THEY TOLD Willie Grayeyes (Diné) to sleep in his clothes — to not even take off his black shoes. At any moment, the Tuba City Boarding School staff members said, the 7-year-old would be called upon. Not knowing what that meant, he obeyed.
“We were treated in Tuba City like we were in the military,” Grayeyes said, remembering the boarding school system that tried to assimilate him and many thousands of other Indigenous children. “We were marched; we were physically abused by being kicked. I did not know anything at the time of the decree.”
The decree in question was the compulsory attendance mandate employed by the federal boarding school system, which often resulted in the physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse of Indigenous children. Any parents, guardians or clan relatives who resisted the mandate were punished by law. Grayeyes, now a San Juan County commissioner, was just 6 years old when he entered the Navajo Mountain Boarding and Day School in 1953.
“That was my first encounter with an Anglo, a white lady, by the name of Elizabeth Eubank, who was a schoolmaster and teacher,” Grayeyes said. “Ms. Eubank arranged everything, as far as who is going to be transferred and so forth.”
After a year at Navajo Mountain, he was transferred to the Tuba City school in Arizona, established in 1903. He loaded up his suitcases and rode in the flatbed
