The Ulali Project: Protecting Sacred Seed
Ulali Project is the first Indigenous women’s group to create their own sound from their strong traditional roots and personal contemporary styles.
The Ulali Project – Healing the Soul-Pain of Our Indigenous Children
By René Locklear White, Lt. Col. USAF (Retired), Sanctuary on the Trail™ Native American Church of Virginia
Our Indigenous children are our sacred seed
The Act of taking Native American Indian children away from their families is still happening across the United States and Canada. The action results in thousands of children experiencing “soul pain” through grief, disempowerment, and spiritual disconnection. What most people believed was over, with the boarding schools, is still affecting generations of children.
According to national reports, nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota alone are being removed from their homes every year, sometimes in questionable and suspicious circumstances.
Government programs remove children from reservations and place them in white foster homes. In these homes, our indigenous children experience a long list of abuses, including sexual violence, physical abandonment, and mental trauma.
The crisis in Saskatoon, Canada, foster homes include overcrowding. Some families try to care for as many as 15 Native children and youth at the same time. There are reports of children being beaten and “crawling around with lice.”
“Taking children away from the families is the most traumatic thing you can do to a child, to a family, and to a people,” said Pura Fé, a Native American singer-songwriter, musician, and activist who lives in Saskatoon. “They come in and just take the children.”
After splitting up families and separating siblings, officials move the native children to a nebulous family, erasing the child’s records. When foster money runs out, or the foster families no longer want the children, officials move the children from foster home to foster home. If children manage to run away and officials find them, they send the children back into the broken foster-care circle.
Foster Care or Boarding Schools, Just Different Words
It is profoundly disturbing that many foster care programs have become residential schools like the original federally funded, off-reservation, Indian boarding schools of centuries past.
The original boarding school operated in Carlisle, Penn. from 1879 – 1918, using former military barracks and military-style uniforms to imprison and assimilate little Native children. In many cases, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) paid the states to remove Indian children and place them with non-Indian families and religious groups.
In August 2017, 17 members of the Northern Arapaho tribe, including tribal elders and young people, traveled to Carlisle to collect and return bodies thought to be the remains of 15-year-old Little Chief, also known as Dickens Nor, and 14-year-old Horse also called Horace Washington.
Officials attempted to “Americanize” the children by cutting the children’s long hair, changed their names to European names, and held them until they assimilated, ran away, or died. The officials’ idea was to “Kill the Indian: Save the Man” through any means necessary.
The 19th and 20th century Carlisle boarding school became the model school for 26 BIA boarding schools, within 15 states and territories, in addition to hundreds of private boarding schools sponsored by religious denominations. It is estimated that more than 10,000 Native American children from 140 different tribes forcibly attended Carlisle alone.
Why is this still happening?
It is a combination of reasons, including Cultural In-Sensitivity and a Culture of Non-Compliance with Policy. What officials continue to fail to realize are the cultural differences. What is in the best interest of a non-Indian child is not necessarily what was in an Indian child’s best interest. Indigenous families are traditionally larger with extended families and tribal relationships.
U.S. federal law says that, with some exceptions, if the state removes a Native American child, the state must place that child with relatives, tribal members, or other Native Americans. But that is not happening. In the United States, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 is U.S. Federal law that governs jurisdiction over removing Native American Indian children from their families.
Investigations are unhurriedly uncovering disturbing examples where social services fail to comply with their own policies and practices, and government officials routinely break their own rules.
Who Feels Lead to Protect and Advocate for These Indigenous Children?
We need healing humanity-type organizations, people, music, and arts to help. To help with the healing. To help find answers.
Pura Fé, an American Native singer-songwriter, musician, composer, seamstress, teacher, and activist, feels the call to help with a big heart. Pura Fé’s force is magnified by teaming up with organizations like Green Arrow Healing and White Lightening Consulting.
Green Arrow works in partnership with White Lightning Consulting to offer local, effective healing opportunities in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. Green Arrow Healing specializes in holistic, culturally sensitive health care.
Pura Fé is also the founding member of the Native American women’s Acappella quartet, Ulali Project. The ladies’ “Sacred Seed” album features original compositions written in English, Tuscarora, and Tutelo. Pura Fé writes music about residential-school and foster-care survivors.
“Sacred seed, DNA, the memory of all time,” sings Pura Fé in the Sacred Seed album. “Within every seed is a universe.”
Ulali’s progressive folk and blues tones invoke our ancestors and are part of a vocal masterpiece. The Ulali Project quartet is currently made up of Ulali founders Pura Fe’ and Jennifer Kreisberg, and new additions Charly Lowry and Layla Locklear.
These individuals aim their initiatives at healing and educating these children and families. More help is needed.
Our Native children carry our sacred seed, carrying our DNA and the memory of all time. If we lose our children, we lose our future.
If you or your organization is interested in helping, consider buying the Sacred Seed album https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sacred-seed/id955750520 or reach out to Green Arrow Healing online at www.GreenArrowHealing.ca or Native American Church of Virginia Sanctuary on the Trail www.SanctuaryontheTrail.org.
Sanctuary on the Trail’s vision is “Helping Leaders First” and “Bringing recognition to the contributions that the Indigenous of the Americas have made to the globe” to “Reduce Suffering in the World.”
Related Information.
To Donate to Green Arrow Healing, click on this link: https://www.greenarrowhealing.ca/donate.html
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