Patrick Day, a Lac du Flambeau tribal member, reflected on his family’s history with the residential boarding school system.
His mother, Irene Pine, was taken away to St. Mary’s Indian Boarding School in Odanah, Wisconsin around 100 miles away when she was only four or five years old.
“You can't, it's hard to escape by foot, right? To get back as a little kid. How can you get back to your parents?” he said.
Day said she had a hard time talking about her experiences.
“They'd come with somebody, like a government guy, right? And you hide your kids generally, because you don't want them taken,” he said.
He remembers tagging along with his mom while she visited friends on the Bad River Reservation. She’d talk in Ojibwe and Day asked her if she would teach him to speak the old language too one day.
“She said, ‘no.’ She goes that it won't help you in the world to learn that language,” he said.
In Lac du Flambeau, there was a residential boarding school from 1895 to 1932.
Children were forbidden from speaking their language, practicing their traditions or culture, seeing their families, or even going home.
That school is just one of more than 523 government-funded and often church-run facilities spread across the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Their stated purpose was to “kill the Indian, and save the man.”
Lac du Flambeau oral history records widespread abuse at the school.
On Thursday, September 26th, community members gathered in the Bingo Hall to honor relatives who went through the boarding school system.
They had a list of the students who attended the local school.
Orange Shirt Day is an annual event in Lac du Flambeau and around the US and Canada.
It specifically honors Phyllis Webstad, whose favorite orange shirt was confiscated when she arrived at her boarding school in 1973 near Williams Lake in British Columbia, Canada.
Her shirt was never returned and Webstad said the color orange forever reminded her that her feelings didn’t matter.
Tribal President John Johnson Sr. spoke about meeting Southwest Native Americans who said they didn’t know where they belonged because of the boarding school system.
He met a woman who described a bread her mom used to make that she’d never had again. Johnson listened, and then made a batch of fried bread for her.
“She took one bite of it. All those memories were brought back to her since she was a little girl, and you should have just seen the tears coming out of her eyes. And she said, ‘that's what I remember,’” said President Johnson.
President Johnson said that when he first became tribal chairman, he immediately talked to Governor Evers about the need to recognize the suffering experienced at the hands of Wisconsin’s residential boarding school system.
He said it took some time but Evers finally got it and made a proclamation that now hangs in the boarding school, recognizing their people.
Johnson described the event as a day to celebrate the resilience and courage of those who didn’t make it home.
“Let us commit to ensuring that every child knows they matter, that they are seen, heard and cherished. Let us honor in the memories of those we lost by working towards a future where every child is safe, loved and given the opportunity to flourish,” said President Johnson.
Robyn Garcia is the Director of Lac du Flambeau Family Services and Indian Child Welfare Development.
She spoke about her mixed reaction to the restoration of the boarding school building.
“My heart told me it should have been destroyed, torn down to cleanse the pain it holds. But then I'm listening to the people, others felt differently, and I recognize that for some, that the building is a symbol, a reminder of what we survived. In some way, perhaps its restoration ensures we never forget that we never allow such harm to happen again,” she said.
Attendees of Orange Shirt Day decorated individual flags to honor boarding school students, then caravanned to the former school to place the flags.
Children ran around the Bingo Hall as people shared a dinner.
Day watched his daughter, a second generation survivor of the boarding schools, play with her friends.
“I got genetics from my mother and genetics from my father, both, that you know, made me who I am, you know that? And maybe some of that stuff was built in resilience stuff, right?” said Day.
He said watching his daughter play reminds him that he and his family are part of the legacy of the boarding schools, and that they’re a testament to endurance.
