Mary Annette Pember
ICT
Excavation is underway in the basement of historic Drexel Hall at the Red Cloud Indian School where a worker reported seeing three small graves in the 1990s.
So far, however, no obvious human remains had been found in the former boarding school campus on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, according to Justin Pourier, who saw the graves years ago but was told to keep quiet about them.
“They’ve only found dirt so far,” said Pourier, Oglala Lakota, who alerted officials again this year about the graves. “It’s slow going.”
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The excavation is part of a Truth and Healing effort at the Jesuit-run school, which opened in 1888 as Holy Rosary Mission and became Red Cloud Indian School in 1969. It operated for almost 100 years as a boarding school before converting to a day school in 1980.
School officials launched the Truth and Healing effort several years ago to unearth the truth about its boarding school past.
Read more:
—Buried Secrets: Red Cloud takes the lead in uncovering boarding school past
—Red Cloud school will dig for graves
—Catholic Church siphoned funds paid to Native people for stolen lands
—Deaths at Chemawa
—Sometimes we hear the voices of children playing there’
—’We carry the trauma in our hearts’
A seven-month review of Red Cloud school by ICT and Reveal found evidence of at least one unmarked grave and at least 20 student deaths, and harsh, dehumanizing treatment of students at a time when the Catholic Church was accumulating thousands of dollars in government payments and hundreds of acres of land at the expense of the Oglala Lakota people.
The ICT/Reveal collaboration, “Buried Secrets,” included an article published by ICT and a two-part podcast by Reveal, with part 1 airing Saturday, Oct. 15, and part 2 set to air on Saturday, Oct. 22.
The excavation work, which began on Monday, Oct. 17, and is expected to continue throughout the week, is being conducted by Marsha Small and technicians from Ohio Valley Archaeology, the same group that performed a ground-penetrating radar search in May that was inconclusive.
In a text message to ICT, Pourier expressed the feelings many people have about the search.
“I don’t’ know if I hope they find something or not,” he said. “This is new territory for me.”
The school’s internet went out during the excavation, prompting fears that lines had been affected, but the problem was later traced to the service provider, according to school President Raymond Nadolny.
Nadolny told ICT that Red Cloud would comment after the investigation is wrapped up.
Pourier told ICT/Reveal that he was working as a maintenance worker for Red Cloud school in the 1990s when he was sent into the basement to investigate a leak. In a far corner, in a small room with a dirt floor, he saw three small mounds of dirt marked by primitive crosses.
His supervisor got angry when told about the discovery, and told him never to discuss his findings with anyone. It was only after unmarked graves were found in the Canadian residential school in Kamloops in May that he raised his concerns again with school officials.
The area is now covered with a concrete slab, which technicians must remove to sift through the soil underneath.
The FBI is on site for the excavation, according to Pourier, who is observing the work as his time permits. In his job as the tribal council’s 5th member, Pourier is helping with the repatriation of artifacts linked to the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre from the Founder’s Museum in Barre, Massachusetts.
Once the slab is removed and the soil collected, it will be examined more closely for remains. The investigation could take months to complete.
Update: This story has been updated to include information provided later that the internet service had not been knocked out during the excavation process but was out because of the service provider.
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