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HISTORICAL CONTENT WARNINGThis chapter contains historical documents and analysis related to Native American boarding schools, forced child removal, and cultural genocide. The language quoted includes period-specific terms that are offensive today. This material is presented for educational purposes only, as evidence of federal and church policies, and to honor the survivors and families affected. Reader discretion is advised.THE LETTERApril 20, 1952 — Tekakwitha Indian Mission, Sisseton, South DakotaLake Traverse Reservation — Sisseton Wahpeton OyateFor Educational Purposes Only — Historical Document AnalysisThe letter is typed on thin, yellowed mission stationery. One page. One signature. No letterhead flourish.The date in the top right corner reads: April 20th, 1952.It begins like a thank-you note:> "Thank you very kindly for your donation of 10.00 for my little Indians..."It ends like a transaction:> "...you may have him any time you desire. I am not making any inquiries about you, because it takes a good person to make an offer as you did."Between those two sentences lies a century of federal Indian policy.It is the system, written down by a man who did not think he was doing anything wrong.I. THE EVIDENCE OF THE DOCUMENT[Historical Document — 1952]What you are seeing is a solicitation letter from the Tekakwitha Indian Mission Inc., Sisseton, South Dakota — a Catholic institution operating on the Lake Traverse Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, the eastern Dakota people.The letter offers a child for a summer "vacation." The language must be quoted in full to understand its weight:1. "We have a few little boys and girls who have no one at all interested, whether they live or die or come and go." The author declares the children to be social orphans.2. "I would send a little boy of six years or older or a little girl what ever you prefer." The child is presented as a selectable commodity.3. "These Indian children are very little trouble, especially the one I have in mind." The child is evaluated for compliance.4. "I am not making any inquiries about you." The placement requires no background investigation.For a historian, this is not anecdotal. This is primary source evidence of three interlocking federal and church systems. This chapter analyzes that evidence for educational purposes.II. EVIDENCE ONE: THE BOARDING SCHOOL AS AN INSTITUTIONThe Tekakwitha Mission was part of a network that, by 1952, numbered over 150 federal and parochial boarding schools.The philosophical foundation for that network was articulated by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, founder of Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879:> "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."The Evidence: In 1928, the U.S. Department of the Interior commissioned the Meriam Report — The Problem of Indian Administration. Investigators found children fed a starvation diet, housed in overcrowded dormitories, forced into manual labor for half the day, and punished physically for speaking their native languages. The report is available in the National Archives as Institute for Government Research, 1928.The Sisseton Wahpeton children at Tekakwitha were not orphans in the legal sense. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) records for the Lake Traverse Agency in the 1940s-1950s show a deliberate policy of declaring families "unfit" based on poverty — poverty created by the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887, which had reduced the Lake Traverse Reservation from 918,000 acres to less than 100,000 acres held by tribal members.III. EVIDENCE TWO: THE OUTING AND VACATION SYSTEM AND THE $10 SPONSORSHIPThe $10 figure is not arbitrary. In the 1940s and 1950s, Catholic publications such as The Indian Sentinel — the official organ of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions — ran a program called "Sponsor a Papoose."The Evidence: Issues of The Indian Sentinel from 1948-1955 contain full-page advertisements with photographs of Native children and the caption: "Will you adopt an Indian child?" The sponsorship money went to the mission, not the child.The "vacation" invitation in the 1952 letter is the direct continuation of the Outing System, created at Carlisle in 1880.The Evidence: Carlisle Indian School Outing Records, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Record Group 75. The official purpose stated: "To give the child experience in civilized family life." The labor reports show: boys classified as "farm labor," girls as "domestic help." No wages were paid. In many cases, the "vacation" became permanent.The sentence "I am not making any inquiries about you" demonstrates that in 1952, a child could be transferred to a stranger across state lines with no home study, no background check, no tribal consent — practices later outlawed by the Indian Child Welfare Act.IV. EVIDENCE THREE: FROM VACATION TO MASS REMOVALWhat began as informal placements was formalized as federal policy six years after this letter.On June 9, 1958, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Child Welfare League of America signed an agreement creating the Indian Adoption Project.The Evidence: The project ran from 1958 to 1967. Statistics documented by the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) in 1969 show:- 25% to 35% of all Native children in the U.S. were removed from their families.- In South Dakota, 90% of children in foster care were Native American in the early 1970s, while Native people made up less than 10% of the state population. Source: South Dakota Department of Social Services, 1971; cited in U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, 1974.- In Minnesota, Native children were 12 times more likely to be removed than white children.This analysis is presented to show historical patterns of child removal for educational understanding of current law.V. WHY LAKE TRAVERSE? WHY 1952?The Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate are Dakota, survivors of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. After that war, 38 Dakota men were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862 — the largest mass execution in American history. Over 1,600 Dakota women, children, and elders were marched to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling and later to Crow Creek, where hundreds starved.Ninety years after Mankato, in 1952, the grandchildren of those survivors were in Tekakwitha Mission, being described as children "who have no one at all interested, whether they live or die."VI. THE LAW THAT ENDED ITIn 1978, after organizing by Native mothers and the Association on American Indian Affairs, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), 25 U.S.C. § 1901 et seq.ICWA states: An Indian child may not be removed without active efforts to keep the family together, and must be placed preferentially with family, tribe, or other Native families. It was written to make the 1952 letter illegal.On June 15, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld ICWA in Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U.S. 255 (2023), by a 7-2 vote.CONCLUSION: THE CHILD WITHOUT A NAMEWe do not know the name of the child the priest "had in mind." That is the final piece of evidence.In the BIA and mission archives, thousands of children are listed as "Boy, 6, little trouble." Their Dakota names were erased.If he is alive today, the boy in this letter would be approximately 79 years old.That is not a donation letter. That is the paperwork of cultural genocide, typed in 12-point font, with a blessing at the bottom.This historical material is presented for educational purposes only, to document federal policy and to honor survivors and descendants.Archival Sources:1. Original Letter: Tekakwitha Indian Mission Inc., Sisseton, SD, April 20, 1952.2. The Indian Sentinel, 1948-1955.3. Meriam Report, The Problem of Indian Administration, 1928.4. Carlisle Outing Records, NARA RG 75.5. BIA Indian Adoption Project files, 1958.6. AAIA, The Destruction of American Indian Families, 1969.7. U.S. Senate Hearings, 1974-1977.8. ICWA, 25 U.S.C. § 1901 (1978).9. Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U.S. 255 (2023).