A Conversation with Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
“My story is not unique. It can be told all across Indian country…”
I interviewed Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist (Tlingit, Deisheetaan Clan, Raven's Bones House) on June 8, 2023. I was deeply moved. Our interview is in two parts.
Jamiann was one of the plenary speakers at the Sierra-Cascades annual sessions on June 23, 2023. She is president of Alaska Native Sisterhood Camp 2 in Juneau. “Camp” means a local chapter of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. The Alaska Native Sisterhood/Brotherhood is the oldest known indigenous civil rights and cultural organization, founded in 1912. “S’eiltin” is her first name in Tlingit.
Background information: Quaker missions in Alaska began in the 1880s. Oregon Yearly Meeting, now Northwest Yearly Meeting, helped support a Friends church, orphanage, and day school on Douglas Island. Douglas and nearby Juneau in southeast Alaska are on the land of the Tlingit.
Friends also ran the government day school in Kake for about thirty years. California Yearly Meeting sent missionaries to the Kotzebue Sound area beginning in 1897, on the land of the Iñupiat. They founded Friends churches and worked with the Bureau of Indian Education to establish three day schools. Alaska Yearly Meeting, now part of Evangelical Friends Church International, has twelve member churches, largely in the Kotzebue area. Many members are Iñupiat, one of the Inuit Peoples. Quakers had extensive boarding schools in the Lower 48 as well, and they were influential in the movement to remove Native children from their culture, communities, and families, often using force.
The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Here's Part One.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
I’ve come into the meeting hot. You better be ready to record! [We both laugh.] I've got all this grass and stuff in my hair. All over my face and on my arms, my legs and everything.
Judy Maurer
I love your red glasses. So good to see you.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
I was just at the cemetery. I remember another time—maybe it was the year before last—my son was raking. And he's like, “Hey, Mom!” Everyone turned and looked. And he's like, "I think I found something." And so he got down there. And he started digging in the dirt. And I was like, “Oh, you sure did!”
Other people surrounded him and they were all digging out all of the dirt from this marker. We were able to find its base and we just laid it on the base because we couldn't stand it up—it would just fall over again. But today, my goal was to weed whack and then dig a hole, so that I could lift it in. I was able to just use that leverage and sort of slide it. I dug the hole right under where it was stationed and then just popped it right up. And then I got all the dirt and stuff in there and made it stable and washed it. It's so nice. Walking away I was like, "He looks so good!"
Judy Maurer
I can see why this is really meaningful for you to do.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
It felt good to come home after that experience. I talked to an archaeologist there, because they are doing road work. I'm skeptical about road work. So I'm like, “I'm taking a picture of you guys.” Then the archeologist came over and she said that she had to be there on site because of where they were doing the work, and that she keeps an eye on them. And that yesterday, she was really happy with the way that they were working because they were going along the side, very gently.
Then she's like, “Did you put these orange markers out here?” I said, “Yes, I did.” And she's like, “Oh, I'm so glad that you did because I mean, it shows an indication that there's something right there.”
So I said, “Yeah, I knew that they were doing work. So I wanted to come over and weed whack so that they could really see all of the markers.” We thought we uncovered only about 12 in the Asian section but I put out 38 markers, one for each grave. Actually, there are five that weren't in what's known as the Asian section.
Judy Maurer
What is the Asian section? What does that mean?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Well, you can look at all cemeteries, and there's segregation. White people are buried in one section. Black people are buried in a section, Asian people in another. Native Americans are usually in the trees and neglected. They're on an island, so you can't get to it. There's many, many burials and cemeteries here in southeast Alaska, where they took our people and put them out on little islands.
We weren't free to just roam around so we couldn't go get out to see them. In Hoonah, there's one called Pit Island. There's an island outside of Kake where people are buried. There's people on Mayflower Island.
Judy Maurer
When you say that they took our people and put them out on islands, were they buried out there? Or they moved the graves?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
We didn't bury people. That was a foreign thing—it was what they told to us to do. It was just another thing, forcing us to bury our people. We cremated people. We didn't just put them in the ground. We sent them back up. When we were having to put people on the ground, that was a foreign thing to us, and we weren't free to roam around. No one was going to take care of our people. They didn't care about us. We were disposable. We were not human.
Jamiann cleaning a gravestone. Photo By Lisa Phu (Alaska Beacon) Source
They weren't going to teach us to take care of them. They weren't going to take care of them. The earliest headstone that I see there in that area I think is 1901.
The Anti-Discrimination Act didn't pass until 1945. So if we were putting Native people in the ground in that area in 1901, and we weren't free to roam around—which didn't happen for decades later, when that Act was passed—then four decades passed of not being able to go take care of them. Then people lose the connection.
Still to this day, some people think they need permission to go there. I went to Hoonah. My friend said, ”I always wanted to go take care of my one family member. Who should I ask? Should I talk to the city about that?” And I said, “Oh my gosh, no. You don't talk to anybody.” She's like, “What?” And I said, “You have an ancestral, inherent right to your ancestors. You don't talk to anyone. You go and you take care of them. I can teach you. Want to go right now,? Let's go.” She's like, “Give me an hour.” So we went down there and she took care. We took care together. This was just a couple of years ago.
Note: Here's an article about Jamiann and others tending graves in Douglas.
Judy Maurer
And you didn't have permission to roam around. You mean you had to stay in certain areas?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
We were like property of the mission school. Basically, there was so much racism and taking our kids and just placing us and putting us in one place and "Oh, you're in the way again, let's put you over here, and put you over there.”
Judy Maurer
I remember that, too.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
All the signs: “No Dogs Allowed. No Natives Allowed.” There's a guy who was a paperboy from the time when the village was being burned down in 1962. That wasn't that long ago. There's people still alive who watched their houses be burned. People of Douglas and Juneau, you know, 1962, they came up with an ordinance and burned that village down. One of the survivors, John Morris, tells the story. He was a paperboy. If his bag was filled with papers and he was delivering, people were friendly. As soon as he'd run out of that last paper and his bag was empty, people would be like, “Get back to your village now. Get out of here.”
Note: In July of 1962, while the Tlingit were known to be at their summer fishing camps on the Taku River, city officials declared the village abandoned and took it by eminent domain to improve the harbor for shipping. They burned the village of 20 homes, including fishing boats, tools, and food stores for the winter. No warning or compensation was given. More information is here.
You didn't belong. You weren't welcome anywhere on our own land. We couldn't just roam around.
Judy Maurer
I had no idea.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
In elementary school there was one white woman teacher, and she would act real super-friendly and happy to see you. And then she'd just tell you nasty messages with a smile on her face. "You and your people, you know you're never gonna amount to anything. You won't be equal to us."
Once we went to an event there. My mother was there. So my mom's walked away. And this woman's like, “Hey, come here, you! Oh my gosh, it's so good to see you.” And then make sure that the coast is clear to tell me the message. Then I'm like, “Okay, I need to stay away from this person.” But she's also trying to draw me in with this kindness. Then I'd be walking away, but she doesn't want me to go tell my mom, right? So she'd be like "Hey, hey Jamie! Did you see there's those games and the snacks and stuff over there! You should go check that out!” She's redirecting me in a happy way, there's something fun over there to do. That's the kind of stuff that's covert—outward but covert racism.
Judy Maurer
Yeah, that's pretty THERE.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
That was even after the passing of the Anti-Discrimination Act in 1945. I wasn't born until 1972, and this is the stuff I was experiencing in school. The principal wanting to spank me; they were still spanking people, but mostly Native people. By fourth grade I was really noticing that I was getting treated differently. Then the students were starting to do more of that also. By seventh grade it really clicked for me. When I walked in school the first day, here come all those teachers and all of that narcissistic colonial DNA, the way that people operate at the front of the classroom, through the hallways, just having to deal with it everywhere, and really no safe outlet until the Johnson O'Malley program put a couple of Native teachers in there. But that first day that I walked in, I knew then. It clicked. “Oh my gosh. It's not just me that's being treated like this. It's all these people who look like me.” This is 1986. That's about 100 years after you guys were here.
Note: The Alaskan Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 was the first law prohibiting Jim Crow segregation since Reconstruction. Its passage is largely credited to years of work by Elizabeth Peratrovich (Tlingit) and others in the Alaskan Native Brotherhood and Alaskan Native Sisterhood, especially her two-hour speech in the House of Territorial Legislators. More information is here.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
There was no place in high school for me. The school system that we've been talking about is not designed for Native people or people of color. It is not designed for Native people or people of color to be successful. And we will continually have that racist teacher at the front of the door or the front of the classroom who has their racial bias. Then there's some, you know, liberal woke person, which is probably the most dangerous type. Because they think that they're doing good, you know?
Judy Maurer
Oh, yes.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
My son's still going through the same stuff that I went through. He says that he goes to class and all day long it just builds up, builds up, builds up. He told the teacher that we're finding bodies in cemeteries of residential institutions. He was telling him about some of the historical harm. Next day the teacher’s talking about God Bless America, and we just live in the greatest country of them all.
My son said he literally put his hand on his head, and looked at the teacher, shook his head.
And, still to this day, if you miss three days of school in a row, they send you a truancy letter. And so they are still threatening to take our children away. They get OCS involved, the Office of Children's Services. So the educational system is not a safe place for Native students.
The racism is embedded in the communities. It's exhausting. I'm just going to be really candid and open here that most white people don't take the things that people of color to heart without some defensiveness or questioning.
Note: Here our conversation turns to planning for Sierra-Cascades annual sessions, at which Jamiann spoke on June 24. Then I gather up my courage and tell her of my concerns for her in coming to annual sessions:
Judy Maurer
I have to say here that I am a survivor of clergy abuse in the Episcopal Church. I would love to be able to speak to the Diocese of Arizona at a conference and tell them all about it. But I'd get triggered six ways from seven being there. I'm afraid that's the position we're putting you in. I'm worried about that.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Do you mind telling me what kind of abuse that was?
Judy Maurer
Sexual.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
By the clergy?
Judy Maurer
Yeah. By a priest.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
How long did that go on?
Judy Maurer
The time I remember was when I was three years old, but I just dissociated. So I don't know if that was the first time. And then another time that I remember was when I was 13. I had to go to his church.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
And be normal. And act like everything's normal.
Judy Maurer
And act like, you know, perfect.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
And they were like, “He is this great person.” They're being lifted up.
Judy Maurer
Exactly.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
That happens a lot in our community, too. I mean, throughout the churches, and just that ripple effect that came home from the residential boarding school era.
I was sexually abused, from what I remember, from six to thirteen, as well. These conversations about this is another thing that I like to do, just to talk, because it gets it out of our bodies a little bit.
Judy Maurer
Yes!
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
And I've been doing some spiritual work. It's really weird to think of some of the stuff that I've learned. But there was so much, and I'm sure you have your own experience through that, and what you've held on to for so long. And now, just expressing, I wish I could go and do that. I'd like to speak to them. But it would be triggering. But it also would be so powerful and healing.
Judy Maurer
Exactly.
Also, the great-granddaughter of somebody who spent a year at Kake will be there. She found her great-grandmother in Tomorrow is Growing Old. She will be at annual sessions.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
I wonder which worker? Is it the Moon family?
Judy Maurer
No. Somebody who lived with the Moon family for a year—Bell Gardner.
I read her the page over the phone. These are the kind of ties that we have.There's even a picture of her great-grandmother in the book. So, yes, the great-granddaughter of Bell Gardner is a good friend of mine, just so you know. She'll be okay. Reasonably okay. As okay as white people get.
Note: Tomorrow is Growing Old: Stories of the Quakers in Alaska by Arthur O. Roberts documents the Quaker missionary work in Kotzebue, Kake, and Douglas Island, Alaska.
Judy Maurer
So this is a lot; your being willing to come down here and speak to us.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
This is what I'm built for. When I was a kid, I knew I wanted to do something impactful that was going to help my people.
Judy Maurer
Really? As a kid you knew that?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
I didn't exactly know what that was going to be. But I knew it in elementary school. They were singing “This land is my land, this land is your land.”
Judy Maurer
Ya, there’s that one line: “This land was made for you and me.”
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
I was like, looking around at everybody. And I felt like, What the heck? What? Why are they all believing this? What's wrong with them? I felt gross—it’s my best description because I was just little. I was like, Why were they even thinking this? Why did they believe it? Were they in a trance or something? I just didn't understand it. And it didn't feel good. I knew at a young age. I was like, I don't agree with any of this! I give no consent to this song!
Judy Maurer
I didn’t realize the problem with that song until a year ago. How old were you?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
I must have been six. A little bit before my grandmother died. Because I feel like my grandmother was still here at that time. I lived right across the street from the school on Sixth Street.
My grandmother was the one that I felt safe around. I remember her taking me into the Imperial bar, where we sat closer to the window. We both had a Shirley Temple. We went in there for a soda. And I think she was just really showing me because mother talks about a time when she was abandoned by her mom. And I'm like, "What do you mean, she abandoned you?" “She abandoned us and dropped us off in Klukwan." I'm like, "When?" And she cried, "I don't know, I was still small then. I think I was five." And I was like, "You were born in 1938." I'm like "1938. 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45." [counting.]
The Anti Discrimination Act passed in 1945. Elizabeth Peratrovich dropped her kids off too. One of them had to stay in an orphanage and one stayed with family. They sacrificed their children so that they can go and fight to get the Anti-Discrimination Act in order. My grandmother was part of that. So my mom equates it to abandonment. And I'm like, She didn't abandon you. She made her frickin’ sacrifice so that she could better our lives. She didn’t abandon you!
But something happened to my mother in that time, I'm sure. She won't talk about it. I think she got sexually abused. I think that's why she talks about it as abandonment. My grandmother was a badass! And she was traveling with Elizabeth Peratrovich trying to get this legislation passed.
Judy Maurer
She was?! She knew Elizabeth Peratrovich?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
They all knew each other. My grandmother was a Grand Sergeant-at-Arms for the Grand Alaska Native Brotherhood/Alaska Native Sisterhood, and then she was a Grand President. So how could they not know each other? Elizabeth was a member of Camp 2. My grandmother was a member of Camp 2, and then became Grand President. I'm the president of Alaska Native Sisterhood Camp 2, currently.
This is what I'm supposed to do. It's just in my blood, like my whole history of my great-great grandfather being on the beach in Angoon when the bombs were coming in 1882. Angoon’s where my family's from.
My mother was born and raised there. Today, there's only about 450 people that live there. It's Russian Orthodox.
Did I talk to you about Angoon?
Judy Maurer
No, go ahead.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Our medicine man Teel ’Tlein was on a whaling ship—lots of colonization going on in 1882. The Northwest Trading Company was doing whaling. They had a station out of Killisnoo—a little island outside of Angoon—where there was a superintendent. Teel ’Tlein accidentally got killed on the whaling boat. They say that the harpoon exploded. It killed our medicine man. When they had come back to shore, the community was upset, and they took the two white men. Now the superintendent is like “The natives here have gone wild because their Teel ’Tlein has been killed. They've captured two white men.” So then here comes the Navy boat. Our village said "Tlingit law for this accidental death is 200 blankets." They asked for 200 blankets. The Navy’s like "No way we're gonna pay you 200 blankets." Then the message went out to the Navy and the Navy came. And they said, "Release those white men." The Navy had ordered us to pay double blankets. We could only come up with so many blankets. We couldn't come up with the 400 blankets. So they're like, "If you don't come up with the blankets, we're gonna bomb you guys."
Judy Maurer
Why did they say you owed them the blankets?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Because we were hanging on to those two white men, I think? Anyways, we couldn't make the payment, and so they started sending the bombs in. My great-great-grandfather was a child on the beach. He was playing down there when the bombs started coming in. His father came and grabbed him.They had to run up into the woods and they hid for the winter. This was October 26, 1882. So then they sent the foot soldiers to shore. They were instructed to burn all the canoes and the houses and burn all the food caches. So they were leaving us to die. We survived winter.
Judy Maurer
In Alaska.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Yes. It was October 26. Teel ’Tlein—the one who got killed—his nephew was over around one of the sides of Killisnoo, harvesting. He saw that the bombs were coming in and so he hid the boat. That was the only canoe that was left. That was what they used throughout the winter to try to survive because all the food caches and everything were burned.
So that's like the base foundation of part of my history. I am Angoon.
Note: Tlingit scholar Nancy Furlow of the University of Alaska Anchorage writes in The Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture Politics that balance and reciprocity are central to the spirituality of the Tlingit people. "Balance regulates all aspects of Tlingit life and it is essential that balance is maintained. . . . Maintaining balance at the time of death is particularly important. Balance goes hand-in-hand with reciprocal acts." The Tlingit demand for 200 blankets was a request for a reciprocal act because Teel 'Tlein's "death placed the community in a state of imbalance on social, cultural, and religious levels." She writes that a letter from Commander Merriman to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury states that the hostages were released before he ordered the bombing. He wanted to, in his own words, "do something they would remember." And remember they do, in Tlingit oral tradition as well as personal conversations, as if the bombing had been in the present day, according to Nancy Furlow.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
There's so much more to Angoon. Backing up some years, the Russians, when they were coming through from Siberia, they were gathering Aleuts and enslaving them. They took the women and children, and they’re having sex with them and holding them captive and making them do all the domestic things. So they're like, hey, Aleut men, navigate this ship for us. Go out and get those seals and all the furs. Go hunting and be our slaves. Otherwise we're gonna kill your family.
And then in World War II they had taken people and had brought them all the way to Funter Bay. Funter Bay is right outside of Angoon. And they just left them there to die. They were not allowed to go anywhere.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
They were dropped on this island, and didn't know how to survive on this tiny, tiny little island. What kind of food sources are going to be out there in Funter Bay? Our family took the risk, and would sneak over there at night and feed them. Blacken their faces. Take fire ash and get it on you. Then travel through the night to go and save those people who are just dropped on that poor Island.
Judy Maurer
Oh, and if they'd done it during the day?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Oh, there's no way you could do it during the day. You can't do that. Just like we couldn't walk around from place to place.
Note: After the Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands on June 3, 1942, the US decided to “evacuate” five Aleut villages. Inhabitants of two villages were forcibly removed and sent to Funter Bay to a long-abandoned cannery, without winter insulation, etc. Many lived in tents. In the Alaskan winter. More information is here.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
The Aleuts were enslaved way before, though. And they were just massacring them going down. And that's when the Russians landed in Sitka. Around 1804 was the battle between the Sheet'ká Kiks.ádi and the Russians. K'alyáan was the lead chief. The Russians got pushed out for a bit. I don't know their story super well, but I know they beat them at one point. And then I think they got pushed out.
Note: The Sheet'ká Kiks.ádi, a Tlingit clan, beat back the Russians in 1802 in the Battle of Old Sitka. The Russians attacked again in 1804. The Kiks.ádi ran low on ammunition and the entire clan was forced into a difficult retreat known as the Survival March. The Kiks.ádi relocated nearby and successfully blockaded Russian shipping at Sitka. More information is here.
Then the Russians sold the land that wasn't theirs. So we Tlingits were like, "Heck, no, we deny that. We never said selling that land should happen or could happen." And so that's how the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act came into play.
Judy Maurer
I was wondering about that.
Note: When Russia sold Alaska to the US in 1867, Alaska Native land claims were ignored and unresolved. As explained by the ANCSA Regional Association, “The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) . . . extinguished aboriginal land title in Alaska. It divided the state into twelve distinct regions and mandated the creation of twelve private, for-profit Alaska Native regional corporations and over 200 private, for-profit Alaska Native village corporations.”
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
We were just saying, "No way did we agree to the sale of our land." And so through the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, they did a lot of fighting on that. My mother was involved with the Goldbelt Corporation before it began
She'd have to wake up at three or something and be at the phone by four o'clock just sitting there because it was four hours ahead of time on the east coast. So she was just waiting for the phone call to come about the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. "Is it a go? Can we start?" Well, she was sitting on the phone. They were calling her and they said, "Green light. It's a go! Get everything together!" So then the corporation began.
Judy Maurer
Was your mother in a boarding school?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Yes, she was. But I went to day schools. I attended Haskell Indian Nations University. It was a junior college at the time.
When I showed up at high school, my tribe was like, “Oh, we can help you go to college. Here's a couple of choices.” So I closed my eyes and was like, “Let's pick the one in the middle.” And then they tell me about it. So I show up there. And I'm like, “Why is there a cemetery here?” I got called an apple.
Judy Maurer
Red on the outside, white on the inside?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Yes. They’re like, “She's just an apple. Don't worry about her.” I'm like, “What the heck does that mean?” So I had to go and find out what that cemetery was. I did a report on that cemetery. There were kids in there from the age of zero to 16. How does a zero-year-old get in a cemetery? Well, the girls became pregnant by priests, because they were being raped. And then they were killing the babies. Before the incinerator came along, they put them in the ground. But when the incinerator came along then they just started disposing of those children in the incinerator. Nuns became pregnant too, you know, because nuns are having sex with boys. This is the same story all across all boarding schools—it was embedded in all of this.
I found out what happened. Haskell had been a residential boarding school institution—United States Indian Industrial Training School, and that's why those bodies were there.
I tell that story of being called an apple. Nobody calls me an apple today.
But that was laterally violent. And so not only are we taking it from, you know, all the racism from the society, but then we're taking it from each other. So many layers of lateral violence,
Judy Maurer
Lateral violence is bullying and things like that?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
The tag word is bullying, yes. But there's so many layers to lateral violence, and it all has roots in colonialism and supremacy culture. It's when we were being colonized, and ethnic cleansing and genocide and all of the mission schools, residential boarding school institutions. Let's just use the kids, for example, they were taking the kids. And if they are taking my kids and I tried to fight them for that, I was either going to go to jail, or I was going to get killed.
I couldn't fight back. And neither could anybody else.
We couldn't get back to the oppressor. Then we started taking out on each other, laterally. So that’s then we started becoming laterally violent with each other. So that's what lateral violence is. It’s all sorts of things: “Don't be too happy. Don't try and go too far. We're gonna pull you back. We're gonna use all this guilt, sin and shame.” That was taught through the whole Christianity thing—guilt, sin and shame. I should have done so much more. Instead, I was under the control of narcissistic emotional abuse that my mother learned through residential boarding school institutions and the whole system before that.
I grew up Tlingit although the other half of me is northern and western European. But my father was never in the picture. He was around until I was about two years old. He was also a fisherman and worked on the pipeline and things like that. So I didn't know him.
I met him again when I was like 12. Later when I was in college, he reached out to me, so I was able to go to meet my settler family in Wisconsin. That was probably the best thing that he ever could have done for me was introducing me to the rest of my family, because I just felt so lost and incomplete until then, not knowing who I was, and then also dealing with all the trauma of society. And I never saw my own self on television. You know, I just saw myself being killed on television.
I'm in the middle of a settlement, and I'm not the only one. There's like nine of us on a civil case against this physical therapist, and there's 19 of us on a criminal case against him. He was targeting Native people; this white man targeting Native people.
Judy Maurer
Yes, because they’re the vulnerable ones.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
He knows our history and the missionary thing. You can have conversations with him, he really earned your trust, but what he's doing is obtaining all the tools to be able to abuse and, and was having us all disrobe and get into gowns. And then massage therapy was going on. But he was never licensed as a massage therapist.
So we were all conditioned already from our historical trauma. And then all of us have our own personal life trauma, where the stories aren't very different. You know, they include sexual abuse, and all the things that I just explained to you. My story is not unique. It can be told all across Indian country, with different little variations, but all pretty much the same. All pretty similar.
Still there's reservations that don't have running water, good housing, any of that stuff. There's so much that could be done. Yeah. So much it could be done. So even though I, you know, struggle and have a hard time, I always said, “I don't try to ask for any help.” It comes down to individualism.
And where that comes from is the Dawes Act, because we were community before then. Individualism really plays into the Dawes Act.
Judy Maurer
What was the Dawes Act?
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Jamiann and her friend Auti at annual sessions
The Dawes Act is when they separated us and put us onto allotments instead of living as a community because it was another way to assimilate and individualize us into white culture.
Judy Maurer
And take part of the lands too, right? There were ”extra allotments.”
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Exactly. Yep.
Note: According to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, the Dawes Act was “the single most devastating federal policy” for Native Americans. Overall, the tribes lost 90 million acres of land. According to the ILTF website, supporters of the Dawes Act “saw the individual ownership of private property as an essential part of civilization that would give Indian people a reason to stay in one place, cultivate land, disregard the cohesiveness of the tribe, and adopt the habits, practices, and interests of the American settler population.” More information is here.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist
Individualism is tied to that. I'm the only one who could do this. No one else does this work as well as I do. Progress, bigger objectivity, right to comfort. That's where it's hard for me to have conversations with Caucasian people that are totally open, like the way that I can with my friend Auti [in photo]. Because I have to worry about making Caucasian people uncomfortable, and I have to make them comfortable to be able to receive my message. And because they're already not going to receive my message well, because of my skin color, because of the internal racial biases, and just programming from the good old America, and beyond.
Judy Maurer
Thank you for being open about this.
One reason I wanted to interview you for the newsletter is that we humans learn from each other’s stories. We may not be able to absorb a documentary, but we can absorb someone's story, and hopefully learn and reflect on it.
Watch for Part Two of this interview in an upcoming issue of the Bulletin. Write to newsletter@scymf.org to subscribe to the Bulletin.