‘Nine Little Indians’ tells story from South Dakota’s ‘painful’ Native boarding schools

MARTY, S.D. — A documentary about nine sisters who attended a boarding school for Native American children in South Dakota and later underwent a lengthy legal battle with the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls will see a global premiere this month.

“

Nine Little Indians

” follows the Charbonneau sisters, who are members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. They attended St. Paul’s Indian Mission School, also known as Marty Indian School, in Marty, South Dakota. All nine sisters said they experienced abuse at the hands of priests and nuns at the school.

Native American children were sent to boarding schools as early as the mid-19th century. Many boarding schools were affiliated with religious groups, and many were directly funded or supported by the federal government through the Indian Civilization Fund Act. That legislation allowed for funding to religious groups that wanted to open schools for Native Americans in an effort to introduce tribes to the “arts of civilization.”

At least 3,000 children died

in Native American boarding schools in the United States between 1828 and 1970, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.

Shannon Kring, the film’s director, has worked with Indigenous communities across the world and directed the 2021 documentary “End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock.” That film chronicles the yearslong fight of the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American people against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

For “Nine Little Indians,” Kring worked with executive producers actor Leonardo DiCaprio and motivational speaker and author Tony Robbins.

Kring told News Watch that she wants the film to be a “healing tool” for all of those who were involved in the boarding school system, as well as their descendants, and acknowledged that it will likely bring up difficult feelings for many who have experiences at boarding schools, even outside of South Dakota.

Kring said that conversations throughout the film’s production and release rollout indicate a general unawareness of the country’s boarding school system. An important part of ensuring the film’s salience is hitting on the scale and scope of the system, she said.

Just

10 states in the country

did not have any Native American boarding schools, and a study from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition said that the United States had a total of 526 schools.

The film will premiere at Lincoln Center

in New York City in a sold-out showing on May 27.

Darrell Red Cloud, a Lakota historian and the great-great grandson of Chief Red Cloud, will open the premiere with a prayer song. Kring told News Watch that the premiere will also include a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.

Kring also plans showings in South Dakota this summer. She said that she hopes the documentary will resonate even with those who don’t have connections to the boarding school system.

All of the nine tribes in South Dakota had boarding schools operating on their reservations at one point in time, and several existed outside of tribal lands.

Photo courtesy of South Dakota News Watch

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is also doing its part to preserve the stories of those who attended Indian boarding schools throughout the United States. The organization, which was founded in 2012, is near the end of its

two-year oral history project funded by the Department of the Interior

.

That initiative has involved nearly 400 survivors of boarding schools across the United States sitting down with historians to share their experiences at the schools in video interviews, which will be stored in a permanent, public archive of survivor stories.

Charlee Brissette (Sault St. Marie Ojibwe), co-director of the oral history project, told News Watch that hearing real stories, like those told in “Nine Little Indians” and in the oral history project, can allow for a much more potent understanding of the system – especially considering survivors are still alive today.

“To be able to witness firsthand stories from survivors … we’re able to see a face of somebody who’s been directly impacted. We’re able to hear exactly what they’ve gone through, and how that experience has impacted their life and shaped them as a person,” Brisette said.