How do I add "Indian Residential Schools" to the sub Catagories for Native Americans Catagory?

+4 votes
147 views
Have begun pulling up the different Indian Residential Schools where children of the many nations were forced into during the 1800s and 1900s.  Each of these places has Student Files, and CEMETERY records. Many Children never made it home!  Currently the Carlisle Indian Schools' Cemetery is under the US Army, and they have promised Exhumation and Reinternment for each child that they are able to return to their proper families/tribes/nations for proper burials.  Native Americans Sub-Catagories has no Section for the Residential Schools that I can find.  help please and thank you.  Also the Canada First Nations should also have a sub catagory for the Indian Residential Schools, as the Children in Canada, were also forcibly removed from their families and placed in similar schools.  Last year alone, in Canada multiple Mass Graves at the schools were found of indian children.  I am calling these "Indian Residential Schools" because this is the generalized name of the time periods in question each school was listed as such with its schools' actual name 1st of the info.  Also some were also noted as Indian Residential and Industrial Schools- Carlisle is listed as both.

Here is a link to the Carlisle Indian School Cemetery -

http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/cemetery-information
in The Tree House by Arora Anonymous G2G6 Pilot (162k points)
Arora, I stumbled upon this old thread while looking for something else. What did you end up doing?

The Native American category structure has been a challenge from the get go and the project has never had a volunteer with sufficient interest, bandwidth and alignment with both the NA and Categorization projects to take on what's needed to clean up and reorganize NA-related categories. I attempted to do so back in 2019 but got in over my head. Others have also started but not made much progress. Sorry.

But if you're still interested in this, maybe we could figure out a solution that is acceptable at least in the short term.
Gave this more thought.

We could have the category "Indian Residential Schools" (which appears to be the most recognized term, although Wikipedia goes with "Native American Boarding Schools" ) right under the overarching "Native Americans" category.

Then the individual schools could be listed / categorized under under "Indian Residential Schools".

You'd need to coordinate with the Cemeteries project for how to categorize those schools with their own cemetery. The Native Americans project does not currently have any team focused on cemeteries.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Carlisle_Indian_Industrial_School%2C_Carlisle%2C_Pennsylvania exists and has been applied to Jim Thorpe's profile since January 2021. It's in the normal school stream. If you wish to create a free-space page to add narrative about the group of schools that would be included. The category should probably be named [[Category:Indian Residential Schools]]. Each individual school would be nested there, as well as in the normal school parent categories: the county school category and the city/town location for the school, just as the Carlisle school has been categorized.

Note: please only create the category when and if you have a profile to add to it.
Not too muddy the waters too much, but there were also boarding schools created by missionaries, and boarding schools created and run by tribes.  Maybe a higher category of “Indian (Native American) Schools” and three sub-categoies for Government-run, Missionary, and Tribal?
Kathie, it's best to keep it simple. What you want is a category to place on a profile, which is the individual school. Why "muddy" the structure with layers of categorization that are not needed" Doesn't really matter who ran the school, category-wise. That can be explained in a space page about the individual school, if it's something someone wants to create.

I have now created [[Category:Indian Residential Schools]] and placed it under [[Category:Native Americans]].

It has one entry at this time. 

2 Answers

+4 votes

So, a couple things that I see that stand out so far are:

Native Americans Sub-Catagories has no Section for the Residential Schools that I can find.

Each of these places has Student Files, and CEMETERY records.

The main question I have is if there is a possible need multiple categories to approach this subject? Just from my preliminary research on the topic and link provided, you may be looking at a much larger project, rather than a single category to lump all of the schools in.

For instance, would you have [[Category:Carlisle Indian Industrial School]] listed under [[Category: Carlisle, Pennsylvania]], [[Category: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Schools]], and the applicable tribe categories; and then [[Category:Carlisle Indian Industrial School Cemetery, Carlisle, Pennsylvania]] under both [[Category: Carlisle, Pennsylvania]] and [[Category:Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Cemeteries]]?

I think the best option at this point (even though you have tagged the projects here) is to connect with both the Native American and United States Cemeteries projects individually, in order to work towards a comprehensive solution and category set than can then be proposed in G2G in order to give everyone a chance to weigh in on the proposal.

See Help:Category Names - Developing and publishing category name rules.

by Steven Harris G2G6 Pilot (738k points)
I think you are onto something Important here about Cemeteries, because there are a lot of Cemeteries that are unknown to general public and researchers.  Not only ones Specifically for "Indians" but ones that were specifically only for "Negros"(term used specifically during specific time periods when these sorts of cemeteries were being created- not meant to offend anyone here).  (off topic for instance only info-Also I've located an old Cemetery in Massachusetts think is from like 1700's and it was specifically for non-white immigrants to the area).  That cemetery is so hidden away in a lone location in the woods ppl today don't even realize it exists.

could they be listed under a sub-catagory in Cemeteries ie: "Indian School Cemeteries", and separately for other "Indian" cemeteries listed just as "Indian Cemeteries"?  then under States as "Indian Residential_Industrial_Boarding Schools" and separately another would be needed as "Indian_Non-Residential Schools"  (because as you get into the mid 1900's more non-residential Indian Schools began to become available to the children.
+1 vote
The "County" category would not apply as these were fully Federal Schools only for Indian Children.  The local governments and even the states had little or no say, or oversight into these schools, purely under Federal control and enforcement guidelines. Add to this the children within the schools weren't even originally living in the states where the schools were located that many of them were sent to- making finding these children and their connected families, much harder for those who maybe looking at a child in genealogy, and trying to figure out.."who are they, who are their parents, etc". The ones that survived, graduated, educated- may have started lives of their own off the Reservations, had families, descendants, etc...The genealogist comes along, going backwards in time- links to one of these ppl, and poof...now they are at a brickwall, because the person shows up in a census as white or indian or metis, or halfbreed, and many times with no other info about who their parents were.  So placing the schools under a state catagory -just for location purposes would most likely help, because there maybe a chance that many of these kids began their new adult lives within the areas near the schools they graduated from. Most genealogist that I know will start by searching their area where they are found on a census doc, then spread out from there..So if the Schools are listed under the states But as ie: "US/Pennslyv_Carlisle Indian Boarding Residential & Industrial School"  or Pennslyvania_Carlisle Indian Boarding Residential & Industrial School, or for ones prior to State being Created listed as "US_Indian Territory_Boarding Schools" may be needed, this would at least show the Schools that were within those expansive areas for immediate research.
by Arora Anonymous G2G6 Pilot (162k points)
edited by Arora Anonymous
There are so many intricacies in this topic alone that I would hate for someone to come along and suggest a single-use category, which is why I answered in the way that I did.

This is the exact type of conversation that should happen in the method I described. Instead of this being a simple "Create this category and use it" scenario, you have stumbled into what could be a tangled web of categories that should really be laid out in full, discussed with the appropriate projects (they may have already looked into these and may have some info on them), and then laid out as a formal proposal.

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