Amelia Schafer
ICT

RAPID CITY, SD – Standing tall at the site of a former boarding school is a roughly seven foot tall statue of a Lakota family, memorializing survivors and victims of the over 100 year federal boarding school era. 

The statue is one of the first of its kind in the nation, as more Native nations work towards healing from the generations of trauma at the hands of the government and Catholic church. 

“This has been a long, dark part of history,” said Amy Sazue, Sicangu Lakota,  Remembering the Children executive director. “It’s still just coming to light.”

A young boy touches the “Tiwahe” statue in Rapid City as Remembering the Children executive director Amy Sazue describes how local children participated in creating the sculpture. Credit: (Photo by Amelia Schafer, ICT)

Remembering the Children was founded roughly 10 years ago to bring awareness to the children who died after being taken from their families and taken to the Rapid City Indian School. Remembering the Children is now working on establishing the first ever large-scale boarding school memorial in the United States: the Remembering the Children Memorial. 

The statue, “Tiwahe”, which means family in Lakota, depicts a family encircling a young boy. While the family dons traditional Lakota regalia, the son wears a boarding school uniform with his hair cut short. 

Family members face each of the four directions, while the grandmother looks over their shoulders. 

“Tiwahe” is dedicated to the survivors of the federal boarding school era. Credit: Amelia Schafer / ICT

“It’s so powerful and impactful,” said LaFawn Janis, Oglala Lakota, researcher with Remembering the Children. “The heart wrenching emotions you feel of celebrating lives, remembering our relatives, you can’t really put it into words.”

In the middle of the statue, 50 stars with small holes illuminate the piece and allow for smoke from medicines that can be burned in alcoves below to float upwards into the air. The 50 stars represent the 50 recorded deaths at the Rapid City Indian School identified by researchers.

“Tiwahe” features an innovative design that allows for medicines to be placed in alcoves at the base of the statue. Smoke can drift up through the statue and emerges through 50 stars at the top, representing the 50 recorded deaths identified by researchers. (Photo by Amelia Schafer, ICT)

“This wasn’t a one off, and it also wasn’t so far back in ancient history,” Sazue said. “My grandparents, my parents went to boarding school, my great-grandparents were in boarding school, were the ones that were taken. I want this to give a glimpse of some of the things Indigenous people have [endured].”

The statue sits at the unmarked burial site of 50 children who died while attending the Rapid City Indian School from 1889 to 1935.

The Rapid City Indian School was created by the federal government to assimilate Native children during the larger federal boarding school era starting in the 1800s. In 1935 it became Sioux Sanitorium, a segregated tuberculosis clinic which later became the area’s regional Indian Health Service clinic.

A Lakota father stands at the front of the statue, holding a canupa (pipe) to pray for the safety of his children forcibly taken to boarding school. (Photo by Amelia Schafer, ICT)

“Tiwahe” is just one element of this large scale memorial. On Sept. 27, organizers will unveil the Beverly Stabber Warne memorial plaza and walking path at the site. Warne was a Lakota elder who was instrumental in boarding school research and the memorial development. The site will then be open to the public, who can visit, take a walk up the hill where children are buried and learn about the boarding school’s history.

To honor the victims and survivors, a $2 million memorial site is being built over a 25-acre plot that used to belong to the federal government for the school. This includes the land where tribal historic preservation officers have identified unmarked grave sites of children who never made it home from Rapid City Indian School.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t really know the history of Rapid City,” Janis said. “It’s bringing our community together for healing.”

The statue itself was created by Remembering the Children with local non-Native artist Dale Lamphere and Oglala Lakota apprentice Derek Santos.

Children from the local Indigenous school, Oceti Sakowin Community Academy, sing in Lakota as the new boarding school memorial statue is unveiled in Rapid City. (Photo by Amelia Schafer, ICT).

It took several years to design, build and implement the statue. Lamphere and the Remembering the Children team created a clay prototype in 2024, gathering input from elders like Bev Warne, Oglala Lakota, and allowing Lakota children to come and help out. 

“We do have that multi generational handprint on here with elders all the way down to little kids,” Sazue said.

Santos’s apprenticeship was created as part of the memorial’s process to allow for local Lakota artists to use Lamphere’s expansive studio in Sturgis, South Dakota and learn from his decades of experience in sculpture making. 

Sazue said that future apprenticeships with Lamphere will be available down the line.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” Santos said. “We’re continuing to tell that story. We don’t know what happened so I just thought of the children. For me being Oglala, it’s extremely important. I have a family member who lost their life in [a boarding school]. I just want to do my part to try and continue to tell the story.”

Amy Sazue, executive director of Remembering the Children, discusses the memorial site and the new statue as its unveiled on May 31. in Rapid City. (Photo by Amelia Schafer, ICT).

Santos is currently working on a medium-sized bronze statue of a buffalo which will eventually be installed at the site on the walking trail. 

According to Santos, his work is inspired by stories from his family, elders and his everyday life on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

“I’m just trying to retell those stories,” he said. 

Remembering the Children organizers are currently finalizing an agreement between the city, Pennington County, the Rosebud, Oglala and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs for an emergency safety response in case of visitor injury at the site. Until then, the site is not open to the public aside from planned formal events. 

In the meantime, organizers ask that the public does not visit unless there is a formal public event.

Amelia Schafer is a multimedia journalist for ICT based in Rapid City, South Dakota. She is of Wampanoag and Montauk-Brothertown Indian Nation descent. Follow her on Twitter @ameliaschafers or reach her...