Before the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act went up for a vote, supporters of the law gather with Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Reps. Heather Keeler, Alicia Kozlowski and Jamie Becker-Finn at the Minnesota Capitol. Here, Flanagan lights sage in an abalone shell while a community member sings a Dakota prayer song and others wait to be smudged. Photo by Jaida Grey Eagle.
By Farrah Mina, The Imprint, March 9, 2023
Well before she became a Minnesota state senator, Mary Kunesh’s great uncle was taken from his home on the Standing Rock reservation and sent 1,500 miles away to the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
He repeatedly fled to his family and tribe in South Dakota, and each time he was forced to return to Carlisle, the first U.S. government-run Indian boarding school. According to the Carlisle Indian School Project, close to 200 school children are buried on school grounds, where forced assimilation meant devastating disease and abusive conditions for students.
Kunesh describes her great uncle’s attendance as costing him dearly. Collie, as she calls him, only returned to Standing Rock for good after he severed his leg falling off a train — a final desperate attempt to escape boarding school.
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