KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded $25,000 to the Shawnee Tribe Thursday through the Telling the Full History Preservation Fund.
One of 80 grants given to organizations nationwide, the funds are to aid with “projects that helped preserve, interpret and activate historic places to tell the stories of underrepresented groups in our nation,” according to a press release.
With the help of the grant, the Shawnee Tribe has plans to prepare an official Historic Structure Report for the Shawnee Indian Mission in Fairway, Kansas.
“We are encouraged to have the support of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Kansas State Historical Society as we begin to uncover our Boarding School’s full history,” Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes said in the news release.
In November, the Shawnee Tribe reminded KSHB 41 of the reality of the Shawnee Indian Mission’s past.
"The tears, the laughs, everything that happened here," Barnes said previously. "The children that may be here."
The building was used as a manual labor school which forced hundreds of children into assimilation practices and threatened cultural genocide.
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By preserving the history of the Shawnee Indian Mission and opening an honest conversation about the whitewashing of Native Americans, Barnes believes it’s time to confront the past.
"There are two ideas that I think a lot of people have and they're both extremes," Barnes said. "This is a wonderful, great place and, then, there are other people saying there are mass graves here. Neither of those are the correct history."
In September 2021, the Shawnee Tribe honored Orange Shirt Day to remember thousands of Native children who were killed at church-run residential schools.
