Bluestem's been following the effort to return Edward Upright, from the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota, and Amos LaFramboise, from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation from the army cemetery at the Carlisle Indian Boarding School. The tribes are linked by the 1867 treaty that established their reservations.
On Monday, the disinterment process began for the boys and the remains of four other children who died at the school.
At Native News Online, Jenna Kunze reported in More Than a Century after Their Death, the US Army to Return Remains of Six More Indigenous Children to Their Tribal Communities:
Today, September 11, the U.S. Army will begin its sixth disinterment project to reunite the remains of six Indigenous children who died more than a century ago with their descendant relatives and communities.
Those students include: Edward Upright, from the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota; Amos LaFramboise, from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota; Beau Neal, from the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming; Edward Spott from the Puyallup Tribe in Washington; and Launy Shorty from the Blackfeet Nation in Montana.
The children are among nearly 200 who died in the government’s care between 1880 and 1910 while attending the nation’s flagship Indian boarding school: the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
In 1879, what was then the Carlisle Barracks became the site of the nation’s first Indian boarding school, which was operated by the Department of the Interior until 1918. During those 39 years, it forcibly assimilated 7,800 Native American children from more than 140 tribal nations through a mix of Western-style education and hard labor. Close to 200 children from 59 different tribes died there, of disease often made worse by poor living conditions and abuse, and were buried at the school.
Today, the United States Army War College has taken over the grounds of the former Indian Boarding School, including its cemetery that holds the remains of more than 190 Native children.
Exhumations from the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery began in 2017, when Yufna Soldier Wolf of the Northern Arapaho Tribe won her 10-year battle to return three Arapaho children. They were reburied on the reservation in Ethete, Wyoming.
Since 2017, the Army has since returned a total of 28 children in five disinterment projects. Each project was conducted for about a month during the summer. A team of professionals from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Center of Expertise for Curation arrives to carry out the process of exhuming and identifying each child’s remains.
This disinterment project is slated to take about ten days, according to a news release from the Army.
This return marks the end of a 145 year waiting period for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribe of South Dakota.
In 1879, two Oyate boys, 13-year-old Edward Upright (Spirit Lake Nation) and 12-year- old Amos LaFromboise (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), left their homes in the Dakotas to head to school at Carlisle. They were each the son of a powerful tribal leader—Amos of Joseph LaFromboise, a founding father of his tribe, and Edward of Chief Waanatan—in line to become hereditary chiefs of their respective tribes when they grew older. Instead, they never left the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania: They both died before they turned 16, and remain buried in the cemetery beside the former school grounds.
Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribal historian Tamara St. John has researched her tribe’s ancestors buried at Carlisle for more than six years in preparation for bringing them home.
Now, her tribe is slated to facilitate the return of both Oyate boys next week, after expecting the boys return last summer. . . .
Last week, Gabriela Martinez reported for WITF in Five Native American students who died at the Carlisle Indian School to return home:
. . .Amos LaFromboise was the first student to die at the school, in November 1879, the year the school opened. Amos was 13 years old and, according to a newspaper clipping from the Carlisle Herald at the time, the boy “was mentioned before to be ill.”
That same clipping says Amos’ death was “the first,” and that “we sincerely hope it may prove to be the only death in the school.”
According to records, the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery has 229 burial plots, 180 of which are identified as Native American burials. Of 180 Native Americans buried in the cemetery –most of whom are students who died while at the school – 157 have a name and tribal affiliation, and 23 are unknown. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded by General Richard Henry Pratt, whose primary objective was to “kill the Indian” to “save the Man.”
Amos was initially buried in Ashland Cemetery, in another part of Carlisle. But his body was moved later that year because Ashland was for White people only, according to archival research conducted by Jacqueline Fear-Segal, an indigenous studies professor at East Anglia University in the UK.
Pratt sent a letter asking the War Department if Native Americans were allowed to be buried in that cemetery.
Fear-Segal’s book, White Man’s Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation, details the judge’s decision: “The judge advocate general was called on to make the final decision, and he informed the War Department that ‘The deed in this case conveys to the United States the ‘exclusive and entire right of interment and sepulture’ in a certain burial lot in Ashland Cemetery in said Carlisle ‘to have and to hold’ – and it is added – ‘for the burial of such White persons’ as the grantee may admit to be buried there”
The deed to the Ashland Cemetery allowed for the burial of “White persons,” so the judge said that meant “internment therein of an Indian would not be legally authorized.”
The Carlisle Indian Cemetery was established in 1880 in an existing army burial ground in the school’s campus, according to the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. Between 1880 and 1918, 186 people – students, prisoners of war held captive in the school and the child of a Native American teacher – were buried there. Due to new construction and expansion of the campus at the time, the entire cemetery was moved to its present location in 1927.
Renea Yates, director of the Office of Army Cemeteries and part of the task force leading the Army’s disinterment project, said the army is processing nine requests for disinterment for next year.
“We have several tribes that have interest in returning their children, some of which are seeking more information about the project and we continue to work with them and help them through the process,” Yates said.
Because the remains have been underground for more than 100 years, the disinterment process has to be slow and methodical, Yates said. It is done by hand and no mechanical equipment is used.
To claim the remains of a relative buried at the Carlisle Barracks Cemetery, relatives must fill out two forms and provide a letter from a third party acknowledging a link to the deceased.
More information about the students can be found on the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.
Amos LaFrombois, Sisseton Wahpeton-Oyate, South Dakota: Died in 1879. . . .
Edward Upright, Spirit Lake Tribe, North Dakota. Died when he was 12 of pneumonia in 1881.
Readers who want to aid with costs can donate to the Repatriation from Carlisle Indian School Cemetery Go Fund Me effort, sponsored by tribal archivist and historian St. John:
. . . We are raising funds for costs associated with the travel and other aspects of the gatherings that will be taking place when they are brought home September 15th to 19th next month. Due to the short amount of time we have to raise monies we have decided to do a GoFundMe campaign addition to the past years of efforts of fundraising by the Buffalo Heart Women and Kit Fox along with the tribal community towards the ongoing work of Repatriation under the federal law Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act/NAGPRA.
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
- Update: Amos LaFramboise to be returned to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, Lake Traverse Reservation from Carlisle Indian School
- SWO archivist: "We are committed to them . . . to bringing them home like the chiefs that they are"
- SWO moves closer to bringing ancestors home from Carlisle Indian School with affidavit signing ceremony
- Video: Return of Our Sisseton-Wahpeton Children
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