- Two Native American boys from Nebraska died at a boarding school in Pennsylvania and were buried there without warning.
- The Winnebago Tribe has sought the return of the boys’ remains, but the military has refused, leading to a federal lawsuit.
- The cemetery where the boys are buried is near the former Carlisle School, which is now a tourist attraction, according to the complaint.
When two Native American boys from Nebraska died after being taken hundreds of miles away to a notorious boarding school in Pennsylvania, they were buried there without notice. Almost 130 years later, the tribe wants to bring the boys’ remains back home.
So far, the Army has refused to return the remains of Samuel Gilbert and Edward Hensley to the Winnebago Tribe. A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the tribe accuses the military of ignoring a law passed more than 30 years ago intended to facilitate the return of dead Native Americans to their lands.
Samuel had been enrolled at the Carlisle Indian Technical School in Pennsylvania for only 47 days when he died in 1895. Edward spent four years at the school until his death in 1899. Both died in their teens, but records do not reveal their exact ages. Tribal leaders were not informed that the boys had died, and their relatives did not know what had killed them.
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According to the lawsuit filed Jan. 17, the tribe formally requested the Army Cemetery Service’s remains in October, but learned in December that the request had been denied.
An entrance sign outside the U.S. Army Carlisle Barracks, June 10, 2022, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. When two Native American boys from Nebraska died after being taken to a boarding school, they were buried there without notice. Almost 130 years later, the tribe wants to bring the boys’ remains back home. So far, the Army has refused to return the remains of Samuel Gilbert and Edward Hensley. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)
“The Army has always sought to maintain a position of domination and control over Native American peoples while they were alive and while they were dead,” said Cultural Heritage Partners, one of the tribe’s attorneys. said Greg Werkhiser.
His body remains in a cemetery with about 180 other children near the site of a former school in Carlisle, about 1,150 miles from the tribe’s homeland in eastern Nebraska. The complaint states that the cemetery serves as a “tourist attraction.”
A spokeswoman for the Army Cemetery Service said it could not comment on pending litigation. But a spokesperson said in an email that Samuel and Edward are buried in separate graves with headstones with their names, along with other children who died at the boarding school.
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“This cemetery is a dignified burial place that shows respect and consideration for all the deceased buried there and will never be treated as a tourist attraction,” the spokesperson said.
Carlisle Indian Technical School, located in south-central Pennsylvania, was the first government-run school for Native Americans and was founded by military veteran Richard Henry Pratt. He believed that Native Americans could become productive parts of society, but only through assimilation.
Since opening in 1879 in an old Army barracks, thousands of Native American children were sent to Carlisle by train and stagecoach. Drastic measures were taken to separate them from their culture, including cutting off their braids, forcing them to wear military uniforms, and punishing them for speaking their native language. They were forced to adopt European names.
By the time it closed in 1918, more than 10,000 children from more than 140 tribes had passed through the school. Among them was Olympian Jim Thorpe. Children were often taken against their parents’ will and endured harsh conditions that could lead to death from tuberculosis and other diseases. The remains of some of the deceased were returned to the tribe. The rest are buried at Carlisle.
After the school was closed, its property was transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of War. It was used by the Army as a rehabilitation hospital and medical field school.
An OAC spokesperson said the remains were moved to another location at Carlisle Barracks in 1927 as the original cemetery was “inappropriately located adjacent to an existing dump and blacksmith shop”. Military personnel, veterans and their families are also buried here.
In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This allows for the return of remains to tribes in accordance with their requests. But the Army refuses to abide by that law and instead requires tribes to follow Army policy, according to the lawsuit.
The difference: NAGPRA requires the return of remains, but Army policy gives the agency discretion to decide whether and when to return them. It also requires a request from the boys’ “closest living relatives,” which the lawsuit says is “nearly impossible to apply in these circumstances.”
“Defendants’ actions perpetuate the evils that Congress sought to right when it enacted NAGPRA in 1990,” the complaint states.
Since 2017, the Army has disinterred the remains of 32 Native American children at Army expense and returned them to their families and tribes, an OAC spokesperson said. The remains belong to the Sisseton-Wahpeton-Oyate, Spirit Lake, Washoe, Umpqua, Ute, Rosebud Sioux, Northern Arapaho, Blackfeet, Oglala Sioux, Oneida, Omaha, and Modoc tribes. It was returned to tribes such as the , Iowa, and Alaska Natives.
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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve in the Cabinet, called on the government to consider the role of Native Americans in residential schools. In 2022, her agency released a report naming 408 schools that helped the federal government strip Native Americans of their culture and identity. At least 500 children died in some schools, including Carlisle.
The Winnebago tribe “continues to suffer knowing that the souls of Samuel and Edward remain lost,” the lawsuit states.
“Winnebago’s view is that these boys have been waiting for nearly 125 years to come home,” said Beth Wright of the Native American Rights Fund, another attorney involved in the lawsuit. “Their spirits cannot rest and cannot survive unless they are returned to the place from which they were taken.”
