GENOA, Nebraska — Dazhen Lasley chose to come to the Genoa boarding school Tuesday.

His great grandfather Henry wasn’t given a choice to come to the school nearly a hundred years ago.

Dazhen found evidence of his great grandfather’s time spent at the former boarding school when he found his relative’s name carved into a desk.

“It’s really meaningful to me,” said the 18-year-old.

Dazhen joined 18 other Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation Public School students Tuesday on a field trip to the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School. The school was in operation from 1884 to 1934 and had as many as 600 students from 40 tribal nations at its peak, making it one of the largest federal boarding schools in the nation.

It was one of more than 300 Indian boarding schools that were established by the government and churches in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The schools removed Native children from their families and subjected them to a strict assimilation program.

Students were typically given academic instruction for the first half of the school day and then taught a vocation for the second half. In Genoa, students were taught blacksmithing, carpentry, harness making and tailoring.

They arrived by wagon or train, and some stayed for as long as three years without seeing their families, said Nancy Carlson of the Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation, which oversees the Genoa U.S. Indian School Interpretive Center.

“Welcome to this place,” Carlson told the Omaha Nation students. “I know it holds a lot of meaning for you and your family.”

She said it’s rare for a reservation school to send such a large group of students to the museum.

Carlson shared the story of one former student, Sidney Bird, who endured abuse by the headmaster at the school and was forced to give up his Omaha language. When he left the school after three years, he arrived at the train station near his home only to find he couldn’t talk to some of his family members because he had forgotten his first language.

“He only knew English,” Carlson said.

Only a handful of the more than 30 original buildings that made up the 640-acre school campus remains today. The interpretive center features numerous exhibits commemorating the school and its students, including 46 tribal flags, photos of students, student desks, wood stoves and harness-making tools.

Brent Wojcik, who teaches social studies at Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation Public School, said he decided to bring his students to the museum to try to connect them to their ancestors, some of whom attended the school.

He said he learned about the school after reading about efforts to locate a former student cemetery on the campus.

“It kind of got my wheels spinning,” he said.

During its 50 years of operation, 86 students died at the school, and 40 of those students haven’t been found, Carlson said. The school’s foundation has worked with the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs and the Nebraska State Historical Society to try to find the school’s former cemetery.

They’ve used cadaver dogs, school records and even ground-penetrating radar to try to find the cemetery, she said.

Wojcik said he had his students research whether they had relatives that attended the school prior to visiting the school. Several found relatives on an online database that has catalogued many of the remaining records from the school.

Nora Lyons, 17, said she was surprised to hear Sidney Bird’s story.

“That kind of stuck to me,” she said.

Latecia Contreras, 18, said she enjoyed reconnecting to the past.

“It’s very interesting to learn about your ancestors,” she said.