Federal leaders face Indigenous schools’ tragic past for first-of-its-kind report

Denise Lajimodiere has studied Native American boarding schools and documented the experiences of Indigenous students for years. Those students have relayed accounts of being forced to leave their homes, learn English and give up tribal languages and cultural practices.

Lajimodiere remembers talking to her own father about his time at Chemawa Indian School in Salem in the 1920s.

“He said kids would just die,” Lajimodiere said. “And I asked him ‘what did they die of?’ … He said they died of being lonesome.”