{"id":38478,"date":"2024-07-16T18:36:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T22:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/?p=38478"},"modified":"2024-07-16T18:39:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T22:39:41","slug":"bring-our-kids-home-winnebago-tribe-in-court-over-children-buried-at-indian-boarding-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2024\/07\/16\/bring-our-kids-home-winnebago-tribe-in-court-over-children-buried-at-indian-boarding-school\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Bring our kids home’: Winnebago Tribe in court over children buried at Indian boarding school"},"content":{"rendered":" \"Winnebago<\/a>
Representatives of the Winnebago Tribe, along with the Native American Rights Fund, Cultural Heritage Partners and Big Fire Law and Policy Group, pose outside of the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, on July 12, 2024. Photo by Indianz.Com (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n
‘Bring our kids home’: Winnebago Tribe in court over children buried at Indian boarding school<\/div>\r\n
Tuesday, July 16, 2024<\/div>\r\n
By Acee Agoyo<\/div>\r\n
Indianz.Com<\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nALEXANDRIA, Virginia —\r\nA federal judge here is weighing a decision that the Winnebago Tribe<\/a> hopes will set a strong precedent at one of the most infamous Indian boarding schools in the nation.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nTwo Winnebago children — Samuel Gilbert and Edward Hensley<\/a> — are known to have died while attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School<\/a>. But the Department of the Army<\/a>, the military agency that controls the cemetery where the boys and hundreds of other tribal youth are buried, is refusing to repatriate the remains<\/a> under a key federal law.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nAccording to the federal government, the U.S. Army does not have to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act<\/a>, the law known as NAGPRA. So a delegation of Winnebago leaders and citizens packed a federal courthouse in Virginia<\/a> last week to stand up for the children whose voices have been denied for more than a century.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n“Those children at Carlisle never had a choice,” Chairwoman Victoria Kitcheyan said in an interview on Friday after the hearing in Alexandria, a colonial-era city whose own dark history is being re-examined<\/a>. \r\n

<\/p>\r\n“Now that tribes recognize that, and have the fitness to bring our kids home, it’s the most important \r\nthing that they be laid to rest with the protocols that each unique tribe holds as sacred,” Kitcheyan told Indianz.Com.\r\n

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The Winnebago Tribe is suing the federal government to recover the remains of two children who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

\n\t\t\"Indianz.Com\"\t\tIndianz.Com\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nKitcheyan acknowledged that the tribe could seek to reclaim Samuel and Edward, who were sent from the Winnebago Reservation<\/a> in northeastern Nebraska to Carlisle in 1895, under U.S. Army regulations. But she said doing so would subject family members of the youth to even more bureaucratic hurdles, thus defeating the purpose of NAGPRA, which requires the return of ancestral remains to their rightful places.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n“They’re going to jerk us around,” Kitcheyan said of the Army’s complex regulations governing disinterment<\/a> of human remains.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“And we think that no agency is exempt from Congress’s intentions and we feel that the tribe has rights under NAGPRA,” Kitcheyan added. “For the Army to ignore those rights is just disrespectful and inappropriate.”\r\n

<\/P>\r\nDuring the hearing, the federal government did not dispute that Samuel and Edward are buried at the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery<\/a> in Pennsylvania. According to an Army study, at least 179 Indian children have been laid to rest there.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nBut Peter K. Dykema, an attorney from the Department of Justice<\/a>, argued that the cemetery at Carlisle does not meet the definition of a “holding or collection” under NAGPRA<\/a>, drawing a comparison to the museums, federal agencies and educational institutions that are covered by the law. As a result, he said that the Army should not be required to remove the Winnebago children from the gravesite.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n“NAGPRA does not require the exhumation of remains,” Dykema told Judge Claude M. Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia<\/a>.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nDykema went further and warned that a victory by Winnebago would open the doors for other tribes to seek the repatriation of ancestors from hundreds of federally-run cemeteries<\/a> — and even from any parcel of the millions of acres of public lands<\/a> controlled by the United States.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“I’m not saying that’s bad,” Dykema said, “but it would be a huge undertaking.”\r\n

<\/p>\r\n

On June 7, in the U.S. District Court of Virginia, the Winnebago Tribe of NE filed its response to the Army\u2019s motion to dismiss their demand to bring home the remains of two boys who died at the Carlisle Boarding School. Read more: https:\/\/t.co\/WFT70wUM8j<\/a> #BoardingSchoolHealing<\/a><\/p>— Native American Rights Fund (@NDNrights) July 2, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>