Cabinet secretary visits Tulalip to listen to boarding school survivors

TULALIP — In some families, the stories were passed down. Siblings separated, children locked in closets, their mouths washed out with soap, a second grader who froze his toes off trying to escape.

In others, the memories were just too painful.

“They really kept it quiet,” Karen Sheldon said of her parents, wiping away tears. “A lot of the little things that happened make sense now.”

Their voices thick with emotion, survivors of Native American boarding schools and their family members took turns speaking to the crowd in the Tulalip Gathering Hall on Sunday. The event was a stop on Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s “The Road to Healing” tour around the country, meant to give survivors a chance to talk about their experiences and access to mental health resources.

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