Description:

After the Indian Wars of the 19th century, Native American children were taken from tribal homelands to far-away boarding schools, where they were “assimilated” by stripping them of traditional language and culture. “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” was the guiding principle of the Carlisle Indian School and the hundreds of schools across the country that followed its lead. Over a century later, a delegation of elders and youth from the Northern Arapaho Tribe travel to Pennsylvania to retrieve the remains of three of their children from the school cemetery – now part of the U.S. Army War College – and bring them back for re-burial on the Wind River Reservation. Our cameras made the journey with them – from their medicine gathering in the mountains to their frustrated tears in a Pennsylvania motel room – as they seek to reclaim a history that has been largely erased, like the cemetery markers labeled “unknown.” Their quest, and the outcome that hangs in the balance for much of the film, ends with the trek of a riderless horse to a windswept ridgetop cemetery on the Wind River Reservation. 

Film Screening and Panel Discussion featuring: 

Jordan Dresser, Home From School Producer & Northern Arapaho Business Council Chairperson
Crystal C'Bearing, Deputy Director Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office
Gail Ridgely, Northern Arapaho Sand Creek Massacre Descendant Representative
Moderated by: Geoff O'Gara, Director of Home From School