South Dakota will officially be the third stop on Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland’s Road to Healing Tour, the Department of the Interior announced today.
The tour kicked off in Caddo County, Okla., in July with the intention of collecting oral testimonies from individuals who experienced Indian boarding schools and their descendants. The following month, Haaland and Newland made their second stop in Pellston, Michigan,and were slated to travel to Hawai’i, Arizona, and South Dakota as part of The Road to Healing tour in 2022.
On Saturday, Oct. 15 at 10 am, the two will visit Sinte Gleska University in Mission, South Dakota— a town within the Rosebud Indian Reservation— to hear from Indian boarding school survivors and their descendants as part of their year-long initiative.
Only the first hour of the event will be open to the media. A transcript will be available in the weeks following the visit, according to the Department of the Interior.
Trauma-informed support will be available on-site during the South Dakota event. Native News Online will also be present at the event, so stay tuned for more reporting.