“The experience of PRTF placement can be devastating for children—and uniquely so for Alaska native children, compounding the trauma of past generations when Alaska Native youth were routinely taken from their communities and sent to boarding schools, including some run by the State or the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs,” the report said.
In the fiscal year 2020, the report states that at least one-third of the youth receiving state-funded mental health treatment were Alaska Natives. Between July 2018 and February 2021, the report said that at least 150 youths were transferred from North Star Behavioral Health System to an out-of-state treatment center.“We do not wish to participate,” a spokesperson said.
The DOJ writes in its report that psychiatric residential treatment facility settings “are disconnected from their culture, losing opportunities to learn from elders, learn Native languages, learn how to live off the land, and participate in cultural traditions that affirm their identity.” Ongootooguk said that the practices of mental health treatment facilities and boarding schools are similarly damaging to Alaska Native youth.
“From a cultural standpoint, the removal of kids for mental health care is a part of the same system of boarding schools and foster care and the overall alienation of kids, of young people, so that they are not able to be productive members of the community and culture they are a part of,” Ongootooguk said.
The history of Child molestations and Kidnapping of Aboriginal/Indigenous children in the Name of God and Jesus