The Skagway Borough Assembly postponed decisions on what to do with land that was the site of a boarding school for Indigenous children. The Skagway Traditional Council has withdrawn its engagement from the process, citing undue stress on its members.
The Pius X Boarding School for Native Children opened in Skagway in 1932. Jaime Bricker is the president of the Skagway Traditional Council.
Bricker: “There is certainly documented evidence of abuse at the school, and it is certainly a hard history to revisit.”
The Catholic Church operated the school until 1959. Bricker says tribal members alive today attended the school as youth. Boarding schools are now widely seen as a tool settlers used to eradicate Indigenous cultures. In 2008, the Canadian government issued a formal apology to attendees at its residential schools. In the US, a federal effort is underway to find out what happened in the institutions.
In Skagway, archaeologists have just finished scanning the ground of the former school for evidence of deaths among the student body. None has emerged so far. The land on which the boarding school sat was purchased by the municipality of Skagway for $1.7 million a decade ago. The municipality is now operating an RV park at this location, and is still making payments to the Catholic Church.
Two years ago, the Skagway Traditional Council wrote a letter to Skagway’s borough assembly, expressing interest in taking ownership of some of the land. They wanted to honor and recognize the experience of the people who attended the school.
Some assembly members supported returning the land. Earlier this year, an assembly member drafted a resolution seeking to return half of the RV park land to the Traditional Council.
Assembly Member Deb Potter saw the resolution peter out.
Potter: “The finance committee did discuss it, but there was really no movement on that at all.”
The Assembly has expressed a will to recognize the tribe’s claim, and return a smaller parcel.
But President Bricker says the conversation around returning land to the tribe has been contentious, and unfruitful.
Bricker: “There really hasn’t been any meaningful progress towards that concept.”
Bricker says revisiting memories associated with the school has been painful for tribal members.
Bricker: “The Pius X mission history has been emotional for our tribal members, and I think it’s really taken a toll to revisit that, and at this point in time, it just seemed like a good idea for the health of our people to step away from this.”
Recently, the Council wrote a letter to the Assembly, and expressed its intention to withdraw from engaging the municipality on the issue. In the letter, the tribe asks that one parcel be set aside for the creation of a memorial that will quote: “Heal the land for future users, unbury and recognize its existence as part of Skagway’s history, and give boarding school attendees and descendents time to grieve from trauma, and show that ‘Skagway cares’”.
Assembly Member Sam Bass recently brought a resolution for discussion. It would subdivide the land into 24 lots. One parcel would be offered to the traditional council for setting up the memorial. The others would be for housing.
Mayor Andrew Cremata says the municipality has to be careful when it sells the lots.
Cremata: “I know that part of the reason we have a housing shortage is the fact that so much of our lots are owned by landowners in town who own ten properties, twelve properties, twenty properties, whatever it is.”
Cremata says he fears the same landowners would buy the land at the RV park, the lots would sit empty,and the young families that seek to establish themselves in Skagway would miss out on the opportunity. To make matters worse, the utilities are in disrepair. Fixing them will cost millions of dollars, according Borough Manager Brad Ryan.
Assembly Member Potter says there is a strong case for returning the land to the local tribe. She points to a U.S. statute addressing the disposal of mission land that says it should go back to “the Indian owners”. It states that: “when no longer used for mission or school purposes said lands shall revert to the Indian owners.” According to this federal statute, Potter says, the land should have been returned to the tribe in 1959, when the school closed.
During a phone call to the Catholic diocese of Juneau, the vicar general said he was not aware of the statute.
Potter says she wants to use her position on the assembly to advocate for returning some land.
Potter: “You also have to think about, there is public opinion and there is doing the right thing. There is obviously not a large native population in Skagway, so they need allies to be advocating for doing the right thing.”
Brickers with the traditional council says regardless of who owns the land, uncovering the history of the school is a priority. She says their staff were able to unearth 2000 pages of documents related to the school in an archive in British Columbia.
Bricker: “ As of right now there is no concise record of attendance at that school, there is no record of who showed up at the doorstep, who left it and how. And that’s concerning to me. We are in the process of trying to delve through it and determine what these new pieces of documentation mean. Trying to rebuild that history, that’s the really important part to us.”
The assembly voted to postpone any decision on land disposal until members can further examine the land title, and read through the results of the archeological study.
