Life as a boarding school student in the Southwest meant constantly being shuttled around on Greyhounds or flatbed trailers, never told where you were going or who would be waiting for you when you finally arrived. From highcountrynews.
They told Willie Grayeyes to sleep in his clothes — to not even take off his black shoes. At any moment, the Tuba City Boarding School staff members said, the 7-year-old would be called upon. Not knowing what that meant, he obeyed, and, in the middle of the night, they woke him. Staffers drove Grayeyes 11 miles to the junction of U.S. Highway 89 and Highway 160 near Tuba City, Arizona, in the Western Agency of the Navajo Nation. There, in the red dinosaur land, he boarded a Greyhound bus.
After that first year at the Navajo Mountain Boarding and Day School, he was transferred to the Tuba City Boarding School, established in 1903. He loaded up his suitcases and rode in the flatbed trailer of a government vehicle to get there, 93 miles away from his homelands in Paiute Mesa in the community of Naatsis’áán, San Juan County, Utah.
“I remember everybody on a certain day would go up to the local day school, and there would be these Greyhound buses parked up there,” said Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, a Hopi historian, former director of the Hopi Tribal Historic Preservation Office and a Christian boarding school survivor. “There used to be just piles of suitcases out on the sidewalk, and they would be loading that up.”
The Greyhound generation remembers more than just the buses and their polished shoes. They also remember the stories of those who went before them. When his grandfather arrived at Keams Canyon, at the Hopi BIA Agency, the administrator told the soldiers that the boy was too old to attend the school. They let him go, but Kuwanwisiwma said, ashamed of his newly shaven head, hesitated to go home. His parents wondered why he was missing, although he soon came home.
Kuwanwisiwma holds the same values and is proud that his Hopi people held on to their language, ceremonies and agricultural lifeways. As a historian, he said, he knows that many tribes were less fortunate than his people — the Paiutes, for instance, who were nearly exterminated by the forced boarding school system.
Lee has worked with Bow to find out whether children were buried at the school, studying the school’s old records. He first learned about the traumatic history of Panguitch when he was the town’s events and marketing director. His discovery that a schoolteacher had died from an opium overdose back in 1905 inspired him to do more research, and that led him to the death records of at least 12 Paiute children.
Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
No. 13 Utah routs overmatched Southern Utah 73-7Cameron Rising threw for 254 yards in the first half, Dalton Kincaid had 107 yards receiving and two touchdowns and No. 13 Utah routed Southern Utah 73-7 on Saturday.
Read more »
No. 13 Utes respond to Florida loss by putting 73 points on Southern UtahA week after opening the season with a loss at Florida, the University of Utah football team routs Southern Utah 73-7.
Read more »
Lawsuit alleges underage marriage, rape and child labor in Utah polygamous group 'Order'The group teaches its members that only those with so-called pure blood will survive the apocalypse, according to the lawsuit.
Read more »
'Climate Denial': Forest Service Sued for Approving Crude Oil Railway in Utah\u0022The planet is roasting in record heat, forest fires are raging, the Great Salt Lake is drying up, and yet the Forest Service is willing to make all these problems worse by paving the way for more oil production,\u0022 said one climate campaigner.
Read more »