ALASKA
News-Miners
News-Miner opinion: On the closing day of the Alaska Federation of Natives’ 50th annual convention, one statement made waves across the state. The general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A., prompted by its Alaska members, extended an apology to AFN and its members for abuses of Alaska Natives in church schools and boarding schools its members ran or participated in. The abuses of Alaska boarding schools are well established but poorly documented, and by offering an apology, the Presbyterian Church has taken a step to bridge divides of resentment and suspicion.
When Alaska became a territory in 1867, no formal system of education existed in villages across the state — what schools there were had been established outside of any organized effort, and were focused mostly on religious education. The federal Organic Act of 1884 marked the first real effort to institute a school system in the territory; it established a system of government-run “day schools” and a smaller number of centralized boarding schools across Alaska. Some schools were run directly by the government, while many were run as contract schools by missionaries from the Catholic, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, Moravian, Presbyterian, and Swedish-Evangelical faiths.
Institutional attitudes toward Alaska Natives in the 1800s and well into the 1900s took a dim view of their traditional culture and language. “They are savages, and with the exception of those in Southern Alaska, have not had civilizing, educational, or religious advantages,” Presbyterian missionary and Alaska school administrator Sheldon Jackson said in an address to Congress. “(Missionaries) must try to educate them out of and away from the training of their home-life. They need to be taught both the law of God and the law of the land,” Jackson said in the same address.
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