I’d invited Weeden, a Mashpee Wampanoag educator, to visit my high school English class in Boston. When I began teaching American Literature, I felt the course had to encompass Native American literature. I started with Tommy Orange’s novel There There. But the book is set in Oakland, California, and I wanted its message to ring closer to home.

Weeden had once driven from New England to California to of redface. Before his visit, my students watched a video of his impassioned speech to the school board. We discussed how cultural appropriation undermines the right of all students to learn — and can, as happened with Weeden’s own brother, result in self-harm and suicide.

As a child, Weeden himself encountered racism in school. “It was the teachers, not even the students, who called me the worst names,” he recalls. “I had long braids. They’d call me sissy, queer, say, ‘The girls’ bathroom is over there.’”

Weeden’s own pedagogy couldn’t be more different than the harassment he faced in his youth. He meets students’ questions with some of his own: “Have you ever seen a square bird’s nest?” Heads shake no. “I’m gonna bet we’ll never see one. Because the square is not a shape we see in nature. Look around. We’re surrounded by squares.” He gestures to our classroom, students’ notebooks, the Boston skyline. Weeden asks students to consider whether the way things are now is natural.

In Massachusetts, students learn about Native people in two main ways: through the lens of Thanksgiving and in third grade, when the allocate time for a deep dive into Native history. So that’s the age group Weeden primarily works with. 

But there are certain topics — like forced sterilization or King Philip’s War, one of the deadliest conflicts in New England history — that you can’t broach with young kids. “We need middle school curriculum. We need high school curriculum,” Weeden says.

For the past four years, I’ve partnered with Weeden in 10th and 11th grade English. At this age, students are deciding not only their postgraduate plans, but the values by which they will live. If students’ only in-depth exposure to Native Americans is in third grade, how can they be expected to understand Native people as adults?

“It should be every year,” Weeden says. “The key is consistency.”

Many of the students at Boston Collegiate Charter School, where I teach, have heritage outside of the U.S. — from Cape Verde to Ireland to the Dominican Republic. Many would consider their families indigenous to those places. But few claim Indigenous American heritage. So students’ final project, presenting a lesson to their peers, is an act of allyship — teaching about another culture without speaking for that group. Like There There, the project aims to expand their ideas of what it means to be Native.

One common oversight is to think of Indigenous people as a monolith, when there are so many distinct tribes. “The reason I’m a Wampanoag is because of the land that I’m on. Cape Cod is where you see the sun rise,” Weeden tells my students. “We always identify ourselves as People of the First Light. And right now, we are in Boston, home of the Massachusett tribe. People say that word, Massachusetts, without ever questioning, What does it mean? It means Great Barren Hill Place.”

In some other states, Native culture is more visible. In Washington State, tribes guided revision of the state history standards. Now Indigenous studies are addressed in every year of K-12 through the In the Southwest, Weeden says, “You can’t go there and not see the Navajo, the Apache, all their artwork and pottery. It’s synonymous with the culture.

“Why New England chooses to only promote colonial history…that’s something for New England to examine,” he continues. “I’m sad and disappointed for the focus to be just Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be a token add-on to that narrative.”

As an educator, I believe in not only teaching about Native history, but inviting Native speakers into my classroom. I’m grateful that my school has funded these visits. There are also low- and no-cost online resources to connect students with local tribes. But until Massachusetts and other states recognize that education about Indigenous peoples must be sustained, consistent and inclusive of living Native people, we will not be able to overcome the ignorance that characterized Weeden’s youth.

“A lot of what I was attacked for as a kid, it’s because people had no clue,” Weeden reflects. “I wouldn’t have encountered that abuse if people were taught the right things about our culture. I don’t even honestly work with Pre-K and early childhood enough — you can never start too early. It’s weird how our culture is considered so foreign even though we’re the Indigenous people of this land.”

How do you get students to remember what they learn? According to Gladys Hawk, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, you tell them a story.

Hawk is one of dozens of tribal elders featured on the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction’s website, which now boasts more than 350 videos.

In an played for educators at the Department of Public Instruction’s annual Indian Education Summit in Bismarck on Friday, Hawk spoke of the bedtime stories her grandmother would tell her in Lakota growing up.

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Hawk said at the end of each tale, her grandmother would tie in an important life lesson.

“She would say, ‘And that’s why I want you to be good — don’t be like this one in the story,’” said Hawk. “We have to listen to what our elders have to say, because usually they’re teaching us something important.”

Sharla Steever and Scott Simpson, who worked on the videos for North Dakota’s Native American Essential Understandings project, shared Hawk’s interview as one example of how attendees can integrate Native culture and history into the classroom.

“You can pull those stories in any time you want, if you want to focus in on a concept or a theme or something historical that the elder is speaking about,” Steever said of the Teaching of Our Elders videos.

Steever said in her experience, storytelling helps to create a sense of community in the classroom. Kids tend to retain information if they have a personal anecdote to connect it to, she said.

Under a law adopted by the state Legislature in 2021, K-12 schools in North Dakota are required to teach Native history. The website is one of a number of resources the Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Indian and Multicultural Education has developed that can support schools in this area, Steever said.

She said the Department of Public Instruction is still doing interviews with elders from time to time. However, it can be difficult to arrange.

While the agency likes to give elders who participate a stipend, there’s not a ton of funding available, Steever said.

“There’s never really been a budget for that,” she said. The department also has to squeeze in time for the interviews around its other work, she added.

Steever said she’s working on an additional set of video interviews with Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate elders.

Haiden Person, a recent graduate from Bismarck High School and the conference’s youth speaker, said Friday that teaching more Native American culture and history in schools is key to combatting anti-Indigenous racism.

“They don’t know it’s wrong, you’ve just got to teach them,” said Person, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Person recently graduated from Bismarck High School and plans to attend United Tribes Technical College in the fall. Person said mental health is an issue close to his heart, and that he plans to become a psychiatrist.

The summit also welcomed Daniel Kish, an expert in human echolocation — using sound to locate objects — and president of World Access for the Blind, for a keynote address.

Kish has been blind since he was a year old. He said he gained the ability to echolocate because his parents wanted him to be self-sufficient despite his disability. He now helps teach the skill to other blind people.

“It’s an ability that provides you with awareness of the environment that’s way out beyond the length of your cane,” he said.

He said a broader goal of his is studying how people develop a sense of personal identity and agency. Kish said he appreciated hearing Person talk about mental health and the importance of leaning on others in your community.

“Haiden had it right, don’t be afraid to ask for help,” Kish said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. North Dakota Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Amy Dalrymple for questions: info@northdakotamonitor.com.

South Dakota public schools would be required to teach a specific set of Native American historical and cultural lessons if a bill unanimously endorsed by a legislative committee Tuesday in Pierre becomes law.

The bill would mandate the teaching of the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings. The phrase “Oceti Sakowin” refers to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. The understandings are a set of standards and lessons adopted seven years ago by the South Dakota Board of Education Standards with input from tribal leaders, educators and elders.

Use of the understandings by public schools is optional. A survey conducted by the state Department of Education indicated use by 62% of teachers, but the survey was voluntary and hundreds of teachers did not respond.

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Republican state Sen. Tamara Grove, who lives on the Lower Brule Reservation, proposed the bill and asked legislators to follow the lead of Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Chairman J. Garret Renville. He has publicly called for a “reset” of state-tribal relations since the departure of former Gov. Kristi Noem, who was barred by tribal leaders from entering tribal land in the state.

“What I’m asking you to do today,” Grove said, “is to lean into the reset.”

Joe Graves, the state secretary of education and a Noem appointee, testified against the bill. He said portions of the understandings are already incorporated into the state’s social studies standards. He added that the state only mandates four curricular areas: math, science, social studies and English-language arts/reading. He said further mandates would “tighten up the school days, leaving schools with much less instructional flexibility.”

Members of the Senate Education Committee sided with Grove and other supporters, voting 7-0 to send the bill to the full Senate.

The proposal is one of several education mandates that lawmakers have considered this legislative session. The state House rejected a bill this week that would have required posting and teaching the Ten Commandments in schools, and also rejected a bill that would have required schools to post the state motto, “Under God the People Rule.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

Miranda Lopez remembers when she first learned about local Indigenous activist and athlete Rosalie Fish. Fish, a University of Washington runner from the Cowlitz Tribe, is for dedicating her races to Indigenous women who are missing or murdered, including her aunt.

Lopez is from the same part of eastern Washington where Fish’s aunt is from.

“It was eye-opening. I didn’t realize that this really big issue is happening right where I grew up,” Lopez said. “It breaks my heart.”

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The class Lopez took where she learned about Fish is part of a decades-long effort in Washington to implement a K-12 Native studies and history curriculum known as , which requires districts to create Native studies curricula in partnership with the tribes around them. It’s endorsed by all 29 federally-recognized tribes in the state.

When Lopez entered her senior year, she had no idea what she wanted to do next. So she spent a lot of time thinking about what she cared about, and what came to mind was her Native history class. Now 19, Lopez plans to become a Native studies teacher.

“From that point forward, that was my purpose for my future,” Lopez said.

Since Time Immemorial is important to students like Lopez — but non-Native students, too, should be learning about the communities they live among, said Willard Bill Jr., assistant director of the state’s Office of Native Education within the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

“It’s primarily to educate the broader…public school kid, so that when they graduate, they have a better understanding of what sovereignty is, what a reservation is, what does that mean, all the intricacies,” Bill said.

Although the Legislature mandated the curriculum in 2015, no deadline has been set for implementation. And while some districts are partnering with tribes to implement the curriculum, other tribal leaders told state officials they’ve struggled to get their school boards to comply.

Legislation sponsored by state Rep. Debra Lekanoff, would set minimum standards, a deadline for implementation of Since Time Immemorial and clear the way for state grants to help develop curricula. It failed to pass in this year’s legislative session. State officials say they’re optimistic about its chances in the upcoming session, which begins Jan. 8.

Efforts to implement

According to a from the State Board of Education, around 80% to 90% of school districts are incorporating tribal history and culture in their social studies programs. That’s a big jump from the last report from the 2021-2022 school year when 44% of districts reported having yet to implement tribal history and culture into their social studies curricula.

But without minimum standards, Henry Strom, executive director of the state’s Office of Native Education, said it’s difficult to know how many schools are providing quality Since Time Immemorial curricula because the original 2015 legislation did not set minimum standards. That’s why HB 1332 is important, he said.

At a meeting last month between tribal and state governments, Gov. Jay Inslee asked Suquamish Tribe chair Leonard Forsman how many districts were “cutting the mustard” when it came to implementing Since Time Immemorial.

“I think we’re probably under a third,” said Forsman, also a University of Washington board of regents member. He said the actual statistic may be lower.

“So that’s not exactly a success,” Inslee responded.

In the 2022 report, some officials in districts that had not yet implemented Since Time Immemorial reported that their districts had not updated their overall social studies curriculums.

“A district could, in theory, choose to delay the onset of a social studies [curriculum] adoption if they weren’t inclined to support Since Time Immemorial,” Strom said at the meeting where Forsman and Inslee spoke.

The work to create and implement Since Time Immemorial began in 1989, said Bill, whose father was one of the first tribal leaders to work on the curriculum. Tribes started funding the work in 2003, and the first legislation “strongly encouraging” implementing the curriculum came in 2005.

“This is some legacy work for us that we’re carrying on,” said Bill, a member of the Muckleshoot Tribe.

‘Place-based’ curriculum

indicate that teaching Native history to Native students often improves their educational outcomes. Native students have compared to other races and ethnicities.

Lopez said she wasn’t that interested in school before taking the Native history class.

“I didn’t see myself in stories and books,” Lopez said. “So when you put something like this in front of students, especially Native American students…and you tell stories of successful people, it opens up a sea of opportunities for a child. It changes the way they look at life.”

Today, 16-year-old Francheska Helton is taking the class Lopez first took: Alison McCartan’s 11th grade Native history class, taught at River Ridge High School. When asked what stories resonated with her, Helton, too, pointed to Rosalie Fish.

“I’m like, ‘I didn’t know that. How did I not know that? That’s someone from my tribe,’” said Helton, who is Cowlitz, like Fish.

Helton and Lopez learned about Fish because Since Time Immemorial is a “place-based curriculum,” meaning the focus is on the local indigenous communities who live on the land.

Since Time Immemorial also seeks to teach contemporary Native issues; found 86% of American schools teach Native studies in a pre-1900 context.

In McCartan’s class, students learned about in response to the plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Then they talked about why many of them didn’t know about the app, and what could be done to both increase awareness and make it better.

McCartan said the issues they talk about vary within classes, but the main concept — teaching critical thinking about Native history and issues — remains the same.

In McCartan’s class, students also start the week sitting “in circle” and having a class discussion. It’s a traditional Indigenous way of learning that , and it’s not very common in an American high school environment, where learning is often more passive and lecture-based.

“Kids were resistant to it. They were like, ‘this is awkward,’” McCartan said. “But once they got used to it, the switch flips.”

McCartan said students open up to her and their peers in ways they never did before circle, and conversations in circle have led to Native students choosing to share about their own experiences and culture. One quiet Native student, McCartan said, even chose to speak at the school’s multicultural assembly because of conversations and support from his peers in circle.

“This is more than just a history class. It’s a community,” Helton said.

Tribal and school district relationships

The idea of Since Time Immemorial is that both Native and non-Native students will learn about who came before them, and who still lives on the land today, said Jerad Koepp, who runs River Ridge’s Native program. But Koepp said that many districts don’t ask the tribes around them, despite it being state law, leaving it up to tribes to appeal to school boards.

The relationship between North Thurston Public Schools, where River Ridge is located, and the nearby Nisqually Tribe is decades-long, said Bill Kallappa II, education liaison for the Nisqually Tribe and Washington State Board of Education member. However, the Native studies program at River Ridge began in 2019. Kallappa said having the tribal government-to-local government relationship is integral to the program’s success.

“Tribes aren’t in it just for tribal students,” Kallappa said. “Of course we want our kids to do well in the system. One way our kids can do well in the system is if we help improve the entire system for all students.”

Students in McCartan’s class said they knew “zero” about Native history before taking McCartan’s class, aside from the brief mention of what tribes exist in Washington in their middle school history textbooks.

“I think this [curriculum] should be taught in more schools,” said a non-Native student, 18-year-old Isaiah Kauhaihao-Derowin.

Obstacles and progress

McCartan, who is not Native, said she realized almost immediately that she didn’t have the knowledge to teach a Native studies program. She said she had to get used to saying “I don’t know.” In the beginning, Koepp was in her classroom almost every day, she said, and she leaned on his expertise.

McCartan’s situation was not unique. Strom says one of the biggest challenges to implementing Since Time Immemorial is a “respectful fear” among educators about getting it wrong.

Other obstacles have to do with bandwidth within schools, at the state level and among tribes.

The Office of Native Education has seen a surge in interest in its Since Time Immemorial teacher training, but only has 10 people on staff. Six years ago, there were just two people working for the office. Tribal leaders also say the financial burden to implement Since Time Immemorial shouldn’t be on the tribes. Currently, tribes often provide the funding and staff for curriculum development. Many smaller tribes aren’t able to do that, Kallappa said.

HB 1332 is meant to relieve some of that strain.

Koepp said non-Native educators can always turn to books, videos and other resources from their Native peers. “Just remember: we’re here and we’ve probably answered that question before,” Koepp said.

The outcomes of Since Time Immemorial at schools like River Ridge may be hard to quantify, but they’re visible through students like Lopez, who plans to return to St. Martin’s University in Lacey next fall to study secondary education focused on history, with a minor in Native perspectives.

Right now, she’s taking a break from school to search for scholarships and save up for the fall semester. After she graduates, she hopes to teach at River Ridge, within the Native studies program. And one day, Lopez wants to venture out to a school district elsewhere in Washington and create another Native studies program, just like the one at River Ridge.

“Native Americans are still here,” Lopez said. “Using a curriculum like this isn’t trying to remember them. We’re acknowledging them — as they are with us now.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on and .

Minnesota teachers renewing their license must now undergo training about Native American history and culture.

The Legislature passed a law this year requiring training for K-12 teachers about the “cultural heritage and contemporary contributions of American Indians, with particular emphasis on Minnesota Tribal Nations,” in order to renew their license.

The requirement goes into effect for less-experienced teachers Tuesday and the remainder of the teaching corps Jan. 1.

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Teachers already must fulfill to renew their licenses, including training on suicide prevention and reading preparation.

In addition, they are required to undergo cultural competency training — which includes instruction on how to best serve Native American students — to renew their licenses, but Native American-specific training will eventually be its own requirement.

The Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board is working on the Native American history rollout and exactly what the training will include. Until then, teachers can fulfill the new requirement under the existing cultural competency training.

In his Gov. Tim Walz recommended Native American history renewal requirement for teachers and argued the current cultural competency requirements for teachers didn’t dedicate enough time specifically to Native American history.

“Given the rich history of American Indians and their contemporary contributions, more time and resources should be provided to Minnesota educators,” Walz’s budget proposal stated.

Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union, said in a statement that it supports the new training requirement, but noted it adds an additional burden for teachers.

“Minnesota’s Indigenous history is complex, rich and long, and it has been far too often ignored in both U.S. and Minnesota history lessons,” said Education Minnesota President Denise Specht. “At the same time, we have to be aware of the extra time and effort each new requirement adds to the plates of educators, and give them the adequate time and training they need to address these important pieces of delivering a well-rounded education.”

The state licensing board said it will release more information about the requirement’s specifics in the coming weeks.

Minnesota’s academic standards for students include material about the cultural heritage and contributions of Native Americans and the tribal nations with which Minnesota shares borders. The Legislature this past session also mandated school districts offer curriculum on the Holocaust, the genocide of Indigenous people and the removal of Native Americans from Minnesota.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on and .

Morris Jenis Jr.’s father knew only his son, a Native American student at the Genoa Indian School in Nebraska 100 years ago, had not been seen in a year. 

Morris ran away from the school in 1921 — “deserted,” according to the militaristic language school officials used — like hundreds of other young Indigenous children who resisted the boarding school policies that forcibly stripped them of language and identity, often hundreds of miles from home. 

“The father…is very anxious to see where his son has gone,” a school clerk wrote the superintendent on the father’s behalf. “He recently heard that a student from Genoa was killed in Montana by a horse and he fears that this may be his son.”

Public archives do not provide any answers about Morris, nor his age and tribal affiliation. The school told his father that they could not find “,” and reportedly returned the $26 — worth about $450 today — his family previously paid to send him home. 

The plea is among thousands of stories made public by the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project, one to digitize elusive school, state and federal records, to bring the stories of Indigenous survivors and those who never made it home back to their families and tribes. 

Last summer, the discovery of more than 900 child graves at former Canadian residential schools tore through international media and reignited investigations of U.S. boarding schools; reports focused on brutal abuse and quantifying death. 

Archivists and community members have continued to retrieve haunting letters, student and local newspapers, photographs and other school documents that paint a poignant picture of resistance and survival in day-to-day student life in the boarding schools. 

Still, many records remain out of reach to descendants, and those that are accessible can be traumatizing. Some collections sit dormant, held by churches or universities with no plans to return them to tribal communities; others require extensive time and . 

“Native people have never had easy access to their records. And that in itself has continued to contribute to the genocide,” said Tawa Ducheneaux. a citizen of the Cherokee nation working as an archivist at Oglala Lakota College’s Woksape Tipi library on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where she raised her family for 19 years. “You’re not having access to relatives and descendants that can educate you more about who you are and where you come from.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

Among the archived collections are receipts for music lessons, requests to use funds to buy shoes, picture contests — a glimpse into students’ interests and how they spent very limited leisure time. Others include letters from parents pleading that their child be allowed to travel home for the summer — a trip families were required to pay for.

Student discipline records and letters show many of such requests denied for lack of funds or because children had to continue building “strength of character,” as a punishment for bad behavior or running away. 

Parents encouraged runaways, hid their children, and, when students were able to return home for summers, would teach children their language, culture, and ways of life as a way to undermine the schools’ assimilationist aim. Families would not legally be able to deny placement in off-reservation schools until 1978, after over a century of resistance, with the passage of the . 

For those working to find and make material more accessible, the retrieval and research is exhausting, but a necessary step toward healing and reckoning with historical trauma.

“It’s painful especially when you recognize relatives’ names or people that you know … I kind of learned to reconcile with that and just understand that, OK, well, maybe my involvement is that these children, they need help to have their stories come to light,” said Genoa Project co-director and historian Susana Geliga, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe and of Taino descent.

“They insisted on their humanity:” Student life as seen in archives

The material that has been made available in digital archives is largely from an official government or school perspective. Yet there are phrases, quotes and clippings from students pointing to how they lived and survived. 

Running away became a common occurrence among students fleeing the conditions of the boarding schools, eager to find a way home, like Susie Romero. Before leaving for Genoa one night in 1933, Romero composed a theme song — â€œI don’t want to go to school here.” In just one year at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, at least 45 boys did the same. 

“…That tells you a lot about the children’s point of view — that they were running away from this,” said Margaret Jacobs, co-director of the Genoa Project and historian at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. 

The documents suggest Romero was discovered and returned to Genoa, but some did find their way back home. In 1920, one student left Genoa for good after a teacher struck him in the face, breaking his nose.

“He can prove it was done for personal reasons,” an acting superintendent wrote in a letter seeking guidance. 

Student newspapers, common at the boarding schools, though likely heavily scrutinized by school officials, also reveal how students kept themselves informed of local and national news and found ways to make .

When compared to how student deaths were reported briefly in the local Genoa paper, student publications shared more detail on their peer’s life and personality. One student, whose name has been redacted out of respect for descendants who may not yet know the information, was described as an “unusually bright child and the little ones among whom his lot was cast will miss his fair example.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

Jacobs said the student newspapers, “insisted on their humanity. They insisted that we matter, and you might not care about us, but we care about each other.”

Some 90 students, in one account published in the Genoa student newspaper, were reportedly in attendance for a funeral at the school — a detail not lost on Geliga.

“They were so policed and monitored with everything that they did … from the time they woke up until the time they went to bed every day …” she said. “Those instances where you can catch their own perspective coming through, they’re really heartwarming because there’s so few and far between — when you find them they kind of pull you into the moment.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

Archives also reveal another facet of student life: the “” system, where children were assigned to white families and expected to work in fields, on ranches and in local homes as part of their “civilizing” process. Piloted at Carlisle, the practice was later adopted by other off-reservation schools including Genoa and the Sherman Indian School in Riverside, California. 

Lorenzia Nicholas, a student at , once refused to return to the family she was placed for outing because of ”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

Though they were paid minimally, students were often forced to go on outings during summer vacations instead of returning home to their respective lands and families. The practice grew popular in communities surrounding the schools: children were a source of cheap labor — girls often cleaned homes and looked after white children, while boys were often placed in undesirable harvest jobs that were , exploitative and dangerous.

On campus, labor did not stop. Children as young as 9 were forced to , likely, Carlisle archivist Jim Gerencser told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, to save on infrastructure costs. Half of their school days were devoted to learning vocational trades; photographs show students fixing roofs, washing clothes in “laundry class” and fashioning utensils. 

Expanding access to archival records, family history

In and the United States, churches are holding onto an untold number of records. Many religious institutions received schools until 1928, yet according to the Department of the Interior’s investigation, must independently decide to share documents. 

Ducheneaux added tribal governments only recently have had the infrastructure or resources required to retrieve and disseminate records held in various public and government archives – tribal colleges and universities have been working at returning access since at least the ’60s. 

Some records have been passed on to private universities like Augustana and Marquette instead of tribal communities and descendants, presenting another barrier to access: fees. Marquette has held a including at least 10,000 images from the Red Cloud Indian School for nearly 14 years, only having digitized about 10%.

“[It] is maybe the only collection that might have images of certain individuals’ relatives … There’s no known images of that person except possibly within that collection,” she said. “And I couldn’t ever get anywhere with them. We have to do justice to all these people that are contacting us asking if we have anything about their relatives.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

An intergenerational legacy: “It’s part of the blood that’s in us”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

Justin Shedee, a member of the Apache nation also known as Corn Cobb Smoker, entered the Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania at 16. Though a letter in his own handwriting expresses his desire to leave, school documents say he “consented” to stay enrolled.

“The reason is I have been so long enough here, about six years now. So I am very anxious to [go] home. That is all I want to ask you,” he wrote in the spring of 1890, requesting to leave the school. 

He would not leave for three more years, “discharged” on July 5, 1893 for “ill health.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

Shedee’s desire to return home lives on in descendants. Community members, scholars and activists describe the weight of their ancestors’ experiences as intergenerational trauma that impacts their current health and ways of life. 

Native American communities and over 80 U.S. representatives are advocating for l on Indian Boarding School Policies to create a commission to investigate nearly two centuries of boarding school policies. 

Among the policy recommendations that have been floated are reparations, a hotline for those experiencing intergenerational trauma, and reformed child welfare adoption practices to prevent “.”

“We’ve been subjected and our ancestors have been subjected to such atrocities and such attempts to wipe us out that we’ve sort of normalized suffering, in a way,” said Stacy Bohlen, CEO of the National Indian Health board and member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, during a webinar hosted by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. 

“It’s part of the blood that’s in us and the blood of our ancestors that we know was shed for our survival.”

This story was made possible by the archives and archivists at the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project, Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, and National Archives.