SG
Well, I’m happy for the opportunity to speak with you about your work, Bishop. I obviously have a very personal interest in the Cherokee Industrial School given that it was a boarding school specifically for boys from my tribe, the Eastern Band of Cherokee.
BO
Part of my thesis was reimagining the uniforms that those 20 young men and boys would have worn for the school. Because in the archives there was no picture of them. There was no description of them. I just knew that traditionally, in the boarding school era, they would put these young boys in military-style clothes. And the purpose of the uniforms was to commit “a cultural genocide” and strip away all Native identity and replace it with a western American identity or white identity. So, literally, they were wanting to kill the Indian just to save the man. The point of it was to put it in the proper context–this event happened at Trinity. Because traditionally, whenever this story was told it was told in this “cute” fun way how these 20 young Cherokee boys came down from Cherokee and saved Duke from going under during the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War. And somehow Braxton Craven found out that if he started a Native American Boarding School, he would make more money per Native student than they would per white student. And it saved the school from going under. So, it was always this fun “cute” story, and I was like this is not a “cute” story. I knew the history of the Native American Boarding school era in this country. And there was nothing cute about it. I just couldn’t just leave it there anymore. I had to pick it up and I’m glad that Professor Eli Meyerhoff, the person that brought it to our class. had a presentation and the original roster of the 20 boys that came, their names, and their ages. I just had to go forward with it.
SG
Yeah, I remember seeing that roster. It was the list of all the boys, their names, their township. things like that. I remember when I saw it just like looking down at it, I was just so, I don’t even know what I thought. I was just shocked because I recognized every single last name on that list, every single one, like my peers in high school. You know friends back home. They share these last names. And it just made it seem so much more [real to me].
BO
Not many people knew about it. Not only at Duke, but also up in Cherokee. And a lot of people didn’t know their relatives went to the school, or there even was a school.
SG
Yeah, I remember feeling almost tricked. Like I’m from Cherokee, I’ve lived here my whole life. How have I never heard about this? Why am I only just now hearing about it? Now that I’m already here at Duke and, it was just very shocking.
BO
If you look back at my exhibit, I have had these portraits of the boys in the uniform and I put a plaque of their name and the year there. Because I needed to put those boys back, and the young men, back on the alumni wall, back in the school. Take them out of the archive where they’ve been hiding since 1885. Seems like every couple of years somebody would stumble upon the story of the school, do a little research and the archive already had a file put together which is some basic documents. They say “Oh, here you go read this,” you know. And that’s as far as somebody would take it. They thought they had it all.
I had to spend weeks in the archive. I probably found 80-90% of the documents in the archive and mainly because, I don’t know if you’ve seen cursive from that era but, it’s hard to read. So, I always look for keywords: “Cherokee,” “Indian,” “boarding school.” And okay, they’re talking about this, you know because that style of cursive is so hard to read.
But there’s probably still a little more. I found one picture which was a copy from an article that was from a wet plate photo. And you can see the silhouette and like in this descending line. And in the description, it said “lower right corner, are the Cherokee boys” and that’s the only photo I could find of them. The rest is gone. It’s just bits and pieces, little clips, paragraphs in the archive saying, “So and so broke his arm from the Indian Boarding School; this is the third time it’s been done it.” You know something like that, and that would be it. That’s all you would find. So, just piecing the story together was very hard and difficult. I’m glad you had that reaction, and you had that connection. Because that’s the one thing I was missing…”how do I get this to Eastern Band of Cherokee? How do I get their connection in this?” And I’m glad you told me that.
DB
During, this time wasn’t there a school up at Cherokee? And I was wondering how this school would differ, except that as you said there’s a way to make some money for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But this was a stepping stone, I read. And, I think your research has helped Duke to further explore this whole school system. Because it was a Chickasaw student and some others that went back to Oklahoma and had a successful life. So, it made me wonder what—and you brought out so much and we need to know more about the boarding school experience.
BO
One common theme in all my research and the work I did was balance. There are some Natives who had wonderful experiences in boarding schools; some had horrific. So, when retelling the story, how do I honor and how do I respect both views on this topic? I consider myself as a conceptual documentarian. And in sculpture and photography. I didn’t want to overemphasize or underemphasize.
There was a school up in Cherokee. The “funny” thing I found in the research was, that Braxton’s actually charged the school to send some of the boys down. And never paid them back. So, there’s all this dialogue between the school and Cherokee and the Bureau of Indian Affairs trying to get their money back. But Braxton Trinity ripped them off and just kept the money. For sending the boys on train two hundred miles from Cherokee down right off county and there was a train they took. So, the school up there paid the fare, and it should have Trinity that paid for it and Braxton never wanted to pay and he didn’t.
Where is the story of what happened in the Carolinas to the Natives and the rest of the South? In that whole pantheon of a story. Especially, when right now in today’s climate the white and black dynamic is so heated and, I don’t want to say strong [per se], but, maybe more out in the open than before, you know where is the place of the Native American story in all of that? Is there a place for it? I think I asked you that, is there a place for it?
DB
Yes! There’s a big story of Natives in the South that’s been invisible with the Southern black and white issues. Ever since slavery came along, I think Indians have been on the fringe of any discussion about the loss of land and displacement.
Starting with Native people, I was looking at the uniform that you showed on display and this uniform the students wore, and it is so alien to our Indigenous freedom to what we wear. We have so many different tribes here scattered from the north, south, east and west. And the uniform is something that we did not wear until there was an opportunity to join the Armed Forces back in the early part of this century, the 1900s. And American Indians have overwhelmingly participated in the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. We are warriors and I think that wearing the uniform did not adversely affect our relationship with the land. You look at success and it was great to see the success of some of the students that came through this boarding school and went out to Oklahoma. It’s like why couldn’t they have stayed here in North Carolina and had the same kind of success and opportunities? It’s so complicated to talk about our place in the South when we’ve been so invisible for so long.
SG
Yeah, I agree with Danny, about the invisibility aspect. Because you’re saying, is there a place for it? Is it here? I don’t even know. I just know that because of colonization and historical erasure, purposeful, intentional erasure of indigenous history in schools and things like that is what makes it invisible. I think on the schools’ end it’s embarrassing that they are excluding that history from their schools. Because I mean I’ve met so many people here at Duke that have said, “Oh you’re the first Native American I’ve ever met.” And it’s like I’m probably not, but I’m the first that you know of.
And it’s just crazy that so many people also have this reaction of like, “I didn’t even know Native Americans still existed.” And that’s how intense this erasure is. There are even people who come from, you know, states with very high Native populations like North Carolina, for example, which is, you know, one of the highest Native populations East of the Mississippi. People from North Carolina here who are not Natives, at Duke, who are just appalled that they didn’t know that there are eight tribes in North Carolina. And there is a rich history of Natives that are still here. And I think along with that, that sort of leads into maybe my advocacy work with N.A.S.A. the Native American Indigenous/Student Alliance. If there is no Native Studies Program here at Duke there are two or three maybe Native American History classes up until literally this semester in Spring 2022. There were not as far as I knew Indigenous or Native American faculty. And that was one of the goals of our organization was to advocate and get Native faculty hired. So that we could start building a Native American Studies Program in a Native Center. And so far, there will be from that advocacy, there is one Native professor who is hired and they will be, I think beginning next semester in Fall 2022. And then outside of the cluster hire that we sort of initiated along with Dean Ashby, there was another Professor hired Ryan Emanuel.
One thing that I kind of feel like Duke thinks or just admin thinks about Native history at Duke. Having those classes as well North Carolina you know UNC Chapel Hill is just 20 minutes down the road. So, if you want to learn that, go take classes there and I think that’s a very poor view to have because 1, as a Native person who wants to learn about not just my history, but my relatives’ history and the people around me. You’re telling me that I don’t belong here at Duke. I need to go to Chapel Hill to learn that, but not only that. Then just these students, these non-Native students on Duke campus, never learned that history because they don’t have the opportunity. They don’t know, or maybe aren’t thinking “I need to go to Chapel Hill to learn Native classes because Duke’s not teaching them.” Duke, I think, has a responsibility to teach Native history, and Native Culture classes here. Just because it’s embarrassing that I’ve met people who are on the pre-med track who want to be doctors. And they’ve said the most ignorant stuff to me about Native people. And that worries me! You’re going to be a doctor and you may have a Native patient, one day and this is your view. Because you’ve just not been educated. And I think Duke needs to do a better job of that. Which is why we want a Native Studies Program.
BO
And that was one of the main questions I was asking when my work was: What’s Duke’s responsibility now? Especially the history of having a Native American boarding school. If you look behind the sculpture of the man holding the flag and a strand of hair in his hand. Behind them is a wall of tobacco and the reason I did that was because Duke wanted to say, “Well, that it was Trinity, not us.” Well, the Duke family owned a tobacco farm, and what’s tobacco? That’s a product taken from Native Americans. And then not only did Duke make money off that as a family. But they also had racist imagery in the selling of their tobacco. So, Duke has a history, a cycle of making money off of not only just off Indigenous bodies but Indigenous products. And Duke today is sending recruiters onto reservations to recruit Native students for the campus. So, they’re making money still off Native bodies and Native products. So, what is your responsibility, today, Duke? Like this is your story, regardless if it was while you were Trinity. You have this cycle of making money off Indigenous people. Now, you have a responsibility to create cultural centers. You have to take care of your student body, what do you do next with this? Then that’s what I was hoping. I’m so happy to hear all those strikes you guys have made. That’s wonderful and I hope that’s just the tipping point.
SG
Well, let me start by saying for context, that the Native American Student Alliance now known as the Native American/Indigenous Student Alliance was one of the only big five cultural groups in the center for multicultural affairs that did not have a space. We did not have our own space. We shared it with a few other groups. And we had been promised to space back in 2016. And it was with, you know Native Advocates like students here like you know the president of N.A.S.A. at the time and other students and Myron Dewey that we were able to get that space that had been promised to us. And it’s called Wekit, and I believe that name was chosen because it means “home” in Carolina, Algonquin.
BO
Exactly. Yeah, it would be great if they can send people to different universities, that have established programs like Arizona State University. Other schools have sweat lodges and other places for ceremonies. I mean it would be great if there was a Duke’s sweat lodge. Things like that. Just as cultural centers for meaning. Because Duke being a research institute knows the research says if Native students don’t have “familiarity.” They don’t have the ability to hold on to. They just get depressed and end up dropping out in high numbers. You have to create a space of familiarity with them if you want them to be successful. I mean, I think that’s with most cultural groups too. And that’s kind of what I pictured with these 20 young boys. These young men who came two hundred miles in 1880, to a small town in Randolph County. Just the loneliness they must have felt. And being forced to speak another language, do this math, and eat the food. I mean they were feeding dairy products that just destroyed their stomachs. One time, they thought they had ran away, but they were in the forest fishing and looking for wild onions and other things they would eat back home. Because there was nothing familiar to them and I think today—I mean, how can you not? Especially, if you’re going to go to reservations and bring people here. Not create that space for them. It’s just what’s your intention? Is it all just purely money? It’s this cycle of money and earning. Profit off of Indigenous people? It’s just your main concern or you are really about creating the next supreme court justice, the next doctor, or the next president. Is that your focus or is it just making money? I hope it’s not just making money.
DB
I like the use that you have of the movement from the tobacco. Which I see as, you know, thousands of years of use of tobacco. And then you have in the right hand, I think is some hair.
It’s almost like this is the moment where the students transitioned from their home community to life at Duke. And, then there’s the flag which is a more contemporary flag. It’s like we’ve moved through time.
Tobacco has always been behind everything, and tobacco can be seen as cancerous. From some people, it can be seen as the corporate success for the Duke people. But, for American Indian people, it’s been seen as medicine. And so, sort of thinking about everything behind all this. You’ve sort of put the spiritual or the culture of the American Indian, behind everything that’s been going on. That we have sometimes a choice, but sometimes we have this background within ourselves to stay strong in the adversity that we face. I think that’s been what has kept us going. Even though we’ve been ignored, and we’ve been invisible. We’ve kept the faith in moving forward and you can see that today in the powwows that we have. And the yearning that the young people must keep the traditions going. More so, than some of the elders. The elders are not the ones that started the powwows, I don’t think, around here. As much as some of the younger people. They were hungry for that relationship. What about the scalp and the American flag? How does that play into the story?
BO
Well, the American flag was basically, I’m giving you my hair, my culture, my power, my identity and you’re giving me this [American flag] like what do I do with it? That’s why it’s to his side, he’s not disrespecting it. He just doesn’t know what to do with it. And where he fits in all of this as his new identity: “I’m an American.” Like, what now? What do I do with this? Then with the tobacco behind him too, it wasn’t just a point to do it, there’s also this idea of the sacred. And why the story should be told.
This idea of the sacred not just being where there’s a temple not just being where like a big historical event took place, but anywhere prayers were given songs were sung. You know the food was shared, medicine was shared, anywhere where, you know, love was made children were born. You know that’s what makes areas sacred. Those boys coming down here, this story is sacred because of the lives that were here. These were real people, you know, and this is not just an event to point a finger at Duke. But this was a sacred event that happened here, and it needs to be honored as such. And the story needs to be honored and told in a proper way. That honors those boys that honor the history of the Natives in the Carolina’s Eastern Band Cherokee. And it needs to be seen in that way.
SG
I have a question about your exhibit in the Nasher. Above the mannequin, with the uniform, the hair and the flag, you know, way above their head, It looks like a seal you had created. I was wondering why you chose the symbol of the water spider to put in that seal.
BO
It replaces the cross and I also replaced in Latin monogram that says “education and religion.” Where that’s Duke’s saying. I replaced it with Kill the Indian, Save the Man in Latin. I replaced that, too. And the water spider is because of the creation story of the Eastern Band Cherokee where a water spider went across the water, spun a basket on her back, put the spark in it, and came back.
The idea was that I wanted to combine that with “What’s next going to save Eastern Band Cherokee?” and how education, the seventh generation we’re talking about, the newest generation bringing the powwows back. That generation would go across as the water spider and bring back knowledge and wisdom that could bring the Cherokees into the future. And how this new generation would be like that water spider, would go and bring that spark back to the people. And this school was kind of part of that like bringing knowledge. Duke today could be part of that bringing knowledge and wisdom back. So, that, as a people we can move forward
SG
One thing that I am personally very interested in, is the Cherokee language revitalization. Which is why I’ve taken Cherokee language classes at UNC Chapel Hill. And I hope to continue learning the language after I graduate from Duke–there’s Master’s apprenticeship programs that some of the federally recognized Cherokee tribes put on and I plan to apply to those.
I have lived in Cherokee my entire life and so coming from an all-native community to an institution like Duke, where you suddenly see the population is switched, and now Native is the minority. It was just a complete culture shock. It was so different, and I think being in this environment made me realize, it just sorts of opened my eyes to like what the world is really like. I was no longer from the inside looking out, I was from the outside looking in. And it was my first year that I sort of felt like this spark, this needs to continue learning the culture, and the language to reconnect so that it can be passed down.
I took my first Cherokee language class my freshman year at the same time I was taking Myron Dewey’s class and my professor Benjamin Fry who’s also a citizen of the E.B.C.I, had us read a book. And in it, said you know, “If revitalization efforts are not successful all language will just cease to exist within my lifetime.” And so, waking up every day with that thought. And then learning about the Industrial school it was just, this weird, I just didn’t know. It took me a long time to figure out what to do with those feelings and just realizing the significance and the importance of you know as an E.B.C.I, a student just to be on this campus and to figure out how I can use my time here and my education here to go back to my community. You know, bringing back, so that I can help contribute to revitalization efforts or you know other things that I’m interested in.
That’s why I don’t know just all these things and to see the water spider was just such an—I knew what it was immediately when I saw it. I mean if you live in Cherokee, you know what that is and so to see something like that on Duke’s seal, was just so strange. But in a good way. Like, I know this history with the Cherokee Industrial school and Duke is maybe not a good one. But, just seeing that despite this you know I belong here. Other Native students belong here, and Cherokee students belong here. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t created, it wasn’t meant for us.
BO
And it could do better, right? I mean Duke took a chance on me, bringing this knucklehead kid from Phoenix, Arizona over here. Of course, I worked hard to stay here but still, they didn’t have to accept my application. So, there’s definitely when I came here… The brown, gray stone and I just I felt way out of place too. But I’m an alumni now. I’m part of Duke. I’m part of the story of Duke now. I feel like, I have a right to demand it to do better. And to do better for Native students, for its Chicano students. And to keep doing better! And to strive to keep doing better!
Regardless, of having that past we’re here now. We can claim it. It’s part of us. We’re part of them. That’s another thing, I wanted with these questions, asking in my work is, “Duke do better and how can you do better?” What’s next, you know what can you do next? It’s not a statue or monument, although, it will be nice outside the Marker in Randolph County where the Trinity College once was to have them put the Industrial Boarding school in 1885, on that historical marker. That would be awesome if I could do that. And maybe, somebody will hear this and start that work. But yeah, we got to demand more and better from them. I think we have a right to, and they need to listen.
DB
Bishop, your work is so important, and it’s gone a long way to make the Native people of North Carolina visible. I think everyone that has seen it and people that will hear about it can learn something new and that’s what Duke is supposed to be that kind of educational institution t bhat brings the world to us and brings us to the world. So, thank you for all that you’ve done to make that happen.
SG
I have a question for Danny. I know you’ve been in the area a long time; you’ve worked with schools around here in urban and Indian organizations. And I’m just personally curious just about the environment or maybe Natives in academia, maybe how it’s changed. You know when you first started working in the area compared to now. From what I understand, you said was decades since you’ve been in the area. And, so as a student trying to enact change to improve the lives of Native students on campus and to improve our education. I’m just curious to know how it was? Like a timeline, a little bit.
DB
It seems like it’s been a long journey. And it has been, but I think increasingly students have been more active and have been asking for resources to be visible. I think what it’s going to take is young leaders like yourself, to go to the tribal councils, the tribal administrators, and chiefs. Ask them to get involved in a government-to-government relationship with the University.
So many times, there’s a big distance and every tribe and every chief wants his students to succeed. But they don’t hear back from the University in a way. So, I think it’s our role to amplify what Myron tried to do here. And what this great exhibit we have now. And with the new hires. Let’s create some dialogue that continues on a regular basis and not just sporadic and just occasionally.
SG
I would also like to thank the Nasher because there is not a lot of institutional support for Native American and Indigenous students at Duke. A lot of our support comes from just each other. Other students build a community, but the Nasher has consistently been a very good ally to us. They had a Native art exhibit a couple of years ago. I know they were probably one of the first organizations affiliated with Duke to get a land acknowledgment, going when that was a goal of ours a few years ago. Just things like that. But I also want to say. Thank you to everyone for listening to this important history and to Bishop and Danny for being here.
