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- By Jenna Kunze
Next week, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland will visit Caddo County, Oklahoma to conduct their first listening session in the Road To Healing Tour, the Department of the Interior’s initiative to hear from survivors of Indian Boarding Schools.
The listening session is set to take place at 10am on July 9. No specific location was announced.
Trauma-informed support will be available for survivors sharing their stories.
Only the first hour of the event will be open to the media, followed by a private listening session. A transcript will be available in the weeks following the visit.
Haaland announced the Road the Healing Tour last month, in conjunction with the release of Volume 1 of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. The report, penned by Newland, recommended connecting with Indigenous communities and hearing about their experiences in boarding schools directly.
Following Oklahoma, Secretary Haaland will travel to Hawai’i, Michigan, Arizona, and South Dakota as part of The Road to Healing tour in 2022. Additional states will be announced for 2023.
The greatest concentration of Federal Indian boarding schools were in present-day Oklahoma, according to the federal investigation.
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