Presented by Eric Hemenway.

This talk will discuss the creation of the Native American  Boarding School system in the United States and the schools that were in Michigan.

For more than a century, the federal government forcibly enrolled Native American children in these schools, meant to assimilate them into white culture.  Michigan is not exempt from this history. There were once three federal boarding schools for Native children operating in Michigan: one in Baraga, another in Harbor Springs, and a third in Mount Pleasant.  The legacy of the boarding school system is still strongly felt by tribal communities in Michigan today. After they were brought to the schools, Native children were forbidden to speak their own languages and often separated from their families for months at a time. Now, tribes are consciously working to reclaim the traditions that were stolen during an era of forced assimilation.

Eric Hemenway is an Anishnaabe/Odawa from Cross Village, Michigan. He is the Director of Repatriation, Archives and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indian, a federally recognized tribe in northern Michigan. Eric works to collect and preserve historical information for LTBB Odawa.