For decades, the federal government took Native American children from their families and sent them to boarding schools around the United States, including to the one in Pipestone, Minn., a small, southwestern town eight miles from the South Dakota border.

Those schools, most of which have been closed for decades, are now at the center of a new federal investigation.

In June, the Department of the Interior announced a comprehensive review of the "troubling legacy" of American Indian boarding school facilities in the U.S.

The Pipestone school is expected to be included in the probe, as well as the American Indian boarding school in Flandreau, South Dakota, 18 miles west of Pipestone.

The investigation came as a result of the discovery of hundreds of human remains on the grounds of residential schools for indigenous children in Canada.

The final report, expected in April 2022, will identify boarding school facilities in the U.S. and will examine any "known and possible student burial sites" near those grounds.

The news of the mass graves in Canada has sent tribal leaders and native people in Minnesota into the archives, eager to learn more about what is being called the state's "hidden history."

"There is a desire to know if there is a similar story, an unknown story," historian Brenda Child said.

Child, a Northrop Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, is a leading expert on American Indian boarding schools. The Red Lake Nation member was the first to write about the American Indian experience in these facilities and is sharing her work with tribes across the state.


"Tribal leaders in Minnesota want to know, did kids die in boarding schools in Minnesota or in other states where we sent our children?" she said.


See the full investigative report: https://kstp.com/news/hidden-history-...