FORT SHAW — Standing before a crowd on a hot August morning, state Sen. Susan Webber, D-Browning, spoke of her great-grandparents, Cecilia Russell Bullshoe and Charlie Reevis.
Both attended the Fort Shaw Indian School, a boarding school just west of Great Falls run by the federal government from 1892 to 1910. The trauma associated with that school was passed down to Webber.
Growing up, she said discipline in her family home “was swift and brutal.”
“My mother, if you got out of line, she would take a strap to you with anything on hand,” she told audience members. “She was raised that way. My grandmother before her was raised the same way. Before that, we were free-roaming, we had different child-rearing. But that (discipline) is what was learned here.”
Sen. Susan Webber, D-Browning, stands with Jesse DesRosier, whose ancestor ran the Fort Shaw Indian School.
Webber argues that remembering boarding school history, in its fullness, is a necessary first step on the path to healing. The event at Fort Shaw comes from her Senate Joint Resolution 6 in the 2023 legislative session, which calls for a Day of Remembrance to honor and recognize the children who attended Indian boarding schools. It was important to Webber to hold the event at the site of the old school, where “our people walked.” Not everyone in attendance felt the same.
