Sheepinsh Goah has always had questions about the experiences of her ancestors. Goah is Tsimshian and grew up in Ketchikan, where she lives today. Most of her family lives in the area. She is the daughter of a boarding school survivor.
Around a year ago, she was told she had another ancestor at a boarding school, but this one didn't survive. Her great aunt, Mabel Stack, had been identified in an army cemetery in Pennsylvania. And she had the opportunity to bring her home.
"And as soon as I (had) seen it, I knew I wanted to do it," Goah said. "I mean, I didn't even have to think about it."
Stack lived with her family in Loring — a once-thriving village near Ketchikan. At 11 years old, Stack, along with another young girl from Metlakatla, Lucy Spaulding, were taken from their families to the federal Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1903. The school's founder, Richard Pratt, was known for his philosophy, "Kill the Indian in him, save the man."
Stack died at just 12 years old, just one year after arriving at Carlisle. Spaulding died a year later at the age of 16. Both succumbed to tuberculosis, according to their death records – a common cause of death among students. Their remains have been buried at the site for over 100 years. This week, they are both returning home together.
The Office of Army Cemeteries reached out to the Alaska Native Heritage Center in 2024 for help identifying the family members of the students buried in the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery. Stack and Spaulding are some of the latest to be repatriated, along with Edward Angalook from Unalakleet and Tummasak from the Shishmaref region.
Goah is Stack's closest living relative. Within the last year, she was sent a variety of documents including death records, education reports, and a letter from the superintendent.
"I started reading it, and it just brought everything so close," Goah said. "It brought her so close to me, and that's the first time I felt that way. But then I've been thinking a lot about her and all this, and it kind of makes me want to cry."
Benjamin Jacuk, director of Indigenous research and healing at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, said there's never been much well-kept information about the Native students who died in boarding schools — especially ones from Alaska. The information they do have is often unusable because it's misspelled or fragmented.
"For the majority of the students that are coming back, there might be just even one postcard, just saying this individual died," Jacuk said.
A collection of uncovered documents was recently found from Sheldon Jackson, a prominent missionary and founder of boarding schools. They were in the basement of Princeton Theological Seminary, Jackson's alma mater, and Jacuk said they were pivotal in helping identify the four Alaska Native children.
It's a big discovery, but Jacuk said there's a lot more work to be done. Documentation is limited and there are many children who died in boarding schools who have never been identified.
"I don't think there's really, we've ever come across a family who has known that their family member has existed," Jacuk said.
The Office of Army Cemeteries has been working to identify and offer repatriation of Native students still buried at the former school since 2017. They are disinterring, or digging up, 12 students as part of their disinterment program this month. Founded in 1879, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School took in nearly 8,000 Native children before shutting down in 1918.
Families are given the choice on whether or not they want to bring their family member home or if they would prefer them to stay buried where they are. This is the first group of children the ANHC has identified there, and Jacuk said there are plenty more. He thinks all Alaskan children at Carlisle who will be repatriated will be brought home by the end of next year.
Goah was unable to travel to Carlisle due to health reasons. Her cousin Ahl'lidaaw Ginack'angeak is one of the family members traveling and has been helping Goah navigate the paperwork.
Ginack'angeak said she feels bitter about having to travel to a U.S. military base to retrieve her family, where so much violence has happened to her people.
"Here is a cemetery full of children, innocent children, who have been waiting for over 100 years to go home," Ginack'angeak said. "In this great country, with this great military, they have been inept at finding and helping these children to get home. I'm not impressed. I'm angry."
And as much as Ginack'angeak wants to bring her ancestor home, she needs people to remember this is not normal.
"That is not a part of our culture anywhere," she said. "We don't go digging up the bodies of our relatives."
Ginack'angeak brought eagle down feathers and boughs of cedar to Carlisle to rest in Stack's casket.
"We'll use our Tsimshian traditions and our Tsimshian prayers, and we'll do right by our traditions and we can do right," she said. "We have our ways."
All four Alaska Native children – Stack, Spaulding, Angalook, and Tummasak – being repatriated from Carlisle are scheduled to arrive back with their relatives this coming week. Stack's family plans to have a service for her when she gets home.
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