
When the institution closed in 1980, some school documents and records were lost and others were sent to federal repositories, said Bobbi Rahder, director of the Stewart Indian School Museum and Cultural Center. Some pupils attended for many years others for just a few months. There is no complete roster of Stewart students, but according to an estimate by the Nevada State Museum, about 30,000 children were enrolled there during the 90-year life of the school. The commission will work with tribal leaders and school alumni during the course of the review, she said.
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Montooth said the Nevada Indian Commission is gathering what records are available, but has not yet received specific direction from the Department of Interior about how to proceed. As we move forward in this work, we will engage in tribal consultation on how best to use this information, protect burial sites, and respect families and communities.” - Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland. “We must shed light on what happened at federal boarding schools. Permission from the tribe is required for entry. The costs yet to be tallied include information about those who rest in the unmarked burials among the headstones in the old school cemetery, located on land returned to the Washoe Tribe of California and Nevada. The boarding schools’ initial goal to “kill the Indian, save the man” failed, but the human price of those policies reverberates down through generations of tribal people. What was called “assimilation” from the early 1800s to the 1930s is today seen as an attempt at cultural genocide, even ethnic cleansing. The history of the Stewart Indian School, the topic of a sidebar to this story, is a mixture of proud achievement and shameful treatment school spirit, loneliness and resilience. Learning about students’ experiences at the school, she said, could help tribal people understand “some of the dynamics in their families, and with reflection, quite possibly make those families stronger and more grounded in their culture, which would lead to stronger communities.” Montooth said the review is about more than cataloging names and gathering data. PHOTO/STEWART INDIAN SCHOOL MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER: Students in front of the old main school building in the early 1900s. Then that will give new insights for their loved ones and allow them to have a new appreciation for the experience of their ancestors or their elders.” – Stacey Montooth, executive director of the Nevada Indian Commission.

I’m hopeful that we can share that information with their families, their descendants. “I hope we find the names of every student who attended the Stewart Indian School and find those dates (of attendance) and their tribal affiliations. Stacey Montooth, the executive director of the Nevada Indian Commission, last month inspected the Stewart cemetery and reported her findings to the Interior Department, which decided to add the institution to its review. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, came after nearly 1,000 unmarked graves were found at former Indian boarding schools in Canada. The institution is among hundreds of Indian boarding schools that will be examined by the federal government in an effort to document their histories, including identifying the students who attended them and those who never went home. The wind-swept site on tribal land, protected by a fence and ringed with gnarled sagebrush, also encompasses an estimated 200 unmarked plots, whose occupants and dates of interment are a mystery. The marked gravesites include many with weathered, nearly-illegible headstones as well as easily-read marble markers and well-tended family plots. Those range in time from 1880, a year before the school existed, to the early 2000s. Starting in the late 1800s, a system of more than 350 Indian boarding schools was tasked with stripping indigenous Americans of their language and culture, while isolating them from their families and tribes, in an effort to “assimilate” the students into white society.Īt Stewart Indian School, which opened in 1890, the very existence and memory of about 200 native people, presumably children, were erased as well.Īt the old school cemetery adjacent to the 240-acre campus, southwest of central Carson City, there are more than 170 marked graves.
