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Students read during
class at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania
in 1901. (Frances Benjamin Johnston/Library of Congress)
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CARLISLE, PA In the summer of 1901, a petite 12-year-old
girl was plucked from an orphanage in Alaska and shipped across
the continent by boat and train. She arrived in Pennsylvania 25
days and 4,000 miles later, a world away from the windswept island
in the Bering Sea where she was born, where her Aleut heritage went
back generations.
So began the final chapter in the heartbreakingly short life of
Sophia Tetoff, one that would end five years later at the Carlisle
Indian Industrial School in rural Pennsylvania.
Sophia was among more than 100,000 Indigenous children placed in
an estimated 375 boarding schools throughout the United States from
the late 1800s through the 1960s. All operated on the belief that
such youth could be civilized if removed from their
tribal environment.
To take children away from their homes and families and subject
them to assimilation is to commit cultural genocide, said
Christine DiinDiisi McCleave, executive director of the National
Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
Many people are now trying to atone for that painful legacy, including
the U.S. Army. Its War College and Carlisle Barracks occupy what
had been the school grounds, which became the burial grounds for
Sophia and at least 188 other students. The true number may never
be known, historians say, given poor record keeping, sloppy burial
practices and the relocation in 1927 of a cemetery so that a parking
lot could be constructed. Some surviving headstones are only marked
unknown.
Earlier this month, a private funeral ceremony was held at the
site for Sophia; two of her relatives attended from California.
The event marked the start of a month-long disinterment process,
the fourth time in five years that the remains of Carlisle students
are being returned to their birthplaces.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first
Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, has pledged
sustained action. In announcing the creation of the Federal
Indian Boarding School Initiative, she said Tuesday that the
department will identify boarding facilities, cemeteries and the
children buried there to uncover the truth about the loss
of human life, and the lasting consequences of the schools.
Haalands
own great-grandfather was a survivor of the Carlisle school.
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Carlisle Barracks
historical Quarters 3 was once the Carlisle Indian Industrial
Schools administrative building. (Curt Keester/U.S.
Army)
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The new focus comes in the wake of two shocking discoveries in
Canada, where hundreds of unmarked graves believed to hold Indigenous
children have recently been found at former residential schools
in British
Columbia and Saskatchewan.
As in the United States, they were often forcibly separated from
their families and barred from speaking their languages or maintaining
their traditions.
Until now, uncovering this history and tracing these children has
mostly relied on the determination of individuals toiling in archives
or online. Yet some names have been remembered and passed on in
moments of serendipity, which is how Sophia Tetoffs great-great-niece
learned of her ancestor several years ago.
Lauren Peters, a former commercial pilot in Winters, Calif., had
been involved in organizing a local cultural celebration of the
Aleuts. She got a call from a tribal elder looking for information
on lost girls from the islands off Alaskas southern coast
who had been students in Carlisle. He mentioned Sophia by name.
Tetoff, thats my family name, Peters responded.
The conversation triggered a quest that has changed her life.
Peters returned to school at the University of California at Davis
and began pursuing a PhD in Native American studies. As part of
her studies, she is documenting the Alaska Native children buried
in boarding school cemeteries across the United States.
Sophias story, she says, is emblematic of generations of
violence and exploitation targeting Indigenous people on the Aleutian
and Pribilof Islands. Many were enslaved by the Russian-American
Company, a fur-trading monopoly that established colonies in
Alaska during the early 19th century.
After the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the
Bureau of Indian Affairs directed its assimilation campaign at the
Aleuts
who also call themselves Unangax. At the same time, Protestant
missionaries began to set up and try to fill orphanages. A similar
effort was being pursued across the countrys western territories,
with missionaries as well as emissaries from the U.S. War Department
pressuring or even coercing tribal leaders to give up children as
part of treaty negotiations.
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Native American boys
work in the carriage shop at the Carlisle Indian Industrial
School in 1901. (Frances Benjamin Johnston/Library of Congress)
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That same year, Native
American girls attend a clothes-mending class at the school.
(Frances Benjamin Johnston/Library of Congress)
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In 1879, about 25 miles southwest of Harrisburg, Pa., the Carlisle
Indian Industrial School opened under the direction of Lt. Richard
Henry Pratt. It was the agencys flagship boarding school,
a model for later institutions, and it ultimately would house nearly
11,000 students representing 50 tribes. Some were as young as 4
when they arrived. Fewer than 800 would ever graduate.
Pratts stated goal was kill the Indian, save the man.
Upon arrival, children were stripped of their native dress and long
hair. Before and after images carefully document the
transformation.
Pratts vision was to rescue the children. But depriving
the children of identity and language was unconscionable,
said Barbara
Landis, a Carlisle-based historian who has done extensive research
on the school.
Little is known about Sophias five years there except that
she spent more than half her time on outings, when students
were sent to live with White families. The ostensible goal was for
them to learn how to adapt in White America, but the girls and boys
served as cheap labor during those placements, working in factories,
on farms or as domestic servants in households.
Sophia was on her fifth outing when she contracted tuberculosis
in 1905 and was sent back to Carlisle. She died a year later, thousands
of miles from home.
The school closed in 1918.
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Lauren Peters and her
son, Andrew, are relatives of Sophia Tetoff. Peters is documenting
the Alaska Native children buried in boarding school cemeteries
across the country. (Curt Keester/U.S. Army)
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Sophias gravesite lies beneath a weeping cherry tree in the
surviving Indian School Cemetery, surrounded by the Carlisle Barracks.
The small burial ground, marked with Army-issued marble headstones,
is squeezed between a busy on-base thoroughfare and the PX parking
lot. The names of several Sioux students who will be repatriated
this summer are etched in nearby headstones: Lucy Take the Tail
(Pretty Eagle), Rose Long Face (Little Hawk), Ernest Knocks Off
(White Thunder).
In a final indignity, one marker contains several errors. Sophias
surname is misspelled, and her tribe is listed as Chuskon,
which Peters thinks is either a made-up or mangled tribal name unrelated
to her heritage. Per military custom, the headstone will be destroyed
and the plot returned to green space.
Peters and her son, Andrew, flew to Pennsylvania for the service,
which was presided over by a Russian Orthodox priest. Andrew served
as a pallbearer, wrapping their ancestors remains in a fur
seal pelt to put her to bed in her box, she explained.
The stress Peters had felt in the buildup to the ceremony melted
away when she finally was there. There is one less child in
this cemetery, and thats a good day, she said, reflecting
on the experience. Sophia will lead the other Alaskans out
of that cemetery.
Her remains soon will travel under a Native American escort to
St. Paul Island in Alaska and will be buried with family members
at a pastoral cemetery by the sea.
What happened to her was a deep, dark, horrible thing,
said Peters, who plans to witness that final moment next month.
But we are excited that we are taking back what was stolen
from us. With that comes a lot of empowerment.
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The headstone of Sophia
Tetoff in the cemetery at the Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania
misspells her last name and incorrectly lists her tribe. (Curt
Keester/U.S. Army)
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The
National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
Our Mission: To lead in the pursuit of understanding and addressing
the ongoing trauma created by the US Indian Boarding School policy.
https://boardingschoolhealing.org
Aleutian
Pribilof Islands Association
Our Mission
- To provide self-sufficiency an independence
of the Unangan/Unangas by advocacy, training, technical assistance
and economic enhancement;
- To assist in meeting the health, safety
and well-being needs of each Unangan/Unangas community;
- To promote, strengthen and ensure the
unity of the Unangan; and
- To strengthen and preserve Unangax
cultural heritage.
https://www.apiai.org
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