Destruction of Culture: The Theft of Culture through the Forcible Removal of Indigenous Siberian Children

By: Yasmeen Farran

 “Around the world, schooling has served as a critical element in state-building and molding citizens. Indigenous peoples in particular have been subjected to mass education as a key instrument of colonial domination and nation-state consolidation . . . numerous accounts exist detailing the pain of detachment from families and the trials of forced assimilation.”[1]

Throughout history, the forcible removal of children from specific cultural groups has been utilized as a means of destroying a culture and its peoples.[2] Although the forcible removal of children from their biological parents and ancestral homes does not fall within the traditional notions of genocide, the act falls within the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“Genocide Convention”).[3] Under the convention, “[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such . . . [f]orcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”[4] Despite the Genocide Convention’s definition, labeling an act as genocide in our society is often reserved for brutal mass killings.[5] This is arguably a narrow view as stripping children from their community separates them from their culture which is a threat to the community’s future existence as a whole.[6] “The existence of any ethnic, religious, racial, or national group depends on the ability of that group to acculturate its children.”[7] This cultural theft has often been used as a threat to indigenous societies worldwide.[8]  

In Russia, indigenous Siberians have endured the forcible removal of their children through the use of boarding schools.[9] These boarding schools were established to force a Russian identity onto indigenous children in the name of creating “a collective Soviet identity.”[10] However, prior to this, in 1924, Russia established the Committee of the North to oversee the affairs of Northern indigenous communities.[11] The committee began with noble intentions: preserving traditional customs.[12] However good intentions were quickly lost and the committee was abandoned as the government began progressing to a policy of industrialization before moving to a policy of forced assimilation.[13] In the beginning, education was brought to local indigenous communities, and school schedules were adjusted to fit the needs of traditional customs.[14] This was abandoned as the USSR pushed industrialization across Russia and disbanded the Committee of the North in 1935.[15] For example, the Committee of the North worked with indigenous communities in creating alphabet systems during the 1920s. However, by 1937, these indigenous alphabets became outlawed.[16]

When Russia entered the 1950s, the government developed extremely adverse views towards indigenous communities and pushed for the Russification of Indigenous Siberians.[17] This developed into the creation of compulsory boarding schools and the removal of children often around 1 to 2 years old.[18] “[A]ttendance at residential school became mandatory and Russification was a generally acknowledged aim; educators were no longer worried about appealing to parents and students as they had in the 1920s.”[19] Many were not allowed to permanently return until age 15 to 17 after being indoctrinated to the Russian way of life.[20] This left them unfit to live in their traditional communities as they did not possess the necessary skills to survive; skills that often are learned in the home.[21] “Two or three generations of Northern Minorities have already been taken through the boarding school system and very few of them have been able to escape its destructive efforts.”[22] Even if steps were to be taken to support indigenous communities and their traditional ways of life, the fear is that irreparable damage has already occurred.[23] This cultural loss is most prevalent in the destruction of language through Russification policies.[24]    

Starting in the 1960s and continually expanding into the 1990s, Russia increased the number of boarding schools and expanded the program.[25] In Russia, boarding schools were a device for housing and educating orphans and those who were unable to be supported by their parents.[26] The purpose of boarding schools was expanded to include indigenous children, despite the fact that they had families and homes, so they could become embedded in Russian culture leaving behind their indigenous traditions thereby feeling loyalty to Russia.[27] However, in the process of the Russification of northern indigenous communities, those children were deprived of their indigenous cultures, languages, communities, and families, which created a cycle of cultural theft for the next generations.[28]  

Many of these boarding school policies produce mixed emotions even often within the communities.[29] Separation from families created generational wounds but allowed many indigenous children to find success in the Russian system.[30] In the beginning, there was great resistance to boarding schools by indigenous Siberian communities.[31] However, residential schools despite the negatives also became one of the few opportunities for social support from a Russian government that often ignored and marginalized Indigenous Siberian communities.[32]

Today, many of these problems continue to persist but in a different form. Currently, Russia has an education policy that encourages shutting down schools nearest to indigenous communities.[33] This action forces indigenous children to attend distant boarding schools away from their cultural communities.[34] Many good intentions to tailor the education system to meet the needs of indigenous students are often lost under the bureaucracy.[35] Additionally, Russia continues to display a pattern of refusing to sign documents pertaining to indigenous rights.[36]

The forcible removal of children under the boarding school system arguably meets the definition of genocide as outlined in the Genocide Convention.[37] Even those who, during drafting, pushed to include forcible removal of children in the definition of genocide failed to recognize how their countries’ own acts may be implicated.[38] Although broad it is worth adding to the conversation, as one committee member pointed out, the definition may be problematic because it may implicate all compulsory schooling taught in a different language or that was of a different religion as genocide.[39] However, by ignoring the historical use of boarding schools on indigenous communities in fear that it makes the definition too broad, it has created generations complacent in the harm of entire communities. Additionally, in an effort to comfort people’s notions of genocide, many have addressed the historical use of boarding schools in indigenous communities as cultural genocide.[40] This dilutes the real physical effects boarding schools have had on indigenous communities.

The forcible removal of indigenous children to boarding schools “was a physical act intended to destroy the group as a physio-biological entity . . . even if though the means of destruction were often culturally mediated.”[41]  In trying to indoctrinate and colonize peoples, nations have deprived them of their homelands, families, mother-tongues, and just as important, their cultures in the hopes of making these communities antiquated. Despite these threats, many in indigenous communities persist to preserve their cultures through extraordinary means including indigenous Siberian communities in Russia. Whether or not the forcible removal of indigenous children can be labeled as genocide, the effects removal has had on communities should not go ignored.

[1] Alexia Bloch, Red Ties and Residential Schools: Indigenous Siberians in a Post-Soviet State 18 (2004).

[2] Kurt Mundorff, Other Peoples’ Children: A Textual and Contextual Interpretation of the Genocide Convention, Article 2(e), 50 Harv. Int’l L.J. 61, 63 (2009). 

[3] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide art. 2, Dec. 9, 1948, 102 Stat. 3045, 78 U.N.T.S. 277 [hereinafter Genocide Convention].

[4] Id.

[5] Mundorff, supra note 2, at 65.

[6] Id. at 93.

[7] Id.

[8] Id. at 63-64.

[9] Id. at 64.

[10] See generally Alexia Bloch, Ideal Proletarians and Children of Nature: Evenki Reimagining Schooling in a Post-Soviet Era, in Bicultural Education in the North 139, 139-1440 (Erich Kasten ed., 1998). 

[11] Andrea Smith (for the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues), Indigenous Peoples and Boarding Schools: A Comparative Study, 21, U.N. Doc.E/C.19/2009/CRP.1 (Jan. 26, 2009).

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Nikolai Vakhtin, Native Peoples of the Russian Far North, Minority Rights Group 18 (Aug. 1992) https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED354117.pdf. 

[18] Smith supra note 11 at 22.

[19] Bloch supra note 10 at 102.  

[20] Id.

[21] Id.

[22] Vakhtin supra at 17.

[23] Id. at 24.

[24] Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Dunbar, Indigenous Children’s Education as Linguistic Genocide and a Crime Against Humanity? A Global View, Journal of Indigenous Peoples Rights, 63, No. 1/200 (2010).

[25] Marina Starodubtceva, Indigenous Education Systems of Canada and the Russian Federation: Comparative Analysis, 15 Global J. of Human-Social Science 7, 9 (2015).  

[26] Id. at 11.

[27] Smith supra note 11 at 22.

[28] Starodubtceva supra note 25.

[29] Bloch supra note 10 at 19.

[30] Id.

[31] Id. at 101-02.

[32] Id. at 103.

[33] Johannes Rohr, IWGIA Report 18: Indigenous Peoples in the Russian Federation 33 (Diana Vinding and Kathrin Wessendorf, 2014).

[34] Id.

[35] Bloch supra note 10 at 17.

[36] Indigenous Peoples in Russia, IWGIA, https://www.iwgia.org/en/russia (last visited Sep. 12, 2019).

[37] Mundorff supra note 2 at 110.  

[38] Id.

[39] Id. at 111.

[40] Id.

[41] Id.

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