The Canton Indian Insane Asylum, also known as the Hiawatha Insane Asylum, was located in Canton, South Dakota. Photo from Robert Bogdan Collection via National Institutes of Health
A gathering will be held on June 5 at the site of the Hiawatha Indian Insane Asylum in South Dakota. The ceremony will honor and remember the tribal members who were sent to the facility during its operation in the 1900s. According to Elizabeth Stawicki, more than 350 tribal members were housed there and 121 are buried in graves at the site. Congress created the facility in 1898, according to research by Ruth Hopkins. It was used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to isolate tribal members with purported mental illnesses from 1902 to 1933, when the remaining patients were transferred elsewhere. For more information about the event, contact Lavanah Smith-Judah of the Yankton Sioux Tribe at 605-260-1853 or Lavanah.judah@gmail.com Related Stories:
Laura Waterman Wittstock: Horrors at facility for 'insane' Indians (2/3)
Editorial: Preserve Hiawatha Indian Insane Asylum history (5/8)
Group to hold ceremony at site of former BIA insane asylum (5/6)
Ruth Hopkins: 'Problem Indians' sent to Hiawatha Asylum (11/4)
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