BY ALYSA LANDRY
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
FARMINGTON – More than 100 years after their deaths, children buried on the campus of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School are on their way home.
Between 1879 and 1918, more than 10,000 Native children were housed at the nation’s flagship Indian boarding school, built atop the ruins of a Civil War barracks and designed to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Nearly 200 of the children died at the school, most from diseases like tuberculosis or consumption.
Their bodies were never returned to their families, and the U.S. Army War College built its campus on top of Carlisle. Now, after years of contentious meetings with tribes, the Army has agreed to send the children home.
The decision came after a meeting last week during which tribal representatives asked the college, the Secretary of Defense and President Barack Obama to honor the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which requires the college to complete an inventory of the remains and comply with requests to return the contents of the graves to the appropriate tribes.
The meeting was the latest in a battle that began in 2007 when Yufna Soldier Wolf, director of the Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office and a relative of a student who died at Carlisle, requested the child’s remains be sent home. A legal officer for the war college responded in a letter stating that the cemetery was a historic site and “one of the most beautiful tributes to the Native American people.” The college also claimed disinterment would be costly and difficult, and that children were buried in the cemetery by consent from their parents.
Eight years after the original request, the Northern Arapaho and Rosebud Sioux filed another request for repatriation of the remains. The Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition also began collecting signatures on a petition seeking the remains to be returned.
At the meeting May 10, leaders of the Rosebud Sioux, Northern Arapaho, Cheyenne River Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Standing Rock Sioux and Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribes met in Rosebud, S.D., to begin negotiations with the Army for repatriation. In a statement released after the meeting, the Department of Defense issued an apology.
“The Army is intent on paying to make sure your children are returned to the people they came from,” wrote Justin Buller, a spokesman for Patrick Hallinan, executive director of Army National Military Cemeteries. “We are not asking for anything from you. We are only wanting to make sure we are honoring your request to return your children to you.”
Buller further promised that the Army would “move forward in a process that works for each individual tribe.”
A spokeswoman for the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition said she hopes the commitment encourages other boarding schools to return students’ remains.
“Grieving and intergenerational trauma are the legacies of the U.S. boarding school policy, and Carlisle Indian Industrial School was at the genesis of it all,” said Christine McCleave, executive officer of the coalition and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. “So as the flagship school—the icon and model of all boarding schools—it makes sense that Carlisle would also be the model for healing and the genesis of the truth, reconciliation and healing.”