A traveling exhibit exploring the history and lasting impact of Michigan’s Native American boarding school system has arrived at Michigan Tech. The exhibit offers observers a chance to learn about a difficult chapter in the state’s past through the voices of those who lived it. In 2024 the Walking Together – Finding Common Ground debuted in the western Upper Peninsula when the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community hosted it during the Winter Powwow. Since then, the exhibit has traveled around the state, hosted by tribal communities, and on college campuses.
The display represents years of research into the Native American boarding school system in Michigan and examines how those institutions continue to affect Native American communities today. For Michigan Tech student Jake Williams, the exhibit resonates personally. Growing up downstate, Williams and his family attended powwows with the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, but he says connecting with his heritage has been a challenge throughout his life.
“Moving up here was not very different for me because I feel sort of disconnected from my culture because I didn’t grow up on the reservation,” Williams said. “Again, my father and grandfather did not grow up on the reservation. So we have been sort of assimilated into white culture for sure.”
Williams’ family is one of many who live in urban settings. Nearly 80 percent of Native Americans in the United States live in urban or suburban areas. Many factors lead to families leaving reservations. But it can become harder to connect with your heritage away from community.
Finding community on campus through the Biskaabiiyaang Collective became important to rebuilding that connection. When the group invited the college to observe the Walking Together exhibit in the fall, Williams found the experience moving. The exhibit includes interviews that tell individual firsthand accounts growing up within the boarding school system. Williams says an upcoming panel discussion with Keweenaw Bay Indian Community members will make the experience more engaging for newcomers.
“It’s striking to hear precisely what had happened, what happened to these people, as well as the lingering effects it has because a big word that has come around somewhat recently is generational trauma,” Williams said.
Generational trauma refers to the challenges individuals pass onto future generations in response to oppression, abuse, and psychological pain as a child or young adult. These traumatic incidents can appear in a variety of ways, often causing harm to an individual’s health or to how a family functions. Addressing generational trauma can become difficult for communities when there is a lack of knowledge about an event. “Remember the Children” covers the discovery of unmarked graves connected to the Rapid City Indian Boarding School in South Dakota, which closed in the 1930s. Michigan’s last boarding school, the Holy Childhood Indian Boarding School in Harbor Springs, closed in 1983.
“It really made me think about how my grandfather and my father had a difficult relationship, possibly in part because of this,” Williams said. “And it’s very striking. But it’s also important to know that it’s not just about me, it’s about everyone. It’s about the panelists and what they went through.”
The Walking Together – Finding Common Ground exhibit was created through research conducted by the Great Lakes Peace Center, the Beaumier Heritage Center at Northern Michigan University and the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan. The Biskaabiiyaang Collective, KUUF, the Canterbury House, Trinity Episcopal Church and the Van Pelt Opie Library have collaborated to bring the exhibit to Michigan Tech’s campus.
The opening reception of the exhibit, and film screening with a panel Q&A, will begin tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. inside the Library Reading Room. On March 16th the exhibit will screen the film Iron Horse, based on the life of Reggie Leach who was raised within the Canadian residential school system and his journey navigating life as a professional hockey player and Indigenous person in the 1970s. The Walking Together Exhibit will remain on display at the Van Pelt Opie Library, inside the Reading Room, from March 11th to the 22nd.
Those interested in bringing Walking Together – Finding Common Ground to their community can find more information here. Those interested in finding details for the exhibit at Michigan Technological Univeristy can find more details here.
