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Morgan Lovejoy was about 10 years old when, on a cold winter night in the late 1920s, he hatched an escape plan.
He and a few other boys were homesick for families they hadn’t seen in more than a year. They snuck out of their beds and headed for Columbus, Nebraska, a few miles away, hoping to hop a train that they ended up missing.
Tired and cold, they returned to the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School. As punishment for their desertion, they were locked in a dormitory attic for two weeks.
At 81 years old in 2000, Lovejoy told a World-Herald reporter that the loss of his native Omaha language to future generations “filled him with sadness.”
“Our language is forgotten,” he said. “Our tradition is forgotten.”
Lovejoy was among thousands — the exact number remains unknown — of Native American children brought from around the country to the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School in Nebraska.
The students were stripped of their language and culture. Some were severely beaten and taken out of school to work on the superintendent’s farm, according to congressional testimony of former employees at the school.
Nebraska researchers believe that all who attended the Genoa school are now deceased. But a local and national push to understand the full scope of the U.S. Indian Boarding Schools that were built across the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries may soon bring new attention to their stories.
The institutions served as a blueprint for Canada’s Indigenous residential schools, where the recent discovery of hundreds of Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves brought renewed attention to practices that have been described by historians as “cultural genocide.”
Shortly after the human remains were discovered in Canada, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative.
The initiative is meant to review the U.S. Indian Boarding Schools’ histories and a legacy of physical abuse and isolation. It also will provide resources to investigate known and suspected burial sites, including the Genoa school’s cemetery. The cemetery’s exact location and the number of children buried there are unknown.
As the federal government moves forward in unveiling the untold history of federal boarding schools, researchers and community leaders in Nebraska are hopeful it brings a reckoning and healing not yet seen in the United States.
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The fourth federal boarding school to be built in the U.S., the Genoa Indian Industrial School operated from 1884 to 1934. It was one of the largest in a system of 25 federal Indian boarding schools. At its peak in 1932, the school’s 640-acre campus housed 599 students, who ranged in age from 4 to 22 years old.
The Genoa school’s location was chosen because the federal government already owned the land, having built a Pawnee day school in that location years before.
Genoa, which is about 22 miles west of Columbus, also was chosen because its location was several days’ ride from any large reservations. That made it difficult for children to run away and return home, according to the Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation.
Judi gaiashkibos’ mother attended the Genoa Indian Industrial School before it was closed in 1934. A member of the Ponca, she is also a co-chair on the Community Advisors Council for the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project and the executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs.
Descendants of those who attended the school are today processing the school’s legacy and its impact on their loved ones.
“I always sensed when she did speak about it there was a sadness, and I felt that she was somewhat haunted by what happened at the school,” said Judi gaiashkibos, whose mother, Eleanor Josephine Knudsen, attended the Genoa school.
Knudsen didn’t share many details with her 10 children about her time at the school, gaiashkibos said. Two aunts also attended the institution.
“They could have died, and I wouldn’t be here,” said gaiashkibos, a citizen of the Ponca Tribe. “I have two daughters who never met my mother, and I have five grandchildren.”
What Knudsen did share was her baking skills, the vocational trade she learned there. For most of her life, Knudsen worked as a cook to provide for her children.
“I’m more and more amazed at my mother’s endurance, her strength, her ability to not become bitter, her ability to put love into her food,” gaiashkibos said.
It’s time, gaiashkibos added, for the United States to face the reality of what occurred at U.S. Indian boarding schools.
“As people reflect on the history, they may want to whitewash it and pretend it didn’t happen. I’m tired of playing that game and being invisible,” gaiashkibos said. “We’re gonna get through this, and when we come out on the other side, there will be some healing.”
As executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, gaiashkibos hopes the federal initiative will provide answers to long-unresolved questions, including the location of the Genoa school’s cemetery.
A historical map and recollections of former students prior to their deaths indicate that there was a cemetery on the school grounds where students were buried. But its exact location hasn’t been confirmed.
“These children who died before they found a true purpose in life, before they got to have a life, they should get to go home,” gaiashkibos said of the children buried there.
An 1899 map shows the Genoa Indian Industrial School and a cemetery nearby.
Records show that diseases such as tuberculosis spread quickly through the school, leading to an unknown number of deaths.
Also unknown are the number of those buried and whether any remains were disposed of in unmarked graves like the ones discovered in Canada. There’s hope that the federal initiative will provide answers.
The Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs is committed to supporting Haaland’s initiative, gaiashkibos said.
The initiative will provide extensive federal resources for the investigation into the loss of human life and the lasting consequences of residential Indian boarding schools.
The primary goal will be to identify boarding school facilities and sites; the location of known and possible student burial sites; and the identities and tribal affiliations of children buried on the former school grounds.
“It’s going to take all of us to undo the harm, the tragic history, the sadness, the legacy,” gaiashkibos said.
In Nebraska, an examination of that legacy has already begun.
Nearly 90 years after the Genoa school closed its doors, a Nebraska-based project is filling in the gaps of a largely unknown story and bringing a broader understanding of the scars that the school left on generations of Native American people.
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“(The schools) were never really about education,” said Margaret Jacobs, a professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
If the federal government wanted to educate children, she said, they could have used day schools within the students’ communities.
“It was about severing the children’s ties to their communities,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs’ idea for an online archive of Genoa Indian School records began to take form in 2015 as she witnessed the final ceremonies of a massive, multi-year reconciliation effort in Canada.
A short time later, Jacobs met colleagues who were working to gather records on the Carlisle Industrial Indian School, an infamous U.S. Indian Boarding School based in Pennsylvania.
“I went ‘Aha, here’s a way I can do something as a scholar to make these records more accessible to families and tribes,’ ” Jacobs said.
In 2017, the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project started gathering records.
Today, the project is a collaboration among UNL, the Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation, community advisers from the Omaha, Pawnee, Ponca, Santee Sioux and Winnebago Tribes of Nebraska; and descendants of those who attended the Genoa school.
Thousands of records have been collected so far and can be viewed on the project’s website.
Susana Geliga Grazales, a member of the Lakota and co-director of the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project.
In the early days of the project, many of those records were gathered by Susana Grajales Geliga.
A graduate student when she joined the project in 2018, Grajales Geliga is now a co-director of the project and a professor of history and Native American studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
As a member of the Sicangu Lakota Tribe and a historian, Grajales Geliga occasionally came across her own ancestral names in the Genoa documents.
“As a historian, my reconciliation with this history is helping people find it,” Grajales Geliga said. “Because to me, those are voices and those are stories that somebody is looking for, and stories that need to be heard.”
A pair of beaded gloves taken from a student upon their arrival at the Genoa Indian Industrial School.
There are no known former students still alive to share their stories. So, researchers rely on records to fill in the gaps. In the future, the Digital Reconciliation Project team hopes to interview descendants of former Genoa students.
When the school closed in 1934, documents were scattered across the United States. Locating them has proved challenging for both the Genoa project and others working to gather information on the government boarding schools.
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has identified 367 assimilative Indian Boarding Schools, including many that were operated by churches belonging to different Christian denominations, in the United States. But the coalition has been able to locate only 38% of the boarding school records, according to a resolution from the National Congress of American Indians. Coalition officials think the remaining records are being held in private collections.
It’s important to understand, Jacobs said, that Genoa school records don’t provide a complete picture of what life was like for students at Genoa.
Many of the documents found through the Genoa Digital Reconciliation Project’s research are student applications written by school faculty, or correspondence among school and reservation authorities.
“A lot of the government records just don’t reflect the children’s point of view,” Jacobs said.
What they do show is the power imbalance between school and government officials and the students’ families.
On Oct. 27, 1922, the Genoa school’s superintendent, Samuel Davis, wrote a letter to the father of a student. He called the father’s request that his son be returned home “a big mistake” and “childish.”
The student had run away, a common occurrence at the school, and was “returned and punished,” Davis wrote.
In another letter sent by Davis on Nov. 1, 1922, to the Rosebud Indian Agency, which oversaw the reservation where the boy’s family lived, Davis asked that if the agency chose to take the student out of the Genoa Indian School, he be sent to a different school and not back to his reservation.
In a final letter, he mentioned two other boys who ran away with the student, and wrote, “It’s almost impossible to do anything with such boys … when their parents are continually writing them silly sympathetic letters. All these letters seem to encourage the boys to desert and return home.”
The school offered rewards to nearby farmers and townspeople who turned in “deserters.”
Runaways brought back to the school often were punished by being subjected to what was essentially solitary confinement, Jacobs said.
Physical abuse was recorded as well.
On Feb. 1, 1928, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution authorizing the Committee on Indian Affairs to survey conditions of Native Americans across the country, as well as to evaluate any abuse that should be corrected.
The mandate brought two former employees of the Genoa Indian School to Washington, D.C., in 1929 to testify before a subcommittee of U.S. senators on conditions at the school.
The former employees testified that Superintendent Davis took boys out of school to work on his private farm, and that they had each witnessed Davis hitting students.
Julie Carroll, who was employed at the school from April to August of 1923, told the subcommittee, “Some of the children were beaten up like dogs until blood flew out of their noses. I saw little children beaten up there until, honestly, it is a surprising thing that they have such an institution anywhere conducted by white men over Indian children.”
Ina Livermore was employed as a matron at the school from February 1922 to July 1923.
She testified that some students were taken out of the boarding school on Monday mornings and returned Saturday evenings after working all week on Davis’ farm.
Livermore also recounted a time Davis hit a student named Helen Parker.
“(Helen’s) face was all bruised and swollen; her dress was all covered with blood,” Livermore told the committee. “They had tried to remove traces of the blood. She came to me, and I got her clean clothing. She told me Mr. Davis told her there would be no need for her to write to her people because she would not be allowed to send out any letters.”
When the committee asked why she hadn’t filed a complaint to the Indian Bureau, Livermore said, “I was informed that if I sent a complaint to the Indian Bureau my complaint would come back to Mr. Davis’ desk and he would proceed to get rid of me in some way.”
The practice of “loaning” students out to local farms and households for wages wasn’t uncommon. Many of the students were promised compensation for their work but never received the money they had earned, Jacobs said.
Sidney Byrd was the last known living former student of the Genoa school. Shortly before his death in 2016, he spoke at a school reunion, telling of a time when the school’s superintendent beat him and other kids with a switch off a cherry tree because they were playing in a trash pile, according to the Columbus Telegram.
Sidney Byrd was the last known living student of the Genoa school. Shortly before his death in 2016, he spoke of his experiences at Genoa during a school reunion.
Byrd said he was one of the last children in the group to be beaten. By the time Davis got to him, he said, the smaller branches had come off and Byrd was essentially hit with a club.
“I’d been beaten so (badly) I could hardly lie down. I had to lie down on my stomach,” Byrd said.
Byrd’s grandparents chose to send him to the school when he was 6 years old. They saw it as his best chance in an increasingly “westernized” nation.
Reflecting on his time there, Byrd said, “However harsh it was for me, I also had friends,” he said. “And it served as a steppingstone to even greater accomplishments.”
Through the Reconciliation Project’s research, Jacobs found that, in the beginning, many of the U.S. Indian Boarding Schools worked to convince parents that the schools were good for their children.
“They tried to convince communities that their children could learn English to learn how to negotiate for their tribe,” Jacobs said.
The school also boasted that the children would learn a trade.
“They put it into these positive terms,” she said.
Conditions at the schools quickly exacerbated the spread of disease. As children became fatally ill miles from home, tribal leaders began to voice opposition to the schools.
“A lot of them wanted day schools in their communities,” Jacobs said. “They weren’t opposed to education; they just didn’t want to lose their children.”
As opposition grew, the government began using heavy-handed methods.
Genoa records show that government agents on reservations kept strict census records of communities, including how many children were born each year, their ages and any illnesses or disabilities children had.
“Sometimes they brought in the military, sometimes they brought in police to bring children,” Jacobs said. “This is especially true in the Southwest. It came to the point that some parents were hiding their children, preventing them from being counted in the census.”
Authorities also withheld government rations from families that resisted.
As U.S. boarding schools became more common, some of the opposition declined over time, Jacobs said. Simultaneously, Indian Nations were deeply impoverished.
“At times, I think families thought, ‘Well, at least at the boarding school, my child will get meals and they’ll be clothed,’ ” Jacobs said.
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Pieces of the school can still be found scattered throughout the modern-day town of Genoa.
A sign that reads “U.S. Indian-School” hangs on an archway above brick steps that marks the entrance to the school’s campus. A smokestack stands at the end of a street. The school’s old dairy barn can be seen in the distance.
The most historically accurate and intentionally preserved of the remaining structures is the Indian Industrial School’s manual training building.
The preservation effort was led up by the Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation, a nonprofit formed in 1990 with the intent to collect and preserve the history of the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School and promote the heritage of the school.
The foundation purchased the school’s manual training building from the City of Genoa in 1999 and worked to restore it. The building now houses the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center, a space meant to educate and facilitate healing and remembrance.
Today, flags from every one of the more than 40 tribes whose children attended the school hang in the interpretive center. Artifacts from tribes and from the school are on display.
Photos of former students who returned years later to the interpretive center for an annual reunion and remembrance can be seen on a worn brick wall.
The Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation said it is dedicated to working with Secretary Haaland on the Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative.
“We are waiting for the federal government to provide expertise and guidelines on this matter,” the foundation said in a statement.
As the foundation and tribal communities across the country await federal guidance, gaiashkibos looks to the future. She hopes to see the establishment of a federal commission, similar to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, something the National Congress of American Indians is pushing for. She also will continue to advocate for Nebraska’s Native peoples.
The Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation is planning for its 31st recognition and remembrance gathering, set to take place in Genoa on Aug. 14.
And the Digital Reconciliation Project team is working to uncover more of the history of the Genoa school. The hope is to provide a deeper understanding of the legacy of trauma left by the school.
It’s an understanding Grajales Geliga is eager to give to the descendants of those who lived through it.
“This is a painful history, but there are also stories of resilience,” Grajales Geliga said. “Everyone has a right to know where their family is buried, and every person has a right to know their history.”
Photos: Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School
A pair of beaded gloves taken from a student upon their arrival at the Genoa Indian Industrial School. Photographed at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
A neighborhood has built up around some of the remaining buildings from the Genoa Indian Industrial School of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographed at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
An 1899 map shows the Genoa Indian Industrial School and a cemetery nearby. Photographed at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
A name is etched in the brick from 1911 at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
Flags from 40 tribes represent the students at the Genoa Indian Industrial School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographed at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
Students made their own shoes at the Genoa Indian Industrial School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On display at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
Murals painted on plaster were used as patterns for students when making harnesses at the Genoa Indian Industrial School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographed at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
Shoe nails, from students making their own shoes at the Genoa Indian Industrial School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are still in window sill boards at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
Flags from 40 tribes represent the students at the Genoa Indian Industrial School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographed at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
A blacksmithing building still stands from the Genoa Indian Industrial School of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is now privately owned. Photographed at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
A stone commemorates the unknown number of Native children who died at the Genoa Indian Industrial School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographed outside the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
A model of the campus of the Genoa Indian Industrial School of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographed at the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
Susana Geliga Grazales, a member of the Lakota and co-director of the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project. Photographed at the University of Nebraska-Omaha on Thursday, July 29, 2021.
Judi gaiashkibos’ mother attended the Genoa Indian Industrial School before it was closed in 1934. A member of the Ponca, she is also a co-chair on the Community Advisors Council for the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project and the executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs. Photographed at the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln on Wednesday, July 21, 2021.
A portion of the stile and gate surrounding the Genoa Indian Industrial School campus of the late 19th and early 20th centuries still stands near the Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center in Genoa, Neb., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
jwade@owh.com, 402-444-1067