It is hoped the Remembering the Children Memorial can bring healing to the community

As supporters gathered in the field behind the Canyon Lake Methodist Church to share in the groundbreaking of the Remembering the Children Memorial, Executive Director Amy Sazue (Oglala/Sicangu Lakota) took a moment to talk to Native Sun News Today about her efforts to bring people together with one common goal – to build a memorial to the victims of the boarding school era who were buried there and forgotten. The Remembering the Children Memorial website estimated that at least 50 children and infants passed away at the Rapid City Indian Boarding School based on oral histories, years of independent research and the federal archived school records. The Memorial has been placed where the unmarked graves were located.

In many ways, the project came together by using Lakota values of community cooperation. “We started with the Tribes,” said Sazue. “I made sure to establish transparent relationships with each of the chairs, with each of the TIPO’s (Tribal Historic Preservation Officer), each of the land committee chairs and land committee members. I had gotten resolutions and MOU’s signed.” She worked with the church who is sharing access to the site. An easement with the school district was needed. ”We also worked with the city of Rapid City. They’re partnering with us to provide access to utilities.”

“Not really shying away from the controversy regarding the land, but that’s not this project,” said Sazue. There were fears that this project might open a “Pandora’s Box” regarding the land issues and might just be too big. But those fears didn’t come to pass. “One side is remembering the children, building a memorial, we are protecting the land, the children, the graves – that’s the focus of this work. Then He Sapa Otipi is doing the community center. Otipi does not need to be subsidized so that arm went away. We still have our legal team that is working on the land issues, separate from the two projects that are full steam ahead at this point. “

Attorney Heather Dawn Thompson (Cheyenne River), who currently serves under the Biden Administration as the Director of the Office of Tribal Relations for the United States Department of Agriculture, had been a volunteer for the Rapid City Indian Boarding School Lands Research Project. She shared a spiritual moment when the group first visited the site. “We came here with medicine people to make sure we were doing the right thing and help us find them. We didn’t really know where the children were. We had oral histories that we had been collecting but the school never kept track of where the children were buried. The medicine person said, ‘you didn’t forget them, and they want you to stop people from rolling over them.’ I thought to myself what the heck does that mean. So we headed to the top of this beautiful hill and sure enough we saw ATV tracks all over the top of the hill. So, thank you for helping stop people from rolling over them, and helping instead to honor them.” She motioned to the Scull Construction team that had assembled for the groundbreaking, “You guys have a heavy burden to make sure you do this right and we are glad you are here with us today to pray to make sure we get off on a good foot with this blessing.”

Thompson acknowledged that many in the audience had been keeping this alive for decades, but gave special acknowledgment to leadership from the grandmothers. “This has always been a grandmother’s project. We remember the children because the grandmothers in our community never let us forget.” She paused to push back tears and continued, “About 10 or 15 years ago, the grandmothers reminded us young people that we should not forget either. They came to us and asked us what we were going to do to protect these children and their memory. Never did we think that out of that initial conversation to honor our elders we would all be here today.”

Nick Tilsen (Oglala Lakota) from NDN Collective, speaking as a member of the community said, “This work was put in motion long ago in ceremonies. People prayed that one day the elders would have this conversation with the younger people and the younger people would roll up their sleeves.” Tilsen said a song came during ceremony saying the children want to be found. “We didn’t know what that was at the time. And then these graves started becoming uncovered, not just here but all over Indian Country. Whenever things like this happen, there is a spiritual motion that gets created, a movement that is important for us to acknowledge. It has come full circle and now we are bringing healing to the people and the community. It takes action and people to be able to reckon with our past no matter how painful it is, to come together. Their spirits are here and are not lost.”

Sazue said that the memorial is intended to be a place of prayer, gathering and remembrance. Right now, it’s a grassy field but Sazue described what it will look like when finished in October. “There will be a memorial walking path with history boards along the route, individual boulders with the names of each of the children who passed and four sculptures of traditional burial scaffolds for children.”

There will also be larger sculpture of a family. “It is meant to depict what boarding school did to families,” said Sazue. Sculptor Dale Lamphere (Dignity) is working with Oglala Lakota sculptor Derek Santos, a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) to create this sculpture. “This sculpture is a family, life-size and a quarter, so it will be a little taller than life-size. There’s a little girl that is small that the family is kind of protecting. There’s a dad who is holding his pipe bag for protection and prayer for his children. There’s a son who is in boarding school clothes.

The Interior Department under the leadership of Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) announced the Federal Indian Boarding school Initiative in June of 2021 to investigate the Federal Indian boarding school system.

The report estimated between 1819 and 1969, there were 408 Federal schools across 37 states or then-territories, including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii. Although, the latest research from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) has identified an additional 115 schools. These government schools were often run by church organizations. At least half of all the schools received support or involvement from a religious institution or organization. Monies from the 1819 Civilization Fund were also appropriated to those who had helped in the effort to “civilize the Indians”, a continuous effort to remove Native Americans, either by extermination, removal, assimilation and eventually termination and relocation. The investigation also found that the government used Indian Trust Funds to pay the schools those run by religious organizations.

The report also found that abuse was rampant at the schools which used militarized tactics and “identity-alteration methodologies” to discipline and assimilate children as young as 4 years old and that children were subjected to rampant physical, sexual and emotional abuse

Mental health expert Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart calls it “historical trauma” or HT. She defines HT as the “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding across generations, including the lifespan, which emanates from massive group trauma” which she wrote in an article about HT published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.

(Contact Marnie Cook at staffwriter@nativesunnews.today)

The post It is hoped the Remembering the Children Memorial can bring healing to the community first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

Visit Original Source