She:kon,
Nia:wen for visiting this website. My name is Louellyn White, daughter of Eleanor Currie and Louis J. White, granddaughter to Josephine R. Currie; Elizabeth Jacobs and Arionhiawa:kon (He Shakes the Clouds) Mitchell White.
I’ve spent the last 20 years researching my family history at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. My work has gone in several directions, from archival research in Washington, DC, historic preservation, repatriating ancestral remains, to walking through cemeteries in Pennsylvania and New Jersey searching for children lost to Indian boarding schools.
My work is also informed by living and working in Canada for the past 15 years where the Truth & Reconciliation Commission has paved a path forward for Indian Residential School survivors. Missing Children’s projects are intertwined with our work when children were taken across the imposed international border to U.S. based Indian Boarding Schools.
This website grew out of the need to share information with relatives about their children in an effective and culturally sensitive way with data curated from years of research and within the broader context of my personal story and Indian boarding schools.
Our purpose is to share knowledge and insights gained through years of research; provide an online gathering space to honor and commemorate these children; and to work together with communities in moving forward toward healing and reconciliation.
First and foremost, this website is meant to honor and remember the children who were lost to Indian boarding schools, specifically Carlisle Indian School and the Lincoln Institution.
This website is also meant for their relatives, families, and communities to learn more about the fates of these children, to reconnect, and to commemorate them.
We would like to gather input from relatives, receive guidance and collaboration, while and recognizing that communities may be doing their own research.
A mother holds her child’s hand as she walks the Earth, guiding the spirit of her child on the journey home to the Sky World, among the Seven Sisters.
The holding of hands is symbolic of the family reconnections that are yearned for by living Indigenous people who have yet to find their children, waiting to be brought home.
The children may no longer have a shadow in their spirit form, but the process of bringing them home can animate the shadow of their living relatives.
Every step in this journey is a relational consideration regarding the care that both child and living relatives deserve. It’s a relational journey that can become good medicine.
A story of healing, a story for healing. A kind of story that can heal generations and where the clouds shake upon the vibrations of love, reunion, of family made anew.
In honor of Arionhiawa:kon (He Shakes the Clouds) Mitchell White, we walk with Indigenous relatives as they reconnect and care for their children.
Some might find the contents of this website distressing, particularly when viewing names and information about deceased relatives. The content may be triggering. Indigenous peoples should be aware that this website contains images, names, and references to deceased persons. We encourage you to seek out support or healing if you experience any stress related to boarding school history.
Please consider supporting the work of Shaking the Clouds, a non-profit organization committed to truth, stories, reconciliation, and healing for Indigenous relatives and communities.
This link will direct you to Preservation Pennsylvania, our fiscal sponsor.