Native Sun News Today: Memorial honors lives lost at Indian boarding school

Linde Miller holds a sign for one of the unknown students who passed away at the Rapid City Indian Boarding School during the memorial walk on Native American Day in Rapid City, South Dakota, on October 12, 2020. Photo by Travis Dewes / Native Sun News Today

Plans for ‘Remembering the Children’ Memorial Park released

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

By Travis Dewes

Native Sun News Today Staff Writer

nativesunnews.today

RAPID CITY – Plans for a memorial which will honor the students of the Rapid City Indian Boarding School were unveiled during the third annual Native American Day walk that remembers the children who died at the school.

The memorial will be named Remembering the Children and the plans can be viewed at rememberingthechildren.org, along with the names of attendants of the school, correspondence of school administration, and the names of the children who passed away during attendance.

The memorial, which will be placed on land between West Middle School and the Canyon Lake Methodist Church, is going to feature a long walking path, sweat lodges, and a large medicine wheel.

Posted by History of RC Indian Boarding School/Sioux San & West Rapid City Lands on Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Grave sites remembering the more than 50 children who died at the school will be marked with decorative burial scaffolds and individual rocks will be engraved with their names.

The landscaping for the memorial park will “entail reintroducing traditional foods and medicine throughout the memorial including covering the hill,” says Remembering the Children’s website.

“So that the land provides prayer and nourishment available for all. The hope is to cultivate indigenous plants such as chokecherries, buffalo berries, currants, wild plums, timpsila, sage, mullein, bergamot, yarrow, prairie rose, and cheyaka, etc.”

Along with indigenous plants in the landscape, a cook shack will be included in the park because “providing food as both an offering to the ancestors and to nourish your community is an essential component of the Oceti Sakowin culture.”

The cook shack is the most expensive part of the plans and costs around $150,000.