NSS Weekly: The Legacy of Minnesota’s Indian Boarding Schools

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INTRO: You are listening to North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, a weekly newscast about what it means to live in Minnesota, produced by AMPERS, Minnesota's community radio stations.

BRITT AAMODT: The US government operated more than 400 Indian boarding schools in the country from the 1800s to the beginning of the 20th century. Minnesota had 16 to 21 of those schools, where Native children were removed from their homes to assimilate them into Western culture.

VICTOR PALOMINO: This week, we discuss the history of Indian boarding schools, and how it is still present in some survivors' lives. And we learn how indigenous language programs are playing a role in preserving culture, traditions, and creating connections across generations. I'm Victor Palomino.

BRITT AAMODT: And I'm Britt Aamodt.

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BRITT AAMODT: But first, North Star Stories reporter Xan Holston with some of the news that made the headlines around the state.

XAN HOLSTON: Measles is now officially active in Southeast Minnesota after the state lab confirmed the virus in an unvaccinated adult in Fillmore County. Health officials are currently tracing possible exposures, but have not announced any public locations of contact. County officials say it was transmitted domestically within the United States. Minnesota Department of Health epidemiologist Jane Griffith says people are often infectious before they realize they have measles.

JAYNE GRIFFITH: The total infectivity period for measles is actually nine days, and usually the first maybe three to five days of that infectivity period, people just think that they might have like a cold or the flu.

XAN HOLSTON: Warning signs include fever, cough, runny nose, red or watery eyes, and a rash. People with symptoms should stay home, avoid visitors, and call a healthcare provider. Vaccination is the best protection, especially at the beginning of the school year when risk of infectious disease spread increases.

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XAN HOLSTON: Vaccination is also part of the response to a new rabies case in South Central Minnesota. Nine people are receiving post-exposure treatment after possible contact with saliva from an infected cow in Brown County. The Hereford heifers showed symptoms before testing positive, including acting strangely, vocalizing, and heavy drooling. Thirteen cows are quarantined, and more than 40 others are under observation.

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XAN HOLSTON: Up north, Mesabi Metallics is proposing a $5 billion expansion on the Iron Range. The Mesabi Metallics CEO recently told Itasca County commissioners the plan would add 500 jobs, but it still needs permits. The mining company broke ground Thursday on its latest expansion, celebrating a nearly $800 million federal loan.

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XAN HOLSTON: Minnesota regulators say Minnesota Valley Cooperative, a customer-owned electric utility, went too far, threatening to cut off power to one of its own members for making some of its own electricity. Last year, the Upper Sioux community built a rechargeable solar panel battery grid at its Prairie's Edge Casino near Granite Falls in western Minnesota. The solar array could sustainably supply about a third of the casino's electricity. Soon after, the co-op told the tribe to unplug it, threatening to completely disconnect the casino. The tribe went to the Public Utilities Commission. In its ruling, commissioners called the shut-off threat unlawful, ordered service to stay connected and referred the case to the attorney general.

PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION: You are treating your members as hostages who have no ability to get out of your service territory, and you are allowed to do whatever you want.

XAN HOLSTON: An independent safety review of the solar array is still required. The co-op plans to appeal.

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XAN HOLSTON: Waseca County in south central Minnesota has declared a local state of emergency as the town of New Richland starts cleaning up from floods. City officials say as many as four out of five homes were flooded, including the town's residential care center. City officials ask all property owners to document damage as the city applies for state and federal recovery funds.

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And finally, Rochester's new regional sports complex now has an official and corporate-sponsored name. The city council approved Altra Sportsplex under a $1.1 million naming rights agreement with Altra Federal Credit Union. Knutson Construction will also pay $84,000 over 10 years to name one of the complex's ball fields. The outdoor complex is under construction in southeast Rochester, with its first fields and concession facilities expected to be in play next April. For North Star Stories, I'm Xan Holston.

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VICTOR PALOMINO: The last day of the month, people around the country observe the Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding School Survivors. In Minnesota, that legacy includes the Morris Industrial School for Indians, which operated on land that is now home to the University of Minnesota Morris in west-central Minnesota.

BRITT AAMODT: The school's history is prompting reflection and conversation about the lasting effects of boarding schools. Reporter Jamad Jama talks about this legacy, the effects, and what healing looks like today.

MATT VILLENEUVE: Native people are sort of always assigned to the past. Indians, as we imagine, right, always existed yesterday. Maybe in you know on an open frontier that no longer exists. I think a lot of people don't know about boarding schools. They don't understand. We're talking about a system of imposed schools that were essentially weaponized by the federal government. They became an arm of the state to achieve a settler colonial policy.

JAMAD JAMA: That's Professor Matt Villeneuve, a U.S. boarding school historian and a descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, with unique knowledge of Minnesota's legacy. The area known today as Minnesota had 23 Indian boarding schools, 21 of which were directly supported by state or federal resources, and all of which directly impacted the 11 sovereign Tribal nations sharing geography with Minnesota.

MATT VILLENEUVE: There's kind of three schools that are constructed. There are day schools, then there are on-reservation boarding schools, and then at the top of the system are the off-reservation industrial boarding schools. A school day would often begin at five or six in the morning. You put on your military uniform, and then half of the day you're you spend in a classroom where Native students are only allowed to speak in English, and the other half of the day you're sent out to the fields, the laundry, the workshop.

JAMAD JAMA: Villeneuve's work focuses specifically on the Morris Industrial School in West Central Minnesota.

MATT VILLENEUVE: I became really interested in Morris for a couple reasons. One is that it's been overlooked by historians. Second, it's one of seven off-reservation industrial boarding schools that's still open as an institution of learning where Native students continue to attend. So that's also animated by the fact that my great grandfather, Joseph, he was sent there as a 14-year-old boy in 1900. I wanted to know more about what his experience might have been like.

JAMAD JAMA: That meant looking beyond the history of the school and instead centering the students.

MATT VILLENEUVE: And we have been working to try to unveil some basic questions, right, about Morris. So, how many students went there? Where were they from? What was a day in the life like? How many students died and never came home?

JAMAD JAMA: Those children and families affected by that history will be honored on September 30th, the National Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding School Survivors. For Villeneuve, that is part of the work.

MATT VILLENEUVE: Days like this are so important to remember this past because the effects are ongoing in the present, not because we want folks to feel guilty about what happened or you know revel in the pain of these stories, but actually to do the thing that these schools made it really hard to do, which is to learn.

NIKKI SANTOS: We are not that far from the federal Indian boarding school era. Myself and my generation, we may not have experienced what our relatives or ancestors have experienced in boarding schools. It still lives within us. It's our grandparents. It's our parents.

JAMAD JAMA: That's Nikki Santos, who leads the Minnesota-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Today, Santos is hoping to work towards restoration.

NIKKI SANTOS: You know, it's important for us as an organization that's rooted in healing to have those honest conversations and also be rooted within our culture when we provide healing spaces for our relatives who did attend the schools.

JAMAD JAMA: And Santos says that kind of healing starts by understanding, acknowledging, and documenting that history. One person dedicated to that mission is Dr. Samuel Torres, Deputy CEO of the coalition.

DR SAMUEL TORRES: Our office has identified more than 500 of those institutions that lasted through the 20th Century, and even some that are still in operations today. That said, we know that there is a very heavy intergenerational transmission of the impacts of those policies, oftentimes even physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse.

JAMAD JAMA: Some Native individuals who attended these schools are still alive today, and families are living with that reality. Torres hears these stories firsthand while recording survivors' stories for future generations.

DR SAMUEL TORRES: We had the privilege of being able to visit Tribal nations across Indian Country, from the lands of upstate New York to Alaska and Anchorage, and even across the Pacific Ocean to our Hawaiian relatives, being able to sit with hundreds of individuals, and of course honoring each other as relatives, recognizing the spirit of the oral histories and testimonies.

JAMAD JAMA: And those testimonies offer a window into what the children had to endure.

DR SAMUEL TORRES: They were forced to go into a church without the consent of their parents or their nation, and forced to learn about these very foreign.

JAMAD JAMA: For Santos and Torres, this work isn't just about understanding history; it's deeply connected to their own stories.

NIKKI SANTOS: Relatives who never once spoke a word about their experience, but it would show up in how they would choose relationships and how they choose to raise their children.

DR SAMUEL TORRES: And I can, you know, just attest to the reality of hearing my children seek Nahuatl, our Indigenous tongue, seeing them dance, seeing them does something to you.

JAMAD JAMA: For the National Day of Remembrance, the coalition is hoping to bring the community together.

DR SAMUEL TORRES: We'll have a brief ceremony to recognize, yes, boarding school survivors and descendants, but also those children that that never made it back.

NIKKI SANTOS: This work is for everybody, and we can only heal if we have our relatives, community members, and allies doing this collectively with us.

JAMAD JAMA: For North Star Stories, I'm Jamad Jama.

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BRITT AAMODT: Coming up, a White Earth Nation artist reflects on his family's memories of boarding school separation and the lessons left behind. Plus, the importance of language preservation.

VICTOR PALOMINO: This is North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, produced by AMPERS, Minnesota's Community Radio Stations, with support from the State of Minnesota. We'll be right back.

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BRITT AAMODT: You are listening to North Star Stories. I'm Britt Aamodt.

VICTOR PALOMINO: And I'm Victor Palomino. For many families, the legacy of boarding schools has shaped not only the lives of elders, but also the stories of resilience, tradition, and connection passed down through generations.

BRITT AAMODT: We are joined now by Kent Estey, a contemporary artist from the White Earth Nation.
In 2025, he released the children's book Picking Sweetgrass about his grandmother, who was a traditional basket weaver and also experienced three boarding schools. Well, welcome to North Star Stories, Kent.

KENT ESTEY: Well, it's good to be with you.

BRITT AAMODT: Why don't you start out by telling us a little bit about who your grandmother was and something about her community before she entered boarding schools?

KENT ESTEY: Everybody loves their grandmother. At least I think, and I sure did. At an early age, I learned that she was an artist, and I thought, you know, that's somebody special. And then I realized, you know, as I grew older, that she was this wonderful basket maker, and she lived in the little village of Naytahwaush, in the heart of the White Earth Reservation, most of her life, her family, the Warren family, were one of the first families to reside on the White Earth Reservation. They lived a very traditional life. Their family was speaking Ojibwe, and only Ojibwe. Her father was part English, so he would speak a little English, but primarily they were speaking Ojibwe. And she recalled and would tell these amazing stories of what life was like on the banks of the North Twin Lake, and she said it was a beautiful life. Everything that they did was associated with land or water. And then in 1902 she would leave for her first boarding school experience. She was nine years old at the time. Now keep in mind she's only speaking Ojibwe. She went to White Earth, the Saint Benedict's Mission. It was the first boarding school established in Minnesota, and so in order to do what they needed to do and were commissioned to do by the federal government, the students had to live there. It wasn't an option for them to ride the bus or go home on weekends. They lived right there.

BRITT AAMODT: These decisions were made for her and her family.

KENT ESTEY: She didn't know anything different because this was her first school experience. So she was punished, slapped, beat because she was speaking Ojibwe. She was punished, slapped, beat because she couldn't speak English. She was punished either way, you know. She said I was always being put in the corner, and I didn't understand why. I didn't know what to do because I didn't understand them. That was her first experience, and she said of all three boarding schools that she would eventually attend, White Earth was the most difficult. And I asked my grandmother once, I said, "Ma, please tell me that there were some people that were good to you." And she said there were. "There were those that were better than others and nicer, but they beat us too because they were told that's what we deserved, and it was good for us to be beat." And so, from White Earth, she would travel to Pipestone, Minnesota. Pipestone was a long ways away for her. She would spend her middle school years there. The children there, the young adults, the women and the girls, were trained to be domestics, and the boys were laborers. And she would spend four years there, and then she would travel from Pipestone, Minnesota, to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to the nation's largest boarding school. She was student number 3981. My understanding is that of the 10,000 Native students that, you know, went to Carlisle, fewer than 100 graduated. My grandmother never graduated. She was 18 years old when she got to Carlisle, and she spent three and a half, almost four years there, and then returned back to Naytahwaush and began her life again in her community. You know, she would tell stories of the outing program that they would have in Carlisle because she wasn't coming home in the summer. She would be leased, basically leased out to white families in the community, and she said one of the hardest things was not being able to communicate or play with or be with some of the children that she was taking care of. She was taking care of children or young adults her same age and not being able to socialize with them.

BRITT AAMODT: She was sent away, changed, but she came back and found that her home was also changed?

KENT ESTEY: Her community was different because now there were Indian agents in every community that were watching the community, making sure that the cultural practices were not taking place. Everything had to go underground. She was no longer speaking Ojibwe unless she was with women her same age. My grandmother would marry my grandfather. They would begin their family. My mother was their first child, and my mother never heard Ojibwe spoken. For my grandmother, that assimilation worked, where this is what she experienced. She didn't know anything different.

BRITT AAMODT: Can you talk about your grandmother's basket making and the significance of it?

KENT ESTEY: So when my grandmother moved back to Naytahwaush from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, she needed to supplement, generate income somehow, and she recalled a skill that she learned from when she was young. An Episcopal minister had come from the Northeast. In fact, I think they were from Canada, and she taught my grandmother and her cousin how to make black ash baskets. So she started making baskets, and she would make baskets for the next, well until she was in her 80s. And at one point in the late, mid-to-late 1980s, she was known as one of the last of the black ash basket makers. And so she used her artistry to tell her story. And that's the important thing: is that she had this amazing life, and she came back, and she wasn't bitter, she wasn't resentful, she was resilient, and that's the most important thing. That you use your artistry to tell your story. And so, her story started out pretty rough, pretty tough, but in the end, she wins because presidents, senators, the Smithsonian would have her baskets.

BRITT AAMODT: Yeah, she was able to keep that traditional art alive.

KENT ESTEY: Absolutely, and she taught my father how to make baskets, and then he taught myself and my brothers how to make baskets. So you know, we grew up in a basket making family. I was kind of the oddball because I always wanted to paint, and I was able to write a book about my grandmother.

BRITT AAMODT: That's a great way to end it, Kent. Thank you so much for sharing her story, your story, and thank you for coming on North Star Stories.

KENT ESTEY: My pleasure.

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BRITT AAMODT: Decades after boarding schools were dismantled, Indigenous nations are working to reclaim, revitalize, and preserve their language and traditions. In the northeastern part of the state, the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College runs the American Indian Studies-Ojibwe Language program that supports the learning and use of Anishinaabemowin.

VICTOR PALOMINO: To learn more about the program, we are joined by Ziibiins Johnson of the Red Lake Nation and Gabrielle Ningewance, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. They are Faculty members in the American Indian Studies-Ojibwe Language program. Thank you for joining us.

ZIIBIINS JOHNSON: Thank you.

VICTOR PALOMINO: Can you tell us a little bit more about the Ojibwe language program.

GABRIELLE NINGEWANCE: This is Gabrielia. The Ojibwe language program is part of Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, and it offers courses for students all the way from really beginner students up to advanced courses. And then we also offer community immersive programming as well. A lot of our students are coming from communities, so maybe they know a couple words or numbers and animals, and then by the time they leave, they're pretty conversational and can come to immersion programming.

VICTOR PALOMINO: The story that we have is talking about how many efforts were put to erase the culture, erase the language. How do you approach the work of taking something that was officially erased and then trying to bring it back?

ZIIBIINS JOHNSON: This is even at the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. Alongside our language courses, we do offer an immersive adult program that runs in the winter and the summertime. Through this programming, we bring in First Language speakers, so elders from across the Anishinabek country with second language speakers, a lot of times we've got folks who are working in immersion schools, or they've got children at home that they're trying to teach the language. And by bridging this gap and bringing in elders and learning in an immersive environment, we're recreating the ways that were taken from us, how we would have learned as children, learning from our grandparents or great grandparents in the home.

VICTOR PALOMINO: I'm imagining that this includes a lot of storytelling and culture and tradition?

GABRIELLE NINGEWANCE: Yeah, this is Gabrielle. Yeah, so some of the different activities we do are really like embedded in some of our like culture practices and traditional practices, like last winter, we did a whole session, a whole weekend, just on tying snowshoes and talking about traditional snowshoe making. So, we skin beavers and different traditional activities like that that really just ground our life ways and our thinking together.

VICTOR PALOMINO: On a personal level, how did you learn the language?

GABRIELLE NINGEWANCE: So this is Gabrielle. Yeah, my family pretty much used Ojibwe growing up just as like a party trick. I always say, like my dad knows some super long words, and he'll just be like, "Oh, this is the longest Ojibwe word at dinner time." And so that was kind of my intro, family experience with it, and my grandma remembers some songs that her mom used to sing growing up. So I was kind of interested in it, and I didn't start really learning until I went to college. I went to the University of Minnesota, and they offered language program classes. So I started taking it at the university, just thinking like I'll take a semester or two, and like have the longest Ojibwe word to tell my dad and show him up, but it ended up completely changing my life and really like grounding me in my sense of identity and understanding of like who I am and where we come from and everything, and also just made me want to be better for my community.

ZIIBIINS JOHNSON: This is Ziibiins. Kind of similarly, I didn't have a ton of language in the household growing up. I had a little stuffed animal dog named Animosh that I thought was the coolest thing because I had one Ojibwe language word as a kid. And for me, actually, when my when my folks got married, I had an auntie who did a prayer in Ojibwe at the at their wedding. I was about 10 years old, and there was something that I, you know, felt without knowing that that would be the direction my life would go. And then, you know, eight years later, was starting school similarly at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, and no idea what I wanted to major in and saw that there was Ojibwe language. Okay, this is my chance to take language. And again, I think I just thought, oh, I'm gonna take one year and that'll be fun, that'll be good. And then next thing I know, was part of the cohort that was petitioning the university for a fourth year, saying, you know, we've got three years and there's enough of us. We want a fourth year of language, and you know, we deserve that here at the university, so graduated in 2016, and then went to work for Ojibwemotaadidaa Omaa Gidakiiminaang, the adult language program, and yeah, it's changed my life in in ways I could have never imagined through learning language. Language is a big part of my identity and who I am. Now and in the future.

VICTOR PALOMINO: For listeners that might be wondering how different is like the grammar and the structure when you're speaking language compared to English.

GABRIELLE NINGEWANCE: This is Gabrielle. The structure of Ojibwe is completely different than English. It's called a polysynthetic language. Just to get technical on everybody, but in English, when you say "I'm going to the store, you have "I am going to the store. You have six different words to make that sentence. In Ojibwe, you say, "Adaawewigamigong indizhaa," which is two words. Basically, we combine all the different parts to make kind of like one big word that you then have to break down. That's just one example. It's pretty different.

ZIIBIINS JOHNSON: This is Ziibiins. One of my favorite words to talk about is minwewebagaasin, which is one word, but in English is a poem, which means that the leaves sound beautiful or have a nice sound as the wind rustles through them or the wind moves through them, so that's you know an example of this polysynthetic.

VICTOR PALOMINO: What does polysynthetic mean?

ZIIBIINS JOHNSON: It means that there's multiple pieces that can be put together to give meaning. But by themselves, you can't pull them apart. They don't have meaning, but without being part of a whole.

VICTOR PALOMINO: So pretty much every conversation can sound completely different using the same base of the language.

ZIIBIINS JOHNSON: Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that you know our elder First Language speakers talk about is that when they're speaking the language, they see the visuals, right? Because all of these different roots or word parts hold meaning, and so when you hear a word, you can see what it's talking about. Yeah, so it's very visual.

VICTOR PALOMINO: The younger generations are getting into learning the language?

ZIIBIINS JOHNSON: Victor, we are the younger generation. But yeah, so this is Ziibiins. But there's a lot of immersion programs that are coming up. So there's lots of different schools around the area that are really focusing on getting you know the younger generation speaking language and joking with each other and trying to read books in Anishinaabemowin. So that's exciting.

VICTOR PALOMINO: Anything else you want to add to the conversation?

GABRIELLE NINGEWANCE: This is Gabrielle. I just want to mention too. We have a couple different community learning opportunities throughout the years. The first kind of big one that we put on is in February. It's our language symposium, which happens at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, and that's February 4, 5 and 6, 2027. So we have lots of great speakers and also Ojibwe immersion sessions where you really get to be in the language during those as well.

VICTOR PALOMINO: Ziibiins and Gabrielle, thank you so much for coming to North Star Stories and for sharing this information with our listeners.

GABRIELLE NINGEWANCE: Miigwech.

ZIIBIINS JOHNSON: Miigwech.

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BRITT AAMODT: This is it for today's program. If you missed any part of today's newscast, you can find this and past episodes at AMPERS.org or listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also get North Star Stories Daily on our website or check your favorite station's schedule.

VICTOR PALOMINO: Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week with more stories and voices from the North Star State.

This is it for today's program. If you missed any part of today's newscast, you can find this and past episodes at AMPERS.org or listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. You can also get North Star Stories daily on our website or check your favorite station's schedule. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week with more stories and voices from the North Star State.

OUTRO: North Star Stories is produced by AMPERS, Minnesota's community radio stations with support from the state of Minnesota. Online at ampers.org.