Christian Colonial Capitalist violence
The concept of Christian Colonial Capitalist violence describes an interlocking system where religious ideology, the political project of colonialism, and the economic imperatives of capitalism work in concert to dispossess and harm Indigenous peoples. It states that these three forces are not separate but are fused together, each reinforcing the others to create a comprehensive structure of oppression.
Indian Boarding Schools
The Indian Boarding School system is considered a microcosm of this interlocking violence: a state-funded (Colonial), church-run (Christian) institution that systematically destroyed Indigenous culture to secure land and create a dependent labor class (Capitalist).
I can only remember one instance of the mention of the Indian Boarding Schools from my childhood. I was raised in Quaker communities, and one of my relatives, still living when I was born, had been involved in one of those institutions. That shows how long some of those institutions continued to operate. I was told she went to help the Indian children.
I don’t remember these institutions ever being discussed at the Quaker boarding high school I attended.
I call them institutions because they were not schools; they were places whose purpose was to forcibly, often violently, assimilate Native children into the white settler colonial culture that had taken over Native lands. The act itself, even without physical assault, is actually violence. And as detailed below, nearly 1,000 children died, or were killed. With increasing numbers found with ongoing investigations.
Bureau of Indian Education (BIE)
Discovery of unmarked graves
The discovery of unmarked graves at the sites of former Indian Boarding Schools across North America represents a moment of profound and painful public validation for truths long held within Indigenous communities. For generations, survivors and their descendants have spoken of the children who were taken to these institutions and never returned, their stories often dismissed or ignored by the dominant society. The confirmation of these burial sites, beginning with the announcement in May 2021 that ground-penetrating radar had detected the remains of as many as 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada, served as a global catalyst. This discovery did not reveal a new history; rather, it unearthed a buried truth, making a chapter of genocidal policy impossible for the wider public and governmental bodies to continue to disregard
Table: Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative – Key Findings (Vol. I & II)
| Metric | Volume I Finding (May 2022) | Volume II Finding (July 2024) |
| Identified Federal Schools | 408 | 417 |
| Confirmed Child Deaths | >500 | >973 |
| Identified Burial Sites | 53 | 74 (at 65 school locations) |
| Estimated Federal Funding | Not specified | >$23.3 Billion (FY23 adjusted) |
