‘Those kids never got to go home’
CARLISLE, Pa. — They want the bones of their children back.
They want the remains of the boys and girls who were taken from their American Indian families in the West, spirited a thousand miles to the East, and, when they died not long after arrival, were buried here in the fertile Pennsylvania soil.
The brevity of those lives, and the effort of a South Dakota tribe to reclaim them now, spring from a turn-of-the-century episode of forced assimilation and cultural destruction — one that continues to haunt and torment the Rosebud Sioux.
Today, many people know this small borough as a stop on the turnpike or as the site of Dickinson College. But from 1879 to 1918, the town was home to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the flagship of a fleet of federally funded, off-reservation boarding schools. It immersed native children in the dominant white culture, seeking to cleanse their "savage nature" by erasing their names, language, dress, customs, religions, and family ties.
The Carlisle goal: "Kill the Indian, save the man." Sometimes, both perished. Nearly 200 children are buried here in the Indian cemetery.
Read more at: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Those_kids_never_got_to_go_home.html
I've always thought that the Carlisle fiasco was a shameful episode in Pennsylvania's history.
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