This article is an adaptation of our weekly History newsletter that was originally sent out on June 28, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Sign up here.
By Debra Adams Simmons, HISTORY Executive Editor
Ugly truths buried in the soil are being unearthed.
The discovery last week of 751 mass graves at the site of the Marieval Indian Residential School in Canada’s Saskatchewan province follows the uncovering in May of 215 graves at another such school in British Columbia.
Thursday’s announcement by the Cowessess First Nation has jolted a nation grappling with generations of widespread and systemic abuse of Indigenous people.
“This was a crime against humanity, an assault on First Nations,” Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations in Saskatchewan said. “We will not stop until we find all the bodies.”
On Friday in Oklahoma, meanwhile, scientists confirmed that bullet wounds were found in one of the skeletons exhumed from a mass grave in Tulsa (pictured above). That provided more evidence that the body—and other remains found nearby—are linked to the 1921 massacre of hundreds of Black people in Tulsa by white mobs in one of the deadliest race killings in U.S. history. The 100th anniversary of what is called the Tulsa Race Massacre, long hidden from view, is being commemorated this month.
These burial sites reveal painful truths amid debates what history can be taught, and scholars such as Elizabeth Alexander call for an exploration of America’s full history.
“They’ve found people who had been disappeared by history,” writer DeNeen L. Brown said in a National Geographic documentary that aired this month about the Tulsa massacre. “The earth had unleashed the truth. … It wasn’t a movie. It wasn’t a chapter in a book. It happened to real people.”
Canada’s own history, like that of the U.S., is fraught with abuse of its Indigenous population. More than 150,000 indigenous students were enrolled in Canada’s residential school system, now closed. Abuse was rampant. “I was so scared all the time,” Deedee Lerat, who from 1967 to 1970, attended the school where those mass graves were found. Lerat (pictured above) told Nat Geo: “I remember thinking ‘don’t be noticed’ because I saw what they did to the kids that were noticed.”
Lerat said she suffered physical, emotional, and verbal abuse while at Marieval. Children as young as three years old were removed from their parents, forced to attend the schools and prohibited from speaking their native languages. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement that “the findings in Marieval and Kamloops are part of a larger tragedy. He tweeted, “we will honor their memory and we will tell the truth about these injustices.”
"They are a shameful reminder of the systemic racism, discrimination, and injustice that Indigenous peoples have faced–and continue to face–in this country. And together, we must acknowledge this truth, learn from our past, and walk the shared path of reconciliation, so we can build a better future.”
Nat Geo Explorer Daniella Zalcman's photographs of survivors of North America’s Indigenous schools was funded in part by the National Geographic Society. Learn more about the Society’s support of Explorers working to inspire, educate, and better understand human history and cultures.
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TODAY IN A MINUTE
Heat wave: For the Pacific Northwest, it is hard to imagine the intensity of the heat, with back-to-back triple-digit temperatures in Seattle for the first time in recorded history—and even hotter temperatures in Portland. Nat Geo’s Sarah Gibbens explains the heat dome causing this spasm of heat, and our Craig Welch, who is based in Seattle, will go deeper in tomorrow’s newsletter on how unprepared the region is for a warming earth.
‘Miniature Pompeii’ found: Archaeologists in Verona, Italy, have found the ruins of a second-century Roman building under an abandoned cinema. The building appears to have suffered a fire but some of itss interior was “preserved intact, with the magnificent colors of the frescoed walls dating back to the second century,” Smithsonian magazine reports. Meanwhile, in Rome, the underground tunnels of the Colosseum are open to tourists for the first time in history, ABC News reports.
Dragon Man: That's what China is calling a skull that may provide more clues to the tangled web of human origins. Hidden down a well for decades, the stunningly complete cranium, which dates back at least 146,000 years, may point to a new species, Nat Geo’s Maya Wei-Hass reports. "I’ve held a lot of other human skulls and fossils, but never like this," says paleoanthropologist Xijun Ni. (Above, the Dragon Man is depicted in a reconstruction.)
Removing Roosevelt: It’s official: The statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York will be moved to a yet-to-be-identified institution dedicated to the life of the 26th president. The sculpture, which shows Roosevelt flanked by a Native American man and an African man, conveys a "racial hierarchy that the museum and members of the public have long found disturbing," the museum wrote in its initial request to the city, CNN reports.
What did Stonehenge sound like? Much of Stonehenge is a mystery but every year scientists learn something new. Researchers have found that the original circle of 157 standing stones (only 63 complete stones remain today) once acted like a sound chamber. Trevor Cox, an acoustical engineer, tells Smithsonian magazine that the next stage of research is to place replicas of people in the henge and find out how much sound they absorb.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Family history: The generations of Khalaf Abu Tayi‘s family reflect the changes in Jordan in the past century. The patriarch sits in the background of this photograph, taken for a January 1999 story on T.E. Lawrence, the British army officer who led Arab troops in World War I and was the subject of the movie Lawrence of Arabia. Abu Tayi sits next to a portrait of his father, Zaal, who was one of Lawrence's lieutenants. The image was recently in our popular Photo of the Day feature of archival photos.
THE BIG TAKEAWAY
51 years ago today: The march would be different than gay rights protests before. The gathering in New York on June 28, 1970 (pictured above)—and in Chicago a day earlier—represented a bigger, louder push for gay rights. The marches, marking the anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York a day earlier, were dawning of the Pride movement, Erin Blackmore reports for Nat Geo. “No one who was there can talk about it without goose bumps,” activist Jerry House said in 2019. “I always say that gay liberation was conceived at Stonewall in 1969 and born at that first march.” See photographer Michael George’s TikTok of historic LGBTQ sites in NYC.
IN A FEW WORDS
An ego is usually just overdressed insecurity. I think you have to dream so big that you can't get an ego.
Quincy Jones, Music producer, composer, trumpeter, From the documentary Quincy
DID A FRIEND FORWARD THIS TO YOU?
Tomorrow, Seattle-based Craig Welch will write about the heat wave in the U.S. Northwest for our environment newsletter. If you don't get the daily newsletter, sign up here for Victoria Jaggard on science as well, and George Stone on travel, Rachael Bale on animal and wildlife news, Whitney Johnson on photography, and Rachel Buchholz on families and kids.
LAST GLIMPSE
The NASCAR of ancient Rome: That’s how Nat Geo’s History magazine describes the empire’s chariot races. “The spectacle,” writes David Álvarez, “was indeed intoxicating, but some Roman elites looked upon racing with disapproval. These same elites funded the construction of massive venues for racing, such as the Circus Maximus in Rome and the Hippodrome in Constantinople. Chariot racing’s popularity only grew as the Roman Empire expanded.” (Above, Alexander von Wagner’s 1882 depiction of a chariot race in Rome’s Circus Maximus.)
Today's newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams. Jen Tse selected the photographs. Have an idea or link to a story you think is right down our alley? Let us know at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading.
