Penitential Pilgrims: Indigenous Truth Commissions in the Northwest Coast

Abstract

This dissertation identifies lessons learned from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for a U.S. context by focusing on the history and contemporary legacies of Indigenous boarding schools in the Northwest Coast, a region divided by two U.S.-Canadian borders. I interpret metaphors of water to explore different approaches to justice among Christian, secular, and Indigenous worldviews that are in conflict in the process of forming a U.S. Truth Commission. While reconciliation remains a highly contested approach, I find that Indigenous peoples are able to achieve some concrete benefits from Truth Commissions through raising awareness of historic injustices and asserting sovereignty and self-determination. This dissertation is divided into three stand-alone articles:• The first article analyzes trends in the funding received by church denominations from the U.S. and Canadian government to operate Indigenous mission schools in the Northwest Coast in the context of widespread official renouncements of the Doctrine of Discovery. This article provides an accounting of both money and land, identifying over $40 million in 2024 USD that the government paid church denominations for mission schools in the Northwest Coast between 1876 and 1908, as well as roughly 1,500 acres of land grants by the U.S. government to churches on Native reservations, many of which are likely to include Native cemeteries. • The second article conducts a statistical analysis of the relationship between boarding schools and logging of coastal Indian Agencies of Washington and Oregon state between 1911-1920, finding a statistically significant causal relationship between boarding school attendance and logging revenues. In doing so, this article identifies systemic government corruption in the simultaneous management of boarding schools and land. This article also traces Native logging practices in the Pacific Northwest and demonstrates how Native leaders were able to leverage these practices to promote self-determination and cultural revitalization. • The third article is an autoethnography of participating in the 2023 Tribal Canoe Journey that explores the role of Indigenous canoes as symbols for Indigenous governance in the context of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a pending Truth Commission in the United States. This article provides a model for non-Native allyship that support Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty throughout the region. Together, these articles provide vantage points for exploring the ways that three different discourse communities—Christian, secular, and Indigenous--understand and engage with the ongoing politics of Truth Commissions within the Northwest Coast.