When two Native American boys from Nebraska died after being taken to a notorious boarding school hundreds of miles away in Pennsylvania, they were buried there without notice. Nearly 130 years later, the tribe wants the boys’ remains returned home.
So far, the Army has refused to return the remains of Samuel Gilbert and Edward Hensley to the Winnebago Tribe. A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the tribe accuses the military of ignoring a law passed more than 30 years ago aimed at hastening the return of the deceased to Indian land.
Samuel attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania for only 47 days when he died in 1895. Edward spent four years at the school before dying in 1899. Both died in their teens, but records do not show their exact ages. Tribal leaders were not notified when the boys died, and family members never found out what killed them.
The tribe submitted a formal request to the Office of Army Cemeteries for the remains in October, but learned in December that the request had been denied, according to the lawsuit filed Jan. 17.
“The military always tried to maintain a position of control and dominance over the indigenous peoples while they were alive — and while they were dead,” said Greg Werkheiser of Cultural Heritage Partners, one of the tribe’s attorneys.
The bodies lie with those of about 180 other children in a cemetery not far from where the school once stood in Carlisle, about 1,100 miles from the tribe’s eastern home in Nebraska. The cemetery functions as a “tourist attraction,” the lawsuit said.
A spokesperson for the Office of Army Cemeteries said she cannot comment on pending litigation. But the spokesperson said in an email that Samuel and Edward, along with other children who died at the boarding school, were buried in individual graves with named headstones.
“The cemetery is a dignified resting place that shows respect and care for all the deceased buried there and is absolutely not treated as a tourist attraction,” the spokesperson said.
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School in south-central Pennsylvania, the first government-run school for Native Americans, was founded by a former military officer, Richard Henry Pratt. He believed that Native Americans could be a productive part of society, but only through assimilation.
After it opened in an old army barracks in 1879, thousands of Native American children were sent to Carlisle by train and stagecoach. Drastic measures were taken to separate them from their culture, including cutting their braids, dressing them in military uniforms and punishing them for speaking their native language. They were forced to adopt European names.
By the time it closed in 1918, more than 10,000 children from more than 140 tribes passed through the school, including Olympian Jim Thorpe. The children – often taken against the wishes of their parents – endured harsh conditions that sometimes led to death from tuberculosis and other diseases. The remains of some of the dead were returned to their tribes. The rest are buried in Carlisle.
After the school closed, the property was transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of War. It was used by the military for a rehabilitation hospital and the Medical Field Service School.
The OAC spokesperson said the original cemetery was “in an inappropriate location next to the pre-existing rubbish dump and forge”, so the remains were moved to another location at Carlisle Barracks in 1927. Military personnel, veterans and their families are also buried there.
In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA. It allowed remains to be returned to tribes at their request. But the lawsuit said the Army refused to follow that law and instead required the tribe to adhere to an Army policy.
The difference: While NAGPRA requires the remains to be returned, Army policy gives the service the freedom to decide if, and when, to do so. It also requires a request from the boys’ “next of kin” — which the lawsuit says is “nearly impossible to apply in these circumstances.”
“Defendants’ conduct perpetuates an evil that the United States Congress sought to correct when it enacted NAGPRA in 1990,” the lawsuit said.
The military has exhumed 32 remains of Native American children at its expense since 2017, the OAC spokesperson said.
But Werkheiser said the remains were not technically returned to the tribes, but rather to the children’s relatives, and often after an arduous wait. He said using the Army process instead of NAGPRA “strips the tribes of all their political rights.”
Tribes whose remains have been returned include the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, Spirit Lake, Washoe, Umpqua, Ute, Rosebud Sioux, Northern Arapaho, Blackfeet, Oglala Sioux, Oneida, Omaha, Modoc, Iowa and Alaska Natives.
“The Winnebago, after listening to what all these other tribes went through, said, ‘We’re not going to play this game. We’re not going to be bullied. ”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first secretary of India’s Cabinet, has pushed the government to take into account its role in India’s boarding schools. In 2022, her office released a report naming the 408 schools the federal government supported to strip Native Americans of their culture and identity. At least 500 children died in some schools, including Carlisle.
The lawsuit states that the Winnebago Tribe “continues to experience the pain of knowing that the spirits of Samuel and Edward remain lost.”
“The way Winnebago sees it is that the boys have been waiting almost 125 years to come home,” said another attorney involved in the lawsuit, Beth Wright of the Native American Rights Fund. “Their minds cannot rest and neither can they.” We cannot continue unless they are returned to the place from which they were taken.”