The leader of an American Indian tribe is concerned that a former Kansas boarding school will be left out of a federal initiative seeking to determine whether thousands of Native American children were buried at schools across the country in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes said federal authorities have not indicated whether the the Shawnee Indian Mission in Fairway, Kansas, would be part of the investigation U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland launched last month. Barnes said he and others worry the Kansas school could be overlooked because it was run by the Methodist church, rather than the federal government, as were many other boarding schools for Indigenous children.
Much of the conversation since the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative was announced has centered on federally run schools such as the notorious Carlisle Indian Reform School in Pennsylvania, which promoted the idea of erasing American Indian culture and assimilating Indigenous children into white society. Barnes noted many of the boarding schools, including the one in Kansas, operated for decades before the Carlisle school opened in 1879.
"There's been a lot of rumor and innuendo about what they are going to investigate," Barnes said. "We are in touch with the federal government and lobbyists to help educate them that the Indian mission system didn't start with Carlisle."
A spokesman for the Department of the Interior said in an email the agency has only recently begun working on the federal program and no information was yet available about individual locations.
Barnes said making distinctions between federally run schools that forcibly removed children from their families and church-run schools that "persuaded" families to send their children to the schools is offensive "hair-splitting" because both types had the same mission.
Congress contracted with Indian agents to work with missionaries to convince Native American families to send their children to church-run schools. They attempted to convince the families they would have no future if they stayed with their tribes, which had been forced to walk to Kansas in the 1800s as part of what became known as the Trail of Tears, Barnes said.
"It was coercion," Barnes said. "(Tribal families) were told if they wanted to fit in, they needed to not act so different, behave and get along. It was considered the best solution for our future."