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First Voices Indigenous Radio

Doug George-Kanen­ti­io joins Host Tiokasin Ghosthorse for the full hour. A few weeks ago, the remains of 215 chil­dren were found at the Kam­loops Indi­an School in British Colum­bia, Canada.The Kam­loops Indi­an Res­i­den­tial school was one of the largest res­i­den­tial schools in Cana­da and oper­at­ed from the late 19th cen­tu­ry to the late 1970s. The school was opened and run by the Catholic Church until the Cana­di­an fed­er­al gov­ern­ment took it over in the late 1960s. Indige­nous chil­dren, some as young as 3 years old, we were forcibly tak­en from their fam­i­lies and put into res­i­den­tial schools. Same as what hap­pened in Native board­ing schools in the Unit­ed States, their hair was cut off, they were for­bid­den to speak their Indige­nous lan­guages, and to see their fam­i­lies. Some did­n’t return home for many years and some did­n’t return home at all. Count­less chil­dren suf­fered ter­ri­ble indig­ni­ties, mis­treat­ment, and hor­rors, includ­ing beat­ings, rape and oth­er forms of sex­u­al vio­lence, dis­ease, and even death. Res­i­den­tial school expe­ri­ences con­tin­ue to affect many sur­vivors today. Doug George-Kanen­ti­io was one of those stu­dents. Doug attend­ed the Mohawk Insti­tute in Bran­ford, Ontario, and wrote about it in a recent col­umn, Our Mohawk Coun­cils Failed to Pro­tect the Res­i­den­tial School Chil­dren,” pub­lished by indi​anz​.com on June 14.

Doug George-Kanen­ti­io was born and raised at the Mohawk Ter­ri­to­ry of Akwe­sasne. He attend­ed school on and near the reser­va­tion before enrolling at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty and then the Anti­och School of Law. Doug was a co-founder of the Native Amer­i­can Jour­nal­ists Asso­ci­a­tion before serv­ing the Mohawk Nation as edi­tor of the jour­nals Akwe­sasne Notes and Indi­an Time. He worked with the late Vine Delo­ria, Jr. on the Tra­di­tion­al Knowl­edge con­fer­ences before join­ing the Board of Trustees for the Smith­so­ni­an’s Nation­al Muse­um of the Amer­i­can Indi­an. Doug is cur­rent­ly vice-pres­i­dent for the Hiawatha Insti­tute for Indige­nous Knowl­edge, a non-prof­it high­er learn­ing facil­i­ty that is based on Iro­quois prin­ci­ples. He resides on Onei­da Iro­quois Ter­ri­to­ry with his wife, the renowned Gram­my-award win­ning artist Joanne Shenandoah.