By Anna Kaminski, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — State, city and tribal leaders scrutinized Tuesday an attempt from the Shawnee Tribe to acquire control of a former Native American boarding school amid disagreements over their shared history.
In the tribe’s second attempt to reclaim the land where Native American children from 1839 to 1862 endured assimilation tactics, resistance came from the Kansas Historical Society, the city of Fairway and a nonprofit organization, all of which currently help operate the Shawnee Indian Manual Labor School, also called the Shawnee Indian Mission.
Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes of Oklahoma told legislators during a bill hearing the school was “built on Shawnee lands by Shawnee hands and using Shawnee funds.”
House Federal and State Affairs Committee chairman Tom Kessler, a Republican from Wichita, introduced the bill earlier this month. House Bill 2384 mimics one that received a hearing in 2024 to authorize the historical society to transfer the nearly 12 acres to the Shawnee Tribe with stipulations. The bill would forbid the tribe from opening a casino on the land.
Barnes said his tribe’s efforts have been misrepresented with some opponents saying a transfer would put the site’s history at risk.
“The reality is that history is already being lost,” he said.
Barnes expressed concerns with the current operations of the boarding school site, including hosting things like yoga lessons and chili competitions, along with narrow educational efforts and a lack of long-term planning. The historical society is required to create a five-year plan for the landmarks under its purview each year.
The historical society has worked in tandem with the city of Fairway since 2016 to operate the site, and a three-way agreement is currently in the works between the society, the city and the Shawnee Indian Mission Foundation, a nonprofit that doesn’t declare affiliation with any tribe, according to its tax filings and mission statement.
All three opposed the bill, including Fairway Mayor Melanie Hepperley and Patrick Zollner, the executive director of the historical society.
“We absolutely are invested in telling everyone’s story,” Zollner said.
He said it’s arguably the state’s most historic site, highlighting its use as barracks for Union soldiers and one of the only remaining stops used by travellers on the Oregon, California and Santa Fe trails. It is the most visited historical landmark in the state, second only to the state Capitol building, Zollner said.
“It’s not falling down. It’s in good shape,” he told legislators Tuesday. “It’s better than some of our other state historical sites and we know there’s still work. We do have a plan.”
The Shawnee Tribe hired Architectural Resources Group, a firm that specializes in historic architecture, to evaluate the site, and the resulting report found it was in need of $13 million in repairs and preservation and restoration efforts.
In response, the Shawnee Tribe came up with a 10-year plan to fund millions of dollars in restoration that involves crafting and construction techniques that adhere to the time the school was built, Barnes said. With the backing of the tribal government, he said, the tribe has pledged to fully fund the project.
Republican Rep. Clarke Sanders of Salina recalled hearing the same bill last year.
“It seems to me the problem is the opponents don’t believe you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do,” said Sanders.
The bill itself contains language requiring the tribe to adhere to its plans, Barnes said in response.
Representatives from four federally recognized tribes in Kansas signed a joint resolution supporting the land transfer. Those four tribes — the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, the Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas, the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska, and the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska — also want to weigh in on the future of the school site.
Any financial contribution to the Shawnee Tribe’s restoration efforts from other tribes has not been discussed, said Joseph Rupnick, chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation’s tribal council.
“We just want to make sure that we’re being consulted on any work that’s being done out there to make sure that it fits within our vision of what that site should look like,” he said.
On the other hand, members of the Kaw — or Kanza — Nation, which originally possessed much of present-day northeast Kansas, and other tribes were unsupportive.
Melissa Garrett, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee, Quapaw and Seneca-Cayuga nations, described her grandfather as a survivor of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the first off-reservation boarding school in the U.S. While assimilation did occur in Kansas, Garrett cautioned against oversimplifying history and comparing it to federally mandated boarding schools.
“Instead of transferring ownership to a single tribe, we should try to preserve an inclusive, multi-tribal, state-supported preservation model that reflects the full history and the complex history,” Garrett said.
The boarding school was founded by Thomas Johnson, a Methodist missionary, slaveholder and pro-slavery advocate. He is also the namesake of Johnson County, where the historical site is located.
Children from 22 different tribes attended the boarding school. Most of the attendees were from the Shawnee and Delaware — historically called Lenape — tribes, which lived in present day Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. Indigenous people either moved eastward on their own to avoid encroaching colonialism or were forced eastward into “Indian Territory,” including present day Kansas. Both the Shawnee and Delaware tribes were removed from Kansas to Oklahoma once Kansas became a state.
A collection of records about Johnson and the school was published in 1939.
A September 1854 entry from the Daily Republican in Massachusetts reads: “He draws pay for every one present the first day, and it always happens that after the first few days, the school diminishes wonderfully in numbers. No restraint is exercised over those children who wish to go, and some who wish to stay and learn are abused to such a degree that they are obliged to go.”
The state of Kansas acquired the 12 acres of land in 1927, and it was designated as a historical landmark in 1968.
Attention to the problematic history of Native American boarding schools has been piqued in recent years. Former President Joe Biden issued a formal apology on behalf of the U.S. government in October for the country’s boarding school program. Former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland created the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to examine and document the troubled history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S.
