On Saturday morning, my beau--a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate elder--and I attended the signing ceremony of affidavits by the relatives of two boys who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
The process of bringing the young men home requires the documents to be signed by family members.
Since it was a solemn occasion for Mike, I chose not to work at the event.
A Bismarck-based journalist for Forum News Service (who was invited by the tribal archivist Tamara St. John to cover the ceremony), Jeremy Turley reports in Boys' remains could come back to the Dakotas from notorious Native American boarding school:
On Nov. 6, 1879, four boys and two girls from the eastern edge of the Dakota Territory stepped off a train in Carlisle, Pennsylvania — more than 1,000 miles from the rolling plains they had called home all their lives.
The Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux children numbered among the first students to arrive at a boarding school explicitly designed to assimilate Native American youth into a white man’s world by stripping them of their culture, language and family ties.
By May 1881, three of the boys — Amos LaFromboise, Edward Upright and John Renville — were dead, all before the age of 17.
Amos and Edward, both sons of influential tribal leaders, are still buried near the site of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Their graves are marked with white military-issued headstones containing glaring spelling errors and no biographical information other than the day they died.
But after more than a century away from their native lands, the boys may soon find a final resting place in the Dakotas.
Officials and elders from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and Spirit Lake tribes met at the Dakota Magic Casino in Hankinson on Saturday, Feb. 19, to take a crucial step in bringing the boys’ remains back home.
In a ceremony that included prayer and storytelling, relatives of Amos and Edward signed affidavits attesting their familial bonds to the boys. Submitting the documents to the U.S. Army, which maintains the cemetery in Carlisle, will set off the process of exhuming the boys’ remains and returning them to the tribal nations as early as this summer.
Spirit Lake resident Marva Tiyowakanhdi said she almost started crying as she watched her aunt Helena Waanatan sign the affidavit affirming her relation to Edward.
“I felt so much honor and respect and love,” Tiyowakanhdi said. “It’s almost like she brought him home in the spirit, like she was welcoming him back.”
If all goes according to the families’ plans, Amos will be buried beside his father Joseph in the St. Matthew’s Cemetery on the South Dakota side of the Lake Traverse Reservation, and Edward will lie next to his father Chief Waanatan II in St. Michael’s Cemetery on the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota. . . .
Many Americans only recognize Carlisle as the alma mater of legendary athlete Jim Thorpe, but [ an archivist at Dickinson College in Carlisle Jim] Gerencser and a team of researchers have uncovered a much darker side of the school’s history over the last decade.
At least 233 students, nearly 3% of the 7,800 who attended Carlisle, died while enrolled at the school.
Amos LaFromboise was the first to perish.
On Nov. 26, 1879, just three weeks after the 13-year-old arrived at Carlisle, his body was laid to rest in a government-owned plot in the town cemetery. His cause of death remains unknown, but documents refer to him as being ill shortly before he died. . . . .
Read the entire article at the Grand Forks Herald.
Reporter Turley tweeted:
This is the first story in @inforum's "Buried Wounds" series, which examines Native American boarding schools and their impact on North Dakota tribes. pic.twitter.com/94yl9jupRr
— Jeremy Turley (@jeremyjturley) February 20, 2022
There are many stories to tell.
Our beau Mike's father and aunt attended boarding schools in the first part of the 20th century; his aunt died at nine years of age under circumstances that were never investigated, though the family was able to bury her with the rest of her family. Despite being beaten when he spoke Dakota at the schools, his father spoke the language at his home with his own son.
Related posts:
- SWO moves closer to bringing ancestors home from Carlisle Indian School with affidavit signing ceremony
- Video: Return of Our Sisseton-Wahpeton Children
Screengrab: The gravestones of Amos LaFromboise and Edward Upright contain spelling errors in a cemetery near the site of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Photos provided by the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center via the Grand Forks Herald.
There's more about Amos LaFramboise and Edward Upright at the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, maintained by Dickinson College.
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