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Alaska Friends Conference Annual Sessions 2024
Epistle to Friends Everywhere:

Undeterred by rain, 23 adults and 5 children gathered on site at Dickerson Friends Center, on the
ancestral lands of the Dena'ina people, with another 8-10 attending online, including some from other states and one other country. We welcomed visiting Friends Johanna Jackson, Sayrah Namaste, JT Dorr-Bremme, Leticia Weber, and Elaine Emily. The theme of the gathering was, “Exploring What Alaska Friends Conference has to Say to the World.”

Over the course of the weekend we reflected on the various ways that Spirit has moved among us and led us to action during the past year. This included a dynamic report from Alaskan Quakers Seeking Right Relationship (AQSRR) describing relationships with Indigenous peoples in Southeast Alaska, Kotzebue, and Interior Alaska. In particular, Jan Bronson, Cathy Walling, and Scott Bell were invited to visit Kake, Alaska in January of this year for Kake Day. They were invited to offer the apology that was approved by AFC in 2022 concerning the harms done by Quaker-run boarding schools. The leadership of the Kake Tribe accepted our apology. They also accepted the donation of nearly $95,000 that had been raised for the development of a Cultural Healing Center. ($75,000 of this was donated by Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends; the remainder was donations from Friends in Alaska and other places.) At a later visit to Kake in July for Dog Salmon Festival, Jan and Cathy, accompanied Juulie Downs, a great granddaughter of a missionary to Kake, who returned cultural items to the tribe.

We heard an inspiring presentation from Sayrah Namaste from American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC) regarding both her work accompanying Indigenous peoples in New Mexico and also the
courageous work being done by AFSC staff in Gaza and Israel. A current program of AFSC, called “No
Hunger Summer”, provides food to children who receive food assistance during the school year.
Currently there is no AFSC office in Alaska, and Sayrah encouraged Alaskan Friends to get involved, as we are one of several US States whose governors refused to accept federal funding for feeding children. She outlined how we could get involved through collecting signatures for a petition and contacting our Governor.

We spent some time considering reports from the Dickerson Project Committee, which oversees the
day-to-day maintenance details of AFC’s recently acquired 23 acres including Mahala Dickerson’s home and garage apartment. At present there are renters in the home and apartment who generously contribute to the care and upkeep of the whole property. There is an expressed need for a vision for how this property might be used in the future, and steps were taken to revive the visioning committee. We were encouraged to take the time needed for this process, trusting that we will know when the time is right to act.

The Dickerson Cemetery Committee also gave a report about their work regarding the cemetery, which sits on the 11 acres associated with the Meeting House that Mahala donated to AFC. The Cemetery Committee queried those in attendance about possible next steps to plan for growth and provide direction for the cemetery. Much gratitude was expressed for the combined gifts of the adjacent Dickerson Project (23 acres and structures) and the Dickerson Friends Center (Meeting House, cemetery and 11 acres).

As part of the report from the representatives to Friends General Conference, Avis McClinton included the news that she spoke at the FGC Gathering about the 339 Manumissions and Beyond Project and as a result she received support from Earlham School of Religion. We felt joy at hearing the news about this important project.

Throughout the weekend, Tom Baring led the children in a variety of activities, including a natural science activity using a microscope. This led to a greater appreciation by all of us for the life within Ashley Lake.

In addition to reflecting on what Alaskan Friends have to say to the world, we spent some time with Elaine Emily about developing daily spiritual practices, and we experienced the joy of blessing and being blessed.

One visiting Friend said, “Despite your small size, you have an outsized impact on the world.”

Below are a few blog posts from our previous website, including the AFC Apology to Alaska Native People.

Photo: Jan Bronson of Anchorage and Cathy Walling of Fairbanks, representing the Alaska Friends Conference, apologize to Alaska Native communities for the boarding schools it ran in Alaska and the United States. The apology took place at Sayéik Gastineau elementary school in Juneau, the former site of a Quaker mission school, during Orange Shirt Day in 2023. (Photo by Lisa Phu/Alaska Beacon)

AFC Formal Apology to Alaska Native People

Alaska Friends Conference approved the language below at our Annual Sessions in August 2022. 

 To Alaska Native people,

 Members of Alaska Friends Conference of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) apologize for the intergenerational trauma the Religious Society of Friends caused Alaska Native and indigenous communities, including active participation in, and promotion of, the Indian Boarding School system in Alaska and the United States.

 The Religious Society of Friends ran about 30 residential schools for Native youth throughout the U.S. and its territories.[i] In participation with other churches and the government, the Religious Society of Friends ran schools that sought to assimilate Alaska Native children and youth into White culture. These schools separated children from their birth culture and languages. Once fractured, these ties are difficult and sometimes impossible to mend.

 The methods used in some of the Friends schools were harsh and often cruel.[ii] Alaska Native people have described to members of Alaska Friends Conference (and other listeners) what it was like for them or their relatives to go to a school where children were tortured and/or physically, sexually, emotionally, spiritually, or otherwise harmed. They described that punishment like this caused humiliation, shame, and alienation. You, your ancestors nor anyone else deserves this kind of treatment. We are deeply sorry.

 We members of Alaska Friends Conference apologize that Friends punished you, your parents, or your grandparents for speaking your own languages. That is an act of oppression and cultural annihilation.  Much of a people’s world view and local knowledge is contained in language.  To attempt to force you to learn English – not in addition to your own mother tongue, but in place of it – was wrong in so many ways. We are deeply sorry.

 We apologize that Friends also banned dancing, teaching that it was evil and creating repercussions across generations. To lose dancing is to lose an important way to celebrate, communicate, share stories, and get to a deeper spiritual place. For the dancers who were stopped, and the community dances lost, we sincerely apologize.

 We apologize that Friends wanted you, your ancestors, or your children to feel that your customs and worldview were wrong. It was wrong to believe that Western European worldviews and practices were superior to ones that you built with each other and the other living beings of your homeland for thousands of years.

 We apologize for Friends who have not respected your ways of living and their participation in forcing a Western way of life upon you.

We have learned that worldwide thousands of indigenous children have died at boarding schools, including in the United States. We have heard from Alaska Native people that sometimes the families weren’t even notified when their children died. Many in our membership are parents and we can only glimpse the anguish this caused.

 At the core of our Quaker faith is non-violence, founded on a recognition of that of God in every human being. It is hard to imagine how a practice that forcibly separated families, broke the bonds of language, and attacked and undermined cultural tradition could have been endorsed and pursued by people identifying as Quakers. Such behavior means that Friends actively denied and failed to see your full humanity.

 We are painfully aware that the direct harms caused by our failure remain personal, cumulative, and ongoing.

 We will do more than simply acknowledge the harm we have caused. We pledge to teach ourselves and our children about this wrong. We will formally and collectively ask ourselves what wrongs we may still be perpetrating in ignorance or bigotry. We believe there should be reparations and restitution for harms from the Boarding School system. We will actively identify reparations we can make while also advocating for them in broader society. Alaska Friends Conference endorses the formation of a federal Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies and will continue to support Alaska Native rights, self-determination, and sovereignty.

 It is not the responsibility of Alaska Native people to help us to transform our behavior. At the same time, we see that our acting without first listening has contributed to great harm. We seek your guidance and input to ensure reparations are done on your terms that will help your communities heal. We ask for forgiveness and pledge to walk beside you as we work together for healing and transformation.

Sincerely,

Members of the Alaska Friends Conference of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

[i] In Alaska, this included the Mission School in Douglas in Southeast Alaska, which was established in 1888 by Quaker (Friends) missionaries sent by the Kansas Yearly Meeting of Friends.  The Mission School was both a school and orphanage.  Twenty-six Alaska Native children were in residence there in 1893. 

 In about 1896, the Mission School changed from a residential school to a day school for all ages, youth and adults.  According to Superintendent Replogle’s 1904 account, however, the “children whom Friends had already contracted for” remained residents at the school.  Friends also ran the government day school in Kake for a period beginning in the late 1880’s. 

 In 1897, Robert and Carrie Samms of California Yearly Meeting of Friends Church moved to the Kotzebue Sound area as Friends missionaries.  They and other Friends worked in partnership with the Bureau of Education to establish day schools in Kotzebue, Deering, and Noorvik that we know of.

[ii] When Friend (Quaker) Charles Replogle arrived in the summer of 1893 to become the new mission superintendent, Replogle discovered that the children in the Mission School were being punished with a strap and ferrule (wooden ruler).
 Charles Replogle describes putting myrrh and capsicum into children’s mouths to punish them for “speaking Indian,” and said that method worked when other methods had failed.  A contemporary Native man described this technique as torture.