BOARDING SCHOOLS

Ojibwe woman makes history as North Dakota poet laureate

BISMARCK, ND. (KVRR/AP) — North Dakota lawmakers have appointed Denise Lajimodiere as the state’s poet laureate. The Ojibwe member of the Turtle Mountain Band in Belcourt becomes the first Native American to hold the position. She has written several award-winning books of poetry. She’s considered a national expert on the history of Native American boarding schools and wrote an academic…

South Dakota ex-boarding school for Native children owning up to its past

The Red Cloud Indian School in South Dakota has undertaken a reckoning with its troubled past

PINE RIDGE, S.D. – Middle schooler Rarity Cournoyer stood at the heart of the Red Cloud Indian School campus and chanted a prayer song firmly and solemnly in the Lakota language — in a place where past generations of students were punished for speaking their mother tongue. Her classmates stood around her at a prayer circle designed with archetypes of…