Remains of 10 more Native American kids to be disinterred

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

CARLISLE, Pa. (AP) — The remains of 10 more Native American children who died more than a century ago at a boarding school in central Pennsylvania are being disinterred and will be returned to their relatives, authorities said.

A team of archaeologists began work Saturday at the cemetery on the grounds of the Carlisle Barracks, which also houses the U.S. Army War College. Nine of the children were from the Rosebud Sioux tribe in South Dakota and one is from the Alaskan Aleut tribe.

The cemetery contains more than 180 graves of students who attended the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School — a government-run boarding school for Native American children. This is the Army’s fourth disinterment project at the school in as many years.

The school founded by an Army officer opened in 1879 and housed some 10,000 indigenous children before it shut down in 1918. Students were forced to cut their braids, dress in uniforms, speak English and adopt European names. Infectious disease and harsh conditions claimed the lives of many of the children buried there.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/sd-state-wire-pa-state-wire-ak-state-wire-native-americans-science-c206f1ea00ed87b3ce2c225bc6aef900

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Submariner]

2. I would like to see Ricky Santorum forced to go to this cemetery and shamed

white-splaining how there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture in his child killing home state.

[TheJillMill]

3. I feel sick...

... this incident hits me viscerally. My daughter-in-law and two grandchildren are enrolled in Rosebud though they live in Michigan; the Little Thunder family. I didn't know about boarding schools until a secretary in the small Midwestern college I attended in 1973 had been through one. Nothing about abuse at the time, but she said they were so brainwashed, they rooted for the cowboys instead of the Indians when they watched movies. Finally, things are coming out and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the nine children were great great aunts and uncles of my grand babies. Carlisle is a few hours away from my upstate NY county and I had stopped there some years ago to look at their museum. Very white-washed stuff of course...

[Warpy]

4. Those schools were still going strong into the 60s around here

and I've met quite a few survivors of them. I can report conclusively they were a resounding flop. Oh, the kids did learn English, but a lot of them refuse to speak it these days unless confronted by an English speaking blockhead from back east (me). As cultural indoctrination centers, they failed, utterly and completely.

Tribal kids are still learning English, starting in primary school, but the schools are run by the tribes. That's what they should have done from the beginning, instead of the cruelty of kidnapping children from their families and hauling them off to boarding schools, all mixed together with kids from other and often enemy tribes.

It's hard to comprehend the confluence of ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity that came up with that idea. It's an idea that is hard to kill. The Chinese are now trying it on their Uyghur minority. It'll be a flop there, too, and for the same reasons.

[Goonch]

5. Carlisle Indian Industrial School

[FraDon]

6. My home town. We were taught very little about the "Indian School".

What we were taught was the tale of the school's best known student (and my first childhood hero): the great Jim Thorpe.

[turbinetree]

7. It is amazing as a person with native blood running through my veins,

and going to school in Rapid City, our history class never was taught me / as student's about this crime, I was told by my mother....

[Ohio Joe]

8. K & R - nt

[wnylib]

9. From the article: "Infectious disease and

harsh conditions claimed the lives of many of the children buried there."

Oh my. The old "infectuous disease killed them" story of Native American deaths. Well, that tends to happen to people who are malnourished, get no medical care when sick, and are forced to continue doing physical labor when they have tuberculosis.

Those children were also "infected" with a number of punishments for using a word from their own language, for mentioning or trying to practice a tribal custom or religion. Those "infectious" punishments included physical beatings, starvation, standing nude outdoors in winter, and force fed lye soap.

Then there were the "sexual infections" of being sold into sex rings for adults.

Such strange diseases those children were infected with led to other diseases for the survivors, e.g. alcoholism and suicide.

Their families were told that they ran away. The few children that did successfully run away were the fortunate ones.

[Bayard]

10. So many lives

Shamelessly sacrificed to white greed and Christianity. Land stolen, culture stolen, dignity stolen.

We owe an enormous debt to the indigenous people in this country.