Poor Roger Bollinger. In response to his kindness, he was exposed to an ugly side of history. Like most Americans, Bollinger was blissfully unaware of the painful story of American Indian boarding schools.

Today I called him to inquire about his gift to Haskell Indian Nations University’s (Lawrence KS) Cultural Center and Museum: a leather-bound photo album of (then-named) Haskell Institute’s very first students. According to curator Bobbi Rahder, these are the only known identifiable photos of that first 1884 class.

Bollinger seemed like a kind man. A civic-minded and concerned citizen, he supports education and cultural understanding. Such sentiments moved him to donate his family’s album to Haskell in hopes that current students might appreciate it. No one in his family knows how it came to be in their possession.

Bollinger knew little about Haskell or Indian boarding schools, but opined that the institute was established to educate Indians in an organized fashion so that they might survive better in the White man’s world. He knew nothing of the force that the federal government exercised in separating those early students from their families or of the impact this still has upon many Indian people today. He seemed skeptical when I told him that many of those students did not go willingly to Haskell and that much of that early curriculum was aimed at creating good servants rather than tribal leaders.

We ended our conversation cordially, and I thanked him for his time and the precious gift to the Cultural Center.

After hanging up, a wave of jealousy passed over me. I am jealous of his and America’s ignorance; I am jealous of his casual relationship with history. Unlike me and many other Indian people, he can put all these events far away from his life. For Bollinger, the stories of Indian boarding schools are part of a distant, indistinct past. He gets to move on and move on easily.

To his credit, Bollinger noted that unfair things happened in the past and that the early relationship between Whites and Indians was a “clash of cultures that have evolved over time.”

For my family, however, this evolution hasn’t always been such a good thing. I suspect that my family may not be the only Indians who feel this way.

Sometimes, I selfishly wish that I knew nothing about my own family’s experience with Indian boarding schools. My mother was taken from her family at age five and taken to “the Sister School,” a Catholic boarding school on her reservation, St. Mary’s Catholic School on the Bad River Reservation in Wisconsin.

Her stories have always been with me. She would whisper them to me, as we would lie in bed on hot afternoons in the cool quiet of her room. Telling her little girl did not lessen the power of the stories’ evil over her. The legacy of the beatings, humiliations, loneliness, helplessness, and resentment were simply handed on to her children. The legacy survived in the often-misguided ways she tried to mother us, devoid as she was of the experience of family. Unsure of the quality of her own culture and love, she sent me, her only daughter, to Catholic school to be educated by the same nuns who helped strip away a piece of her humanity. I see now that she gave me the only gift she knew to give, the gift of survival at any cost.

The pain of Sister School dwells in my and my mother’s DNA; it is like a deeply imbedded stinger, unseen on the surface but throbbing under the skin. Distanced and strengthened by age, experience, and family support, I am now digging this stinger out from our family psyche. The experience is painful and scarring but ultimately I hope will lead to some catharsis that holds relief.

Looking at the photos of those first students at Haskell Institute brings a terrible realness to the stories of my mother’s life at Sister School. Although my mother was born many years after Haskell’s first class, I see her pain and hunger when I gaze into the eyes of Charles Panther, a young Osage man who was the first to die at Haskell.

“We were always so hungry,” she says. She still recalls the beatings she received for infractions like gulping cups of cream from the milking parlor. Despite the beatings, she and her siblings would desperately steal food. “We were just so hungry, we couldn’t stop ourselves.”

During its first year, Haskell Institute buildings were not yet fit to be occupied, according to Rahder. Of those first 300 students, 10 died during the first year due to exposure, hunger, disease, and, Rahder speculates, broken hearts. Panther, 20, was the first to die; his marked grave lies among many others in the Haskell cemetery where several young children also lie. Many, many more were buried without markers.

Early Haskell policy stipulated that students were not allowed to leave the school for four years. The policy was strictly enforced, says Rahder, who refers to letters in the Cultural Center’s collection from the mother of two girls to the superintendent. When the girls’ father was dying, the mother begged that they be allowed to return home; her request was refused. A subsequent letter asks the superintendent to inform her daughters that their father has died. The Cultural Center is home to numerous such artifacts, grim witness to the school’s painful past, a past that mirrors United States policy towards Indian peoples.

The photographs in the Bollinger album attach faces and expressions to the impassive list of names in the school’s first ledger that is kept at the Haskell Cultural Center. Until now, the ledger was the only record that these youngsters lived and sometimes died at Haskell. “The list alone was so impersonal,” says Rahder. “But seeing faces connected with names makes their stories so much more meaningful.”

The album of 26 photographs of students from that first class is on display at the center. If funds become available, Rahder hopes to have a special event introducing the photos to Haskell and the public. She hopes the exhibit will contribute to the healing process for Haskell and other Native peoples. The center also includes a healing garden and peace pole on its grounds.

Most of the non-Indians who visit the Cultural Center are shocked to learn about the history of Haskell and Indian boarding schools, says Rahder. And they are often visibly moved after reading the early letters between students and parents.

Such is the strength of experience over our views of history. Part of my healing is offering up unequivocal proof that the boarding school experience happened and that its legacy lives on in our people.

For her part, Rahder hopes that this new awareness among non-Indians will ripple out into the community at large.

I’m not sure of the impact that this knowledge will have upon others, but it is helpful to my family and me. Chi Migwiich (thank you very much) Roger Bollinger and Haskell Cultural Center.

Mary Annette Pember (Red Cliff Tribe of Wisconsin Ojibwe) is an independent writer and photographer based in Cincinnati, OH.

The 2009 issue of Tribal College Journal Student featured a poem by Ruth Laws McLain (Cherokee, Swedish, Scottish, French) who was then a student at Haskell Indian Nations University. Her poem, Wakarusa, protested the proposed construction of a multi-lane road through the Wakarusa Wetlands on the south side of the Haskell campus. The road, she wrote, would destroy the ecosystem, but also negatively impact the Haskell cemetery and the Medicine Wheel. Charles Panther (Osage) is buried in that cemetery. To read her poem, visit TCJ Student: http://tcjstudent.org/wakarusa/