In the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of Native American children were sent to schools run by the federal government and churches. Many suffered abuse at those schools, where the goal was to erase Indigenous cultures starting with the communities’ children.
On this Indigenous Peoples Day, we have the story of a Wisconsin survivor of one of these schools. His name is Dewey Schanandore. When he was a child on the Menominee Reservation, he went to a Catholic school called St. Anthony’s. He also briefly attended St. Joseph’s.
Jimmy Gutierrez: We learned some Wisconsin history together last month.
Maria Peralta-Arellano: Oh, I hope you’re talking about Dewey.
"I’ll behave … hahah, yeah I’ll behave, you don’t have to remind me!" Dewey Schanandore says.
Gutierrez: Who could forget Dewey Schanandore? So, we talked for a while. I mean, the man has lived 79 years and seen a lot, the good and the bad.
Peralta-Arellano: Yeah, including his experiences with what he called the “Kill the Indian, save the man” program. Our state’s brutal history with Indian boarding schools, which we found out Dewey was sent to in the first grade.
"It was like a mixture of science, math, English, geography, and then reading, writing and arithmetic. And I was ready to excel because, hey, man, my mother, she didn’t raise no fool, man. She instructed me, you know what I mean? So it’s like I had this insatiable desire to compete academically at that very early age. And here’s the real big but. But that world changed at 7 years of age with that first beating that I got — that program to kill the Indian, save the man. That was designed to program us as Indigenous people to fail in every aspect, every facet of society that we live in. And to some, it worked," Schanandore says.
Peralta-Arellano: The wild thing is that these schools were everywhere for over 150 years in Wisconsin. The goal was clear: convert "savages," starting when they were kids. Indigenous cultures didn’t fit into white society at the time, so they tried to erase them by any means necessary.Today, though, we know that knowing your history matters. Dedicating days to recognize atrocities matters. And the stories of those who lived it and experienced it matter. Because not all history is passed.
"When I grew up on the Menominee Reservation, we lived in the forest in northern Wisconsin, and the place was just simply beautiful. The whole show — the animals, the trees, the sunshine every day" Schanandore says.
Peralta-Arellano: It sounds like a magical childhood, some of it, at least. Because something that Dewey was very clear on was that growing up on the reservation also meant growing up in abject poverty.
"People would help each other with deer meat, bear meat, animal stuff, and some had the foresight to see that other people were in need. So it was shared. The fruits were shared amongst the people" Schanandore says.
Peralta-Arellano: He was the youngest, he had an older brother and sister. His dad was a musician. He says his mom was compassionate and sensitive to tribal culture. But when he was small, maybe 6 years old, they divorced, which devastated his sister at the time.
"She was going through the impact of the divorce of my mother and my father, and she reacted in a way that they didn’t deem appropriate. So the state stepped in. And the last thing I remember was I walked up partway to the stairs, up to the first floor, and I looked around the corner and I could see my sister. She had her hands in the doorway" Schanandore says. "And the white woman, I say a white woman with respect, she was pulling her by the hair. That was the last I saw of my sister. They took her to Green Bay, and they put her in an orphanage, a Catholic orphanage here in Green Bay, which is probably in existence no more. And they did shock therapy on her, electroshock therapy. And it completely changed her.
Gutierrez: That’s incredibly difficult to hear.
Peralta-Arellano: What made it worse was that at this time, his sister was in boarding school. I can imagine that she lost any peaceful place in her life to go. Not at school, and not at home. She had no safe place. For Dewey, he was entering first grade and just about to head off to boarding school himself.
"I walked in the building for the first time at that time, and I remember seeing a lot of books on the shelves. And it was like a typical classroom-type setup with desks, all-time wooden desks. And I walked in and sat down. I looked on the wall, and there was the alphabet, the entire alphabet. And I said, well, I just wonder if I can learn that, you know? And I had confidence that I could. I don’t know" Schanandore says.
Gutierrez: I guess I didn’t expect him to take to this setting so much.
Peralta-Arellano: He really did. But there was one problem: the nuns. He says he witnessed their violence toward the kids really early on. There was even a nun that the kids nicknamed “Bruiser.”
"When I would hear this negative energy coming out of her, I would have to tell myself to turn off the volume in my mind. There’s an up and down button that’s on and off, okay? And what do I do when it’s off? I take a look at the wall. I study the alphabet" Schanandore says.
Gutierrez: Even at that age, he had his own coping techniques.
"Then she’d get her revenge again. I remember sitting there, looking right at her, looking at the punch coming at me. Didn’t move me at all. Absorbed the punch, fell down, whatever, got back up, sat right back down, more peaceful than ever," Schanandore says.
Peralta-Arellano: Imagine this is your first-grade teacher. In second grade, this was all still going on, so some of the students decided they had enough.
"My buddy in the back of the room opened up the window in the back room, and five or six of us scratched ourselves up, bleeding and stuff, and we ran away. And we ran into the forest, ran to our old trail, and we would meet there. And we were all beat up" Schanandore says. "Some of these guys had blood all over the place, you know what I mean? And then we would meet there and sit around and talk about what happened and how we felt as a form of healing.
Gutierrez: Again, incredible, and tragic, that they found ways to process this even so young. I know that he says his Menominee practices had a lot to do with saving him at that time too, but still...
Peralta-Arellano: That was his life until high school. Just trying to survive every day as a child. He wants to give credit where credit is due because he says none of this would be possible without three entities: the federal government, the tribe and the Archdiocese of Green Bay. They were all complicit in the abuse.
Gutierrez: Yeah, he was clear on that. OK, so he gets out of boarding school, thankfully. And he starts high school in Shawano, Wisconsin. Experiences a ton of racism...and this is when he goes to his guidance counselor for...guidance.
"I walked in the counselor’s room one day, and I said, Mr. Counselor, I have an idea and I have to tell you about it. And he says, what’s that? I told him, I said, I’m going to be 17 years old in so many months. After that, I’m out of here. I don’t want anything to do with school, education, indoctrination, nothing. He says, well, OK. You would think that a counselor would counsel somebody who sees them like that, you know, try to persuade them. But that’s the level of racism that I had to deal with at that time," Schanandore says.
Peralta-Arellano: Dewey struggled for a while after dropping out. First, he says he moved around the state, then joined the Air Force, even tried his best to assimilate into the white culture that surrounded him.
Gutierrez: Those years were really important for him though because they led him back to tribal teachings. And that’s where he found a mentor, an elder he worked with who led these ceremonies.
"At the age of 30, he told me one day, he says, no. He says, I want you to sit down on my side of me, sit next to me. Very brilliant, simplistic old man. I didn’t know I was going to become his assistant. That blew me away, man. It blew me away completely," Schanandore says. "He spoke in a ceremony one day in front of the people. He says, if I’m not here, this man here will slide over into my chair.
Peralta-Arellano: This man and these ceremonies really changed Dewey’s life. They led him back to what was important to him.
"I should conclude that part of it, because that is something that not too many people can understand, why I talk about my total relief from Christianity and from Catholicism was by my acceptance of these customs and traditions of my people, and it worked," Schanandore says.
Peralta-Arellano: What he’s talking about here is forgiveness. Forgiveness is what opened up his path to healing from his past experiences. He started living a new life, a healthier life. He started competing in track events, traveling across the state. He rode his bike across the country. Still rides every day. He even ran for human rights.
Gutierrez: And he was running. Everywhere, all the time. And then...
"My trail led to a gravesite next to the Catholic church on the reservation. Matter of fact, the gravesite was in the back of the church, and my trail was right by the gravesite," Schanandore says.
Gutierrez: Basically, he says his ancestors directed him to an unmarked gravesite at St. Michael’s Church in Keshena.
"They were trying to get out of the hole, and they said, Dewey, we need your help. We can't get out of this hole. We need you to help us. And that was going through my mind, and I didn’t know what to think at the moment. So I took my tobacco, my offering, and I put it on the ground. I said, OK, I will, I’ll help you," Schanandore says.
Peralta-Arellano: Dewey says there was a whole investigation, which local station in Green Bay reported on. And while the church said they wanted to be of assistance, they didn’t apologize. But Dewey says he was there when Bishop Ricken of the church acknowledged the trauma caused by the church.
"He got up and spoke in front of the people in the church, and he says, after consideration of what some tribal members mentioned to me, we’re going to have a little ceremony on the back of the church for those people. He came through," Schanandore says. "Jimmy, the bishop came through for me. Maria, he did what he said he was going to do."
Peralta-Arellano: It’s estimated that nearly 1,000 kids died in Indian boarding schools across the nation. The truth is, we don’t know the exact number of how many children actually suffered at these schools. The numbers are probably much larger. Record keeping wasn’t the best, and there really was no incentive to do so. At least 14 of those schools were here in Wisconsin, working to kill the “Indian and save the man.” Dewey says he forgave the church. But he still had someone else to forgive — his parents.
"I had some anger at them one time because I wasn’t getting the proper protection from these things that were going on. I had some anger over that. Then I had to split that at a very early age. Again, I found out that they themselves went through the kill the Indian, save the man program when they were younger in their lives, and Jimmy, I cried over that. Everybody in my family was impacted in a real profound way that created sibling rivalry, confusion, every aberration of the psychological mindset that we had at that time was impacted by kill the Indian, save the man. So we had a lot of work to do between ourselves in order for us to love. That’s something that was taken from my family," Schanandore says.
Gutierrez: Gov. Evers has apologized for the role Wisconsin had in these schools. Then-President Biden apologized for the role the U.S. government had in the schools. The Department of the Interior even started a three-year investigation into the impact of boarding schools.
Peralta-Arellano: There have been oral history projects making sure these stories are documented...
Gutierrez: Kinda like we’re doing here?
Peralta-Arellano: Yeah, and also a while back, the U.N. made a declaration affirming the equal rights of Indigenous people.
"There’s a lot to say about genocide. I don’t like thinking about genocide, but I have to because I have to know how to prevent it. And that declaration that the United Nations made, and it’s made in recent years, protects Indigenous rights. To what degree? I don’t know," Schanandore says. "Just the knowledge of the United Nations having this document in place gives me great hope, gives me a whole lot of hope. Why? Because we need people in the world to know that we are a sovereign nation, and we’re a sovereign nation from day one.
Peralta-Arellano: When we met Dewey, he rode his bike down to see us. For his age, I was kinda blown away by how active he was. How healthy he is. And not just physically, but in spirit.
Gutierrez: He’s been through it. And he’s emerged. And he appreciates all of it.
Peralta-Arellano: The good and the bad.
"If I can just mention that after I do my morning offering, it’s like the spirit tells me, OK, do we have your tobacco? Now, go ahead. Once you’re ready, go ahead. Ride your bike. You know that satisfied feeling of having been given the permission to live from day to day to day. You know, that’s all. I take it a day at a time, man. You know? And it works. Works really good. You know, I love every minute of it. You know?," Schanandore says.
