The work continues
Still wrapping my mind around seeing my father and I in an article together...
Native News Online shared their coverage of the ceremony and the gravesites. It has been a lot of emotions to process seeing my father and me in an article together about this work. The article goes deeper into some topics that I suspected may be the case, such as land theft.
Within four days of the honoring ceremony, the Ketchikan Indian Community had already identified dozens of additional relatives buried at Morningside.
At Dundas’ urging, Ketchikan-based historical researcher Sid Hartley used the Lost Alaskans database to curate a list of more than 60 Alaska Native relatives from Southeast Alaska who are buried at Morningside.
Hartley was also able to match names on historic deed sales, with names of local residents who were committed to Morningside, calling into greater question the true reason for sending Alaskans to the asylum in the first place.
“I have a whole binder of deeds and all of these land sales that I found through research last year,’ said Hardley. In 2023, she was asked by a Ketchikan Indian Community clan leader to research land grabs in their community, including by reading through more than 500 pages of Tlingit landowner testimony from a 1901 local land case. “And, sure enough, there are some names correlating with their date of internment into this asylum.”
Ketchikan Indian Community Vice President Gloria Burns expects this connection of Native land dispossession with Alaska Natives removal from their homelands under the guise of mental health treatment, to become more apparent with further research.
“I think when you look, you're gonna find it,” Burns said. “When we look through this, we're going to see not just allotment issues, but I think particularly we'll find women and children who had land, who suddenly didn't have land anymore.”
The full article is powerful and communicates the massive scope of the work that needs to be done.
https://nativenewsonline.net/mourning-morningside
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