More stories emerging about Native boarding school trauma

WHITE EARTH NATION, Minn. (AP) — American Indian children from White Earth Nation and other reservations were sent to boarding schools across the country, starting in the late 1800s. The federal government used the schools to separate Native children from their families, culture and language, part of an effort to assimilate American Indians into white society.

There were at least 16 Indian boarding schools in Minnesota, most operated by religious orders. Many children were deeply traumatized by physical and sexual abuse, punished for speaking their language and stripped of their culture.

“There was a lot lost at that time — loss of culture, loss of identity,” said Joe LaGarde, a White Earth tribal elder. “And that’s all a part of how you take a person’s land. You take away their identity. Once they lose that, it’s a lot easier to deal with them.”

But this story isn’t just about a long ignored piece of American history.

Many in Indian Country believe the boarding school trauma that happened decades ago is still evident today in broken families, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental illness.

Earlier this year, Susan Rudolph, prioress of St. Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, acknowledged that connection when she sent a two-page letter to the White Earth Nation, apologizing for the religious order’s role in the boarding school located there for decades.

Children, she wrote, were forcibly taken from their families and placed in mission boarding schools with an “intentional plan to root out” Native ways. “The ripple effect of that wound lingers in the memory, the culture, and the documented history of your people for all time.”

A tribal official said it was one of the first direct apologies from a religious order to a tribal nation in the United States, Minnesota...