Victims of abusive, government-backed Native American boarding schools are sharing their experiences as U.
Sleeping two in a single bed, Isabel Yazzie, left, and Theresa Tully Begay are among the students at the overcrowded Navajo boarding school in Chinle, Arizona, Dec. 14, 1945. Thirty-five children sleep in a room intended for 10. Sometimes as many as four are crowded into a single bed. – After her mother died when Rosalie Whirlwind Soldier was just four years old, she was put into a Native American boarding school in South Dakota and told her native Lakota language was “devil's speak.
Now 78 and still living on the reservation, Whirlwind Soldier said she was airing her horrific experiences in hopes of finally getting past them. Most closed their doors long ago and none still exist to strip students of their identities. But some, including St. Francis, still function as schools — albeit with drastically different missions that celebrate the cultural backgrounds of their Native students.
The first volume of an investigative report released by the Interior Department in May identified more than boarding 400 schools that the federal government supported beginning in the late 19th century and continuing well into the 1960s. It also found at least 500 children died at some of the schools, though that number is expected to increase dramatically as research continues.
South Dakota had 31 of the schools including two on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation — St. Francis and the Rosebud Agency Boarding and Day School.
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