Tiwahe Pays Tribute to Children Who Died While Attending Rapid City Boarding School 100 Years Ago
Tiwahe, meaning family in Lakota, was installed on May 31, 2025 to pay tribute to 50 Indigenous children to died while in the custody of the Rapid City Indian School more than 100 years ago. Photo by Darren Thompson.
By Darren Thompson
Rapid City—On Saturday, the unveiling of "Tiwahe" brought hundreds together to pay their respects to children who died while attending boarding school a century ago. Tiwahe, meaning family in the Lakota language, is a bronze sculpture that memorializes the nearly 50 children who died while attending the Rapid City Indian Boarding School. The sculpture is on land placed into trust of the Oglala, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud Sioux Tribes, where the boarding school previously operated.
Dr. Donald Warne, M.D., Oglala Lakota is the Co-Director for the Center for Indigenous Health at Johns Hopkins University, and the son of Beverly Stabber Warne, the namesake of the plaza the memorial sits on. Photo by Darren Thompson.
“Where the past meets the future is right now,” said Dr. Donald Warne at the “Remembering the Children Memorial” dedication. “We each have the opportunity to make a difference on future generations and I think that is something my mom wanted to see.”
Dr. Warne, the Co-Director of the Center for Indigenous Health at Johns Hopkins University, talked of the impact of boarding schools, in his family and to the broader Indigenous community in the region. Warne, whose mother bears the plaza’s name, paid respects to the known children whose names were memorialized in stone at the Remembering the Children Memorial. “When we look at the names of these beautiful takojas (grandchildren in the Lakota language) who passed on, they’re our family,” he said.
The Rapid City Indian School, was a federal Indian boarding school that operated from 1898 to 1933 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Students who attended the school came from reservations across South Dakota, as well as the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and the Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Flathead an Fort Peck Sioux Reservations in Montana. Tribal historic preservation officers were able to identify nearly 50 unmarked gravesites on land where the boarding school previously operated—now the Beverly Stabber Warne Memorial Plaza. Warne passed away in 2024 at the age of 85. She considered by many to be a pillar of Rapid City’s Native community. She was also a member of the Remembering the Children board, the nonprofit organization that organized the sculpture and its dedication.
A wall memorializing the 50 children who died, some of them unknown, while in the custody of the Rapid City Indian School, which operated from 1898 to 1933. Photo by Darren Thompson.
Mortality rates were specially high at federal Indian boarding schools due to factors such as sickness and starvation, but many children also died while running away or traveling to and from the school. Rapid City’s Indian school was intended for grades four through eight, eventually extending to the tenth grade. Students enrolled for three-year terms with the school and were permitted to go home over the summer, but only if their families deposited monies for a train ticket back to the school in the fall. If they didn’t, students ended up working in Rapid City, applying the trades they learned in boarding school.
“Students were taught carpentry, iron work, and then ended up working and building many of the structures still standing in Rapid City today,” said Dr. Arthur Zimiga, an Oglala Lakota with a masters and doctorate degree in education from Harvard University, in an interview with LRI Native News. “Many families in the Rapid City community are descendants of the children who went to the Rapid City Indian Boarding School.”
Today, Indian boarding schools still operate in South Dakota, including the Flandreau Indian School in Flandreau and the St. Joseph’s Indian School in Chamberlain. Previously, a total of 31 Indian boarding schools existed throughout the state; some were operated and funded by the federal government and some were privately funded by churches or Christian organizations. The Rapid City Indian Boarding School, like all other Indian boarding schools, required all children to speak English, and all classroom instruction was taught in English.
During the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Interior—led by Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo—led an investigation of the history of federal Indian boarding schools throughout the country. The Bureau of Indian Affairs published two reports of the federal Indian boarding school initiative, with the federal government acknowledge the first time in U.S. history that the federal government operated more than 400 federal Indian boarding schools in the contiguous U.S., Alaska and Hawaii. In its report, the U.S. Department of Interior wrote that boarding schools directly targeted American Indian, Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian children in the “pursuit of a policy of cultural assimilation that coincided with Indian territorial dispossession.”
“It cost about a million dollars to kill one Indian and it was cheaper to assimilate Indians than it was to kill them," said NDN Collective President Wizipan Little Elk on Saturday, May 31. “The reason why they wanted to assimilate them was to take Indian land.”
The impacts of boarding schools on Indigenous families in the country are immeasurable. The boarding school is widely considered as one of the most destructive policies in American history. Boarding schools were key for advancing the country’s assimilation mission, which began in 1819 after the passing and signing of Civilization Fund Act. Federally funded “schools" forced Indian children to take new “white” names. They were forbidden from speaking Native languages, and prohibited from taking part in any Native cultural practices. Today, the vast majority of Indigenous people who have beginnings in the U.S. no longer practice their culture or speak their language, largely as a result of Indian boarding schools.
"That history is very much a part of all of us,” said Garriot. “In that report [the Federal Indian Boarding School Initative] there were a number of recommendations, and one of them was an apology.”
Before Garriot became president of NDN Collective, he served as the Deputy Director of Indian Affairs during the Biden administration. He helped with the federal Indian boarding school initiative, which resulted in the first-ever apology from a U.S. President for the operation of boarding schools on October 25, 2024 on the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona.
Many communities like Rapid City have created memorials to honor those who went to boarding schools and did not return, in both the U.S. and Canada. According to the report, at least 973 Native children died while in the custody of boarding schools, and most of the deaths were hidden from the public and government’s eyes.
The U.S. Senate’s Special Subcommittee on Indian Education published a report known widely as the Kennedy Report in 1969, which was an extensive overview of education for Native Americans in the United States. The report included how schools failed to provide adequate education to Native Americans leading to widespread misinformation and prejudice toward them in the educational system. Today, the state of education for Indigenous children remains a critical issue for families and communities and, as reported in the Kennedy Report, has a history of gross under financing and is in constant need of investment.
Students from the Oceti Sakowin Community Academy began the dedication ceremony in the Lakota language on May 31, 2025. Photo by Darren Thompson.
The ceremony was introduced by students of the Oceti Sakowin Community Academy, a private Lakota immersion school organized by NDN Collective in Rapid City. Students said a Lakota prayer in unison, and followed with a Lakota song to hundreds of community members. Behind them was a wall with the names of 50 children, some of their names known and others not.
The statue’s image and theme—tiwahe, meaning family in Lakota—was created by several community members, with sculpting led by Dale Lamphere, a Sturgis based sculptor, and Derek Santos, an Oglala Lakota and Lamphere’s apprentice. The statue features two parents, a man and a woman, connecting hands in a protective stance around their children. On the top of the statue are 50 stars, to acknowledge the number of children who are known to have died while in the custody of the boarding school. A statue of a buffalo made by Santos is nearly finished and will soon be installed at the memorial site.
The memorial was developed by the Rapid City Indian Boarding School Lands Project, received support from the Black Hills Area Community Foundation, and got funding from the Dakota Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
“This meaningful action honors the memory of the children who died at the Rapid City Indian Boarding School between 1898 and 1933, “said the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) in a statement to LRI Native News. “A significant percentage of the Rapid City Native American community today are descendants of the children who survived after being brought to the school, underscoring the enduring impact of its legacy. NABS recognizes the Remembering the Children Memorial as a crucial step toward acknowledging the painful legacy of Indian boarding schools and supporting the ongoing journey of truth, justice, and healing. Additionally, NABS has identified 35 Indian boarding schools in South Dakota, highlighting the extensive reach and impact of these institutions on Native communities throughout the state.”
Darren Thompson is the Managing Editor for the Last Real Indians Native News Desk and Director of Media Relations for the Sacred Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He covers tribal sovereignty, environment and social justice, and Indigenous music, arts, and film. He can reached at darren@sacreddefense.org.