The Baltimore Yearly Meeting wholeheartedly supports the establishment of a national commission to seek truth and a measure of justice for those still suffering the residual effects of public policies that created and maintained hundreds of boarding schools for Indigenous children in the United States from 1869 through the 1960s. We support legislation to fund such a commission. Once established we will hold the people who come before it and the commission members in the Light, in expectation that airing of harms and traumas will lead to some healing of long-suffered wounds. We want a commission that yields real results and changes, not a report that gathers dust on a shelf.
We applaud the fact that one intention of the commission is to prevent continued removal of Indigenous (American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian) children from their families, communities, and cultural connections by adoption and foster care agencies.
We urge research by faith groups that ran residential schools, especially the Religious Society of Friends, to provide explicit data requested by the federal government as part of the commission’s documentation of all boarding schools and students. We believe accountability requires robust cooperation.
Let’s be clear. It is OUR job to do the physical work to open our BYM camps. Work is available for all abilities and skill levels. Sign up and invite others! Announcements will go out in newsletters, but personal invitations help.
There is a LOT of work to do. BYM Staff cannot and should not do it all. Let’s descend on camps in such numbers that we run out of work to do--early.
How to Sign Up
Three Sign Up Genius links, one for each of the residential camps:
