Uncovering the Legacy of Genocide through Audio-Storytelling

Jesuits stand with Lakota students from Red Cloud Indian School (1890-1900). Photo Credit: Marquette University, Raynor Memorial Libraries and Holy Rosary Mission – Red Cloud Indian School Records

by Maili Smith

A recently launched six-part podcast series, American Genocide: The Crimes of Native American Boarding Schools, focuses on an often obscured period in American history: when Native American and Alaska Native children were forced into boarding schools run by the government and religious institutions starting in the early 19th century. A federal study identified over 400 schools that served to assimilate Native children into white society through the erasure of their faiths, cultural traditions, and language.

“This isn't taught in schools: 87% of schools in this country don't teach about Native Americans past 1900 and they're certainly not teaching about the boarding schools,” says Echo Hawk, one of the podcast hosts in a recent interview for Vanity Fair.

Many of these children were subjected to abuse, sexual assault, violence, and forced to convert Christianity. Many never made it home.

With the publication of the last episode on May 25, 2023, the podcast concludes a year after Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, began to search its grounds for bodies of former students. This story is an example of slow violence, as the community continues to reconcile with the legacy of Red Cloud several generations later. This podcast follows individuals reconciling with the multi-generational trauma as well as the uplifting ways in which the community is moving forward.

The podcast series uses narrative empathy and storytelling to build understanding and compassion for the individual lives that were and continue to be impacted. The atrocities committed to indigenous children at these boarding schools have been reduced to statistics in the ledger of history, if mentioned at all.

“What I hope that people take away from listening to this podcast is really understanding that this wasn't distant history, that there are people who are alive today who attended these boarding schools, that this impact lives with the Native community and lives with our communities today,” says Lashay Wesely, the Hawk’s podcast cohost.