This week on Foreign Correspondent Thurs 26 May on ABC TV

A bleak search is underway on Nebraska’s frozen plains.

The graves of indigenous children who died after being taken from their tribes and sent to boarding school are being sought by a community. A moving story about coming to terms with a traumatic past.

The State Archaeologist is attempting to locate an old cemetery on the grounds of the former Genoa US Indian Industrial School using ground-penetrating radar.

The Genoa school was part of a nationwide network of Native American children’s institutions established in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was their goal to assimilate indigenous children into white society.

By 1926, it’s estimated more than 80% of Native American children were enrolled in these institutions

“We’ve been severed from our language, from our culture, from our practices over a whole course of time, but the boarding school era that…

did a number on our people where we almost did not recuperate from it.”

– Redwing Thomas, Teacher, Santee Sioux Nation.

Last year, the discovery of more than a thousand graves of children at the sites of former boarding schools in Canada pushed the U.S.A to examine its own history.

ABC journalist Stan Grant, whose family was impacted by Australia’s assimilationist policies of forcibly removing children from families, presents this powerful story.

He tells the story of a community in Nebraska trying to uncover the truth about one of the country’s largest and longest-running boarding schools.

“We were taught in school about Native American boarding schools, assimilation,”

– says Genoa resident Nikki Drozd

“but we weren’t aware of the cemetery…I didn’t stop to think about the children that died here.”

This month, the US Department of the Interior has published the first major government investigation of the country’s boarding school history. It’s estimated that up to tens of thousands of children could have died while attending these state-sanctioned institutions.

“We’re still looking for those children that died,”

– says Judi gaiashkibos.

“I can’t rest until I feel I’ve exhausted every possible avenue to find the children.”

Foreign Correspondent – Thursday 26^th May at 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview