History has the important job of making us feel the injustices that others endured.

In Canton, the Hiawatha Golf Course is next to a cemetery where 120 Native Americans are buried. They died while living on those grounds at a federal insane asylum, which had a history of abuse and neglect a century ago. It’s a story that hasn’t been widely known in our state.

History shows that in the late 1890s, South Dakota Sen. R.F. Pettigrew wanted to build a national institution for Indians who had gone mad. Some doubted his idea, but others liked it because they saw it as a tool to assimilate Native Americans. In the end, reasons people were sent there had little to do with insanity. Some people were sent for practicing their culture or because someone thought they were a problem, or because they were having too many children. The facility was open for 31 years and took in hundreds of people from across the country.