Grace LaTourelle-
The 2023 Wallenberg Memorial Lecture will be given by the Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Brenda J. Child. Child’s lecture is entitled
“Boarding Schools and American Indian Dispossession.”
The lecture will take place Monday, Oct. 9 at 7:00 p.m. in Wallenberg Auditorium, located in Nobel Hall. It’s sponsored by the Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies department. The runtime will be about an hour, with a subsequent Q&A session with Child.
The Wallenberg Memorial Lecture began in 1982 as a tribute to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who aided in the rescue of Jewish people in Hungary during World War II. Originally focused on the Holocaust and mass genocides, the lecture now takes place every other year and has broadened to focus on a range of historical injustices. Child’s lecture was purposefully timed with Indigenous People’s Day this fall.
“Boarding Schools and American Indian Dispossession” revolves around Dr. Child’s family’s experience with Native American boarding schools. She will also discuss the removal of lands from native people and how the boarding schools worked in tandem with that: coercive and forceful attendance of children.
Child was born on Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota and Child’s grandmother attended Flandreau Indian School. Thus, Child has researched the generational traumas that resulted from the forced renouncement of one’s own culture, and the current implications of that. Child ultimately is working towards accountability for the atrocities people endured.
“The topic of Professor Brenda Child’s lecture, ‘Boarding Schools and American Indian Dispossession,’ is so important, and her connection to this topic is both professional and deeply personal,” Professor of Scandinavian Studies and faculty representative on the President’s Council for Indigenous Relations Dr. Ursula Lindqvist said.
Gustavus students are encouraged and invited to attend the free lecture and opportunity to talk with Child, with varying degrees of knowledge on the history surrounding these tragedies.
“As citizens and people living in the US, we should know the history of our neighbors and know the history of our government actions as well. These issues aren’t in the past. Many living people bear the legacy of these schools. There is space to talk about reparations and reconciliation as well, both on a national level and on a local level regarding the Gustavus campus and its history,” Professor of Political Science and co-director of Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies Mimi Gerstbauer said.
As part of the concept of reconciliation and expanding compassionate knowledge and perspectives, students are encouraged to prepare for this lecture in ways that help open themselves up to different, and uncomfortable, perspectives.
“I would urge students to come with open hearts and minds. Be humble. Leave at the door any tendency to justify the intent of the boarding schools, and just listen thoughtfully to what Professor Child has to say. Ask questions, respectfully. Allow yourself to be challenged and to be transformed. Plan to take a class on Indigenous art, literature, or politics in a future semester; Gustavus offers far more courses on these topics than most students realize,” Lindqvist commented.
Though the subject of this year’s Wallenberg Memorial Lecture regards the history of the unjust treatment of Native Americans, the subject matter contains modern context and new discoveries.
“The history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S. is still coming to light,” Gerstbauer said.
“This work is a necessary step toward accountability, reconciliation, and healing,” Lindqvist said.
Reconciliation not only exists on a broader, United States level but also within the St. Peter and Gustavus Adolphus community.
“Gustavus recently joined the Reconciliation and Reunification Learning and Action Network to help ‘promote understanding, healing, and unity within our local Indigenous community’,” Lindqvist said.
Lindqvist, colleagues, and student researchers have investigated Gustavus’ own settler history, which has been shared publicly, entitled “Unsettling History and Mission at a Settler Institution on Dakota Lands.”
“…There is so much still to unpack, and I’m pleased the college has made a long-term institutional commitment to this hard work of investigating what it means that our college is located on Dakota homelands,” Lindqvist said.
Along with her work at University and research, Child is also a heralded author of several award-winning books and created the “Jingle Dress Dancers in the Modern World: Ojibwe People and Pandemics” documentary in 2020. She is currently on a committee that is developing a new constitution for the 15,000-member Red Lake Ojibwe nation.
“But at the time the jingle dress arose, Native American children were in government boarding schools, our languages were being suppressed, our dancing and powwow traditions were being suppressed, and it was all part of the assimilation movement. Native people were not supposed to be Native people anymore, or practice our traditions, or even speak our language…” Child said in her documentary.
This lecture is an opportunity for Gustavus students to hear from an individual directly affected by these atrocities and ongoing discrimination, and to learn about how it further impacts the Indigenous community.