Southeast Alaska Native communities have worked for decades to undo the harms of colonialism. But Lingít language professor X̱’unei Lance Twitchell said that for too long, the organizations that caused that harm were conspicuously absent.
“L’eiwtu Éesh Herman Davis once stood up at a gathering and said, ‘Why is it just us? Where are the people who did this to us?’” he said.
Now, some of those people are trying to join the effort. Presbyterian Church leaders came to Juneau last week to learn how exactly they ought to make an apology. The visit is part of a plan to formally apologize to the Lingít community for the 1962 closure of Memorial Presbyterian Church, which destroyed an important center for the Lingít community in downtown Juneau.
Twitchell sat on a panel last Wednesday at the Walter Soboleff building with Tlingit and Haida President Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson and Sealaska Heritage Institute President Kaaháni Rosita Worl. La Quen Náay Liz Medicine Crow moderated as they spoke to church leaders about the harm religious organizations have done to Lingít communities through language suppression and violence at boarding schools.
“Until about a few weeks ago, I’ve never stood up and talked about my trauma,” Peterson said. “Couldn’t do it. Now I feel like I have to as a leader, so people can understand and know what we all go through.”
Worl said that when she was putting together her presentation, she had flashbacks to when she was taken to boarding school as a child.
“I had been kidnapped from my home with my grandparents and brought to a Presbyterian mission, Haines House,” she said. “I am a strong woman, but last night, I will tell you I saw myself, I felt myself as a 6 year old that cried in my bed wondering, ‘Why was I taken from my family?’”
Twitchell said he can teach Lingít today because of the elders who held on to the language through all the violence at boarding schools.
“One time I was driving [Lingít elder Marge Dutson] home and she said, ‘They tried everything, they tried to beat it out of me, they tried to scare it out of me, they tried to shame it out of me, but I held on to my language,’” he said.
Jermaine Ross-Allam is the director of the Church’s new Center for Repair of Historical Harms. His job is to travel to places where the Presbyterian Church has created trauma and caused conflict, like Liberia.
“The Center for Repair can’t tell Lingít people, ‘This is what your reparation looks like,’” he said.
Ross-Allam said he noticed a lot of joy in the work that leaders like Twitchell have done to restore language and community, and that’s why he wants the Presbyterian Church to do this apology right.
“For me, reparation is ultimately about reclaiming the material resources necessary to have more of that kind of joy,” Ross-Allam said.
Presbyterian Church USA has committed $1 million in reparations. They’re installing a memorial at the site of the former church on Oct. 7, and church leaders will read an apology Oct. 8.
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