At a press conference Thursday to mark Orange Shirt Day — a memorial to the thousands of lives lost at Indian residential schools — the chief of the Shawnee Tribe announce a partnership with the city of Fairway to investigate the history of the Shawnee Indian Mission, while calling on the federal government to research U.S. Indian boarding schools nationwide. Earlier this year, the Department of Interior announced an initiative to find out the inner workings of federally-operated Indian boarding schools. Places like Shawnee Indian Mission, which was an Indian boarding school from the 1830s to 1860s on 2,000 acres of Shawnee Tribe land, isn’t included in the initiative since it was operated by Methodist missionaries. Now, the Shawnee Tribe is partnering with the city of Fairway to begin looking into the operational details of the Shawnee Indian Mission. But Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes said the federal government “needs to step up” as well.
Source: KCUR News
