-=> Quoting Sondra Ball to Robin Arnhold <=-
Hi, Sondra,
 
 SB> I think, for many Indians, the poor parenting skills come from the
 SB> forced disruption of family life by the colonizing powers.  We lost
 SB> something like 90 or 95 percent of our people in a couple of hundred
 SB> years.  That resulted in massive disjointing of family systems.  Then
 SB> the kidnapping of our kids at a very young age, and sending them off
 SB> to boarding schools, further disrupted the sytem.  I think many Indians
 SB> re in a position of having to re-create the family unit.
No question about it, the family history of virtually every Indian family
is a tragedy, a small reflection of the greater tragedy wrought by the
past 505 years.  Dorothy, an Anishinabe lady who was my downstairs
neighbor until I moved here four years ago, was very adamant about the
adverse affects of the boarding schools on Indian families.  She was very
certain that's where her grandmother learned to beat her children and
grandchildren as a means of discipline because part of growing up
Anishinabe (or as a member of any other Indian nation) is learning that
that's not the way things were done before the dominant culture
interfered with the traditional social structures of the first nations.
Take care,
Robin
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