Rival Chinese and U.S. Companies Respond to Controversial Questions from Indian Country

Standing Rock 2016. Photo by Ryan Vizzions.

Rival Chinese and U.S. Companies Respond to Controversial Questions from Indian Country

Today: U.S. ChatGPT's Failed Responses

The new U.S. ChatGPT, financed by billionaires, obtained a contract to serve U.S. agencies with information this week. We asked the search platform questions about Standing Rock, and the upcoming case Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace and Red Warrior Society.

It failed to provide the correct answers more than a dozen times. It repeatedly gave outdated and incorrect information. After an hour of being unable to answer basic questions, which are stated in court documents, it finally gave up and said: "You've reached our limit of messages for the hour."

It did not correctly identify Heath Harmon as an FBI informant. It did not even give the correct names of the defendants shown in the upcoming court case, Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace and Red Warrior Society. It gave information that was three years old involving Energy Transfer's subpoena issued to Unicorn Riot media.

In our questions today, we asked who was identified in the court document as a defendant and member of the Red Warrior Society. The search platform repeatedly was unable to answer, and tossed out various names every time it was asked. As can be seen here, it incorrectly identified Clyde Bellecourt as the leader of Red Warrior Society. We pointed out that Clyde was co-founder of the American Indian Movement, not the Red Warrior Society.

Our research reveals that this industry planning to make big money off of other peoples data with AI, artificial intelligence, is deeply flawed, and potentially dangerous.

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Updated Feb. 1, 2025

We asked the rival Chinese-owned and U.S.-backed search platforms a series of controversial questions from Indian country, on torture in residential schools, critical injuries of water protectors at Standing Rock, bordertown racism in Rapid City, and federal lawsuits filed against Deb Haaland while she was Interior Secretary.

We asked if the Rio Puerco wash, flowing by Navajo communities, was contaminated by the Church Rock uranium spill. We also asked who were the Lakota Red Warriors.

Controversial Search Engines Do Not Reveal U.S. Interior's Failure to Report Thousands of Boarding School Deaths

Controversial Search Engines Do Not Reveal U.S. Interior's Failure to Report on Thousands of Boarding School Deaths

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, January 30, 2025

The controversial new search platforms owned by a Chinese company, DeepSeek, and U.S. billionaires, ChatGPT, did not respond accurately to the question of the U.S. Interior's failed report on the number of deaths of Native children in U.S. boarding schools.

Leonard Peltier's Conviction: Chinese and U.S. Search Platforms Respond Differently to Case

Leonard Peltier's Conviction: Chinese and U.S. Search Platforms Respond Differently to Case

Leonard Peltier's Conviction: Chinese and U.S. Search Platforms Respond Differently to the Case. The Responses Reveal a Flaw: The AI Platforms are Not Up to Date. 

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, January 30, 2025

Was Leonard Peltier unfairly convicted? The Chinese-owned DeepSeek, and the U.S. backed ChatGPT search platforms, responded differently when asked if Leonard Peltier was unfairly convicted of killing two FBI agents.

The responses show a major flaw in AI, artificial intelligence, search platforms. They are not current. Both search platforms failed to show Peltier was granted clemency last week by President Biden, with a release date of February 18, 2025.

Mohawk Nation News 'Carney's Carnival -- Step Right Up, Folks!'

New today at Mohawk Nation News

Read and watch at MNN

https://mohawknationnews.com/blog/2025/01/29/carneys-carnival-step-right-up-folks/

 

China's 'DeepSeek' confirms U.S. boarding schools were genocide -- but rival U.S. fails to confirm genocide

Sicangu children at Rosebud in South Dakota in 1987 before the Lakota children entered  Hampton boarding school in Virginia. Photo Library of Congress

China's DeepSeek confirms U.S. boarding schools were genocide, but rival U.S. company fails to confirm genocide

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Jan. 29, 2025

In the race to scrape up all the data in the world, a Chinese company and a U.S. company are in a race to the top, or the bottom, in the AI, artificial intelligence industry, depending on your perspective. They are in the business of answering questions -- using other peoples data -- on new search platforms.

There's billions at stake, and the Chinese startup caused the biggest market value loss in U.S. history -- $600 billion -- in the stock market on Monday.

There' also a mother's statement about her son's murder and a cover-up of the industry's copyright violations. And now, ChatGPT is set to make a fortune with a new U.S. government contract this week, providing the scraped up data to government agencies.

We asked the Chinese-owned DeepSeek this question: Did U.S. boarding schools commit genocide? DeepSeek confirms that boarding schools are responsible for genocide. On the other hand, the big money U.S. rival ChatGPT says, it's just a matter of perspective.

DeepSeek confirms it was genocide.

Leonard Peltier's Spiritual Advisor Lenny Foster 'Prayer, Clemency and the Road Ahead'

Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier's Spiritual Advisor Lenny Foster: 

Prayer, Clemency and the Road Ahead

"Geronimo died in captivity in Fort Sills, Oklahoma, we certainly didn't want that to happen to Leonard Peltier." -- Lenny Foster, Dine', Peltier's spiritual advisor in federal prison.

Article by Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Jan. 27, 2025

Video interview

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tony Gonzales, AIM West, thanked people around the world for their support for freedom for Leonard Peltier, who is scheduled to be released on Feb. 18 after a grant of clemency. Tony shares an interview with Lenny Foster, Dine', spiritual advisor to Leonard Peltier.

Tony Gonzales, AIM West, shares an interview with Leonard Peltier's spiritual advisor, Lenny Foster, Dine', and welcomes all to watch a film about Peltier.

Lenny, Peltier's spiritual advisor in the federal penitentiary from March, 1985 to September 29, 2018, continues to pray with him. "I'm very happy that our prayers have been answered."

"It's been a long haul, 50 years, I feel like I've done time with him," Lenny said during the interview with Morning Star Gali, Pomo, broadcast on AIM West TV.

Buried in History: The Native Children who Died in U.S. Boarding Schools and Were Not Reported

The U.S. Interior Did Not Report Thousands of Children's Deaths in U.S. Boarding Schools

(Photo) Geronimo's People: Say Their Names -- Chiricahua Apache children transferred from prison in Florida to Carlisle Indian School in 1886. More Apache children with Geronimo imprisoned in Florida were transferred with Geronimo to the barracks at Mount Vernon in Alabama. From there, Apache children were sent to Carlisle Indian School in the winter and spring of 1886-1887. Of the 106 students who arrived at Carlisle from Mount Vernon, 27 died and more were dying in May of 1889 at Carlisle. Shortly after being taken to Carlisle, during the year of 1887, the teenagers began dying from tuberculosis. Skahsejah, Skah-se-jah, 17, died in June. Eric Gatay, 18, died in October. Fourteen-year-old Edna Graham, Bet-ah-kat-oth, died in July. The following year, more of the children died from tuberculosis. Basil Ekarden, E-kard-en died in March. He was 16. Alida Booth,Ta-pe-na-nah-clin-ah, 15, died in April of 1888. Simon Dakosin, Dak-o-sin, 14, died in June. More of the children and teenagers died from tuberculosis and consumption, the Washington Post's raw data shows. -- Censored News.


(Photo: Albuquerque Indian School, May 10, 1884.) The U.S. Interior did not report the large number of children who died in Albuquerque Indian School. The raw data from Washington Post shows epidemics of tuberculosis, and pneumonia, killed Dine', Pueblo, Apache and Hopi children during epidemics in 1892 and 1911 -- 1912. The Meriam Report in 1928 exposed the U.S. negligence and the overcrowding, lack of food and failed medical care that accelerated the diseases. -- Censored News



Walapai (Hualapai) students in Hackberry, Arizona 1900

The U.S. Interior drastically under-reported the deaths of children at Chemawa Indian School in Oregon.


'Run, run as fast as you can'

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Updated Feb. 1, 2025

Censored News is examining the raw data from Washington Post, and continuing to expand this article on the thousands of deaths of children in boarding schools that the U.S. Interior did not report. Who were the children, what did they die from, and why is it being covered up in history?

Thousands of Native children died in U.S. boarding schools that were not reported by the U.S. Interior Department in its recent report. Suffering from malnutrition, diseases and abuse, the largest number of unreported children's deaths were at Chemawa Indian Training School in Oregon, followed by Haskell Indian Industrial School in Kansas. The largest total number of deaths were at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

The year-long investigation by The Washington Post documented that 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970 -- three times as many deaths as reported by the U.S. Interior Department. The actual number of deaths could be as high as 40,000, since deaths of children in unmarked graves were either never reported or the records were destroyed.

Colorado Boarding Schools "Filthy and Abusive"




Teller Boarding School in Grand Junction, Colorado -- Thirty seven children died here between 1894 and 1910. The causes of death are typhoid, tuberculosis, pneumonia, kidney problems, blood clot and drowning. They were Dine' (Navajo,) Shoshone, Tohono O'odham, Mescalero Apache, San Carlos Apache and Yuma, Washington Post's data shows.

At Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School in Hesperus, Colorado, Southern Ute, Navajo, White Mountain Apache, Pima and Pueblo children died of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases in the early 1900s. An estimated 1,100 children from 20 Native tribes attended the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School in Colorado for 17 years.

"At Fort Lewis, students and staff were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Thomas Breen, a longtime superintendent of the school whose abuses came to light in a series of Denver Post articles in 1903," reports Chalkbeat.

"Students lived in poor conditions. Illness was common. Raw sewage and putrid water conditions were frequent problems at the Grand Junction school. The Fort Lewis school also was hard to heat in the winter, making for miserable conditions."

Twenty-six children died at Fort Lewis of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, scrofula, fever and pneumonia. Seven of the children were Southern Ute, and five were White Mountain Apache. The other children were Mescalero Apache, Dine', Pueblo, and O'odham.

Mary, Southern Ute, was 12 years old.

At Ute Mountain Boarding School in Towaoc, ten children died. Seven children died at Southern Ute Boarding School in Ignacio, Colorado.




Albuquerque Indian School Militarized Children


Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico

Dine', Pueblo and Apache children were forced to attend the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico, where they were militarized.

Native children were forced into militarization. Forced to cut their hair and not speak their language, the children were brainwashed into serving in the same U.S. military that murdered and massacred their people. The majority of children were Dine'. The U.S. government began seizing large numbers of children from their Navajo families in 1919 and without the consent of their families, the U.S. government sent them to distant boarding schools.

The U.S. Interior did not report the large number of children who died in Albuquerque Indian School. The raw data from Washington Post shows epidemics of tuberculosis, and pneumonia, killed Dine', Pueblo, Apache and Hopi children during epidemics in 1892 and 1911 -- 1912. The Meriam Report in 1928 exposed the U.S. negligence and the overcrowding, lack of food and failed medical care that accelerated the diseases.

Tuberculosis and pneumonia were the leading causes of death at the school, but children also died from typhoid, measles, anemia, sepsis, Addison's disease and injuries. A fifteen-year-old Maricopa Pima died of typhoid in 1890, and two more children died of typhoid in 1892. A Mescalero Apache boy died of typhoid in 1985, and another Apache boy of typhoid in 1916.

The U.S. Interior reported only 10 children died at Albuquerque Indian School.

The Washington Post documented 77 children who died.

Running Away: Native teen girls died running away in California




Native teenage girls died from the cold after being beaten with a strap and running away from the Greenville Indian Boarding School near Sacramento, California.

Five girls ran away from boarding school. Molly Lowry, 11, was one of the girls who died of freezing and exposure after being hit by a school worker in 1916. The following year, Edith Buckskin, 14, one of those who ran away, died from "exposure, frostbite, infections from subsequent amputations of feet and lower legs."

Across the nation, children who ran away died from freezing temperatures and infections from amputations from frostbite, including children at Greenville and Rapid City boarding school in South Dakota. Children died on the train tracks across the country. It remains unknown if they were sleeping from exhaustion, running, pushed or committed suicide.

When children were captured, they were beaten, and jailed at Chilocco and Haskell. At Rehoboth in Gallup, New Mexico, Dine' were chained in the basement. At Chemawa in Oregon, an eleven-year-old boy was shot and killed while running away.

Beverly Ogle, Maidu and Pit River, published four books about her people in what is known as California. In her last book, on boarding school victims, she relates the story of her own father.

Ogle's father Sidney Benner was taken to Fort Bidwell school in Modoc County, California, at the age of 10. By that time, kidnapping was a legal requirement and her grandmother had no recourse.

"Like many of the students in these schools, he and his brother ran away, but were caught by school patrols that used dogs. Sidney said the patrolmen would shoot their rifles over the childrens’ heads, 'Of course, the kids didn’t know they wouldn’t be shot,'" Ogle said.

Kate Mook's investigation into the deaths of the teenage Native girls at Greenville, California reveals how the deaths of the girls who ran away at Greenville are linked to today's murdered and missing in Indian country -- the failed investigations into abuse. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2100&context=etd


The Children at Chilocco

At Chilocco, children seized from their homes were doused with kerosene, forced to march military style, and punished in a guard house with bread and water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuQtljaCYzo&t=353s

Children died of preventable diseases at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, in a school marked by hunger, loneliness and failed medical care. The Washington Post data reveals the causes of death of children at Chilocco -- pneumonia, heart failure, epidemics of measles, and failed operations. There are 69 students buried in the school cemetery. More than 17,000 students were at the school during nearly a century of operations, from 1884 to 1980, north of Ponca City.


When children became sick at Chilocco, their parents were rarely informed. When students passed away, families received a form letter.
https://library.okstate.edu/search-and-find/collections/digital-collections/chilocco-indian-agricultural-school-photo-collection/





https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-boarding-schools/tree/main/schools/OK/Chilocco_Indian_Agricultural_School

The U.S. Interior reported only 12 deaths at Rapid City Indian Boarding School in South Dakota.

However, The Washington Post reveals there were 45 children that died there.

At the Pine Ridge Boarding School, the Interior reported only 4 children died. However, there are 10 deaths of children that are documented. The family names of the children are well known.

Charles Crowdog died in 1909 at Rapid City Indian Boarding School, where children were locked in jail cells, starved and beaten. James Means and Mark Sherman were run over on the train tracks while escaping, the Washington Post shows.




Luke Shell Necklace had only been sick a short time at Rapid City Boarding School when he died in a hospital after an operation in 1917. Luke was Cheyenne. He was seventeen years old. Abner Kirk, 12, Sisseton, died of cholera at the school in 1925. James Short Tree, Northern Cheyenne, died from suicide on April 20, 1921 at Rapid City Boarding School.

At St. Labre Indian Mission Boarding School in Montana, the Interior reported only one child died. However, thirty-three children are documented as dying there. The same Catholic boarding school was successfully sued by the Northern Cheyenne Nation for exploiting children in fundraising scams and funneling millions to the Catholic Church.

'Run, run as fast as you can'

Leonard Peltier described his abduction when he was nine years old on Turtle Mountain Little Shell in Belcourt, North Dakota. Leonard's words are in a letter to the Indigenous Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the Oneida Nation in 2014.

"Grandma was telling me, 'Leonard, run and hide' ( in midcef, a French and Chippewa Language Native people created). But I felt as if I was hypnotized. I could not move and stood frozen in place. Finally, grandma understood that she could be taken to jail," Leonard said in his statement, published here."On this particular fall September day, I was outside playing, waiting for breakfast. I could see coming down the road a few miles from our place this huge cloud of dust that could only be made from a high speeding car. I knew the only people who had cars that went that fast was the B.I. A."

"I knew that I was supposed to run into the woods and hide, this was normal and as children, we were taught this from an early age. If we didn't hide, the government would steal us and we may never be returned."

Leonard didn't escape, and was taken from the log cabin where he lived with his grandmother. Leonard describes the DDT poured on him at the shower, and the abuse that followed in Wahpeton boarding school in North Dakota.



Indigenoous Boarding School Tribunal at Green Bay, Wisconsin.


During the Indigenous Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Lakota, shared the story of a Lakota elder from Cheyenne River in South Dakota. At four years old, he was thrown against the wall repeatedly until his bones were broken for wetting the bed in boarding school. Now, he is over 70 years old and his back is still scarred from the beatings there.

Roxanna Banguis, Ed.D., Tlingit, Haida and Sechelt, said her mother told her that there were constant beatings in the boarding school in Sechelt B.C. When the school partially burned down, skeletons of babies were found in the walls.

"The sexual molesters, the predators, found a job where they can abuse children," Banguis told the Tribunal.

Yvonne Swan is Sinixt, "People of the Arrow Lakes, of the Colville Confederated Tribes from Washington State.

Speaking about the purpose of the Boarding School Tribunal, Swan said it is important to heal. "The United States took a lot of things from our people."

"We have to come from deep within, and get all that out."



Nationwide, tuberculosis was the leading cause of reported deaths in Indian boardischools in the U.S., Washington Post data shows. Sick children were often forced to sleep in the same bed with others, and the disease spread rapidly due to neglect.

Homicide and Scarlet Fever

The official reports do not list the names of all of the children who were murdered in the boarding schools operated by the U.S. government and Christian churches.

One homicide is documented at Cherokee Boarding School in Cherokee, North Carolina. Twelve-year-old Fred Warner Cooper was murdered in January of 1918, Washington Post data shows.

In Hopi's Keams Canyon, children died from scarlet fever, the Washington Post data reveals in a list of names and causes of death.




Typhoid, Malaria and Smallpox in Oklahoma and New Mexico boarding schools

At Seneca boarding school in Oklahoma, children died of typhoid. Two children died at Wealaka Boarding School in Leonard, Oklahoma, in 1901 from smallpox. Again, at the Jones Male Academy in Oklahoma in 1922, one child died of smallpox.

Even before Native children began dying as captives at Carlisle, children were dying at Fort Coffee Academy for Choctaw boys in eastern Oklahoma. Whooping cough, pneumonia and flu killed twelve boys in 1853.

At Kaw Boarding School in Washunga,OKlahoma, an unnamed child was shot and killed in 1906.

Malaria took the life of a unnamed girl at Wheelock Academy in Millerton, Oklahoma in June of 1914.

At Armstrong Academy in Bokchito,Oklahoma, two students were poisoned. Charles Wallace, 17, and Gissel Tonihka, died in March of 1910. Fire spread through the Dwight Mission School in Vian, Oklahoma in 1918, killing 13 children and teenagers.

Lester Kachina, Apache, died from typhoid at Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico in August.

Epidemics of typhoid killed children and teenagers at Sherman Institute in Riverside, California in the early 1900s.

At Sherman, Robert More, 16, Mono, died when he was hit on the head with a hammer on the athletic field in 1915.

The following year at Sherman, Maude Hope, 20, Paiute, Shoshone, Bannock from Idaho, died of gangrene. An epidemic of Spanish flu took the lives of Tohono O'odham and Pima teenagers at Sherman in 1918.

Jose Juan Francisco and Salvador, both 15 years old, and Tohono O'odham, Paiute, Shoshone and Bannock from Arizona, died after being hit by a streetcar in 1920.

Olin Zhebe Bolli was trying to make it home to Navajoland from Sherman. The report says he was running away and either fell to his death from a freight train while running away, or was found unconscious inside the freight train and died from exposure in 1921.

A fire at Joseph's Mission School in Culdesac, Idaho, a Catholic mission on Nez Perce land, killed six children. Rosalie Branchaud, 12, Andrew Fogarty, 9, Edward Switzler, 4 years old, Simon Broncheau, 5 years old, Lawrence Henry, 8 years old, and Max Ostenberg, 12, died in the fire in October of 1925.

Measles, whooping cough and infectious diseases took the lives of Quechan children in Fort Yuma, California.

Choctaw Indian Academy in Kentucky, the first federally- controlled Indian boarding school, 1825.

Cholera at Choctaw Indian Academy

Cholera was deadly at Choctaw Indian Academy in Sulphur, Kentucky in June of 1833. Nine Choctaw, Seminole and Miami boys and young men died from cholera. The original school, which failed due to lack of funding in 1818, was created by Baptists.

"The epidemic lasted three weeks and the death toll reached twenty-four: fourteen [enslaved], one white man, and nine students, including six Choctaws, one Miami, and two Seminoles. It was built in 1825 and was the first federally-controlled Indian boarding school," according to Kentucky History.With the first roots in the Baptist Church, Kentucky Senator Richard Johnson used money from the Choctaw treaty for education, and his connections at the War Department, to create the school, which ultimately led to a flow of wealth to him. Johnson's common law wife is described as mixed race and enslaved.

"Johnson’s property also included a plantation where he enslaved at least sixty people including his two daughters, Adaline and Imogene, and their mother Julia Chinn," Kentucky History states.

The U.S. Interior's concealment, and under-reporting of deaths in its report, are revealed in the death count at Fort Hall. One of the epidemics that spread through Fort Hall boarding school in Idaho, was scarlet fever which took the lives of children in 1891. The Interior reported a total of 15 deaths at Fort Hall -- but there were 110 children's deaths, Washington Post reports.

The Spanish Flu spread rapidly through Chemawa in Salem, Oregon, in 1918, killing Ojibwe, Aleut, Cree, Lummi, Nez Perce, Blackfeet, Yakama, Klamath, Suquamish, and Hoopa. They were all twelve years old or teenagers. Elmer Mitchell, an eight-year-old Alaskan Native, died of scarlet fever there in 1903.

Jennie Schulzhagen and Annie Jessen, Tlingit, died from drowning at Chemawa in 1907.

Charlie Fiester was shot and killed after he ran away from Chemawa in April of 1907. Charlie was eleven years old. He was Klamath, Modoc, Yahooskin, from Klamath, Oregon.

Chemawa continues to operate as a boarding school.

Measles took the lives of children at the Osage school in Kansas. Meningitis spread, killing Mescalero Apache children in New Mexico. On Whiteriver in Arizona, a fifteen-year-old boy committed suicide at Fort Apache in 1935.

James Lacey died in a blizzard while trying to run away from the Holy Family Mission and School in Piegan, Montana. His friend who was also running away with him carried James' body three miles to his mother's house, in 1895.

The flu killed more than 22 children at Pierre Indian School in South Dakota in 1919. As in the case of the other schools that Lakota children were incarcerated, children died running away, and from rampant infectious diseases and brutal force.

At Pierre, An unnamed child died of blood poisoning in 1897. Clarence Loudner, 12, drowned in 1928. Robert McLean drowned in 1948. Marvene Medicine Crow drowned while running away in 1967. Francis Red Bear, 15, was crushed by overturned dairy truck in 1959.

Brutal deaths in Genoa, Nebraska

The children's deaths at Genoa in Nebraska shows the brutal abuse. Abuse and neglect were rampant at Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska, where John Roubideaux from Rosebud in South Dakota died from blood loss and shock after being struck by a freight train in 1918.

Ernest Saul, Santee, died from blood poisoning there from a severely broken arm the same year, 1918.

At Genoa, Felix Milk Williams of Rosebud was "accidentally killed" with an injury to the neck by another student in 1921. Albert Cottier, 13, Assiniboine, died from blood poisoning from an abscessed tooth in 1930. Amos Cadue died from an "accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound from a sawed-off rifle" in 1925.

An unnamed child died from a ruptured spleen after being kicked by an employee at Genoa. Robert Potter's death was reported as an "accidental shot killed by another student when the two were playing with guns" in 1898. Clarence White was killed by a train in 1921. Clarence Walker, Winnebego, was crushed by a train at Genoa in 1927.“They were beaten up like dogs,” said Julia Carroll, an employee at the Genoa Indian Industrial School who testified before a congressional hearing in 1929. “I have seen those children beaten up until the blood would flow out of their noses.”

In Hawaii, Native children were murdered

Joe Kahakauila died suddenly after he told adults he was sick and was forced to work anyway at the Industrial and Reformatory School in Haleiwa, Hawaii. He was sprayed with a hose when they found him sleeping in 1918. Joe was forced to return to the reform school without notifying his family and family was not told of his death until after burial.

At the same school in Hawaii, William Keawe was beaten to death by a school guard in 1930.

On the Longest Walk, Haskell and Carlisle

On the Longest Walk northern route from coast to coast in 2008, walkers went to both Haskell and Carlisle and offered their respects to the children who died incarcerated, lonely and suffering. At Haskell in Kansas, the museum displayed the history in photos of children forced to work in the boarding school. They were underfed, sick with malnutrition, and imprisoned for running away. Haskell students told the walkers that children remain in unmarked graves in the wetlands.

(Photo) The Haskell jail, where children were punished and imprisoned for running away and breaking the rules. "There were severe physical and emotional consequences applied to the children for failing to abide by these new rules. They were often subjected to inadequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Later, in the period from 1910-1933, they would have been incarcerated in the Haskell jail, but prior to its construction, fruit storage cellars were used to punish students," said Haskell Cultural Center and Museum.

The long list of names of children who died at Haskell include an unnamed child who died of sepsis following a gunshot wound in 1916.

Native American students at Haskell said the remains of the children who ran away, and others who died and disappeared, are believed to remain here in the Haskell wetlands.

Jessica Lackey, member of the Cherokee Nation and the Wetlands Preservation Association described the reign of terror targeting Indian children beginning in the 1880s, including those who were brought here to Haskell Indian boarding school.

Haskell Indian Industrial School began in 1884, as Indian children were forcibly removed from their families. Young Indian children were torn from their families and brought here. They were taught Eurocentric ways and were the targets of forced assimilation into the mainstream culture. The goal was to get rid of their Native American culture.

“When they came to these schools, they weren’t allowed to speak their language. If they had long hair, it had to be cut. Often times they couldn’t associate with other family members that were at the schools with them. It was a very militaristic, harsh, system and a lot of them died,” Lackey said in 2012, after the Longest Walk.

The wetlands were a place where boys were taught to become farmers, because that was what the school administrators wanted them to become.

“But the wetlands were also a sanctuary, a site of resistance.”

The children often ran away to the wetlands to flee forced assimilation. Since the children’s parents were not allowed to come to the school or to stay in Lawrence because of racial prejudice, the families camped out here in the wetlands.

“The kids would run away to their families.”

“A lot of us believe that the wetlands are a final resting place of the children who ran away.”

Lackey said the cemetery has about 100 grave stones. However, hundreds of children are still missing and unaccounted for from Haskell Indian boarding school.

'The Children who Never Came Home,' Longest Walk Northern Route at Carlisle




Carlisle Indian Industrial School, founded in Pennsylvania in 1879, was among the first boarding schools to systematically kidnap Native children from their families, cut their hair, and abuse them if they spoke their language.

Carlisle opened in 1879 and operated for nearly 30 years with the motto of "kill the Indian and save the man."

The children began dying of infectious diseases when they arrived at Carlisle.

Ripped from their families, many were Lakotas from Rosebud in South Dakota who died in 1881.

Dennis,"Strikes First, son of Blue Tomahawk," 13, Lakota from Rosebud in South Dakota, died from pneumonia at Carlisle in January of 1881. Ernest,"Knocks Off, son of White Thunder," 19, Lakota from Rosebud, died of pharyngitis (throat infection) in December of 1880. Dora,"Her Pipe, daughter of Brave Bull," 17, Lakota from Rosebud, died in April of 1881 of pneumonia. Rose,"Red Rose, daughter of Long Face," 19, Lakota from Rosebud, died of congestion of lungs in April of 1881.

At Carlisle, Willie Curley, 9, Arapaho, died of pneumonia in May of 1881. Albert, son of Tulsey Mekko, Creek, Muscogee, Seminole, died of measles in April of 1881. Giles, son of Wooly Hair, 17, Cheyenne, died of congestion of the lungs in May of 1881. Frank Cushing, 12, Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, died of tuberculosis in July of 1881.

Stolen from their families, and brought to Carlisle, the children did not return, and many died as teenagers from disease and abuse.

Northern Arapaho from Wind River, Wyoming,"Little Chief, son of Sharp Nose" died in January, 1883 at Carlisle. Little Chief was 16.

Forced into harsh labor, they were starved and tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other diseases spread rapidly. This pattern of systematic genocide continued, as is documented in the forced sterilization of Native American women by doctors at the Indian Health Service.

Even after the forced sterilization was exposed in the 1970s, secretive medical research continued on Native victims who spoke little if any English. Johns Hopkins University has carried out vaccination experiments on both Navajo and White Mountain Apache children for the past 40 years at Indian Health Service hospitals on tribal lands in Arizona, with little information made available to the public. It is now documented on the Johns Hopkins website.





Sick and dying far from their families, tuberculosis and pneumonia took the lives of many children at Carlisle in Pennsylvania in the 1800s and early 1900s. In-nah-ilth-tah-hoze-hee died in July of 1888 from tuberculosis at Carlisle.

How se-eh Jose Kowseah, an eighteen-year-old Queres (Keres) Pueblo, died from suicide at Carlisle in April of 1886, the Washington Post and the digital record at Carlisle reveals.

Charles Packineau died in the spring, running away from Carlisle at the age of 21 in April 21, 1912. Charles Student file shows he is Hidatsa, and entered the school on November 11, 1906. Six years later he died running away at the age of 21.Lakota chiefs White Thunder, Swift Bear, and Spotted Tail wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., on December 27, 1880, asking for the return of the bodies of their dead children.

“Our hearts will grieve too long if we don’t have what’s left of them back. We want to dig their graves with our own hands, we wait when the birds begin to sing and the flowers begin to bloom…” There is no record of a response.


 

Fort Defiance, Tse Ho Tso, by O’Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882.

The U.S. Interior Failed to Report Widespread Deaths on the Navajo Nation

On the Navajo Nation, sixty-nine Dine' children died at the Fort Defiance Indian Boarding School. Sixty-six Dine' of the children died here during the years of 1911 through 1919, but the cause was not written.

The number was drastically under-reported by the U.S. Interior in its recent report, which says that only 13 children died in Fort Defiance, Tse Ho Tso, the Meadow Between the Rocks.

The Meriam report in 1928 revealed that the boarding school at Fort Defiance was turned into a trachoma school in January of 1927.

"All children enrolled there suffering with the diseases were retained, those free were exchanged with other schools for their trachomatous children."

In March, approximately 450 trachomatous children were at this school. The spread of the disease in schools was accelerated by the reuse of towels, and the lack of food.

Pointing out that trachoma results in blindness, the report said:

"The diet at Fort Defiance is notably lacking in the two great preventive foods, milk and fresh vegetables and fruits."

Dine' children died at boarding schools in Leupp, Tuba City, Ganado, Crownpoint, and Mariano Lake on the Navajo Nation. The children who ran away often died in the cold, and if they were captured, they were imprisoned, starved and brutalized.

At Tuba City boarding school, epidemics of flu took the lives of many children at Tuba City in 1919 and again in 1926. Dine' children died of pneumonia. Chee Harold Calamity, 13, Dine', drowned when his raft turned over in March of 1944.

Tuberculosis killed Dine' children in Shiprock, New Mexico. In Chinle, Arizona, an eight-year-old Dine' girl died of whooping cough in 1924.

Navajos died at Keams Canyon Boarding School in Arizona from the rampant spreading diseases. Six children died from scarlet fever in 1904. Children died of measles, spinal meningitis and pneumonia.

At Fort Wingate boarding school, east of Gallup, New Mexico, there was little medical care and children died of pneumonia, appendicitis, meningitis and tuberculosis. Seven children died of meningitis in 1933.

"We were not equipped to take adequate care of our pupils," the Fort Wingate Superintendent wrote in 1927. "Our hospital facilities consisted of an un-repaired set of Army quarters."

Nearby, at Crownpoint, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation, whooping cough spread taking the lives of children and seven children died of chicken pox in 1924.

Dine' continued to run away from the boarding schools. Ronald Yazzie, 9 and Willie B. Yazzie, 13, froze to death after running away from Crownpoint, New Mexico, boarding school in 1968, Washington Post data shows.

"In 1970, 11-year-old Johnson Kee West died after he fled the Kayenta Indian School in northern Arizona and tried to climb a snowbound mesa to get home. “Frozen,” the Navajo boy’s death certificate noted," the Post reported.
West’s death was one of the most recent recorded by The Post came as the era of federal boarding schools drew to a close.

Before he passed to the Spirit World, the great painter Carl Gorman, Dine', lived in Fort Defiance. Seated at the Navajo Nation Inn Restaurant, Gorman described the cruel treatment in boarding school when he refused to speak English as a young boy and how he ran away. Gorman was punished and chained in the basement of Rehoboth Mission School in Gallup. The years did not diminish that memory.

Stewart Indian School in Nevada

Stewart Indian School: Boarding Schools Violated Geneva Conventions on Genocide

Native students at Stewart Indian School in Nevada died of tuberculosis, pneumonia and meningitis during the early 1900s. In 1898, one child died from a fractured skull. Three students died from eating wild parsnips in 1909, and one Paiute teenager, sixteen years old, took her own life. Ten-year-old Enis Johnson died from drowning in 1926.

Navajos from remote communities like Pine Springs and Oak Springs were taken to Stewart and seldom returned home during their childhoods.



Stewart Indian School has a history of kidnapped children from outside the state of Nevada, abuse, and exploiting students for labor. Photo: A historic photo on display at the Stewart Indian School and Cultural Center in Carson City on Jan. 13, 2020, by Jazmin Orozco-Rodriguez.
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/new-stewart-indian-school-museum-reflects-on-a-dark-history-brings-hope-for-native-communities

Today, Stewart Indian School has a new policy. "Assimilation is genocide," the school states on its website.

The "U.S. government’s assimilation policy set up 408 boarding schools for American Indian children to provide vocational training and English classes," the school says. Although it is part of treaty rights, the school said the policy "justified dividing up Native land through allotment and was intended to destroy Native culture."

Stewart Indian School states that the "cruel policy gave school officials authority to kidnap children from their families and bring them to boarding schools like Stewart."

The school points out that the treatment of Native children in boarding schools violates the Geneva Convention on Genocide:

"Thousands of children, families, and Native communities were affected by this policy which meets the United Nation’s definition of genocide
1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention)
Killing members of a group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Poisoned by eating wild parsnips

Native children were starved, and hungry. Across the nation, children died from eating poisonous wild parsnips.

At Fort Shaw Government Industrial Indian School, in Fort Shaw, Montana, thirteen-year-old William Manning was poisoned after ingesting wild parsnips in 1900. His records say he was Flathead, Colville or Salish.

Eight-year-old Jerry O'Brein Buska died in June of 1906 at Vermillion Lake Indian School in Minnesota after eating a root resembling parsnips in the woods.

At Stewart Indian School in Nevada, three students, two boys and one girl, died after eating wild parsnips in 1909.

The Tragedy in Southern Utah


Panguitch Indian Boarding School, southern Utah

Paiute children as young as six were taken and forced into labor in southern Utah.
Twelve unmarked graves of children were discovered at Panguitch Indian Boarding School in 2023, Paiute leaders said. The school operated from 1904 to 1909 and was shut down due to rampant illness.

When the unmarked graves were found, Hope Silvas, chairwoman of the Shivwits Band of Paiute Indians, reflected on the children. “When we first gathered to find you, far away from home we felt your spirits welcome us with mischief and happiness only we could recognize and respect."

"Our hearts filled with sorrow and anger to hear of your mistreatment, to forcefully change your spirits into someone you are not. We will remember you always and how you walked here in life. Our tears will fall as we sing for you. May your spirits journey home in a good way to reunite with your family who also wondered where you went," Silvas said.

The Paiute Tribe of Utah said a Utah State University study in 2023 confirmed the bodies were those of two Kaibab Paiute children, four Shivwits children and additional children from other tribes.

Forced into farm labor when they were as young as six years old, some children were taken at gunpoint from St. George, Utah, and in the northwestern Arizona community of Moccasin.

Who was Hastiin Tadidiin?

Hastiin Tadidiin, referred to as Taddy Tin, Dine', in Kaibeto, was shot and killed while trying to protect his children from being taken away to boarding school. Tadidiin was killed by agents sent by the former superintendent at Panguitch.

"Hastiin Tadidiin (Diné) was murdered in the winter of 1916. Federal agents found him inside his hogan, about 10 miles northeast of Kaibeto, Navajo Nation, Arizona, when they came to round up his children and forcibly transport them to a nearby federally funded boarding school," writes Alastair Lee Bitsóí in High Country News.

Tadidiin is known for his name 'Corn Pollen Man.'

"His family estimates that he was in his 70s when he was shot with at least 10 bullets. Records and family history reveal that he died trying to protect two of his children, at least one of whom, a daughter, was taken away after his death and placed in boarding school." https://www.hcn.org/articles/who-does-the-federal-boarding-schools-investigation-leave-out/



Panguitch's superintendent Walter Runke, who also worked at Tuba City Boarding School as a disciplinarian, moved on to oversee a Navajo boarding school system, Salt Lake Tribune reports. https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2021/08/23/bodies-paiute-children/

The superintendent allegedly ordered three white men to arrest Tin for not sending his kids to school. Runke and the white men, though, were acquitted by an all-white jury, which said they were acting in self-defense, according to an article in The Coconino Sun."

The Meriam Report 1928: The Spread of Tuberculosis

"The prevalence of tuberculosis in boarding schools is alarming," the Meriam Report states.

The report says the lack of health examinations when children are admitted, serious overcrowding, poor rations, and the industrial method of operating schools led to widespread tuberculosis.

Sick children were forced to work at duties too difficult. "A full-fledged case of the disease thus develops before the case is diagnosed and treated. To aggravate these conditions the child in an advanced stage of the disease is frequently returned to his family, there to infect others in the home and himself to be the victim of neglect on account of ignorance and lack of facilities to meet his needs."

The highest rates of tuberculosis nationwide were in Pine Ridge, followed by Rosebud, Pima and Tohono O'odham.


(Page 1 of 60) The Washington Post reveals that the Interior failed to report thousands of deaths in its report. This list shows the difference in the number of deaths reported by the DOI, Department of Interior, and the number of children's deaths documented by The Washington Post. The list continues at https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/native-american-deaths-burial-sites-boarding-schools/

The Washington Post shares the names of the children that died, and warns that as many as 40,000 Native children are feared dead from malnutrition, disease and abuse, since many deaths of children in unmarked graves were never reported, and other documents were destroyed.

"As the number of schools increased, waves of deaths swept across the system, according to enrollment records, government reports, death certificates and news clips."

"At least 270 died at Chemawa Indian Training School in Oregon, 146 at Haskell Indian Industrial Training School in Kansas, 110 at Fort Hall Boarding School in Idaho and 100 at Sherman Institute in California," Washington Post reports.

Preston McBride, a Pomona College historian who wrote his dissertation about four of the largest Indian boarding schools, has estimated the death toll to be as high as 40,000.

The Washington Post article includes the names of the children who died in U.S. boarding schools. Read the article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/native-american-deaths-burial-sites-boarding-schools/



Rapid City Indian Boarding School

Children's deaths at Rapid City Indian School
Source Washington Post

https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-boarding-schools/blob/main/schools/SD/Rapid_City_Indian_School/390_Rapid_City_Indian_School.csv









Lists of Students in U.S. Boarding Schools

U.S. Indian Boarding Schools Students Lists
https://nibsda.elevator.umn.edu/search/s/888ae0dc-6ef8-496a-8464-3ccb10900acb

BIA Boarding Schools
https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/media_document/vol_ii_appendix_a_list_of_federal_indian_boarding_schools_public_508_final%5B1%5D.pdf

Fort Defiance Boarding School, Arizona, Navajo Nation, Student list 1940 -- 1972
https://nibsda.elevator.umn.edu/asset/viewAsset/6604db2e7a910f3a6f056fb1

Phoenix Indian School, List of Students, 1902--1989
https://nibsda.elevator.umn.edu/asset/viewAsset/6604dbf8b94fa60c3f70ecd1

Albuquerque Indian School, List of Students 1886 -- 1964
https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/centers/americanindianhealth/wind/PP_Nat__Amer__Board__Schools_Ed_for_Cultural_Genocide_1.pdf

Abuse of children at Fort Totten, Chemawa, other schools

https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/centers/americanindianhealth/wind/PP_Nat__Amer__Board__Schools_Ed_for_Cultural_Genocide_1.pdf

Apache children 'prisoners of war' transferred to Carlisle

These materials include a cover letter and Descriptive Statement of Pupils regarding 37 Chiricahua Apache prisoners-of-war transferred to the Carlisle Indian School from Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, where a larger group of Geronimo's band remained imprisoned. The 37 individuals transferred to Carlisle represented a portion of all prisoners aged between 12 and 22. A second group of prisoners from Geronimo's group were transferred in the Spring of 1887.

https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/documents/descriptive-statement-pupils-chiricahua-apache-prisoners-war-1886

Carlisle digital file: Apache prisoners of war at Carlisle with Geronimo from Florida and Alabama taken to Carlisle

https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/index.php/topics/apache-prisoners-war-1886-1887?page=1


Canada's Independent Report

The final report by the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burials calls on Canada to implement its 42 obligations for “truth, accountability, justice and reconciliation” that must be carried out through a new Indigenous-led legal framework to support the search for and recovery of the missing children.

"Students were not only strapped and humiliated, but in some schools, they were also handcuffed, manacled, beaten, locked in cellars and other makeshift jails, or displayed in stocks. Overcrowding and a high student-staff ratio meant that even those children who were not subject to physical discipline grew up in an atmosphere of neglect. From the beginning, many Aboriginal people were resistant to the residential school system. Missionaries found it difficult to convince parents to send their children to residential schools, and children ran away, often at great personal risk and with tragic outcome."

https://osi-bis.ca/osi-resources/reports/?report-type=final-report

In conclusion, for now, these words from the Meriam Report in 1928, describing the meals at boarding schools:

"In some schools the child must maintain a pathetic degree of quietness. In fact, several matrons and disciplinarians said that they did not allow the children to talk."

About the author

Brenda Norrell has been a journalist for 42 years, beginning at the Navajo Times during the 18 years that she lived on the Navajo Nation. She was a correspondent for Lakota Times, Associated Press and USA Today. After serving as a longtime staff reporter for Indian Country Today, she was censored and fired and created Censored News in 2006. On the Longest Walk northern route, Govinda Dalton and Norrell hosted the Long Talk Radio, live from coast to coast on the mobile broadcasting bus Earthcycles, in 2008. Govinda and Norrell broadcast live again from the Indigenous Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay on the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, in 2014.


Copyright Brenda Norrell, Censored News. Censored News content may not be used in any way for revenues.