Across the Aisle | Preserving a Painful Piece of Michigan History.

• Author: Rassenfoss, Joe

Beginning in the 19th century, thousands of Native American children suffered forced assimilation into white society in Indian boarding schools set up by the federal government.

Three of those schools were in Michigan. Now two state senators from opposite sides of the aisle are working together to make sure that painful history is never forgotten.

Sen. Wayne Schmidt grew up in northern Michigan and attended school with members of the Grand Traverse band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. "I knew about the Indian boarding schools because of the one (nearby) in Harbor Springs but didn't think much about it when I was younger."

Schmidt's awareness of tribal issues, which expanded through high school and college, deepened thanks to six years in the Michigan House of Representatives, and since 2014, in the state Senate. After meeting with tribal elders during 2021 about the legacy of Indian boarding schools, he realized that "we needed to emphasize the history more."

The result is SB 876, which encourages the state Board of Education to include the troubled history of Michigan's Indian boarding schools in its recommended curriculum standards for students in eighth through 12th grades.

Schmidt, a Republican, knew exactly who he wanted for a co-sponsor: Sen. Jeff Irwin. The fact that the Democrat is a member of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians informed the decision, but the two also have a long history of cooperation. "I've worked with Jeff on a number of things," Schmidt says. "And he's a friend."

"We've collaborated on issues important to tribal communities," Irwin says. "A few years ago, we were able to change the budget so that the state is now following through on its treaty obligation to provide education to qualified tribal members. And a few years before that, I had a bill about tribal tourism promotion that we worked on."

The new bill cites the "cultural assimilation of Indigenous children through the forceful relocation of these children from their families and communities to distant residential facilities where the children's American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian identities, language and beliefs were to be forcibly suppressed."

'A Chance to Heal'

Thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families and placed in the schools. By 1900, there were 20,000 children in the schools, and by 1925 that number had more than tripled, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing...