Thread by @TelegraphWorld

❌ This is the story of a dark chapter in the US’s origin story it has tried hard to bury ever since.

From the 1880s to the 1990s a forced assimilation programme saw nearly a million Indian Americans sent away to residential schools

@Josiensor reports 🧵
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

Until now, the programmes had not even been formally acknowledged by the US government.

❌ They were characterised by many today as a form of cultural genocide

🇺🇸 But last month, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold a position in cabinet, announced an investigation to “uncover the truth” of what really happened at these schools

🗣️“My grandparents were stolen from their families when they were only eight years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture and communities."

"Many children like them never made it back home” said Deb Haaland

Kills Seven Horses was 12 when he was taken from his family to Pennsylvania to be “civilised” in a boarding school.

🔴 His plaits - a source of pride for many Native people - were cut

🔴 His traditional clothes were replaced with a blazer

🔴 He was given the name Alvan

Kills Seven Horses died and was buried with little ceremony just three years later on Carlisle Indian Industrial School land next to dozens of other young pupils who never returned home

telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

The white marble stone marking the young boy’s grave read only:

“Alvan Sioux, March 22, 1881”.

It took a while for Ione Quigley to realise that this was where her great-uncle was buried, she had always known of him by his Native American name

Thanks to the efforts of Ione Quigley, earlier this year the Rosebud Sioux tribe was finally granted permission to repatriate Kills Seven Horses and 9 other ancestors

🗣️“Because his life was cut short, we'll never know whether his vision quest would come true,” Mrs Quigley said

🔴 Mrs Quigley has been to the gravesite every day for the past three weeks, where she has been carefully disinterring the bodies and documenting what they find.

It has been physically and emotionally challenging work.

🗣️“I know that this process will be painful,” she said

🔴 In the 40 years it was open, nearly 11,000 students from 50 different tribes passed through Carlisle Indian Industrial School’s doors, including Kills Seven Horses.

❌ Some 200 died - mostly of disease, but some of malnutrition and abuse.

Fewer than 800 would ever graduate.

🗣️“Those that died were thrown into the ground with little thought. They were seen as sub-human, as incidental. It’s just tragic” says Barbara Landis, a Carlisle Indian School biographer

🔴“This is where the historical trauma began,” said Mrs Quigley

“They were taught to hate their own identity"

🗣️“It has created a dysfunctional society, where now we see alcohol and drug abuse, violence. There is just so much pain that hadn’t been there before,” she said

“It won’t undo the heartbreak and loss we feel. But only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that we’re all proud to embrace” said Mrs Quigley

Read the full report from @Josiensor ⬇️
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…