The remains of five Native American children who died at an Indigenous boarding school are being returned to their tribes over a century later

The remains of five children who died at a Pennsylvania boarding school for Native Americans are going to be exhumed and returned to their families who have waited for their return for more than a century, the Office of Army Cemeteries (OAC) has announced.

The children died between 1880 and 1910 while attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a boarding school for Native American children known for physical and sexual abuse, the US Department of Interior detailed in a 2022 report.

They were forced to assimilate into White society, stripped of their Indigenous names and banned from speaking their languages. If they resisted, they were punished, often violently, according to the report.

The names of the children who are being repatriated to their tribes, the OAC announced May 24, are: Edward Upright from the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota; Amos LaFramboise from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota; Beau Neal from the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming; Edward Spott from the Puyallup Tribe in Washington; and Launy Shorty from the Blackfeet Nation in Montana.

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the first off-reservation boarding school for Native American children, and was built on the abandoned Carlisle Barracks, according to the National Museum of the American Indian and the US Army War College. The college now occupies the site.

The deceased children returning home are among more than 10,000 students, spanning about 50 tribes, who were brought from across the United States to the school until it closed in 1918. At least 180 students were buried at the school's cemetery in named and unnamed burials, according to the OAC.

The exhumation is the US Army's sixth disinterment project at Carlisle Barracks, after the Army moved human remains to the post's cemetery in 1927. So far, 29 children have been returned to their tribes, not including the upcoming disinterment.