Photo coverage By: Allison Levering
Written by: Allison Levering Co-Writer: Emmalee Fields
LAWRENCE, KS
On the evening of Monday, September 30th, 2024, The Haskell student body gathered at the sacred fireplace lit by guidance counselor Manny King near the auditorium and was led in a prayer and invocation by Dr. Daniel Wildcat in honor of all of the children who endured the boarding school era at Haskell and all-throughout Turtle Island. Following an opening prayer, Dr. Wildcat offered indian tobacco to ten of Haskell’s “155 runners” and sent them out in groups to each of the four directions (North, East, South, West) to offer medicine to each direction for healing, guidance and remembrance in the coming school year. The auditorium was then warmed by six big-drum student singers in a beautiful rendition of a welcome song. Chef Champaign then fed the attendants with a meal of traditional foods before the presentation by a Deidre Whiteman informing students about the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition and historical trauma studies.
Co-Writer’s Commentary By Emmalee Fields
Deidre Whiteman was the lead speaker on the evening of September 30th, and October 1st over in the Tommaney library the following afternoon. Miss Whiteman is Meskwaki, Dakota, Ojibwe, Hidatsa and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota. She is the Director of Research and Education at the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, NABS, and is an alumni of Haskell Indian Nations University, having received her bachelor’s degree here and her master’s at the University of Minnesota. Both of her grandparents were boarding school survivors so all the effort and work she has put into this program is close to her heart.
At her second afternoon event over in the Tommaney library, she went over with those gathered how to access and navigate the National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive, a digital platform and repository for boarding school archival collections throughout the United States. They have identified 523 Indian Boarding Schools within the US, most of which were run by the government through the Department of the Interior, and other religious institutions. NABS believes this number will only continue to grow though as more information comes to light and are released, for though they have identified these schools and such, they have barely scratched the surface of attaining their records and it was said that it will take decades to sort through it all. It is an enormous undertaking for a current team of 12, but it is their goal to document this dark side and history of the US, and in memory of those who attended these places of harm, and their families and descendants. These boarding schools were full of sickness and death, and for those who never returned home it is upon all of us to give them justice, and to remember their names.
*Turtle Island-North and South America
* big drum– a powwow style drum
