«There's no guarantee until researchers can dig into the ground»
Archaeologists are digging for children who died at a Native American boarding school in Nebraska. A century ago, dozens of children died at the school, but their burial sites were lost by time.
Archaeologists have begun excavating the remains of children who died at a boarding school for Native Americans in Nebraska. The burial sites of dozens of children who died at the Indian industrial school of American Genoa have been lost for decades — a mystery that archaeologists seek to solve by excavating a field that a century ago was part of a sprawling campus.
The town of Genoa, Nebraska was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools that separated Native children from their families and cut them off from their heritage, according to the Associated Press.
Newspaper clippings, recordings and a letter from a student indicate that at least 86 students died at the school, usually due to diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid fever, while at least one death was blamed on accidental shooting.
For decades, the inhabitants of the tiny community of Genoa, with the help of Native Americans, researchers and government officials, have been searching for the location of a forgotten cemetery where the bodies of up to 80 students are believed to be buried.
Researchers have identified the names of 49 children, but have not been able to find the names for 37. The bodies of some of these children were returned to their homes when they died, but others are believed to have been buried on school grounds in a long forgotten location.
The school, located about 90 miles (145 km) west of Omaha, opened in 1884 and during its heyday was home to almost 600 students from over 40 tribes across the country. The establishment closed in 1931 and most of the buildings were long since demolished.
As part of an effort to locate the cemetery, last summer dogs, trained to recognize the faint smell of decaying remains, searched the area and reported finding a burial site on a narrow a piece of land bordering a farmer's field, railroad tracks and a canal.
A team using ground-penetrating radar also showed an area last November that matched the graves, but there's no guarantee until researchers can dig into the ground, said Dave Williams, a Nebraska archaeologist.
< p>This process is expected to take a few days.
“We're going to dismantle the soil and first see if what the GPR shows actually looks like a grave,” Williams said. “And once we've sorted that out, we'll film the site and determine if there are any other human remains in the area.”
If human remains are found during excavations, the state archeology department will continue to work with the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs to decide what to do next. According to Williams, the remains could be reburied in a field and created a memorial, or exhumed and returned to the tribes.
According to Williams, DNA can point to the region of the country where each child came from, but narrow it down to individual tribes would not be easy.
The federal government is taking a closer look at the boarding school system. The U.S. Department of the Interior, led by Secretary of State Deb Haland, a member of New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo and First Native American Cabinet Secretary, released an initial report in 2022 and is working on a second report with more details.
In some At least 500 children have died in schools, but this number is expected to reach into the thousands or tens of thousands as research continues.
Sunshine Thomas-Bear, a member of the Winnebago tribe and its Director of Cultural Preservation, visited the archaeological site excavations on Tuesday. She said that her father was a survivor of a Native American boarding school, and that the trauma of those institutions was passed down from generation to generation.
“I want to help heal my people, let them know what I'm watching. If anything is found, I will report it,” Thomas-Bear said. “All this is under development. It's just one single step.”