PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. – Inching forward on her knees, Marsha Small scraped away at the earthen floor in search of a bone, a tooth, any human fragment at all. This grim task consumed Small and her team of archeologists for five days in mid-October. They were hunting for the remains of Indigenous children beneath a former Native American boarding school that represents a dark chapter in American history.“My ancestors put me here,” Small, 63, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe and a Montana State University doctoral student, said outside of Red Cloud Indian School. “And that’s why I do this.”
Source: A former Native American boarding school reckons with its dark past