Names and other messages from the children can still be seen written on and carved into the wooden beams of an old dairy barn on the site of the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School, which operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographed in Genoa, Neb., on Monday, July, 10, 2023.
Zahn McClarnon held up a flashlight and peered at a name carved into the upper level of a barn in Genoa, Nebraska.
His mother, Loretta Jordan of Lakota descent, leaned in to get a better look.
"Oh, that's a Blackfeet name," the 82-year-old said.
Little has changed in the old dairy barn where students of the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School carved or wrote their names decades ago. The brick silos on either side of the white barn still stand tall, wooden steps still lead up into the large hayloft, and the names of children who worked in the barn still remain on the wooden support beams.
"Three of the children that died and are buried on the grounds here are Blackfeet," said Judi gaiashkibos, director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs.
Partnered with the State Archeology Office, gaiashkibos has led efforts to locate the lost graves of the federally run Native American boarding school that once operated in Genoa. Wednesday was the third day of an excavation at one potential gravesite.
Thousands of students spent time at the Genoa boarding school during its 50 years of operation. But the location of those who died and were buried on school grounds was lost to history decades ago.
The fourth federal boarding school to be built in the U.S., the institution operated from 1884 to 1934. At its peak in 1932, the campus housed 599 students who ranged in age from 4 to 22 years old.
Renewed efforts to locate the school’s cemetery and identify students who died on the campus suggest that at least 86 students died there. Nine are recorded as having been buried on school grounds. The remains of 37 others were sent home, and the final resting place of about 40 is still unknown.
The team led by State Archeologist Dave Williams has been digging this week at a site less than a mile from the dairy barn, on the outskirts of Genoa. While no remains have been discovered yet, Williams said he's not yet ruling out the site as a potential grave location.
Williams and his team were guided to the site by historical maps and documents and a geophysical survey last year that revealed four anomalies consistent with the presence of graves.
"At this point, unfortunately, we don't have a super clear indication if we're in one of those anomalies," Williams said Wednesday night. "We'll be back out tomorrow and continue working."
The team will dig down to about 8 feet before going back to the drawing board.
"Dave (Williams) and I are committed to following this through and if we don't have results here, we'll regroup with the tribes and determine if we should do more ground-penetrating radar in other places," gaiashkibos said. "We still have hope."
If remains are found, tribal leaders may choose to leave them buried and construct a memorial to mark the site. They may also decide to exhume the graves and repatriate the remains.
Mecca e′ Stacy Laravie of the Ponca Tribe watched as Williams and his team carefully excavated the site Wednesday.
Protecting the potential remains and honoring them with ceremony is an important part of the process, Laravie said.
"(The children) were not allowed to be buried and have ceremony for burials like we traditionally would," Laravie said. "The irony is that if we allow these processes to happen when tribes are not consulted, then this process and the people involved are no better than those who tried to assimilate the children."
That assimilation has been referred to as a cultural genocide. Students were stripped of their language and culture. Some were severely beaten and taken out of school to work on the superintendent's farm, according to congressional testimony of former employees at the school.
Laravie is a former Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and a descendant of Chief Standing Bear.
A number of such preservation officers have come to the potential gravesite since the excavation began.
Their job is a sacred task, Laravie said.
"Today, the THPOs that are here monitoring, they're descendants of these students that were here," Laravie said. "These are our ancestors possibly and they may be unearthed. And if not fully unearthed, this is still a groundbreaking, so we have to treat it as such."
Remnants of the school and reminders of the Native American children brought to its campus are spread across the modern-day town of Genoa.
The Genoa Indian School Interpretive Center houses a number of records and artifacts inside what used to be the school's industrial training building, the school's entry stile faces railroad tracks nearby and the former dairy barn still stands on private property.
The names scrawled throughout the barn are a monument of sorts, said gaiashkibos, whose mother attended the Genoa school.
"It's a lasting legacy," gaiashkibos said. "Their names matter, their lives matter. We're here today to find those children."
Photos: Excavation begins on potential site of Genoa Indian School cemetery
Mecca e’ Stacy Laravie, a member of the Ponca Tribe, observes and monitors Wednesday as archaeologists with History Nebraska excavate a potential burial site for children who died while attending the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School. Her great-grandfather attended the school.
Loretta Jordan of Omaha gets a closer look as she and her son, Zahn McClarnon, and Judi gaiashkibos, director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, visit an old dairy barn Monday on the site of the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School. The school operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Names and other messages from the children can still be seen written on and carved into the wooden beams of the barn.
Zahn McClarnon and his mother, Loretta Jordan, of Omaha, use flashlights while visiting an old dairy barn on the site of the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School, which operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Names and other messages from the children can still be seen written on and carved into the wooden beams of the barn.
Names and other messages from the children can still be seen written on and carved into the wooden beams of an old dairy barn on the site of the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School.