From Mar. 11 to Mar. 22, the Walking Together: Finding Common Ground traveling exhibit will be displayed at the Van Pelt and Opie Library East Reading Room. The exhibit shows the history of Native American boarding schools in the United States and Canada and their continued impact on Native communities today. The exhibit and all of its events are free and open to the public. It will be open daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
From 1819 to 1980 there were at least 417 Native American boarding schools operating in the U.S., including four in the UP. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families, often under threat of starvation. They were then sent to distant schools funded by the U.S. government and run by religious organizations. At these boarding schools, children were given colonial names, forced to cut their hair, and punished for speaking their native language. Many students experienced physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual abuse while under the care of the schools. The mortality rate for the schools was exceptionally high, which meant many schools had cemeteries on site. It is impossible to know exactly how many children died, as the U.S. government didn’t keep records of the deaths, but it is certain that at least 1,000 children died while living in the boarding schools.
In a 2015 report by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, previous boarding school students recounted their treatment. One student was Lydia Ross, who was made to attend Manitoba’s Cross Lake Indian Residential School. “My name was Lydia, but in the school I didn’t have a name, I had numbers,” Ross had recalled in the report “I had number 51, number 44, number 32, number 16, number 11, and then finally number one when I was just about coming to high school. So, I wasn’t, I didn’t have a name, I had numbers. You were called 32, that’s me, and all our clothes were, had 32 on them. All our clothes and footwear, they all had number 32, number 16, whatever number they gave me.”
The short film Remember the Children was shown on Mar. 11 to open the exhibit. The film shared the history of the Rapid City Boarding School and the community’s efforts to find and protect the children’s graves. Following the film, three boarding school survivors shared their experiences.
A second film, Indian Horse, will be screened on Mar. 16 from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The film is about a First Nations boy who survived Canada’s residential school system and went on to build a successful hockey career. The film will be followed by a discussion and refreshments.
This exhibit is being brought to Michigan Tech through a partnership between the Keweenaw Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, The Biskaabiiyaang Collective, Trinity Episcopal Church of Houghton, the Canterbury House, and the Van Pelt and Opie Library.
