North Dakota Native Americans grapple with dark boarding school history in day of remembrance

FORT TOTTEN, N.D. — The message written on Denise Lajimodiere’s vibrant orange shirt is temporary and blunt: “Federal Indian boarding colleges have been genocide.”

It’s a sentiment the

writer and former North Dakota State College professor

has believed for a few years, however solely just lately has broader recognition come to the grim historical past of Native American boarding colleges — what Lajimodiere calls “America’s best-kept secret.”

Lajimodiere was amongst about 50 individuals who gathered outdoors of the Fort Totten State Historic Web site on Friday, Sept. 30, to look at a day of remembrance for Native American youngsters who attended boarding colleges that aimed to strip them of their tradition, language and household ties.

The second annual “Each Little one Issues” occasion held on the Spirit Lake Reservation aligned with the Nationwide Day for Fact and Reconciliation, which Canadian activists established in 2013 to boost consciousness for the legacy of the nation’s residential colleges.

The Canadian authorities made Sept. 30 a federal vacation final yr after an anthropologist

introduced she had discovered unmarked graves

seemingly belonging to 200 youngsters on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential Faculty in British Columbia.

The disturbing discovery at Kamloops in Could 2021 has prompted the

U.S. to start reckoning

with its personal historical past of government-sponsored compelled assimilation of Native People. Occasions just like the one in Fort Totten have grown out of that heightened consideration, Lajimodiere mentioned.

At the least 13 Native American boarding colleges existed in North Dakota, together with a big federally run establishment at Fort Totten,

in accordance with Lajimodiere’s analysis.

The Spirit Lake Tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and the State Historic Society of North Dakota

just lately agreed to companion in a seek for the stays of youngsters

across the former Fort Totten Indian Industrial Faculty.

The Friday gathering featured prayer, storytelling and a “therapeutic fireplace” that burned from dawn to sundown. Organizers from the Spirit Lake chapter of Household and Little one Training handed out orange T-shirts — a reference to the

occasion’s Canadian roots.

Audio system together with Lajimodiere and North Dakota Rep. Ruth Buffalo, D-Fargo, informed attendees about their private and household ties to boarding colleges.

Lajimodiere, an enrolled Turtle Mountain member, has spent years documenting the experiences of boarding college survivors. Her father, grandfather and different relations attended Fort Totten, which she calls a “hellhole boarding college.”

“That is definitely a day of remembrance for me personally — remembering the hell that they went via right here,” Lajimodiere mentioned.

Earlier Discussion board Information Service reporting

and Lajimodiere’s findings discovered that the Fort Totten college, open from 1891 to 1959, had a tradition of systemic abuse and neglect of youngsters.

Lajimodiere mentioned her father witnessed the deaths of fellow college students from sickness, bodily abuse, hunger and loneliness (

“failure to thrive”

).

“It was a type of genocide, in addition to cultural genocide,” Lajimodiere mentioned.

Buffalo, an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, mentioned she at all times knew her mom had attended boarding college in Wahpeton, but it surely wasn’t till the invention at Kamloops final yr that her mom started to share particulars of the punishments and cruelty she endured on the establishment.

Faculty directors made Buffalo’s mom kneel on a broomstick for talking her native language, the lawmaker mentioned. Younger boys had their hair reduce quick towards their will, she added.

Those that survived boarding colleges typically had the trajectory of their lives shortened by the expertise, and the scars stay of their households generations later, mentioned Buffalo, who sits on the board of the

Nationwide Native American Boarding Faculty Therapeutic Coalition.

Many boarding college survivors select to maintain their childhood experiences bottled as much as keep away from traumatizing the youthful generations, however occasions just like the one at Fort Totten “let individuals realize it’s OK to share their very own tales,” Buffalo mentioned via tears. That public recognition may help set off a therapeutic course of, she mentioned.

Spirit Lake Tribal Chairman Doug Yankton knowledgeable attendees in regards to the tribe’s efforts to

repatriate the stays of a boy named Edward Upright

who died and was buried on the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial Faculty in Pennsylvania.

The U.S. Military, which maintains the cemetery in Carlisle, has

pledged to facilitate the return of Upright’s stays

to the Spirit Lake Reservation subsequent yr.

Tribal leaders throughout North Dakota imagine

the longer term will deliver extra repatriations

as researchers look into former boarding college websites.

Occasion organizer Nancy Robertson mentioned she hopes shining a lightweight on the historical past of boarding colleges will support within the tribes’ push to “discover all the youngsters which can be lacking.”

Spirit Lake member Marva Tiyowakanhdi, who opened the gathering with a prayer within the Dakota language, mentioned the occasion can function “an awakening to the tragedies and traumas” endured by tribal elders and people who have handed away. However Tiyowakanhdi mentioned remembering boarding college survivors additionally celebrates the resilience of her individuals within the face of persecution.

“One of many issues we’re at all times saying since we’re standing right here is that as a result of certainly one of them made it, we made it,” Tiyowakanhdi mentioned. “When you take a look at it that method, it’s form of an honor towards them.”