Members of the Growers Guild recently came together in Phoenix, Arizona. While there, they visited the Phoenix Indian School, which was established in 1891 as a boarding school for American Indian children by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the essays below, two members of the Growers Guild reflect on this history, their visit, and what we can bring forward into the present-day work of nonviolent resistance and democracy strengthening. These reflections are particularly salient as the government attempts to suppress information, promote false narratives, and cast dissent as it uses state violence against citizens and immigrants alike in Minnesota, including among native communities.
Democracy as a Practice
By Sherri Bevel
I work with a lot of third sector organizations—church-based, anti-racist, democracy promoting, human rights protective groups. It can feel overwhelming, but to the degree I am able, I like to be a bridge between the ideas and the work of all of these different committed, intelligent, and creative people working together for a better society.
One of my favorites of these organizations is an offshoot of the Horizons Project— the Growers Guild. We are a group of around 20 facilitators, mediators, and Nonviolence trainers convened to devise ways to address political violence. Recently our dedicated administrators and staff members had the brilliant idea that, since we would be close, we should spend a couple of hours at the site of The Phoenix Indian School; or the Phoenix Indian Industrial School, as it had been known toward the beginning of its 99 years of operation.
When we arrived at Phoenix Indian School Visitors Center, the sole employee of the non-profit that is preserving this history and culture and sharing it with the public, gave us a tour. She did not just show us the building, she shared her whole self. Her grace and openness were a rare gift. She shared details of her childhood and the difficulties of preserving cultural history and language.
It was fascinating, and at the same time it was difficult to look into the mouth of an institution founded upon ideas like Captain R.H. Pratt’s declaration in an 1892 speech, “Kill the Indian…save the man.” Here, assimilation and cultural erasure was combined with an arsenal of genocide and removal. Our group is diverse; not perfect, but certainly not shrinkers from hard things.
After Elena Selestewa, our guide, had given generously of her time and our tour was over, a small cluster of our group surrounded her, eager to share connections, talk about personal discoveries, and find out more. I found myself concerned that we were overstaying our welcome. Several others had the same concern. This feeling had nothing to do with our gracious host, but sprang from the realization that she must have many things needing her attention. It is important that we give to this undertaking, this preservation of history, as much as we have received. Whether we merely extract—or find ways to exchange—is a huge deal as a benefit for us just as much as any way that we could benefit the Indian School. It speaks to whether we are becoming who we say we want to be.
I am asserting that ‘democracy’ is a practice that is present in our interactions with one another as citizens, or it is not. Practices of healthy engagement (reciprocity, respectful communication; regard for the ‘other’) constantly recreate us as democratic citizens. Some political theorists contend that the only way that ordinary citizens participate in our democracy is by casting a ballot. I agree with another camp that holds that we create a rich or barren political culture based upon how we engage each other as individuals and across ethnic and interest groups.
This small group of mediators and facilitators is a cherry-picked dream. These are people that have dedicated their lives to conflict resolution and democratization. I am looking forward to watching the unfolding engagement between our group and the Indian School Visitors Center.
As another example, in one of the church-based groups I work from (and within my family!), there have been instances of name-calling, gossiping in cliques, instead of direct communication, and a lack of humility with regard to acknowledging mistakes and making apologies where appropriate. Thankfully, that church-based group understands the importance of nonviolence in communication and is exploring processes to address these breakdowns. My point is that these are some of the things that we do to people closest to us. Certainly, these things are not good practice for the sometimes-difficult work of democratic discourse.
Practicing values that strengthen our regard for the needs and rights of others helps us become better citizens in a democracy. It helps us become ever better at devising constructive approaches to conflict—whether recent and shallow disputes—or of long-standing ones that stretch centuries back into our history. We will never be perfect, but we certainly can become a lot better.
Sherri Bevel is Co-Founder & Curriculum Development Specialist at Addie Wyatt Center for Nonviolence Training.
To Remember Is to Resist: The Truth About America’s Indian Boarding Schools and Why It Matters
By Adrienne Evans
As social justice workers “people workers” we stood on the grounds of a former Indian boarding school in Arizona — rain like teardrops but landing where? Today, the grounds are empty, eerily quiet, the silence of absence — of a history too unknown. But just beneath the surface, the ground whispered of children’s footsteps, stolen names, heartbreak, and squashed spirits. It felt like standing inside a lie long told — one still echoing in our public memory, our textbooks, and our consciousness.
Too many Americans don’t know — or don’t want to know — or face the truths of our past. But they persist, and so it matters, perhaps now more than ever.
The truth is undeniable: from the 19th century through much of the 20th, the United States government, in coordination with religious organizations, waged a systematic campaign to forcibly assimilate Native American children. It was, by every honest measure, cultural genocide.
Indian boarding schools were not benign educational efforts. They were weapons of colonization — designed to “kill the Indian and save the man,” as Carlisle School founder Richard Henry Pratt infamously stated.
Children as young as five were torn from their families, often under duress or coercion. Upon arrival, their hair was cut. Their names were replaced with Anglicized ones. They were forbidden to speak their languages or practice their traditions. Siblings were separated. Traditional clothing was confiscated and replaced with militarized uniforms. They were indoctrinated into Christianity and punished — sometimes violently — for resisting.
Many were placed on labor registries, a system allowing local white families to “check out” Native students for domestic or agricultural work. Often unpaid and always exploitative, this amounted to legalized child labor. Many endured backbreaking work; some never returned.
Sexual violence was rampant. Survivors have testified — in heart-wrenching detail — to the rapes, molestation, and systemic abuse that occurred behind closed doors. The institutions shielded perpetrators and silenced victims. Few were ever held accountable.
Children were forced to perform for white visitors: dancing, singing, or speaking scripted English speeches — exhibitions that reinforced white America’s myth of progress and benevolent conquest. These performances were a cruel mockery of the very culture the schools were destroying.
And many never came home.
Recent investigations by the U.S. Department of the Interior have confirmed the deaths of at least 973 children at these schools — buried in mass graves, unmarked plots, or school cemeteries. Thousands more are unaccounted for.
Over 400 schools were federally funded — and many more operated by private religious organizations. These institutions were scattered across 37 states and territories, including Alaska and Hawaii. Nearly every Native nation was affected.
But this isn’t ancient history. The last federally-run boarding school closed in 1969. Some schools persisted into the 1980s. And today, several still operate under revised structures — and without full reckoning of their pasts.
That lack of reckoning is not a historical oversight — it’s an ongoing act of erasure.
Silence Is Not Neutral, It Enables Authoritarianism
The silence around these schools is not accidental. It reflects a broader pattern: uncomfortable truths — especially those involving Indigenous suffering — are often buried, softened, or reframed to fit a patriotic narrative divorcing us from our empathy and absolving us of our responsibility.
Too many of our schools still teach about westward expansion as if it were heroic. Too many museums mention Native Americans only in the past tense. Too many memorials celebrate colonizers without context.
When we fail to tell the truth about history, we allow injustice to masquerade as legacy. We give comfort to ideologies of supremacy. And we deny survivors and their descendants the dignity of recognition and the possibility of healing.
And the consequences of historical silence are not confined to our borders.
When a nation refuses to reckon with its history, it creates fertile ground for authoritarianism — not just abroad, but at home.
This isn’t unique to the U.S.
In authoritarian regimes around the world — from Hungary to Turkey to Cambodia, Vietnam, China, to Russia — truth-telling tour guides, educators, and historians are harassed, imprisoned, or disappeared for challenging state-sponsored histories. In such contexts, the past is sanitized for nationalist consumption.
America often prides itself on free speech and open discourse, though that has certainly been tested in recent days as peaceful protesters have faced state violence and backlash. When it comes to our own historical crimes — especially against Native peoples — a similar suppression occurs, not through state terror but through omission, erasure, and polite silence.
Trauma Is Not Past Tense
The boarding school era left deep scars. Many Indigenous communities continue to face intergenerational trauma — marked by disrupted language transmission, fragmented kinship, mistrust of institutions, and cycles of grief and loss.
This is not about blaming. It’s about understanding how the past shaped — and continues to shape — the present and becomes deeply infused in who we are individually and as a society.
There can be no real healing without truth.
No justice without accountability.
No reconciliation without remembering.
Increasingly, people today are seeking to be heard, seen, and valued — and increasingly we seem to be longing for a world that is shaped by empathy and caring.
We don’t have to be among those who are harmed in these horrific ways, to care — we just have to be human.
To recognize that children were stolen and silenced. That cultural genocide was carried out under flags and crosses. That our nation’s moral foundation is cracked not because of its flaws — but because we refuse to face them.
One survivor recalled, “They took my language, my sister, my name — they left me with silence.”
Truth Is Not the Enemy
We live in a time when “truth” is increasingly politicized — where historical honesty is portrayed as divisive or unpatriotic as the government occupies cities and issues false narratives misrepresenting truth, stoking doubt about what we can literally see with our own eyes.
But honesty is not a threat to the nation. It is the only way to make it worthy of the ideals it claims to uphold.
What We Can Do
We can support Indigenous-led truth and healing efforts.
We can demand that our schools teach honest history.
And we can refuse to let silence do the work of injustice.
Adrienne Evans is the Director of the United Vision Project.