Haskell Institute, founded as United States Indian Industrial Training, was an Indian boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas that was established in 1884. During the boarding school era, children were brought there by force — sometimes in child-sized handcuffs — and put into a re-education program. The legacy of the boarding school era still resonates today.
This article was produced in collaboration with the Native Storytelling Workshop at the University of Kansas.
The early years of Haskell brought death to Native children, who were taken from the Kickapoo, Cheyenne, Omaha and several other tribes. Many of these deaths were caused by poor conditions such as incomplete dorms, bad restroom facilities, and diseases spread by students sharing towels. If a student was sick, they were sometimes sent to the hospital. Read more>