- Welcome to Independent Lens .
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
'Kill the Indian, save the man.'
This was a phrase and the actual guiding principle
behind a U.S. Government-run Indian boarding school
in the late 19th Century.
In tonight's film,
Home from School: The Children of Carlisle,
we learn about the horrors some children faced
at the Carlisle Boarding Industrial School
in Pennsylvania.
In the late 1880s, tens of thousands of Indian children
were taken from their homes by the government
in an effort to reprogram them,
in effect deprogramming them
and anything they knew about their cultures or traditions.
Many of these children returned home
emotionally scarred for life.
Others never returned home at all
and actually died while at the school.
Home from School
follows a small delegation of Northern Arapaho Tribal members
who travel from Wyoming to Pennsylvania
to bring back the remains of three of these children
who were buried at the school over a hundred years ago.
Most often, it's directors or producers
that look for subjects for their films.
In this case, it was members of the Arapaho Tribe
who were proactive and sought out the filmmakers
to chronicle their trek east
to bring home the remains of their ancestors.
They reached out to a Wyoming-based production company
who were more than happy to jump in.
Director Geoff O'Gara is the founder of Caldera Productions,
a company that focuses on
telling stories of the American West.
O'Gara has an eclectic background.
He's a published author,
has worked as a reporter in Washington D.C.,
did PR for Major League Baseball's Oakland A's
in his native California,
and also has a theater background.
In the words of the filmmaker referring to his Arapaho actors,
'To move forward, they must heal the past.'
Home from School: The Children of Carlisle
starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.