Swaying between Hope and Despair

Reflections on Fatherly Love and Honouring those who Lost it Early

Father and Son, artist unknown

Horrors come in many shades of black and grey, and the horrors faced by the Native American children in the boarding schools of the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries were that of the darkest shade of black. The idea was to ‘civilize’ the indigenous children. They were stolen from the cradles of their hopeful childhood and subjected to the center of the world's disdain. The ideal of systematic assimilation, “Kill the Indian, save the man”, was shamelessly preached by Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt's greedy father abandoned his family to get rich quickly in the California Gold Rush. Maybe it is the outcome of having an unreliable father that turned Pratt into such a monster, or maybe he was born that way - cruel and calculative. The evil mastermind behind Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a practical concentration camp to imprison indigenous children and obliterate their cultural identity. These innocent children were kept in overcrow…