In 1948 Congress gave the land belonging to the Indian Boarding School in west Rapid City to the City, the School District, the South Dakota National Guard, various churches and the Native Community — except the Native Community never got theirs.
My mom practice-taught at the Flandreau Indian School in the mid 1960s where she learned firsthand how Indigenous Americans were abused. Now, South Dakota's long history of racism is again under the media microscope.
Native Americans overwhelmingly turned out to vote for Joe Biden now Laguna Pueblo citizen and former New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland is Secretary of the Interior with oversight of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and land repatriation as part of her wheelhouse.
Haaland, Diindiisi McCleave and New Mexico Indian Affairs Secretary Lynn Trujillo have all recounted stories about their grandparents being sent away to boarding schools. They talk about the intergenerational trauma that was triggered by the experience and the effects that have manifested themselves on younger generations seeking to maintain their language and cultural practices, which were banned in boarding schools. For some families, the boarding school experience was a forbidden topic, never to be talked about. In New Mexico, the Ramona Industrial School for Indian Girls opened in the mid-1880s and housed mostly Apache students, many of whom had parents who were being held prisoner by the U.S. Army at Fort Union, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. [Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press]
The State of South Dakota still seizes about 750 American Indian kids every year reaping over a billion federal dollars since the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed. In 2011 NPR took on the Daugaard administration in a three part exposé. I even have direct personal knowledge of those horrors.
Active Efforts Case from South Dakota Supreme Court [ICWA] https://t.co/JFvTQ2Dq3e
— TurtleTalk (@ILPCTurtleTalk) July 16, 2021
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