Events planned in remembrance of Nebraska’s federal Native American boarding school

The Sheldon Museum of Art will host an event Friday in recognition of one of the nation’s largest federal Native American boarding schools.

The Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School operated from 1884 to 1934. At its peak in 1932, the school’s 640-acre campus housed 599 students, who ranged in age from 4 to 22 years old. Children from more than 40 tribes were taken from their families and communities and stripped of their language and culture.

A Genoa Remembrance Day panel discussion is planned for 5:30 p.m. Friday at the Lincoln museum. The event will include remarks by Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs Director Judi gaiashkibos, a University of Nebraska Inter-Tribal Exchange student-led panel and community conversations.

The event is personal for emcee Randall Nunez. The UNL senior’s grandfather was taken to the school in Genoa at 7 years old.

“Come learn, especially if you don't know anything about Genoa itself,” Nunez said. “We're open arms. We'd love to see everybody's faces there.”

Hundreds of children were brought to the Genoa boarding school during the institution’s 50 years of operation. At least 86 are known to have died there. Records show nine students were buried on school grounds. The remains of 37 others were sent home to their tribes. The final resting place of 40 is still unknown.

Historians and government officials in recent years have begun to examine the nation’s boarding school era. In 2022, a Nebraska legislative resolution designated Feb. 20 as an annual day of remembrance for the Genoa school.

In addition to Friday’s event, Sheldon, along with Love Library and Omaha’s Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge will be lit orange in memory of the children taken to the federal boarding school.

The Genoa school is one of many Native American boarding schools that operated across the United States through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Spurred by the discovery of unmarked graves at similar schools in Canada in 2021, The Interior Department under then-Secretary Deb Haaland launched an investigation into the federal and church-funded boarding school systems.

The department’s published findings estimate at least 18,000 children were taken from their tribes and forced to attend schools founded in the name of assimilation. It also documented nearly 1,000 deaths and 74 gravesites associated with the more than 500 schools. Historians believe that the true death toll is likely much higher.

Nunez said when he talks about Genoa with his college friends, they know about the town but not about the federal institution that operated there for 50 years.

“I feel like it’s important getting the story out there that the school is still there, and just making sure that it's told truthfully,” Nunez said.