Stolen identity

In 1975 the US Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which granted tribes the ability to take over responsibility for the programs that had been administered by the federal government. Three years later the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed, giving Native American parents the legal right to refuse their child's placement in a school.

This seemed to be the death knell for most boarding schools, but some remain. There are still 73 schools in the US that can be traced to the old boarding school days in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, Montgomery says. Fifteen are still boarding schools for indigenous children, albeit operating on a different curriculum that incorporates the students' indigenous culture. The rest, including the Haskell school, formally known as the United States Indian Industrial Training School, have evolved into public schools or colleges.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic Anderson went daily to work at the Haskell University where he would drive past a cemetery with about 100 headstones, all belonging to early boarding school students. On the same campus, their one-time existence is also recalled in the 123-year-old Hiawatha Hall, still standing, built by students "out of native Kansas limestone".

"We still live in a colonial society," Anderson says. "The relationship between the United States government and the American Indian people, while much improved than it was 100 years ago, is still a colonial one. The reservations still exist. The federal policies that affect us still exist. And the history of jurisprudence with relationship to native people still holds precedent in legal cases."

Elsewhere, Montgomery, who has both African and Native American blood and refers to herself as "a unique byproduct of American colonialism", has found few physical remains of the boarding schools except for stone foundations. "While I stood on top of them, I couldn't help but feel how isolating and confining life must have been for the children."