To the editor:

I applaud the recent story on abuses that took place in South Dakota Indian boarding schools.

However, the Washington Post story was pre-dated by a story in the April 30 issue of “Indian Country Today.”

In that article, the St. Paul’s Marty Mission School was named as a place where alleged abuses took place. This was in addition to the St. Francis Mission School where Mr. Lloyd B. One Star alleged abuse to have taken place.

These plaintiffs, along with many other survivors of these boarding schools, have united to file a lawsuit against the U.S. government.

Thousands of plaintiffs have come forth for this lawsuit. Lawsuits like this one already have been filed and settled in Canada, where first nations peoples were subject to abuses by boarding school religious employees up into the 1960s-1970s.

The plaintiffs in this case are using a provision from the 1868 treaties with the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Peoples, the Crow Tribe, and the Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, that took place at Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, that held religious agents accountable for their actions toward tribal members. Minnesota Ojibwe (Chippewa) treaties of the 1860s contained behavior accountability provisions for religious employees of the federal government Indian agencies appointed to reservation duty following the Civilization Act of 1819.

Many of the 25 boarding schools open at the beginning of the 20th century had stories of abuse based upon systematic punishment to stop native ways. The Lawrence community, the Kansas Department of Transportation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers all need to stop living in denial of this cultural holocaust and acknowledge its existence.

Mike Ford,

Lawrence