Forum, February 2026

What to do with our history?

I’ve become very interested in the history and ongoing effects of the Indian boarding school system (“Speaking with Friends About Indian Boarding Schools” by Rachel Overstreet, FJ Jan.). I currently live in the Pacific Northwest, a few miles from the Canadian border. This area and British Columbia share a history of these schools. I recently learned that my ancestors, members of Moorestown (N.J.) Meeting, took in a student from the Carlisle School in the early 1900s. It was part of a program to provide “cultural exposure and training” to students from Carlisle. It’s been fascinating to observe and feel how I’m reacting to that news.

The question, “So what do I do with this?” is very real. Step one has been to educate myself. Step two has been to make connections with the local Lummi Nation, where I’ve been introduced to survivors of these schools. I’m visiting a couple of Indian boarding schools in British Columbia this June. One has been made into a national historic site by the Canadian government. Its purpose is to teach so we never forget or allow it to happen again. May this article reach many who knew nothing about this chapter in our history. And may it also reach many, like myself, who have learned enough to want to do more. You’ve inspired me to keep going on my journey of exploration and action.

Bob Andrews
Bellingham, Wash.

First I would like to thank the author, Rachel Overstreet, for accompanying me when I lobbied my congressmember and senators on this very issue! Friends Committee for National Legislation (FCNL) is such a valuable resource for lobbying.

Secondly, it is so important to highlight the work that National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS), Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples, and FCNL are doing on Indian boarding schools. I encourage other Friends to join me in exploring this difficult part of our history as Friends. I am impressed with the number of workshops, books, and articles that are available to elevate our understanding of Indian boarding schools and their ongoing impact on current generations.

Overstreet’s lived experience, ongoing work, and the queries she provided help us move forward to address the legacy of our Quaker (perhaps well-intentioned?) early role in the boarding schools. I commit my time and attention to supporting the efforts of NABS, FCNL, and my local tribal neighbors to this work. One of the things I appreciate the most about the work of NABS is the focus on both education and healing.

Carla J. Main
Port Townsend, Wash.

I have been visiting the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona for a number of years, following the trail of a White ancestor who used to live and work there. A book was recommended to me by the San Carlos Cultural Center: Eva Tulene Watt’s Don’t Let the Sun Step Over You. It was the first time I’d ever heard about Native children being abducted and placed in inhumane residential boarding schools. I was sad and appalled. Tulene describes a range of experiences with the schools: it’s “complex,” as Rachel Overstreet says.

Watt’s mother was sent to the San Carlos School, where they didn’t give the children enough to eat. They weren’t allowed to use the bathroom and they were whipped. She fought back and was sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania for one-and-a-half years, without any trips home. Watt’s brothers were captured and sent to the Rice Station Indian School in Arizona. The family stayed close, disrupting their previous pattern of moving with the seasons. The boys were given hard manual labor, while the girls were taught Anglo-American domestic skills. The way they were treated was torture. Eva’s older brother Paul died at the Rice school, due to work he was forced to do. Eva went to St. John’s Indian School, which she liked, even asking to stay over the holidays. Anthropologist Keith Basso collaborated with Watts. He writes, “Mrs. Watt’s accounts of her brothers’ treatment at Rice are among the most telling yet registered on the topic of student abuse in Native American boarding schools.” I recommend this book.

Members of my Memphis (Tenn.) Meeting gathered to watch the PBS documentary Dawnland about Indigenous child removal (both to schools and non-Native foster families), and how Maine is holding truth and reconciliation hearings to air and address these systemic injustices and cruelties.

I am seeking what is mine to do in the work to restore accurate history, and help heal the generational inheritances of this terrible trauma.

Ann Walton Sieber
Memphis, Tenn.

Thank you for this important reflection. The Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children at Montclair State University in New Jersey just published an essay, “Stolen Childhood: Picture Book Stories of Indian Residential Schools,” which reviews nine children’s picture books on Indian residential schools.

Maughn Gregory
Ivins, Utah

Lessons in humility?

Nineteenth-century Friends were responding honestly to the Light as they understood it, within the cultural context they lived (“Never Too Late to Begin Repair” by Mary Zwirner and Gordon Bugbee, FJ Jan.).

We now see their understanding and actions as deeply flawed and hurtful.

What will our descendants say of us 200 years from now? Is there not a lesson for us in humility here, as we also now insist we know the Light in twenty-first-century culture and events?

John Smallwood
Staunton, Va.

Divisions on Israel–Palestine continue in the letters column

Why were monthly meetings not included in the discernment process around the genocide statement? (“Eight Quaker Organizations Draft and Sign Statement Saying Genocide Is Occurring in Gaza” by Sharlee DiMenichi, FJ Nov. 2025 online, Dec. 2025 print).

One of the eight organizations, Friends Committee for National Legislation, spent almost a year in 2023 gathering input from individuals, monthly meetings, and Quaker organizations to add the word “abortion” to their policy statement.

The discernment process in this case seems to have occurred “internally,” and then among the heads of the eight organizations. This is hierarchical, to say the least. It was then presented for endorsement during a time of upheaval, globally and domestically. There is plenty of blame to go around.

The statement, which purports to speak for all Friends, does not advance the cause of peace by pointing the finger of blame at the Israeli government.

Claire Cafaro
Fort Collins, Colo.

New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM) spent a great deal of time wrestling with the issue of genocide in Gaza at our annual sessions last August. Some Friends even felt we should not meet on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus because of the severe way the administration responded to the nonviolent encampment in the spring of 2024 (we agreed to go ahead and meet on campus but held a moving meeting for worship on the site of the encampment).

We had a lengthy session of worship around the Gaza issue during one of our meetings for business, and we listened to the heart-felt experiences of Rania Maayeh, head of Ramallah Friends School in Palestine.

Friends were united about the need to respond, but because we did not have a clear proposal to consider we agreed to hold an online called meeting for business of NEYM in October, which many Friends attended.

The session was focused and well clerked, and we united in joining Friends World Committee for Consultation World Office, Friends Committee for National Legislation, the Quaker United Nations Office, Canadian Friends Service Committee, American Friends Service Committee, and the other Quaker organizations who issued the statement.

We have come a long way on Israel–Palestine. Just a few years ago NEYM was barely able to unite around a very mild rebuke of Israel concerning its treatment of Palestinians and the complicity of the U.S. government. Much has changed. As brutal as 75 years of Israeli rule over many disenfranchised and ethnically cleansed Palestinians has been, the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and children as collective punishment for the brutal violence of Hamas on October 7, 2023, has stirred many hearts in our yearly meeting.

Peter Blood-Patterson
Amherst, Mass.

Upon years of thought, prayer, and reflection concerning the wars in Palestine and Israel, I tend to believe at this point that Hamas and its military allies have continuously pursued aims of genocide against the Israelis in their statements and actions.

Consider the suicide bombings of the Intifada. Some might regard these bombings as acts of protest. Even so, there is no denying that another purpose was to kill Israelis in full view of their families and friends.

Remember that the Second Intifada came soon after the Oslo Accords. Many of us were optimistic for a short time. The Nobel Committee even jointly awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres.

Then an Israeli extremist killed a group of Palestinians, after which Hamas retaliated with more killings. The first atrocity appeared to be an individual act while the atrocities in retaliation were admittedly a group act. Some Hamas leaders even characterized their retaliations as a jihad.

There have been so many more killings by both sides before and since these atrocities, as we know all too well. It seems like every time we imagine that we have identified the initial attack, we remember more attacks which preceded that one.

I suppose the world might judge the killings by Hamas to be small-scale atrocities. If so, I believe it would be reasonable and fair to concede that Hamas lacked the military resources to exact killings on a larger scale. The difference in 2023 was that Hamas falsely assumed their military allies would join them in their attacks. This fateful miscalculation has been widely reported in the international media since then.

Now many Friends are speaking up to condemn Israel’s horrific massive atrocities since 2023 while hardly mentioning what happened before. Are we taking sides, I wonder? Why would we want to take sides?

Tom Louderback
Louisville, Ky.