Overall, I think the most surprising thing I learned this week was about how students at Native American boarding schools were often buried there in unmarked graves and not allowed to be returned home, especially at Carlisle. Before, I had not realized the full extent of the racism that Native Americans were facing at the time, but to discover what was happening with the younger generations is also heartbreaking. It really goes to show the difficulty of trying to merge and anglicize different cultures, as it is very harmful to children to punish them for being who they are. The legacy of ideas like this really affects me because it has changed how I have generally viewed boarding schools in the past, as while they can be places of learning who students who can’t stay with their families, the sad reality is that sometimes, there was no choice. Knowing this information makes me more determined to try and find some way to help the outside, as the road to getting a more equal society is still a long and painful one. In researching how the modern effects of this are impacting the world, I found an article called “How Indian Boarding Schools have Impacted Generations” on the Center for Health website, by Jenna Kunze. In the article, Kunze describes how the state of reality, indoctrination, and buffers greatly harmed the way in which indigenous people were able to address themselves, with families having difficult relationships due to the cycles of loss. This has led to things like children needing to be raised by their grandparents and feelings of exclusion, as people have lost faith in the full-blooded nature of their Native American ethnicities by being deprived of these experiences. It has given descendants of children who went to these boarding schools and survived trauma and isolation, showing the profound intergenerational effect. Because boarding schools have a much darker history than an an average person might be led to believe, and many indigenous people find themselves losing their identities and communities, it is more important than ever for them to take action. They might be able to attend public schools now and a Bureau of Indian Affairs has been organized, but prejudice is still an ongoing thing. That is why it is important to face their trauma and expand their horizons beyond such things, to ensure such mass disasters never occur again. There are also repatriation attempts to return the deceased bodies of students to their surviving relatives, but it becomes hard when some places such as the American War College claim they are historic property and should not be removed. Still, the efforts are a step in the right direction, and shows the growing strength of the Native American people as they try to keep their traditions alive.