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People in Kentucky want to preserve what remains of a Native American boarding school, the only one in that state. Many Americans have learned about these boarding schools, where tribal children were educated in American culture in a way that might erase tribal ways. The Kentucky school complicates that story, as Stan Ingold of member station WEKU reports.
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STAN INGOLD, BYLINE: In a field next to a stream in rural Scott County, Kentucky, stand the remains of the Choctaw Academy.
CHIP RICHARDSON: There is a stone dormitory that is 20 feet wide and 30 feet long, and the roof collapsed. It did not have triangular trusses.
INGOLD: That's Dr. Chip Richardson, an ophthalmologist who owns the property. He's also on the Kentucky Native American Heritage Commission. The school, he says, holds historic value.
RICHARDSON: It was probably, just in general, just the most important place in antebellum America.
INGOLD: It opened in 1825 and was the first federally funded school for Native Americans. The academy was started by an agreement between the Choctaw and the U.S. government. Ian Thompson is the tribal historic preservation officer for the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. He says the tribe had a lot of buy-in and sent mostly teenagers there to become their future leaders.
IAN THOMPSON: They were already trained in a Choctaw understanding of the world, but they wanted them to gain a Western education so that they would be better able to interact with American officials, understand where they're coming from, that type of thing.
INGOLD: Thompson says in part that the academy had some successes.
THOMPSON: A number of future leaders were educated there. People that came and ran the Choctaw Nation school system were trained there.
INGOLD: There were more than 500 boarding schools for Indigenous children operating across the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and there are plenty of verified accounts of horrible abuse and deaths in those institutions. Thompson acknowledges that Choctaw Academy was part of that system. Boarding schools, he says, have a complicated history.
THOMPSON: For some students, they were great. For other students, they became places where there were efforts to erase their language.
INGOLD: The Choctaw Academy was popular, and other tribes from across the country started sending their young people there. Even prominent white families sent their children. That's according to Christina Snyder, professor of history at Penn State University. She wrote a book that covers the Choctaw Academy and the students there. One in particular, a Potawatomi teenager who went by the name Joel Barrow.
CHRISTINA SNYDER: He came to the academy in 1837 when he was about 17 years old, 16 or 17. At the time, his name was recorded as Arcmuggue.
INGOLD: In many cases, Indigenous students were issued Western names or they chose their own. Snyder says Barrow's academic success continued when he was accepted at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, to study medicine.
SNYDER: In 1844, Barrow's professors reported that he had, quote, "surpassed all the white students, law and medicine." So a really outstanding student overall.
INGOLD: It's believed that Barrow may be the first Indigenous person in the U.S. to receive a Western medical degree. He became a tribal doctor for the Potawatomi in Kansas.
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INGOLD: Back in Scott County, Dr. Chip Richardson wants more people to learn about his fellow physician and to save what remains of the original Choctaw Academy, which closed in 1848.
RICHARDSON: Make this a U.S. landmark. And that puts it into the same realm as, you know, the Statue of Liberty and those places that we consider to be very important to our story of America.
INGOLD: Richardson says he would not benefit financially from restoration efforts, which are making some progress. The Kentucky Senate recently approved a resolution recognizing the accomplishments of Joel Barrow and the Choctaw Academy.
For NPR News, I'm Stan Ingold in Scott County, Kentucky.
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