The Native Ways student club of Northwest College, Hinckley Library and the Native American Culture and Literature Class are co-sponsoring a screening of the award-winning documentary, “Home from School: The Children of Carlisle.”

The film will be shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Fagerberg Building Room 70.

It tells the story of a delegation of Northern Arapaho tribal elders and youth who traveled from Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation to Pennsylvania in 2017 to retrieve the remains of three Native American children who died at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the 1880s. The children were among the tens of thousands removed from Native American homes in the late 19th century, and well into the 20th century, and taken to U.S. government-run Indian boarding schools. The program forced them through a military-style remedial education program designed to strip them of their languages, traditions and culture.

“It’s important to understand the hardships Native Americans went through and how it continues to affect them today,” said Jennifer Litterer-Trevino, assistant professor of photography at Northwest College and club adviser for Native Ways. “It was about trying to take away their culture and who they were as a people, and many of their elders today are the survivors who are now trying to regain and preserve that culture.”

“Home From School: The Children of Carlisle” also dives into the history of Indian boarding schools, including Carlisle, which operated from 1879-1918 and served as a model for many others of its kind. Many students never returned home, dying at these schools, and those who did return were emotionally scarred with trauma that echoed through the generations.

“This film is especially relevant today because of what’s been happening in Canada (and the United States) with the discovery of unmarked gravesites at former boarding schools,” said Litterer-Treviño. “It won’t be an easy film for people to watch, but it’s educational and important to learn what happened.”

The documentary will air later in November on PBS and has already won awards — for Best Indigenous Voices Documentary at the 2021 Montana International Film Festival, Best U.S. Documentary at the 2021 Chagrin Documentary Film Fest and Best Feature Film at the 2021 NatiVisions Film Festival. It is being presented at Northwest College as part of Native American Heritage Month.

To learn more about the film, visit www.homefromschoolfilm.com.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Litterer-Treviño at jen.litterer-trevino@nwc.edu or 307-754-6160.