‘I would not cry:’ National Day of Remembrance recognizes boarding school survivors and families

WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. In Canada, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.

WASHINGTON — Ramona Klein admits she was “an instigator” at Fort Totten Indian Boarding School in North Dakota.

“We didn’t have toys. We didn’t have anything to play with. And we went to bed at 6:30 as little girls,” she told a crowd Tuesday, Sept. 16, at a National Day of Remembrance recognizing boarding school survivors and descendants.

Klein, who attended the school from 1954 to 1958, would wake up in the middle of the night and wake the other girls. They’d whip the scratchy, rough, Army-issued blankets on the floor while two girls sat on it and “we’d get sparks.”

“It’s like [the] Fourth of July. So we would laugh. That was fun,” she said. Then they’d get bored and slide down the stairs on the mattress.

The beatings that inevitably followed didn’t break her.

“I would not cry,” she told the crowd. “I distinctly remember saying, ‘You’re not going to get the best of me.’”

More than two dozen people gathered Tuesday on a rainy day in the nation’s capital for the event hosted by the National Native American Boarding School Coalition at the Indian Gaming Association. The organization, known as NABS, advocates for Native peoples affected by U.S. federal Indian boarding school policies.

The remembrance included a candlelight vigil, songs, and talks by survivors and their families.

Since 2021, the organization has informally observed Sept. 30 as the National Day of Remembrance for those who attended U.S. federal Indian boarding schools, survivors, their communities, and their families. This year the organization recognized it a bit early to coincide with the National Congress of American Indians’ Tribal Unity Impact Days in Washington, D.C.

‘A little bit more joy’

Klein, the first vice president on the organization’s board of directors, uses her experience and voice to encourage other survivors to speak up.

The organization has been traveling around the country to permanently document the experience of boarding school survivors, the Oral History Project, as part of the U.S. Department of Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative that was started by former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo.

Klein, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, recently traveled to the northwest for the project and witnessed five generations in one family speaking up, including the 90-something-year-old great-great-grandma.

“I think it’s the first time some of them really spoke with feeling, of their feelings with each other and helped understand some of what some people might call dysfunction,” she said. “But I think we’re used to functioning that way. … You know, it’s not necessarily dysfunction.”

It’s because of the U.S. federal Indian boarding school experiences and trauma that they are the way they are, she said. And to release that now, after so many years, is cathartic for many.

“To see people after they share their story, especially people who share their story maybe for the first time, they seem lighter,” she said. “There’s a little bit more joy.”

Ponka-We Victors-Cozad, NABS director of policy and advocacy, said the organization is still advocating for legislation in the U.S Congress to establish the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. A bill proposing the commission was introduced in July 2025 by Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Oklahoma Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, Chickasaw, will be introducing one in the House soon. Victors-Cozad is Tohono O’odham and Ponca.

The Senate bill outlines that it will establish the Truth and Healing Commission and that the commission must investigate the impacts and ongoing effects of the Indian boarding school policies, under which American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children were forcibly removed from their family homes and placed in boarding schools.

The bill calls for the commission to develop recommendations on ways to protect unmarked graves and accompanying land protections; support repatriation and identify the tribal nations from which children were taken; and discontinue the removal of Indigenous children from their families and tribal communities by state social service departments, foster care agencies, and adoption agencies.

The Office of Army Cemeteries has begun the disinterment process at the former site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, with 19 graves this fall — the highest in a year. One of the children disinterred is a Seminole Nation of Oklahoma student, Wallace Perryman, who was one of the last to be buried at the school at age 20. His remains are set to go home to the Seminole. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes will repatriate the remains of 18 other children. Both tribes declined to comment about the repatriations.

Paving the way for others

Klein and Deb Parker, the organization’s outgoing chief executive officer, reminded everyone that the Day of Remembrance is a time of celebration “because we’re survivors.”

Parker, who is Tulalip, Yaqui and Apache, said as tribal nations are growing, it is important to remember those who paved the way to get there — those who survived and those who didn’t.

“That’s including those who were beaten if they spoke their language,” Parker said. “And yet, so many of those children wouldn’t give up their language. They kept speaking in corners. They kept speaking behind buildings, so that they would never forget who they are. And so it’s because of those children we carry on with our culture, with our language, with our identity.”

She continued, “And so where it’s a time of reverence, a time of introspection, it’s also a time of celebrating those who made it home and honoring those who carried those teachings forward, so that we can be here today.”

Other events are set for Sept. 30, which is a national holiday in Canada now known as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Canada’s remembrance started as Orange Shirt Day, named on behalf of a First Nations woman whose orange shirt, a gift from her grandmother, was taken from her when she arrived at residential school in Canada.

The use of orange shirts as a symbol of support for the boarding school students and their families has now spread broadly, and officials are encouraging people in the U.S. to wear an orange shirt to honor the survivors and support community healing.

Among the celebrations scheduled this year are a National Day of Remembrance on Sept. 30 at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, and a film screening and gathering on Sept. 29 at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Student Union Theater.

This story was originally published by ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today, see the story here.

Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, Diné, is the managing editor of ICT and based in its Washington bureau. Follow her on X: @jourdanbb or email her at jourdan@ictnews.org.