I and my twin were born in May 1948, to Ken and Betty Palmer, pioneer missionaries to Ivory Coast, West Africa. At age five and a half, we were sent to the Mamou Alliance Academy boarding school, located in the mountainous country of Guinee, West Africa. This school requires two weeks of travel on bush roads, and we spent nine months there away from home each year. Until age nineteen, the bulk of my life and of that my sisters were spent in missionary boarding schools in Africa, and later in the USA. My boarding school experience, and that of my peers consisted of severe abuse of all kinds.

During my adult life, I raised four wonderful children, ran an upholstery business from home, and made extra money housecleaning and giving horseback riding lessons. It was not until I turned age fifty-five, after my children were grown, that I could begin the process of dealing with buried, forgotten painful memories of my childhood. This process accelerated when I discovered from Internet sites that Native Americans were forced to mission boarding schools, and they suffered many of the same abuses that Mks also experienced. My husband Dan and I, since that time, met and became friends with many tribal people. One indigenous leader and friend, Ray Levesque, after becoming familiar with my story, asked me if I had thought of writing a book. The Missionary Myth: Children Pay the Price is the result of his suggestion.

Starting three years ago in the summer time, my husband Dan, who has a PhD in Computer Science, began working on a language restoration project, ACORNS, to support tribal efforts to revitalize language and culture. The acronym, ACORNS stands for Acquisition Of Restored Native Speech. Dan and I now travel extensively to tribal locations as we train language teachers how to use this software, which is freely downloadable. Many tribes are now either using this application, or are at least aware of it.

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