4. The Scientist Detective

Crystal and Lashay set out to clear any doubts they have around the integrity of the search of the school grounds. This leads them to the eccentric scientist who operates the ground penetrating radar. She’s Native American, determined, and despite her cutting-edge technology, swears her allegiance is ONLY to the “lost and stolen children” that she searches for under former boarding schools around the country. They also encounter the wisened elder who will perform a prayer over the grounds. He claims to have perfectly merged Lakota and Catholicism via quantum physics. It is an enlightening and unexpected journey into the deep spirituality that looms over the proceedings.

What is AMERICAN GENOCIDE?

Amidst an unprecedented federal investigation into hundreds of Native Boarding Schools and the 100,000+ children these institutions forcibly removed, one school has become the epicenter of controversy in America’s attempt to reckon with its dark history: Red Cloud Indian School. While today some see the school as a positive presence in the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota tribe, others cite it as a perpetrator of generational trauma. While the US government is starting to admit its culpability in a church-facilitated campaign of genocide, the quest for justice is exposing tension throughout the Native community. In this new podcast from IllumiNative, series hosts Crystal Echo Hawk (Pawnee) and Lashay Wesley (Choctaw) hit the ground in Pine Ridge, South Dakota to chronicle the actively-developing situation for themselves, covering every twist and turn in this true crime story about the compounding intergenerational pain of Native American boarding schools and whether it’s possible for a community, Native peoples, and the United States to achieve truth, healing, and reconciliation.