One of the least talked about subjects in the american school system is the forced boarding schools of the Native American. I was fortunate enough to have it mentioned briefly at the high school I went to. Hearing the first hand accounts of one of the last students of one of those schools was quite interesting.
The mass graveyards of these boarding schools is quite saddening to hear about and see. There are many schools that do have private graveyards, but not usually for the same purpose. Iowa State has its own private graveyard founded during a terrible blizzard in which a family member of one of the First Deans passed away. For this I always thought it was common place for old schools and universities to have some form of private graveyard in case of tragic deaths. It is heartbreaking to see that so many died in such terrible conditions.
I also find that the change in the public’s general interest was so drastically shifted by the creation of these schools, yet even still at about that same time the state of Iowa was doing slightly different things compared to California at the same time. It is always fascinating to me the inherent differences of two states that came about roughly ten years apart from one another.
Ian Nieland