Time turned back for Chilocco alumni

By John Christian Hopkins
Diné Bureau

ALBUQUERQUE — There is a lot to catch up on when you have not seen your friend for 44 years. Bernice Austin-Begay said she has never seen her husband, Reuben D. Begay Sr., engage in such an intense conversation with anyone for so long.

"It's been 44 years," since he had seen Reuben, Ellison Tsosie of Fruitland said.

Finding old friends and reliving old memories draws many of the former students back for the Chilocco Agricultural Indian School's annual reunion.

Chilocco's 123rd reunion was held at the Marriott in Albuquerque last week, culminating in a banquet Saturday night.

As for Bernice, she ran into one of her old friends as well only she did not recognize her at first.

"She was a pretty girl, and all the boys liked her. They always voted her queen of this or that," Bernice said. "She waved to me from across the room and I couldn't tell who it was. When she came over, I had to ask who she was!"

A lot can change over the years, but for most of those who attend the annual reunions there is one constant: the education they received at Chilocco changed the course of their lives.

Basic schooling
Located in northern Oklahoma, Chilocco taught Indian children basic schooling and there was an emphasis on learning a trade. Reuben was 10 when he left Teesto, Ariz., for Chilocco, which was named to the National Register of Historic Places last year.

"We went to school in the mornings and in the afternoons we went to whatever our trade was," Reuben said. A chemist with the Salt River Project Navajo Generating Station now, he was learning to be a house painter back then. Other trades included farming, carpentry, nursing and other manual labors.

"There was a restaurant there, where the girls learned to be waitresses," recalled Bernice. It was during her time at Chilocco that Bernice, 60, and Reuben, 63, first met on a blind date on Valentine's Day when she was 15, and he was 18. She currently teaches the Navajo language at Page High School.

Pauletta Johnson met her future husband, Charley, at Chilocco; though, just like Reuben and Bernice, they did not begin dating until after high school.

Pauletta, who now lives south of Tulsa, Okla., has no doubt that Chilocco changed her life, and it gave her confidence to succeed in the world.

"It was inspirational, it motivated me. When I made the honor roll, I told myself 'I can do this'," Pauletta said.

She retired four years ago after 33 years of working for the federal government, including 19 with the Department of Energy. Pauletta graduated from Chilocco in 1966 20 years after her mother had.

Emma Falling, of Locust Grove, Okla., did not squander her time at Chilocco she served in student government, on the school paper, in the choir and acted in school plays.

"She was very clubby," Bernice laughed.

Emma said she has missed only one reunion in the past 27 years; she looks forward to seeing her old schoolmates like Bernice. "Bernice is my special, special friend," Emma said. They both graduated in 1965.

Falling, a member of the Cherokee tribe, has only positive memories of Chilocco, where the school was "like a parent" to her. "It was wonderful," Emma recalled. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me."

Keeping the memories
With a focus on traditional trades, her instructors encouraged her to pursue a teaching career, Emma said. But that changed after a class field trip to the offices of petroleum giant, Conoco, she said. She was awestruck by the computers and the world of data processing; she went on to become a "payroll clerk slash timekeeper slash trainer" for Hillcrest Healthcare System, Falling said. She recently retired after 39 years. The girl who was once so involved in school activities is now a woman determined to keep the memory of Chilocco alive.

"I guess, maybe, because I was so involved in everything, that's why this is so important to me now to keep this going," Emma said.

At 10, Reuben was one of the youngest to be sent to Chilocco but all of them from various Indian tribes came with little notion of what life was like outside of the reservation.

Bernice remembered her first Christmas. The school let most of the children go home, but those kids whose family lived too far away or had no transportation were left behind in the near-empty dormitories, Bernice said.

"I didn't know what Christmas was, I had never heard of it," Bernice said.

Another child told her to wait and see. Soon, Kayenta resident King Mike came through handing out little bags of candy and snacks. Chilocco was one of the first handful of Indian schools along with Haskell in Kansas and Carlisle in Pennsylvania. It was founded when the official federal policy was to "educate" and this assimilate Indian children into mainstream society.

Today, decades after their boarding school experiences ended, many Native Americans still struggle to overcome bitter memories and the stripping of their cultural identities.

"Boarding school was a terrible, terrible experience," said Jim Northrup, a Fond du Lac Ojibwe from the Northwoods of Sawyer, Minn. He was sent to the Pipestem boarding school in Minnesota.

"Before I left, I asked my mother why the white kids didn't have to go. She couldn't answer. She turned away, but not before I saw the pain in her eyes," Northrup said.

Northrup was six then and, as one of the smallest kids at Pipestem, was beaten and bullied by bigger kids nearly every day. Today, the 63-year-old Northrup is an award-winning columnist/author/playwright.

"The first meal was a brutal learning experience," Northrup recalled. "A big guy reached across the table and took most of my breakfast."

He learned to protect his food by eating with one arm wrapped around his plate and holding his fork in his other hand, ready to stab at any prowling fingers.

It was tough on the new kids at boarding school because they were not allowed to speak their native tongues and few spoke English. The students at Chilocco were continually tested and those scoring the higher marks were put in more academic-oriented classes. Because he tested well, Reuben found himself in more advanced classes. In his first science class, he said he didn't learn anything; and then he took a chemistry class.

"That's when I sat up and watched the teacher," Reuben said. "I thought 'This might be interesting'."

Another Navajo, Leonard Sylvan of Gallup, started off in leather working before Chilocco's school paper caught his eye but his interest was not in writing. He was fascinated by the production of the paper, and it led him to a 35-year career with the Navajo Times, where he is currently its senior press technician.

"It was a good experience for me," Sylvan said of his days at Chilocco.

But for every positive story, there is a negative experience, too. Jim Northrup ran away from Pipestem after a few months. He made it nine miles before he was captured. He later discovered that local farmers were paid bounties to bring back the runaway Indian children.

There were always nights of sorrow in his dormitory, he said. A boy would start crying either because he was homesick or had been beaten up, he explained. Soon the kids in the beds near his would think about how homesick they were, and a "wave of sobbing" would sweep the dorm, from one end to the other, Northrup said. "After a night like that, we all got up and pretended it didn't happen," he recalled.

But even Northrup admits to some good aspects to the schooling; he did learn to read and write English and now is a successful newspaper columnist and author. In fact, Native American actor Adam Beach ("Windtalkers") is interested in taking an option on one of Northrup's books.

Even though the boarding school generation learned to adapt to the world around them, many still keep the memories of those lonesome years locked away inside.

"Boarding school happened to me nearly 60 years ago," Northrup said. "But the pain is still there."

John Christian Hopkins can be reached at hopkins1960@hotmail.com