Over 120 years ago, two Alaska Native children from the Bering Strait region were taken to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a notorious boarding school. Both died of tuberculosis and were buried there. Now, over a century later, they have come home.
One child, a girl named Tummassak, originally from Shishmaref, arrived at Carlisle on November 14, 1897. She died April 8, 1900. Another, Edward Angalook of Unalakleet, arrived November 23, 1903 and died September 24, 1905. Last week, the remains of both children were brought to their home communities.
The graveyard at Carlisle was moved in 1927. Nearly a century later, in 2024, the Office of the Army Cemeteries, which runs the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery where the children were buried, reached out to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, according to reporting by Sydney Dauphinais at KBRD community radio in Ketchikan. The Alaska Native Heritage Center had conducted research on boarding schools and were asked to help identify the family members and origins of the Alaska Native students who died at Carlisle…