Buried Apologies and a Path Forward

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Disinterment and repatriation is important work, but it’s only just begun, and it’s not the only work that needs to be done to acknowledge and atone for the history of Indigenous boarding schools. The Federal Government has not yet provided a centralized place for survivors or descendants of survivors of Federal Indian boarding schools, or their families, to voluntarily detail their experiences in the boarding school system.

Which means that there are still generations within the Indigenous community who continue to carry the invisible burden of these schools. The “road to healing” has started, maybe, but it's the indigenous people themselves who have taken the most significant steps forward.

Note: We would like to issue a content warning for this episode. Some parts of this episode may not be suitable for younger audiences.

Hosted by: Sharon McMahon

Executive Producer: Heather Jackson

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, and KariMarisa Anton

Thank you to our guest K. Tsiannina Lomawaima and some of the music in this episode was composed by indigenous composer R. Carlos Nakai.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome. Welcome to our final episode of Taken, Native Boarding Schools
0:11.0	in America. When the Carlisle Indian School opened in 1879, its founder, Richard Pratt,
0:18.4	was prepared for success. What he was not prepared for was death. But death came just the
0:26.0	same as students living in the harsh conditions of the school succumbed to illness, abuse, or accidents.
0:33.6	The first student to die was Amos Lafram-Wah. Amos, the son of a sysatin-wapitans-su tribal leader,
0:41.8	spent only 20 days at Carlisle before he died. He was 13 years old. Amos was buried in a small
0:50.6	makeshift cemetery on the school's campus over a thousand miles away from his home.
0:55.9	Over the years, the cemetery expanded and filled up with the remains of other students who passed
1:00.9	away while in the care of the Carlisle Indian School. It's at Carlisle that their bodies have
1:06.8	remained for over a century or longer. As of June 2023, the time of this recording, Amos has not
1:15.5	yet been repaid-treated back to his tribal descendants, but there is hope that he will be returned
1:21.9	this coming fall. Amos's relatives signed an affidavit confirming their family bond and submitted
1:28.4	it to the US Army which now maintains the Carlisle cemetery. Tamar St. John the sysatin-wapitans-
1:34.7	tribal historians says of the fight to have the bodies of their su-children returned. We are
1:40.1	committed to them and to bringing them home like the chiefs that they are. They plan to bury Amos
1:48.3	next to his father on the Lake Traverse Reservation. I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets
1:57.1	interesting. In September of 2017, news broke that the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
2:06.3	was a zooming part of their cemetery. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School had operated in that same
2:12.4	location before it closed its doors in 1918, so tribal members and descendants of those who died
2:18.6	at the school reached out to the Army and asked that their loved ones be sent home.
2:24.9	The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act became federal law in 1990
2:30.7	and requires federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding to return Native
	...

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