Oral history interview with Dolly BaDonie

Milligan: This is Sarah Milligan with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program. Today's date is June 1, 2018. Got to get that right. I'm here on the Chilocco campus for their annual reunion, and I'm talking to Dolly BaDonie about her time as a student at Chilocco. That's the most formal part of the whole thing. Maybe you can start by giving me a little bit of background information, like where you're from, a little bit about whatever you want to talk about, your family or anything like that.

BaDonie: Okay. My name is Dolly Ganuelas BaDonie. I'm from the state of Washington from Yakama tribe. I attended Chilocco Indian School from 1966, graduating in 1968. This year, we are the honoring class of fifty years since graduation, and it's like returning home. This is our second home away from our 1:00original homes. Through my two years of being here at Chilocco, it's just like another extended family member with all the students from the various tribes and the various states that they represent. We lived together in dorms nine months out of the year, and it was just a sanctuary, a blessing to be able to attend this school. My reason for coming to Indian boarding school, when I was in high school back in, I think it was 1965, where I come from, we were still facing prejudice within our own school within our own reservation. I told my mom that I 2:00don't feel comfortable being in the public school setting because the way they treat the native, some of the Yakama people.

This is our reservation, but we were treated like we didn't belong there, that we weren't part of the school district, or just being Indian in general. I don't know how else I could say it. I pleaded with my mother to let me attend Indian boarding school because I had several family members and several friends that I was finding out what a great experience Indian boarding school was. They were in Oklahoma. I literally had to beg my mother to let me go to boarding school because she was a boarding school survivor. I say "survivor" because in her day is when all the punishments, the lack of language to be used, all of the horror 3:00stories, the hair-cutting, beatings, whatever they went through. She suffered her own type of PTSD or however that is done to Native children in the time. She spent, I believe, eight years at boarding school, Chemawa Indian school, and she swore to herself that she would never let any of her children go to boarding school due to the things that they endured in her time.

I told her, "Mom, it's not the same anymore. It's not. We're in the ʼ60s now. From what I understand, the Indians, the Natives that are going to boarding school, they're getting good grades. They're feeling a place of belonging. They're with other tribes. It's a homecoming to them. They thoroughly enjoy it. It's a good educational system. It's an agricultural school where they're going 4:00to teach us everything we need to know to survive in this world." So she broke down, and she let me go. She actually accompanied me here, and she came to my graduation. Boarding school life to me was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life. I definitely appreciated coming here and made many lasting friendships with many tribes of whom my honoring classes here.

My best friend, Jenny Johns, from Florida is here, and several of my other classmates have passed on. We honored one of our classmates today at the cemetery ceremony. It was his wish that we do a memorial for the children that 5:00were buried in the Chilocco cemetery never to return home. His exact words: "Do something for them." If he was alive today, he would have led the ceremony. He wrote three of us a letter, Tina Kalama Aguilar, Jenny Johns, and myself, and specified, "You three get this done. I want this to happen." It was his wish to be here to make it happen, but he passed on in September. We fulfilled that wish for him today.

Milligan: When did he send you that letter?

BaDonie: I have the letter, but it's in the car. He sent me that letter in July of 2017, I believe. I have the original letter, and I read it verbatim, his words. He was a boarding school--he entered the boarding school at age nine. 6:00Nine years old, he was in the boarding school system. His mother had passed away. He told me that in the ʼ50s, the State of Oklahoma figured that Native men could not raise their children without a mother. They took him, and they put him in the boarding school system since he was nine years old until he graduated in 1968. Boarding school to him was like salvation, a place to live, a home, a family, my friends. He felt so bad that--he knew that there was a cemetery here. When he graduated from here, he was drafted into the Army, eventually went to Vietnam, is a Vietnam combat veteran. From there, he moved to Portland, Oregon. His name was Alex Stone, Cheyenne tribe of Kingfisher, Oklahoma. I believe from 7:00his boarding school experience, he got into state child welfare initially, and then he was instrumental in keeping families together, putting abusers in jail for abusing children. He did everything he could to protect children and to keep families together. That was his goal in his employment.

Milligan: So after he left out of the military he worked with child welfare?

BaDonie: Yes.

Milligan: Was he in Oklahoma or in Oregon?

BaDonie: In Oregon. He met his wife in Portland, Oregon, and then he made it his home. Then from there he initiated a lot of, probably, policies and rules that are still being used today in the state of Oregon in protecting children.

Milligan: So he obviously--I can understand why that was his drive with sort of his background. So when he asked you all to do something that recognized the cemetery--maybe actually you can explain a little bit more about what the cemetery is.

BaDonie: In the two years that I went to boarding school here, I never knew that there was a cemetery with Native children buried in it. I never knew that. As we grew, as we were adults and getting towards our retirement years, we traveled a lot together, him and myself and my other friend Jenny Johns. He talked about the cemetery. Apparently, from what I understand from the Chilocco Alumni Association, they said there is a cemetery here on Chilocco, and they've 9:00estimated about 125 students, babies, maybe staff, whoever. We don't know. They don't know. Some names they have; some tribes they have. It was always his wish that they be remembered and never forgotten because they didn't get to go home like the rest of us. So today we fulfilled that obligation for him because he wasn't able to come here and do it himself. He told us what we needed to do, and we did it.

Milligan: It was beautiful, by the way.

BaDonie: Did you go out there?

Milligan: I did get to go down there, yeah.

BaDonie: Oh, good, good, good.

Milligan: And that's, I think that's an interesting--so I think you have an interesting sort of rounded perspective, not just on boarding school but on Chilocco, too, with your mom's legacy and sort of growing up understanding that, and then making the conscious decision to come to Chilocco. I want to talk a 10:00little bit more about your time when you did come to Chilocco and sort of what your experiences were. Do you remember when your mom brought you to school? Do you remember getting dropped off here?

BaDonie: Yes, I remember. I think my mom only went as far as Ark City because there was a pick-up place for us, for the students that were getting off the Greyhound buses. That's how we got here in the day is on Greyhound buses from the various states and tribes. I believe I left my mom in Ark City and then rode out here with another group of students. Coming down the long archway from the road, I was entering into a new life, a new way of living, scared and anxious at 11:00the same time and not really knowing what I was getting into other than I was going to a Native boarding school. It was exciting but scary at the same time.

Milligan: Were the other students on the bus with you--they would have all been Native at that time. Was that a new thing for you to be in a space that really was just Native kids?

BaDonie: Yeah, it was new and enjoyable. I got to meet all these different tribes. Some of them were returning students and were telling me what a great experience and what a salvation it was to be able to have a real home. A lot of them came from broken homes and absent parents in their life or deceased parents. They were telling me how great Chilocco is. "You'll adjust. You'll get 12:00used to it." It's kind of like military-style run. You'll have duties. We all have to do something to maintain our buildings and everything. The beds have to be made, and our dressers, everything has to be in a certain order. There was no such thing as being messy or being lazy, being in the boarding school system. We all had duties whether it was mopping, cleaning, sweeping, bathrooms. We all had a detail, kitchen, whatever. I knew I didn't want to do kitchen because you had to get up about five o'clock in the morning.

I lucked out the two years that I was here. I had a teacher. His name was Mr. Leonard Hathcoat, and he taught history. I became acquainted with him, and I really enjoyed his class. One day he asked me if I could be his student 13:00assistant after school an hour a day so that--. He said, "If you don't want to work in the kitchen, you can work for me. I can keep you out of the kitchen." I said, "That'll work," so every day after school I did his typing on the old typewriters with the old carbon papers. If I was a junior, I would do the senior tests, type it all up and get it ready for the classes. Whatever he needed me to do, I did it for him. I got his class prepared for the next day, and then when I was a senior, vice versa. I would do the junior stuff. That was my two-year duty here at Chilocco, so I got on really easy, very easy, where others were like, "Aw, I've got kitchen duty next month," or whatever. My duty was to work for him 14:00every day after school.

Milligan: So was that an immediate assignment, or was that after you'd been here for a little while?

BaDonie: It came, I believe, within a couple of months. He was a very good teacher, very outspoken and demanded attention. I just don't even know how we even came together to even get to that point. He always said he saw something in me that he thought that I would be successful, and he just asked me one day if I would be willing to work for him as my duty, for, I guess, my room and board if that's what you want to call it. I mean, I still had to clean halls and stuff at the dorm setting, but at least I didn't have to do kitchen duty. (Laughs) We got up early enough. I didn't want to get up any earlier than that.

Milligan: Which dorm were you in?

BaDonie: I was in, they called it, Home Three. I was in Home Three.

Milligan: Do you remember--I guess you still had a matron at that point.

BaDonie: Oh, yeah, we had several matrons.

Milligan: Do you remember anything about anybody from that perspective?

BaDonie: The matrons? I remember them all. They had their routine. They had everything down from mail call to wake-up call, to changing towels and sheets out, maintenance schedules, letters, whatever. I can still see them. I may not remember their names right off the top of my head, but I remember all the matrons. For some reason, I don't remember their names. If I looked at the book I could tell you, but I can still see their faces.

Milligan: Did you feel like you had a good relationship with them?

BaDonie: I think so, as long as we'd do what we needed to do and we did it. We had to do it. It was part of our obligation of being a student here. If it wasn't for the students--I know facility maintenance had a lot to do with the upkeep, but the students are the ones that upkept our dorms. It taught us a lot in life to be orderly and organized, changing out sheets every week. That became a schedule for probably most of us. We lived by that. We lived by--you're given your towels, and you use them all week. You hang them up; you dry them. You don't just throw them on a floor and expect Mom or somebody to pick them up and take care of them like my kids or maybe my grandkids do. We didn't do that. We learned a lot from being in the boarding school setting. You learned 17:00organization and time consciousness and different things like that. I probably learned more here than I would've at home because--. I got out of my home because by the time I was in high school, all my sisters were growing up and getting married, and each one of them had to take their role in taking care of kids and cooking and doing dishes. I said, "How am I going to do that? I'm going to go to boarding school." But I still had to do something. At least I didn't have to be the cook at home and do the laundry and do everything that we're supposed to do as one leaves home and the next one takes over to help our mom out.

Milligan: That's actually interesting because you talked about your kids and grandkids now and how there's maybe a different expectation of what Mom's going to do for you versus what you're going to do for Mom. It sounds like the 18:00household you grew up in, there were expectations that you had roles. Do you think that had anything to do with the legacy from your mom's own experience in a boarding school? Was she in that regimented sort of--.

BaDonie: I think so, but my mom has many children. She had eleven of us. When you have eleven children, you have to be organized. One of her main goals was the dishes are going to be done; the house is going to be clean; you're going to get your clothes in the laundry room, and your older sisters are going to get you ready, and blah, blah, blah. We were scared of her not to have the house clean. We had a long driveway. We always had a watch dog. "Oh, here comes Mom!" Everybody was running in every direction, picking up things and doing things, and getting in the kitchen, straightening things out or picking things up and straightening up the couches and everything because we knew what our mom expected of us. When you have so many children like that, you almost have to be 19:00organized. We learned a lot from our mother, so it wasn't like boarding school was going to change it other than the different duties that we did. Just coming from an organized household, I guess, boarding school wasn't that hard.

Milligan: Was coming to Oklahoma from Washington State an adjustment?

BaDonie: Yes, the weather. In Washington, we're cool. It gets hot but not humid. It gets cold, but it gets cold here, too. In our time, we had to wear dresses and skirts all the time. We couldn't wear jeans or pants like everybody does nowadays. That was only for Saturday. On Sunday we still had to wear skirts and dresses here, so it was very disciplined, too. It was a big adjustment, but the love of the school, the love of your friends, and the campus setting just by 20:00itself--. The beauty of the whole place, this is a magnificent place, the buildings, the lawns, the ovals, the trees, everything, everything here. I've drove through other boarding schools, but nothing to me surpasses Chilocco and its magnificent limestone buildings.

Milligan: It is beautiful.

BaDonie: It is.

Milligan: I wondered, what did you do for entertainment and for socialization while you were here?

BaDonie: They had dances. They had dances here. We had movies. We had a drama club, choir. We had a big auditorium in our school building, so we were always in there. That's where we went to movies, and then the drama club would do their shows. Then the school would bring in different types of entertainment. I believe Oral Roberts Jr. came out one time. School assemblies. They had the 21:00different denominations, and we all went to church. It was something to do. Of course, we had the oval that we're on right now. This very building was where we all gathered and sat and talked on the outside, sat. Generally, we had bands. Somebody would play guitar or do something, and we'd all sit and watch. We did a lot of socializing. Then on weekends there was sports. There was volleyball; there was softball. Of course, our sports were big. Our sports were big on campus. We had very athletic tribal, different tribal members that came from different tribes that played against all these bigger schools here in the surrounding area. Our gym would always be packed with the Chilocco support.

Milligan: Do you remember which were the most popular sports at that time?

BaDonie: It was probably--basically, they all were. Basketball was big; football was big. They had a good wrestling club. They had a big FFA club which we, the girls, were never part of. It was the animals. They had the ag barn here. They had a military--I don't know what they call it, but they call it Charlie Company. They had that here, too. That alone, a lot of the students joined that and got their training or whatever they needed to have down here. Then we had postgrads here, also, because it's an Indian agricultural school. Anybody that had graduated, they had cosmetology, dry cleaning, automotive. They had heavy 23:00equipment. They had all kinds of things going on at this school. Had a lot of people go through. I think just about everybody that went to school here probably ended up in the military. I was in the era during the Vietnam War, so everybody I knew just about went to Vietnam or was stationed somewhere. They all had to partake in the military. For the Native, that's always big. Natives, I understand, are the biggest minority that went into the armed forces, and we thank them for all their service. About everybody I graduated with that's passing on now went to Vietnam.

Milligan: That would have been that era, the National Guard unit here on campus.

BaDonie: Oh, yeah, that's what it was, the National Guard.

Milligan: They had a lot of participation early on. Did you--you were talking a 24:00little bit about a lot of the career training programs on campus. Were you involved in any of them, yourself?

BaDonie: The classes that I went to, probably the only thing that I went to is mechanical drafting. There was so much to choose from. Getting here kind of late, I probably didn't get the pick. They had their own print shop here, and the dry cleaning. I didn't get into any of that. Like I said, my duty was to help my history teacher, so I really didn't get into a lot of the other classes that taught--.

Milligan: Seems like you were doing some clerical training.

BaDonie: Yeah, so that led me into the clerical field eventually.

Milligan: Did it?

BaDonie: I put forty-four years of employment with the Yakama tribe.

Milligan: What were you doing with the Yakama tribe? What was your job?

BaDonie: Mostly administration-type stuff, finance stuff, basically in the administrative field. I didn't go to college, so that prepared me for office work and to get things done. Coming from a boarding school setting, if something had to be done, I made sure it was done. There was no if, ands, or "maybe later" or "when I have time." "No, you're going to do it now, and I want it now." That's just the way it was, and I think most of my classmates are like that that went into the workforce. Since we were in the boarding school setting, if it's going to get done, somebody has to make it get done, and we are the person that's going to make you do it, not like now. The cellphones are out; computers are out. "Didn't I tell you to do this?" "I'll get to it." "No, you're going to get to it now. You're going to get it done. That's all there is to it. Put that 26:00away. You want to do that, break time, or take it home."

Milligan: It's interesting. I've talked to a lot of people, and it's obvious that there's a lot of success that have come out of Chilocco alumni. Whatever sort of career people choose to go into or end up in, sometimes they just fall into things.

BaDonie: We have a lot of leadership of different tribes that came from Chilocco. Some are here today. It brought a lot of good teachings that put us through employment.

Milligan: So when you left the Chilocco campus--. Part of the reason why you 27:00asked to come--what I hear you're saying is that you wanted to come here because you still felt that there was discrimination in the public school system where you were at, maybe in a larger community maybe. I wonder if when you left the Chilocco campus if that was still the case even around here. You went out on weekends, didn't you? You didn't have outings?

BaDonie: No. The only time we could go outside of the Chilocco campus, if we were on a holiday pass with a student that was from Oklahoma, whether we went home with them for the holidays or whatever.

Milligan: Oh, I see.

BaDonie: That's the only time that you could get off campus.

Milligan: But you were here from August through June, right?

BaDonie: May, for two years.

Milligan: Did you go back home for the summer?

BaDonie: Yes, I went home immediately after graduation. I was still seventeen. 28:00My mom still had control of me. In June, I turned eighteen.

Milligan: Not for long.

BaDonie: Yeah. I became fully employed when I was twenty. I worked summer employment as a youth, out of school, too, so that prepared me for working for my tribe for the next forty-four years.

Milligan: Where did you work as a youth?

BaDonie: At the Indian Health Service. I just helped out the different clerical offices, whatever they needed, filing, copying, or mimeographing, the old style, or typing on carbon paper or whatever. Just wherever I was needed I would help out.

Milligan: Was that back in Washington?

BaDonie: Yes, on the Yakama reservation.

Milligan: Was it a hard adjustment since you were on campus for these two years 29:00with going back home and working on the reservation? Was it a hard adjustment leaving that, being around a lot of other Native people consistently, going back out after you graduated, or were you ready to go? I don't know if I'm asking that right.

BaDonie: Yeah, you are. I didn't want to go home. This was family. This was our home, making all the friendships that we had here from all the tribes. Specifically my class, I did stats on it, and there were forty-nine tribes representing seven different states of the United States. Of those states, Washington had maybe fifteen tribes here, so it was hard to leave all of these friendships and all of these people because I may never see them again. Why these reunions are so important to me and my friends that come here is because 30:00we can see each other again. My best friend is from Florida. She comes from one part of the United States, and I come from the other. We meet at Chilocco every year.

Milligan: Have there been any years that you've missed the reunion?

BaDonie: There's been a few because of different obligations at home. That's probably why a lot of them don't come, because you have graduations going on, you have births of new grandchildren and great-grandchildren, or illness, or for whatever reason. There's been a few years. I only started coming probably when I reunited with my friend. Gosh, it's probably been I don't know how many years ago, but I haven't tried to miss any reunions since then. --

Milligan: I'm also, I'm curious about the alumni side of it because people from the outside I think would look and say, "You were just here two years, and you 31:00were at home for fifteen," or whatever it is. For this to be what you really define as a big part of what you consider home and family, how do you think that that--. It seems that that happened so fast. How do you think that that sort of closeness or that feeling happens? Is it because of your friendship, or is it because you think that you all are isolated on this sort of campus as a village? Do you think there's just other factors that people come back to Chilocco?

BaDonie: It's the love of our school. It's the love of this campus. It's the love of all the friendships that we made, everlasting friendships that we made. There's been a lot of deaths of a lot of our friends. Coming here is just like they say on a lot of our shirts: "coming home." It was just like missing my 32:00family. They're like my family. I miss them just as much as I miss my mom and my brothers and my sisters, and I'm anxious to go home and see them. Well, I'm anxious to come back and see those that return, also. As you can tell by--

Milligan: They're ready for you!

BaDonie: --the number of people that are coming here, it's that that brings us all back together again.

Milligan: Are there special things that you do when you do come back to campus? Are there things you want to see or places you want to be?

BaDonie: Just coming here to campus, and then seeing our old dorm that we stayed in, and our school, and as you can see, our school is dilapidating. It's falling apart. These magnificent buildings aren't grander like they were when we were here. It's really sad to see that, but still the campus itself is still beautiful, our oval, our lawns, the buildings that are still intact. They have a 33:00lot of memories. It's always heartfelt to even come back here, even when this is happening to our school.

Milligan: Do you think--I hear a lot of people having conversations about what they wish would happen with this campus. Is there something you've thought about with that? If you could snap your fingers and make magic happen, what would happen to this campus?

BaDonie: I wish that the buildings could be restored, that maybe this could be a big museum, maybe, maybe a big, memorable center, maybe a convention center. I'd really love to see the buildings restored and something made from it or done with it. Even the people from the surrounding area, they probably want to come 34:00in here and look. They probably don't think that they're welcome, now that there's guards and police and it's really protected. I just wish that magically Chilocco could be restored to the grandeur it was when I was here, when I graduated. I think a lot of them feel that way. It still brings us back; we still come back.

Milligan: You can tell that you have a lot of love for the place, as well as the people, and you see that when you talk to anybody who comes back to this reunion. I had one more question about the cemetery commemoration that you all did today because I also wanted to make the point that it sounds like that was the first time any alumni group, any alumni reunion, has taken the time to really focus on that cemetery. You said when you went to school here that you 35:00didn't even know it was there. At what point did that cemetery sort of come back onto the consciousness of the alumni society or the alumni group?

BaDonie: From my understanding from just listening to Mr. Baker out there, I think that they've had a cemetery committee for the last four years, and he corrected everyone by saying this was not the first ceremony. I think this is probably the first ceremony of the magnitude that it was today. I believe when they had the fence put around it--and they've been kind of cleaning it, and they probably had prayer service or something over it. I heard him say that today. Today is probably where the classmates were able to go out there and witness the ceremony, the traditional ceremony and the prayers and songs and stuff that was 36:00done by various tribes. The Seminole tribe participated from Florida, the Creek tribe of Oklahoma, the Navajo tribe of Arizona, of course the Warm Springs tribe of Oregon, and there was two of us Yakamas from the state of Washington that partook in the ceremony today out there.

My husband burned cedar, and my friend from Florida burned bay leaves and sweet grass. Prayers and words were said for those that are still left here. It was, like I said, all done at the request of our deceased classmate. Because of what happened today, it seems like it opened up a whole new door for the five Chilocco tribes that owned this land. The leadership is getting together. They 37:00did a lot of work out there, a lot, allowing us to get in there, the clearing of the trees and the road. From what I understand, there's grants coming in. There's a pledge of thirty thousand to do more work at the cemetery and eventually get a monument memorializing those that are still here, and possibly some benches or something where people can go out there.

Milligan: It seems that--maybe I misunderstand this, but it seems like most of the burials out there happened between when the school opened in 1894 to maybe the early--.

BaDonie: The early years, yeah.

Milligan: When I hear people talk about it, there's so much emotion behind sort of what that means. That space is there that really represents kids who came. Maybe they didn't want to, but that they never got the chance to even really get 38:00sent home or really communicate even with parents. I've seen the letters from the superintendents that basically say, "Sorry, your child's dead," which is just heartbreaking. I'm curious about that because I know when you talk about your time in boarding school, and other people, your time in school, it was this sort of positive--. You embraced what that meant for you as a Native person to be in a school with other Native people, and there was some ownership there, versus when your mom was in school or that sort of time period that the cemetery represents. Do you ever sort of think about that with Chilocco's overall history, that reconciliation of those different times? Is it hard for you to think about the Chilocco of the cemetery times as the same physical places of Chilocco that you came to?

BaDonie: I can't really answer that because, like I said, I didn't even know 39:00there was a cemetery there. I can only know from when I came in '66 what a great experience it was for me to be accepted and just be part of the whole school, not like I was where I came from. We, the Natives, were the minority there. It was a whole different experience. Being in the '60s, everything had changed from the time of the early cemetery, the early Chilocco days I really don't know anything about.

Milligan: Right, I hear that, absolutely. It's different what I think a lot of people outside the Chilocco community understand at all. I also think it's great to have this alumni recognition of the whole story in trying to walk backwards and do something that memorializes the kids from the earlier years.

BaDonie: Yeah, the various tribes, I understand (that they know of) there's 125 graves out there. I don't know how many different tribes are out there. I think they're working on that. I heard one of the leadership today, said that there could possibly be more, and they want to widen the fence. They probably want to do whatever it is to find out if there's more graves out there, how they do technology nowadays underground, how they find things. More things are going to happen because of the ceremony and the request that our class is instrumental in doing through our deceased classmate. From what he started, just magnified.

Milligan: The ripples are happening out. It'll be really neat to look back next 41:00year and see what's happened. I don't want to keep you too much from your friends that are looking for you. I know they are. (Laughter) Is there anything else you want to talk about that I didn't ask about?

BaDonie: No, I think you pretty much covered everything, how I feel about being here and how I got here. I think we covered it, and how I think it prepared me for my career and doing what I needed to do in my life. I'm happily retired, except for the neck surgery that I had to have, but I'm doing okay. I thank you for the interview. I thank you for asking me to be part of this interview--.

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