Reckoning – Quakers and Indian Boarding Schools
Schools don’t have graveyards. At least, that is what many believed until some gruesome recent discoveries.
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Schools don’t have graveyards. At least, that is what many believed until some gruesome recent discoveries.
We are two Quaker women who raised our families in towns dominated by the U.S. military. Rather than shun the military and look away, we have lived our witness amidst strong military presences. One thing about being in a military town is that you can’t look away from how big a machine the military is.
I am new to this place, Woolman at Sierra Friends Center. I am meeting it as it is now, not as it once was, before the fire.
Last spring, Cynthia Black from Eugene Friends Meeting published an article in Extra! Extra! – Western Friend’s email newsletter – which described a project being organized by British Friends at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, England.
A cold Wednesday evening in May 2017 found me standing, as usual, in front of the meetinghouse on 9th Street in San Francisco. Few people passed by that night. In front of me, one of the many drug dealers who worked our neighborhood was crouched, his back to me. I grappled with conflicting feelings.
My grandfather descended from a family of farmers – homesteaders, given cheap land after the government committed genocide to clear it for white families like mine. When my grandfather married my grandmother, he was welcomed into her family’s business: the lumber mill, turning forests into 2x4s.
We must stay on our mission of being witnesses of Earthcare. Will everyone restore rare rainforest in Hawaii? No. Some will restore their aina (sacred land) by planting a small urban garden or one tree in their small yard.
John’s son, Adam, spoke glowingly of his father at John’s memorial service. Adam and his sibling were adopted when they were small. Adam knew what his life would have been like if they hadn’t been taken away by social services from their alcoholic mother.
Another member of our Meeting, Jane, also adopted two siblings. She was able to be a wonderful, caring, single parent to them.
About a year ago, Multnomah Monthly Meeting in Portland, Oregon, asked all of its committees to examine how their work might be upholding or breaking down structural racism.
Prisons rank high on the list of institutions that Quakers want to eliminate, very close to war.
