Consider This from NPR - An American Indian Boarding School That Was Once Feared Is Now Celebrated

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Federal Indian boarding schools left a decades long legacy of abuse, neglect and forced assimilation of Indigenous children.Last year, when the federal government finally acknowledged its role — that painful history drew attention to a few schools that remain open. NPR's Sequoia Carrillo and KOSU's Allison Herrera visited Riverside Indian School in southwest Oklahoma to find out how a school that once stripped children of their Native identity now helps strengthen it.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. Lorinda Long was around eight years old when she attended her first federal Indian boarding school in Arizona. It was not easy. I was in fourth grade and I was tiny and he just hit me and I bounced against the cinder block wall and I was in shock and I started crying, you know, and he just said some curse words to me. Long is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and a survivor. She is among thousands of people sent to these schools, forcibly taken from their families to assimilate into white culture. The schools have a long history of abuse.

And I know some kids would run away and some kids would die from running away, get harmed from running away. A year ago, the federal government acknowledged its role in the system. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched a listening tour called The Road to Healing, where she speaks with survivors. Long shared her story with Haaland last summer at Riverside Indian School in southwest Oklahoma, where she now lives. Riverside is still operating today, but with a very different mission. Now, Long has taken it upon herself to care for younger Navajo students who move from home to attend Riverside. I want to encourage you to have an education. I want, you know, I'm here if y'all ever need me, you know, just call on me.

She wants students to know that despite the difficult legacy, some schools can be good places. Now I feel it's a whole lot better. Consider this, federal Indian boarding schools left a decades-long legacy of abuse, neglect, and forced assimilation of Indigenous children. While most have closed and are widely condemned today, some still in operation are celebrated, cherished. We visit one in Oklahoma, once feared, now a place where Native culture can thrive. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It is Friday, June 9th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It's Consider This from NPR. Federal Indian boarding schools were designed to tear Native children away from their families and erase their culture, their history, their traditions, their languages.

This entire system has long been condemned by Native Americans as a form of cultural genocide. Last year, the federal government finally acknowledged its role. The consequences of federal Indian boarding school policies, including the intergenerational trauma caused by forced family separation and cultural eradication, which were inflicted upon generations of children as young as four years old, are heartbreaking and undeniable. That is Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose own grandparents were taken from their homes at a young age and sent to these schools. The new spotlight on this painful history has drawn attention to a few schools that remain open,

like Riverside Indian School in southwest Oklahoma. NPR's Sequoia Carrillo and KOSU's Allison Herrera went to Riverside Indian School in Southwest Oklahoma. NPR's Sequoia Carrillo and KOSU's Allison Herrera went to Riverside to find out how a school that once stripped children of their Native identity now helps to strengthen it. Sequoia Carrillo spoke with my colleague Ari Shapiro to bring us their reporting. I was lucky enough to visit Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma. It actually first opened its doors back in 1871, and it's been in operation since. It's one of only a handful of federal Indian residential schools still operating in the U.S. today.

And instead of stripping children of Native identity, it is trying to strengthen that identity. How are they doing that? Yes, we went in knowing the facts. We knew that the majority of staff is now Native, and there are cultural elements present in the curriculum. But we didn't know when it shifted or if there was a clear shift from a place that erased culture to a place that promotes it and protects it. So we worked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to get access inside, and we went to see it. Okay, let's listen to this report from Allison Herrera. The campus is sprawling in every direction, with new and renovated buildings

mixed in with older, dilapidated ones. There are a few trailers, an old red barn, and a brand-new basketball court. It's all overseen by the school's principal. Hi. Nice to meet you. I'm sorry. You're good. You're good. I'm Amber Wilson.

I'm the principal here at Riverside Indian School. Good morning. She takes us on a tour and says hello to just about everyone, including some of the maintenance staff. Y'all working hard? Hardly. Okay. Leave that door open for me, okay? Yes, ma'am. Riverside is a residential school, so there are dorms and recreational facilities that make it feel more like a junior college than a high school or middle school. The dorm staff work really hard to make sure that they feel like this is their home. Good morning. As Wilson shows us around, the one thing she won't let us do is go into the classroom and talk to the students. The Bureau of Indian

Education declined our request to observe classes or interview students. Many of those students come here because their parents or their older siblings also attended this school. In recent generations, students see it as a way to get a better education away from their hometowns. Some even come back as teachers. We met one of them in the hallway just outside his classroom. Benjamin Blackstar and I'm an art teacher here at Riverside Indian School. I'm also an alumni from here so I graduated in 2004. Blackstar says a lot has changed since he attended. Now the students are taught things like drum making, stickball and are encouraged to explore their cultural identity.

Here in the hallway, he shows us art from past students and newspaper clippings of recent graduates and success stories. Some of the students have also taken to wearing traditional clothing like ribbon skirts and moccasins. Every young lady here, you know, they all wear ribbon skirts now. And it's such an amazing sight to see. Blackstar's grandma went to Riverside, too, 75 years ago. But he sees her a lot, pointing to a faded black and white photo on the wall outside his class. So this is 1948. This is my grandmother, Vimby, in Tenedal, right here. I really didn't get a chance to talk to her.

She passed away in 2007, so I really didn't get a chance to talk to her about that. Blackstar hopes his grandma had a good experience here, when so many did not. That's reporting from KOSU's Allison Herrera, who visited Riverside Indian School along with NPR's Sequoia Carrillo. And Sequoia, I'm curious, does the school teach its own history? You know, dealing with the painful memories of the school's history is something that most of the teachers and administrators we talked to had trouble articulating. And the principal flat out told us that they're not really interested in looking backwards. But there are those who think that the painful past should be addressed

officially. In talking to survivors from the old days at Riverside, all of them want the wrongdoing remembered. They just differ on how to do it. Some say tear the schools down. Some say just teach it in the classroom. Many see the schools as good places now and that they leave the students better off than they found them. And based on what you saw, do you think that's true that students are now better off? Allison and I talked to recent Riverside alums as well as alums and current students from other federal residential schools. And it seems like yes. Recent alumni often talk about the connections they made with teachers or school trips they got to take while at Riverside. And the school itself has a Facebook group of more than 3,000 alums who proudly tout the school's motto, once a brave, always a brave, and ask when the next graduation is so that they can attend and support the students.

One alum active in the Facebook group lives in Farmington, New Mexico, and she spoke with us over Zoom. Here's Allison again. Why don't you introduce yourself? Well, my name is Leandra Johnson, and I'm from... She graduated from Riverside 15 years ago after leaving her public high school in Bloomfield, New Mexico. Educational-wise, I learned more.

When she attended Riverside, Johnson said a little bit of the school's troubled history was included in the curriculum. She also learned Native American history at Riverside that she was never taught at her public school in New Mexico. She said Riverside was just better. You had that support, I guess you could say. You had that support from your other peers that were around your age, pushing you to graduate, pushing you to do better. Johnson remembers feeling more comfortable at Riverside because she was around other Native students and teachers. Now she has three children of her own. Her oldest, Adrian, is a shy seventh grader who's enrolled in public school. He likes science and video games. Zelda, Super Mario.

What about Fortnite? No, not a big fan. One of the challenges to getting a good education in his rural hometown is reliable Wi-Fi. That was Allison Herrera again. And Sequoia, did you find that lack of Wi-Fi impacted your experience when visiting the residential school? Definitely. In fact, in order to speak with us, Leandra and Adrian had to sit in the parking lot of a local library closer to the center of town to connect over Zoom. We wanted to know what about Riverside, where Adrian now wants to go, makes him want to leave home and move hundreds of miles away.

Here's what he said. Because you can learn more about your culture. My mom went there and I just want to experience it. And that is the irony of this story. A school with such a troubled past that once families were forced to send their children against their will has now become a place where they want their kids to go in hopes it will give them a better life.

That's NPR's Sequoia Carrillo, who reported on Riverside Indian School along with KOSU's Allison Herrera. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Support for NPR and I'm Mary Louise Kelly.