I've been working on the biography of a World War II nurse, a Lakota woman, for some time now, and yesterday, once more, I was going over the time in her life that she spent at a boarding school on the reservation where she lived. She's almost 100-years old, but she remembers the 1930s well, especially those years she and her sister spent at the boarding school. She says she had some teachers who were good and wonderful, but most all of the stories of that time in her life--she was just a child--are not good and wonderful.
All schools were not alike, but for her and literally thousands of other Native kids, those boarding schools kept them from home and parents and family, not to mention heritage and culture. School years stretched out so long that by the end of the year some little ones didn't remember their mothers.
I can't help wondering whether we white folks are at it again?
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