Quaker’s involvement in the Boarding Schools for Indigenous Children was extensive. Now is the time to look at this history honestly, then decide how we can best make reparations for the negative impact we had. In preparation for consideration of the Minute on these issues, the Peace and Social Concerns Committee will have a film and discussion on May 20th, 2022 at 7 pm. You can familiarize yourself further by reflecting on the following Minute and looking into some of the background resources included with the Minute.
MINUTE

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.