Buried Secrets: Red Cloud takes the lead in uncovering boarding school past

WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. In Canada, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.

This story and a two-part podcast are the result of a collaboration between ICT and Reveal to examine Indigenous boarding schools in the United States. The podcast, “Buried Secrets: America’s Indian Boarding Schools,” starts with part 1 on Saturday, Oct. 15, and concludes with part 2 on Saturday, Oct. 22.

PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, South Dakota – Justin Pourier will never forget what he saw in the basement of Drexel Hall.

Pourier, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, was working as a bus driver and maintenance person for the Jesuit-run Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge reservation when sometime in the 1990s a supervisor asked him to go into the basement to look for a leak.

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/buried-secrets-red-cloud-takes-the-lead-in-uncovering-boarding-school-past