RAPID CITY, SD – Hundreds gathered Monday morning for the annual Remembering the Children Memorial Walk, a gathering to remember the children who lived and died at the Rapid City Indian Boarding School.
The annual remembrance began at the Formal Gardens at Sioux Park with speakers and a reading of the names of children at the school followed by a walk from Sioux Park to the Remembering the Children Memorial site at 3550 Canyon Lake Drive.
The Rapid City Indian School land on the west side of Rapid City was purchased in 1896, and the first children arrived at the school on September 20, 1898. By the 1920s, enrollment grew to as many as 340 students.
From author Scott Riney’s “The Rapid City Indian School, 1898-1933” the first death at the Rapid City Indian School occurred in 1901, and while records are incomplete, between 40 and 50 children are known to have died at the school and may be buried on or near school grounds. (https://www.rememberingthechildren.org/copy-of-enrollment-records)
From South Dakota Searchlight, ‘Trauma associated with not knowing’: Uncovering the history of Rapid City Indian School’
The Remembering the Children Memorial on the west side of Rapid City off Canyon Lake Drive is designed to address the lack of public knowledge about the federal Indian boarding school system, unresolved grief, and the continued marginalization of Indigenous histories and voices.
Through the creation of a physical site that centers Indigenous leadership, art, oral history, and ceremony, the Memorial becomes part of the process of broader community healing.
