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Celebrate and explore Native American Heritage Month with WKAR!

Home From School: The Children Of Carlisle | Independent Lens

HOME FROM SCHOOL
Courtesy
/
Caldera Productions
Tribals members pay their respects at Little Chief's reburial at Sharp Nose Cemetery, Wind River Reservation, WY.

Tue. Nov 23 at 9 p.m. on WKAR-HD 23.1 & STREAMING | 130 years after Native American boys died at an Indian boarding school, their tribe tries to bring them home.

Northern Arapaho tribal members travel from Wyoming to Pennsylvania to retrieve the stories and the remains of three children who died at Carlisle Indian boarding school in the 1880s.

“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man” was the guiding principle of the U.S. government-run boarding school system that removed thousands of Native American children from their families and homes.

The children were forced through a military-style, remedial education, a brutal assimilation tactic that stripped them of their languages, traditions, and culture. Many died whilst in attendance of these schools and those who survived would return home emotionally scarred and traumatized.

An old photograph of a large crowd of Native American children who attended Carlisle Indian Training School.
Courtesy
/
Repository: National Archives and Records Administration
"Pupils of this school" Carlisle Indian Training School, 1885

Home From School: The Children of Carlisle dives into the history of the flagship federal boarding school and chronicles the modern-day journey of tribal members who seek to recover what remains of the Arapaho children. In a quest to heal generational wounds, the Northern Arapaho forge the way for other tribes to follow.

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