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Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 8, titled: "It is more cost-effective to educate them than to kill them" - Exposing the colonial boarding schools in the United States, Canada and Australia

Xinhua News Agency reporter Kan Jingwen

Ramona Klein, an American Indian woman in her 80s, still trembles uncontrollably when she recalls the dark green bus bound for North Dakota. When she was 7 years old, she and her five brothers and sisters were sent to a boarding school 200 kilometers away from home by that bus, starting a nightmare life.

Klein's memories of that school were all about hunger, corporal punishment and forced labor. What particularly frightened her was the broom and paddle that the dormitory supervisor used to "educate" the students. Klein was punished to kneel on the broom handle many times, and was beaten all over by the dormitory supervisor with a paddle. "This is a lifelong scar, a lifelong trauma."

Klein's experience is a microcosm of the tragic history of Native Americans. According to a recent report released by the U.S. Department of the Interior, at least 973 Native American children died while attending boarding schools operated or supported by the U.S. government between 1819 and 1969. The report pointed out that Native American children were abused in boarding schools, forced to change their beliefs, and punished for speaking their native language, and these practices caused long-term harm to the Native American groups.

In recent years, there have been frequent reports of abuse of students in boarding schools for indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries. From the thousands of unmarked graves in the United States and Canada to the "stolen generations" caused by Australia's "assimilation", the tragic experiences of the indigenous peoples, such as separation from their families, violent abuse and cultural genocide, are receiving more and more attention.