On the frozen plains of Nebraska, a grim search is underway.
The community is trying to locate an old cemetery that was once on the grounds of the US Indian Genoa Industrial School.
‘A cemetery at a school is not the norm – that you could die and then you’re gonna be buried out the door?’ Judi gaiashkibos, Commission on Indian Affairs, Nebraska
The State Archaeologist is using ground penetrating radar to try and locate an old cemetery that is somewhere on the grounds of the former Genoa U.S Indian Industrial School.
The Genoa school was one of a network of institutions for Native American children set up in the 19th and 20th centuries across the U.S.A.
Their purpose was to assimilate indigenous children into the white man’s world.
By 1926, it’s estimated more than 80% of Native American children were enrolled in these institutions.
“We’ve been severed from our language, from our culture, from our practices over a whole course of time, but the boarding school era did a number on our people where we almost did not recuperate from it.” Redwing Thomas, Teacher, Santee Sioux Nation.
Last year, the discovery of more than a thousand graves of children at the sites of former boarding schools in Canada pushed the U.S.A to examine its own history.
ABC journalist Stan Grant, whose family was impacted by Australia’s assimilationist policies of forcibly removing children from families, presents this powerful story.
He tells the story of a community in Nebraska trying to uncover the truth about one of the country’s largest and longest running boarding schools.
‘We were taught in school about Native American boarding schools, assimilation’, says Genoa resident Nikki Drozd ‘but we weren’t aware of the cemetery…I didn’t stop to think about the children that died here.’
This month, the US Department of the Interior has published the first major government investigation of the country’s boarding school history.
It estimated that up to tens of thousands of children could have died while attending these state-sanctioned institutions.
‘We’re still looking for those children that died’, says Judi gaiashkibos. ‘I can’t rest until I feel I’ve exhausted every possible avenue to find the children’.
