Hidden History: Federal investigation generates new interest in Minnesota’s American Indian boarding schools [Video]

Alice Erickson squinted at old, black and white photographs tacked to a bulletin board.

“I can remember seeing them buildings,” Erickson said, pointing to an aerial picture of a dozen structures that made up the Pipestone Indian School. “They were dark. I think they might have been made out of quartzite even.”

While the 75-year-old struggled to remember the layout of the once-sprawling boarding school campus of the early 1900s, she’s heard stories her entire life about the Indigenous children who lived there.

“When these kids were brought there, or taken from their homes… they cut their hair off,” she said. “I see a lot of pictures with these little kids all have the same haircut.”

For decades, the federal government took Native American children from their families and sent them to boarding schools around the United States, including to the one in Pipestone, Minn., a small, southwestern town eight …