The Decibel - After 144 years, bringing home remains from a residential school

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania was the first government-run residential school in North America. Earlier this fall, the remains of two boys, who died there more than a century ago, were returned to their tribes in South Dakota, over 2,000 kilometres away. It’s a process that took six years — and has only begun the healing and closure to the people who were part of it.Willow Fiddler, a national reporter for the Globe, visited those tribes to find out what it took to bring their boys home. She’s on The Decibel to talk about how the United States is reckoning with its history of boarding schools, and where Canada stands when it comes to repatriating the remains of Indigenous children who died at residential schools.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

When they arrived and started breaking ground on the two graves that were being disinterred, the rain started falling and it didn't stop. Willow Fidler is a national reporter for The Globe. And one of the comments from someone who was there was that it was the tears of the mothers of those two boys. 144 years of those mothers' tears were finally coming down on this day that those two boys were being rightfully returned to their tribes and traditional burial spots. These two boys died at North America's first federally run residential school. And this fall, Willow went to South Dakota to talk to the people who spent six years working to bring home their remains. These two boys who died at that school, where they never should have died, were finally being brought home for that traditional Sioux Dakota burial that they were entitled to. This kind of repatriation of remains from schools is part of the work Indigenous communities are doing to process what happened at these schools and to try to heal. So today, Willow tells us who these boys were, what it took to bring them home, and how communities in North America are

trying to heal from the legacy of residential schools. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Willow, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. We talked about the two boys off the top, but who were these boys? Amos LaFrambois and Edward Upright were two young boys, 12 and 13 years old, from the Sisseton Wapitinoyate tribe in South Dakota. Edward comes from the Spirit Lake tribe. Today, they're two separate tribes, but back then they would have kind of been among the same tribe. And so they were the sons of two highly respected Sioux leaders

at the time. And they were among the first group of students who would have traveled to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, when that school first opened in 1879. Okay, so they were from South Dakota. They ended up in Pennsylvania because they went to this school then, Carlisle, as you said. What do we know about this school? This school would have been, you know, among the first federally run Indian industrial schools that opened in the States. Previous to that, there were other schools that were being operated, you know, on reserve and different locations. This one was kind of the first one, though.

It was founded by a military guy by the name of Richard Pratt, who has become a notorious historic figure in the States. And he founded the school based on his beliefs that education was the key to assimilating young Indian children into what they consider to be a civilized society. So he was able to get the support of the federal government, the Department of Interior. So this was 1879. The student records for Amos and Edward, who were the first ones there, I think the date on there says November 3rd or 6th, 1879. So that's when they would have first enlisted. I had read just recently that, you know, the minimum age was 14, but that may have been changed afterwards because we know that Amos and Edward were 12 and 13. And you mentioned it was this school was founded by Richard Pratt, this military guy. He had a famous

saying when he was establishing these institutions. What was that saying? Yeah, he was notorious for his phrase to kill the Indian and save the man, this ideology of this aggressive assimilation policy that we saw in the states and of course it was mirrored right back here in Canada so we know that the saying kill the Indian save the man was later adapted here in Canada to kill the Indian in the child which is of course of a very widely and commonly used phrase used by survivors, experts and a lot of people across the country here in Canada to describe the residential school policy and system here and its intent. The other thing I wanted to point out was in 1879, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald

commissioned Nicholas Davin to conduct a feasibility study on the American boarding school system, and that included Carlisle. a follow suit and contract churches out to run these schools aimed at separating the children from their families and making sure that they were in a residential school, as opposed to a day boarding school, for example. They already knew back then that it was going to be a lot easier to indoctrinate and assimilate young Indian children if they had absolutely no contact or connection to their parents and families and home communities. So which is why we have the residential school system where all of these young Indigenous children were forced to live. Wow. I guess I wonder, too, if we're comparing the two countries, Willow, what does the conversation in the U.S. look like when we're talking about the reckoning of the

history of these schools? It's a little bit different. There's some things I feel like they're more advanced on. For example, we have yet to do any repatriation work of identifying any human remains and then returning them to their home communities. That hasn't happened yet here in Canada. That's happened several times in the United States where tribes are doing that work on their own. And I think that's kind of what the other difference is that a lot of these tribes are doing this work without, you know, any initiative from the federal government. It was just last year in 2022

that the Department of Interior released its first report on its initial findings of its boarding schools. Think Canada's TRC. So if we go back to 2007 to the TRC and all of the work that the TRC did in terms of hearing the stories and experiences of the survivors, finding all the documents, the number of schools, the number of children, all of that. That is just being started now in the States through the Department of Interior. And it's Deb Haaland, who is the secretary of that, and she's a Native American herself. But it was Kamloops in 2021 that kind of lit a fire under people there, I think. And with the repatriation of these two boys, it also kind of just reaffirmed for them that

this was extremely important healing work that they needed to do. The narrative for boarding schools and its impacts is not known to the extent and magnitude that it is here in Canada. I visited a museum close to Sisseton Wapiton Oyate tribe in South Dakota while I was there. And they have an exhibition on one of the residential schools that was running there. And I actually think it's still being operated by one of the local tribes. But it's very, very much framed as being this positive experience that was meant to provide, you know, positive learning experience and teaching all of these important life skills to, you know, to all these Indigenous children there. And I was very disturbed by it, actually, because there is yet to be any of that reckoning in terms of

a realization that, oh, my gosh, this assimilation policy is responsible for a lot of damage and destruction to these tribes and their cultures and their way of life, that's not happening yet at the level that it has here in Canada. So you're actually seeing a couple of different things here. So in one way, the U.S. could be seen as kind of ahead of Canada in terms of the repatriation of children's bodies coming back to communities. But at the same time, the conversation and the understanding of what these schools did and their purpose is not at the same level that it is in the States as it is in Canada. Right. Tamara St. John, you know, she speaks about she's a state legislature. them with all of this and making those connections between the state of their tribes and communities,

which is very much like here in Canada in terms of high disproportionate rates of suicide, addictions, incarceration, all of that nasty stuff are directly connected to the experiences and abuses and traumas of those boarding school survivors and their families through intergenerational traumas. We'll be right back. Let's come back to these two boys that we began with, Willow. They died what their their date of deaths were. The interesting thing about Amos's burial, first burial, he was buried at a local cemetery. And it turns out that that cemetery was for white people only. And there's records with letters asking whether he can be buried there or not.

And the response was, well, it's whites only. There's no legal authorization for him to be there. He was. So then he had to be moved. OK, so that catches us up to the present day. Willow, who was behind this initiative to bring the boys home and how did they get involved? So it started in 2016 when the Northern Arapaho tribe approached the army wanting to repatriate children that they had buried there in Carlisle. So that kind of opened the door for the army to say, yeah, we've got these children here. If there are tribes that want to repatriate, we will work with

them in order to do so. And just to be clear, this is because the army owns that land then where the boys are buried. Right. So this was like the army barracks cemetery. So after the Northern Arapaho did the first repatriation in 2016, that kind of opened it up for them. Tamara St. John and her colleague Diane DeRogier, who is the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Sisseton Wapitin Oyate, started doing the work. They knew Amos and Edward were there, but they did run into some challenges. And this is kind of why it took them six years. So, you know, if a tribe was to go to the army and say, we want to repatriate, there would be like a super easy process to do that if it was just going by the army process, right? They would have their own transfer ceremony,

they would exhume the bodies and then kind of hand them over however they would. And that's that. But for these tribes, it can't be that simple because they have their cultural customs and protocols when it comes to burials and disturbance and all of that. And so that was what they were pushing. And it took them six years to come up with the agreement that would allow them to conduct all of their tribal ceremonies and customs that are used in these circumstances for deaths and burials and disinterments. And they eventually were able to get the army's full agreement and cooperation in doing so. Was there some disagreement at all about the way that the bodies were being released to the tribes? Because I think there was something there as well that was a bit of a sticking point. So the army was saying, you know, we have our own regulations on how we do this,

on how we return bodies or repatriate. And that involves identifying a next of kin or the closest living relative for whoever the deceased is. What the tribe's problem with this was that, one, it can be difficult to identify who that may be, especially in this case, where these boys died at being boys and, you know, wouldn't, for example, have any offspring or anything like that. The other part of it that they were arguing was that as tribes, they had the right to repatriate the remains under the Native American Graves and Repatriation Protection Act, which allows specifically tribes to do that work as a whole so as opposed to putting all of this work which

is a lot of work i mean physically emotionally spiritually mentally uh it's a huge burden to place onto one single family member and that was what the tribe's problem was. We're not going to do that to one of our people. That's just too much. We need to do this as a tribe. We need to do this as a collective that these are our boys and they deserve this. And it has to involve a lot of people. So once everything was finally agreed upon, Willa, what was that process like to exhume the remains and bring those boys home? Yeah., so I mean, once the agreement was signed, everything happened super fast. You know, they were on the road to Pennsylvania, like within a day. So there was four passenger vans that went down from South Dakota and involved the Kit Fox Society, which

is a group of men from the tribes and the Buffalo Heart Women, which is a group of men from the tribes and the Buffalo Heart Women, which is a group of the women from the tribes. And they carry out kind of sacred and traditional roles specific to these kinds of events. And all of this happening with the Army's participation too, right? Which is really fascinating because to think about them going there and being met by some army official a major or somebody who's like helping them plot out where they could set up their sweat lodge which is an important part of their ceremonies and what they have to do and then you know when it got time to to digging the the tribes people, you know, first broke ground. And then when the bodies were exhumed, it was the Buffalo Heart women who had the responsibility of actually carrying those

remains and carrying them into the tents where they would be then analyzed by the Army's forensic team. They had forensic experts from the tribes as well included and observing and helping to do that work. And then just having the men of the Kit Fox Society watching, kind of watching over, watching guard as all of this work was being done, just making sure that it's being done with as much love and care and respect as as possible because that's what these boys deserve and all of this again happening in the pouring rain like it poured all day and all night and providing kind of that cleansing too at the same time. The cleansing of tears, the cleansing of all of the hurt,

and that, you know, they were able to do this in a good way. And then how did they bring the boys' remains back to the communities? The actual remains would have been placed in red cloth and then into a pine box. And then the pine box placed on a buffalo robe, so a buffalo robe for each of the boys. And then taken into the passenger vans where the caravan from the tribes then traveled back to Pennsylvania, over 2,000 miles. And once they got closer to the repatriation grounds near Sisseton, they had a horse and carriage meet them at the place that they believe the boys would have left from to go to Carlisle. Wow.

And the boys probably would have been on horse and carriage leaving. So they were picked up by this horse and carriage and taken down to the repatriation grounds, which is traveling down these dusty gravel roads, you know, and followed by all of the tribe's people that were there to support them all. So they were taken to the repatriation grounds. The tribe had to establish those repatriation grounds in 1991 when they repatriated remains from the Smithsonian Institute. So they've had those grounds there for a while and conducted the full Dakota Sioux traditional ceremony. There were seven fully erected teepees waiting for them at the repatriation grounds. The traditional Dakota burial is four nights. They had spent the one night on the road. So for the next three nights, the boys were placed upon scaffolding with their buffalo robes. And that's where they lay for three nights there until they were buried in the ground beside each other.

I know we are having conversations in this country about the remains of children found at the sites of residential schools. I guess, where are we in Canada, Willa, when it comes to this process of potentially returning those bodies to communities? Yeah, super sensitive. But there is a lot of that work going on, of course, since Kamloops in 2021. Several groups across the country that are now doing that work. But that is a big question, right? What do you do when you find remains? Do you leave them there undisturbed or do you bring them back home to where they really belong?

There are going to be a lot of different feelings around that, a lot of different beliefs around that, because not all nations here in Canada are the same. Each nation, even families, those beliefs vary. So it needs to be handled with extreme care. It needs to be, you know, led by the survivors, which I see is happening. And I expect, you know, in the coming years, we're going to see what that will look like for us. Just lastly here, Willow, I'd like to come back to Amos and Edwards. I mean, what does it mean for these tribes to be able to bring those boys home? It means a lot of healing, because there hasn't been that reckoning yet with them in the States.

Survivors know what it was like. And survivors will share with their families and their people of what it was like for them. But even for like Tamara and Diane, like Tamara is a daughter of a resident boarding school survivor. And, and I think Diane is as well. But even speaking with them, when I went to visit visit with them the week after they repatriated the boys and sitting with them for well over an hour, you could just see how raw this was for them still. Like it's a to think about holding bones of a child and then you connect that with that it happened because of this mass federal effort to kill the Indian and the child is just devastating and heartbreaking. And it's going to take time for them to process that and to heal from it. But that's what it's for. It is, it's for the healing and it's going to take time for them to process that and to heal from it. But that's what it's for. It is.

It's for the healing. And it's such hard work. But for intergenerational survivors like Tamara, she knows that it's up to them to do that work. There is no one else that's going to do it. So it's a lot of healing, a lot of healing. Willow, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. If you've been listening to the In Her Defense podcast,

I want to let you know that you can join the host, Jana Pruden, and producer, Kasia Mihailovic, for a Reddit Ask Me Anything, today, Friday, on the True Crimes Podcast subreddit. Or you can go to tgam.ca slash defenseama. That's happening at 1 p.m. Eastern today. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Michal Stein produced this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.