05/06/2002

Associated Press

Elders of the Lummi Indian tribe from Bellingham, Washington, gathered at the Chemewa Indian School in Salem yesterday to honor about 200 students who died there.

Sunday's service marked a new effort by tribal people to reclaim the histories of those children who never returned from Chemawa, and to pressure the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which runs Chemawa, to restore the cemetery and build a monument in the children's honor.

Criss Brown, the student body president, said many students today consider the children who died to be their forebears and she said they would like to regularly help in mowing and picking up trash at the cemetery.

Government archives indicate that most of the children, who ranged in age from toddlers to teen-agers, died during epidemics of influenza and smallpox between 1880 and 1925.

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)