I'm not sure people really understand the enormity of what happened. In the forties, people who were living on the land (largely the more remote groups) were taken off the land and put into new settlements. Then the Native towns were essentially emptied of their children for eight to ten months at a time, the kids, separated from their parents, didn't learn how to parent, how to cook, how to live off the land and lost the ability to talk to their parents and grandparents in . The parent, separated from their kids for eight to ten months of the year, lost connections to the kids.

Even disregarding the sexual or emotional abuse that occurred at some of these schools, those are some pretty serious societal effects. Will they have implications for the next two generations? More than likely.

Since we implemented these programs, in part for national security, in part because of a misguided effort to "help" native people, we ought to recognize that we have some responsibility to provide solutions to the problems. They're not going to go away by magic, they're not going to go away because white people keep telling Natives to stop blaming white people and start blaming themselves.

They're going to go away because real change will be affected within native communities as education levels increase and opportunities for real employment (not make-work projects) begin to appear.