The work of repatriation BY | BELEN LUCRETIA BENWAY ’21
Searching for answers BY | GREG SKOOG (SJU ’89)
Exploring hard topics, employing undergrad student research, engaging in difficult conversations and recommending solutions. ... These are the tools of liberal arts inquiry that will help acknowledge our past and shape our future. And right now, Bennie students are leading that push in so many different ways. These next pages highlight just a few of those areas.
Defining decolonization Colonization – of the type that took place in North America – involved the removal of Indigenous people from the land. Beyond that, it involved the attempted elimination of those cultures by multiple means, including the forced assimilation process found at Native boarding schools. Colonization has resulted in the removal of
Indigenous peoples from most forms of representation – in our history, in our curriculum, in our media – so that we’re left primarily with crude stereotypes. Decolonization is the unwinding of that process and regaining native presence, culture and representation. The practical elements of that can vary depending on whom you ask.
18 | College of Saint Benedict Magazine
“Native Americans have been healing from the injustices of colonization for decades, and I think all the steps forward we take as a University and College to pay respect to the resilience of this group of people is important. Sharing these photos is a symbol of our school extending respect and tribute.” This is a line from the chapter I wrote in the book Inclusion in Higher Education: Research Initiatives on Campus. This line perfectly encapsulates the mission I had from the start of my research working in the Saint Benedict’s Monastery archives. I started working in the archives sophomore year with the goal to uncover as much information and as many photos as I could detailing the forgotten history of the industrial schools that were operated at Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s. It was truly astonishing to me to find out that at one point in our history, there were more Indigenous students on these grounds than white. I felt like if I could learn more about the past I could possibly shed light on that same community in the present. It soon became a much bigger project than I ever expected, with our community’s reach of industrial schools stretching to the White Earth Nation and Red Lake Nation as well. I found a wide range of photographs from each school. The first phase of my work was to physically spend lots of time in the archives looking through photos and trying to analyze them in the hope of placing faces with names. The sisters were pivotal partners in my work and without their help and support I wouldn’t have been able to uncover nearly as much information. Not only were they so sweet and always had an extra cup of coffee to offer me, but they also really held a plethora of knowledge. Every time I would come into the archives they would have a few more files they thought would help me. The archives are huge and there is so much information down there, it can be really easy to get lost in all the materials. Some of the photographs hadn’t been seen in the 100+ years since they were taken! It feels like you are touching history. And from that moment on I felt like I had to get these photos out and shared. I wanted everyone to know about this history and about all the students who were
