Home From School: The Children of Carlisle

Description

A feature documentary that follows a delegation of Northern Arapaho tribal members traveling from Wyoming to Pennsylvania to retrieve remains of three children who died at Carlisle Indian Industrial school in the 1880s.

The film dives into the complicated history of the off-reservation Indian boarding schools in the troubled years after the Indian Wars of the 19th century, when tribes were moved onto resource-starved reservations and children were taken away from the families, with the express aim to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” Documenting the journey to retrieve the children provides a heart-wrenching lesson in how historic traumas haunt the present…and how they can be healed.