes, I actually do tours. I tell them, “It’s not your fault, you’re not the only one that struggles with this. A lot of us do, but it’s up to you to break that cycle.” We’re meant to be survivors. That’s why we’re still here.
But I get told, “Oh, it happened 100 years ago. Get over it.”
That’s when we start blaming the education system, because this wasn’t taught K through 12. It was systematically meant for us to be written out of history, but with Deb Haaland’s initiative and Joe Biden’s apology, I really think that needs to be in the history books now as well.
To be honest, I was starstruck, getting to meet Deb Haaland; I cried before I saw her. We actually took her into the dining hall. The floorboards are really, really tacky. We only get to go so far.
She just walked right in there, all the way around. This is Deb Haaland, so we really can’t say anything. Then I’m looking at her, like, “In some other formal way, she may have been here already.”
At the same time, I feel that the apology was made at a very, very awkward time. I think it happened abruptly. It felt like Joe Biden really didn’t write it out, or know how to sincerely apologize for it.
There was that formal apology, but I don’t think there was any empathy or sincereness behind that. In a way, that was one step forward for our people, and if not, we’re about to take a few more steps back.
This story was produced by KJZZ, the public radio station in Phoenix, and published by KNAU as part of the Arizona Public Media Exchange.
